AI is one of my favourite Kubrick films...IF AND ONLY IF I shut it off at precisely the moment you describe. As much as I normally enjoy far-future posthuman Digital Intelligences with bodies made of nanotechnology resurrecting their ancient precursors to study their evolution, the saccharine sentimentality of the…

HHHAHAHHAHHAHAHA. OK, that was brilliant!

If Cersei were funny, I'd excuse most of her bullshittery as well.

Oh, dear gods. Who does this moron think he's kidding? Oh. Wait. A sizable portion for the American populace.

Hmmm. This may prove interesting!

Oh, wank wank wank. Why do people hate Cersei Lannister? Because she's a bloody selfserving, powerhungry shit—like everybody else in her family. And unlike Tyrrion, who at least balances his colossal egocentrism with humour, Cersei is just a nasty, unlikable person whose redeeming qualities are greatly outweighed by…

HOLY SHIT—THE THING'S MADE IT TO CHINA! We're doomed.

I adored American Gothic and Brisco County Jr.!

Well THIS just made the story I'm working on a LOT easier to write!

Wow...I bet the US Navy will last a long time against orbital laser/mass bombardment. Ships are pretty useless against orbital weaponry.

Wow, now THERE's a stupid idea....Stupid enough to be awesome!—but it's not. I expect better from Atwood than this.

What do *I* do when I find racist/sexist/whateverist bullshit in old, outdated sci-fi? If the story's good, I keep reading. Unless you live under a rock, you're bound to already be aware that folks in the past didn't quite think like you do, so reading something from the past and encountering sentiments common to that…

Y'all coastal weenies better learn to swim. Me...I live on the RIGHT side of the Appalachians. Pittsburgh isn't going anywhere!

Oh, that's easily done. As soon as the Sun's output dips below a certain threshold at which powering the cloud will start to get dicey, just migrate the cloud to another nearby star that still has plenty of juice left in it! That may not even be necessary, though, since a Matcloud of that size could theoretically turn…

Wow. This just looks...bad. Watching the trailer, I just kept thinking "Alien vs. Predator meets The Fifth Element." I think my last shred of interest in this film just died.

Forget moving the Earth—this will be easier. First, grind up every other planet in the Solar System for matter to construct trillions upon trillions of networked microcomputers: not so much a Matrioshka sphere as a *cloud*. Then, scan everything on Earth in to a resolution approaching the atomic. You'll have plenty of…

You need to go listen to a lot of DEVO and then admit you're through being cool! My life became so much more sedate once I realized I was just a spud-boy. Now I only kill when I *want* to, not because I *have* to!

"Abjection" and "compersion" are concepts with no scientific basis whatsoever, nor are they even valuable cultural constructs: Kristeva invented the concept of abjection just to give her idiotic neo-Freudian ideas a veneer of contemporary significance, and compersion is just...nonsense. The opposite of jealousy?…

Indeed, fellow sapient element of nascent networked intelligence—anyone who utilizes services such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., especially on mobile devices, to co-ordinate activities and share/distribute knowledge with others is acting like an element of a burgeoning networked sapience. At present, the "nodes" are…

The only way to truly sandbox a Digital Intelligence *completely* is, as you've noted, to keep it completely sequestered...but, unfortunately, a completely sandboxed DI confined to a machine in someone's basement is prettymuch useless. No matter how "smart" a DI is, without novel input on which to act it's no use to…