Thank you; finally some sanity in this ridiculous debate. Reading through the comments in this story I feared that /. had finally become COMPLETELY populated by fucking morons, instead of just being MOSTLY populated by fucking morons.

Which crap exactly? Holding a seminar? Inviting people that some self-promoting bloggist (the URL in the summary with his name leading to his blog is SO informative after all) has decided are an AGW answer to the Illuminati? Pray tell dear AC, I long to know what "crap" it is that you speak of.

Point by point analysis:

Is incredulity the appropriate response here? Is the fact that they held the meeting incredible, or are the quotation marks supposed to help me figure it out?

Great. How about actually quoting the BBC on their reasons for attempting to block the FOIA request instead of speculating that it must be a conspiracy?

Woah, woah, woah. Look at the list everyone. I can spot a hell of a lot more than three names and affiliations on there that I'd call scientists. Which three are we referring to? What discounts all the others from being scientists? A baffling and quite badly founded argument really...

"Low level" eh? The Duty Editor for World at One/PM/The World this Weekend, the Head Of Radio News, the Director of News and the Head of TV Current Affairs. Not to mention the 28 other BBC staff attending. Why the focus on just these four in particular and the dismissal of their roles at that time? Again baffling...

Ah less baffling now. They've been involved in a scandal this week so their involvement brings into question the entire proceedings of a seminar nearly seven years ago, apparently. That's some astounding journalism. *golf clap* Kudos to "Bruce Hoult in a Bishop Hill comment" (from TFA) for selective blindness and blatant agenda pushing in an article attempting to criticise the BBC for the very same things. Truly inspiring.

Yes, the reflections being the thing that prevented previous version from being considered "perfect" cloaking devices. But don't let my logic stop you from denouncing this as a let-down...

The energy output of a star is going to be many orders of magnitude higher than what you'd get from fusion technology. The sun is a giant fusion plant itself! A sufficiently advanced technological civilisation may very well find itself bound only by the amount of energy it could produce or harness, and getting every last scrap of energy from a star is a massive boost to an energy based economy.

This is the first time in a very long while that I've read a /. story that's gotten me excited. The idea that we could find evidence of a Dyson sphere is quite crotch-tingling for a fan of science fiction like myself!

Of course there's the problem of how we can be sure any evidence we see is actually a constructed sphere and not a freak natural occurrence, or something that we simply don't understand or haven't envisaged at this point. Still, any data that showed a "should-be-visible" star radiating heat but not light is something of note. Hell, it would give us something to start beaming signals at like mad in the hope of a return at the very least. Lets just hope it's within X light years, where X is less than half my remaining lifespan so I can catch the "Hello? Who the fuck are you!?" signal from the big blue people on Pandora.

To be honest I was going for Funny, but apparently by taking the metaphor to the brink of absurdity I hit some kind of Insightful sweet spot!

We're getting closer. It's more like Toyota repossesses your car because you say you want to enter it in a race known for it's poor safety record for spectators, and Toyota is under the impression that a certain type of license you don't posses is legally required for said race, even though there is no such licensing requirement, but they don't want their brand associated with any negative press if any spectators get mowed down by their car.

A student loan has a defined repayment period and method. The loan company couldn't legally demand the money as they'd be in breach of contract.

A lot of software that we have today can be considered as AI, but like everything there's various degrees. Siri is a form of AI, albeit a crappy one. Wolfram Alpha can perform basic reasoning. Asimo (that little creepy robot) does some stuff that even 30 years ago would have been considered science fiction. We have AI now, just not the Skynet or Sentient Intelligence that people expect from books and films.

Artificial Intelligence. The ability to react to stimuli and make decisions based on those stimuli is a solid definition of intelligence. Yes, there are others. The fact that it's programmed intelligence makes it Artificial. Trust me, it is AI and the argument over semantics is moot and unproductive.

This is what the vast majority of anti-automated car people forget: an automated car will actually drive in a way that results in a net gain to the system. Everyone benefits when people leave a decent gap between their car and the car in front (go read if you don't believe me). A human driver often won't because they want to "send a message" to the other driver that "they're too slow" or they don't want someone entering "their" territory and will actively move to block them - I see this every day. Automated cars have the advantage of not giving a shit about emotional considerations, and they won't instantly turn into arseholes the moment they get into the "safety" of a car like a lot of the people who seem to share my commute each day. Apologies for the large amount of quotation marks; they're meant to indicate me using an annoying air quotes voice.