[Teaser] Terminator: Salvation (Christian Bale)

[TwistedBishop]

Spoiler Alert:
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(I have no idea how he is supposed to survive the massive destruction of the internet infrastructure after a global nuking instead of a localized attack, but well, that's Hollywood...)
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Wasn't that the whole point of the internet to begin with?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Wasn't that the whole point of the internet to begin with?

The Internet (the original DARPA thingy) was supposed to be a reliable communication system that would allow communication even if several major bases and cities in the US would be destroyed. But is the Internet still capable to do this on a world-wide basis? And communication is not the same as running an Artificial Intelligence!


Well, without a real Skynet to experiment with, we can only speculate, but I reserve some doubts that this would be a viable strategy for Skynet.

(And then there's the question how Skynet wants to maintain an infrastructure to build all his cool Terminator models and flying combat units if he tries to destroy the ones that keep the infrastructure intact in the first place?)

Actually, strike all that. Wikipedia might not be the most reliable source, but I think it's sufficient here:

A common semi-myth about the ARPANET states that it was designed to be resistant to nuclear attack. The Internet Society writes about the merger of technical ideas that produced the ARPANET in A Brief History of the Internet, and states in a note:

It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.

The ARPANET was designed to survive network losses, but the main reason was actually that the switching nodes and network links were not highly reliable, even without any nuclear attacks. Charles Herzfeld, ARPA director from 1965 to 1967, speaks about limited computer resources helping to spur ARPANET's creation:

The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was clearly a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPAnet came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators who should have access to them were geographically separated from them.

So, the internet might be able to survive some losses - but still, can it maintain an Artificial Intelligence? Could it survive global, nuclear destruction? It certainly wasn't build with the latter in mind, and the "losses" we speak off have more to do with routers failing or breaking down then levelling entire cities and their energy supply.

 

[Arnwyn]

IN an interview I saw months ago for the TV series, it said that both the show and the movie are disregarding the third movie as if it was an alternate timeline.

AWE. SOME.

The indication seemed to be that this latest movie wouldn't match up with the TV show.

Less awesome. Of course, since time travel makes everything loopy, it's acceptable, I guess.


And yeah - I despised T3. Much prefer the continual judgment day postponing.

 

[TwistedBishop]

And then there's the question how Skynet wants to maintain an infrastructure to build all his cool Terminator models and flying combat units if he tries to destroy the ones that keep the infrastructure intact in the first place?

This sounds like a problem you're having with the Terminator mythos in general, not Terminator 3 specifically. The concepts of SkyNet as a self-aware AI and its use of mutually assured destruction were established in the first movie and elaborated on in T2.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

This sounds like a problem you're having with the Terminator mythos in general, not Terminator 3 specifically. The concepts of SkyNet as a self-aware AI and its use of mutually assured destruction were established in the first movie and elaborated on in T2.

The "Judgement Day" was set in a reasonably "far" future in the original movie (sure, it's now in our past, but who would have known in the 80s? We should have flying cars by now!).
I was willing to believe that Skynet might already have his automated factories and an army of combat robots due to the technological advances. But T3 puts the Jugdement Day in our present - we don't have automated factories or lots of combat robots to start a war against mankind.