I would imagine that s group of some later version of the bird could fly cover for a single (remote or actual) piloted aircraft. That strategy would insinuate human judgement into the mission, while freeing the robots to do what they need to within those restrictions. Of course, hijacking the flight of robots would then require only gaining control over the piloted craft and changing the mission definition. When do we start seeing these things in movies?

This has potential. They'll start teaching each other things, and pretty soon those robots will be sporting what some people might refer to as 'artificial' intelligence. Of course they might get a bit touchy [ http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/short-story-the-a-word/ ] about us calling them that, though. And at some point, the lies we tell them will come back [ http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/short-story-edifice-of-lies/ ] to bite us. But hey, these are just stories. Fiction. Well, at least they were when I wrote them. Now I'm not so sure.

>>>> Nature didn't select for "non-competitiveness"

Actually, it does. Nature selects for survival, and that can be achieved by finding ways to avoid competing for the same resources. For example, staking out a different plot of ground, or an unoccupied tree, or eating your second-favorite food because you don't have to fight over it.

Not Tesla, Farnsworth. According to the time traveler from Westercon 100 that I met at the Seattle Westercon 50 Science Fiction Convention in 1997, Philo T. Farnsworth not only invented TV, but in 1927 he invented the time machine. If you don't believe me, ask Dr. Robert Forward; his grandson from the future was on some of the panels.

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Read my short stories at klurgsheld.wordpress.com

This sort of thing can be spun either way, so any attempt to investigate it further could be hazardous to the researchers and publishers. In fact, I explored the potential side-effects of doing so in one of the political short stories at my blog, called 'Forced Inquiry'. Pop the following into your browser and have look.

klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/short-story-forced-inquiry/

In particular, it might be handy to have a separate device that is good for reading, and which communicates with your desktop. I've long wanted to have the help or docs somewhere other than either in the way of what I'm working on, covered by what I'm working on, or on a second monitor I don't have. With the doc on an iPad beside my keyboard, I can work more comfortably, and I can take it to somewhere more comfortable if there's a lot to read before proceeding with the software I'm using.

I tried Bob once, but it crashed the PC before I even got in the door.

About the only way I can imagine getting all of those flashy CGI battle scenes into Asimov's storyline is to show Seldon's fears. Start with him working out the details that run through a Crisis period, and have the datavis melt into his nightmare scenario of what would happen if he didn't head it off in time. That way, you get all the destruction Emmerich wants, and then you pan back out through the datavis and onto Seldon's face. He then crafts the countermove. Then we switch up to that future, and we see the events come together to the crisis moment, but then his recording turns on and warns everyone off. Rinse and rep[eat. End with a cliffhanger, the Mule trashing his programmed fix. ...and if you liked that, check out "Burnout Fever", now available on Kindle.

Sure. If corporations want to be treated the same as flesh and blood citizens, I say let them have it with both barrels. If they break the law, they get treated the same as anyone else. Jail time and the death penalty can be implemented just as easily for corporations as they can for 'natural' people.

I wrote a series of short stories about a company incarcerated for theft. Set your browser to klurgsheld.wordpress.com. There's a link to Business Short Stories in the tab for About My Short Stories.

Now, if we could only convince a corporation to run for office, maybe we could get this farce out into the open. But then again, they'd probably just render someone and come up with an excuse why s/he's never seen in public. Kind of like Adam Selene in the never-made movie version of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

Many years ago, I worked on a secret DoD project in a room with a cypher lock, which only had digits to choose from. The password was 1234. One day, we came in after a weekend, and discovered that the wall next to the door was missing. When we dutifully reported the problem to security, we learned that contractors had been in over the weekend doing some work that entailed removing the wall, and they didn't replace it when they were done. I suspect that either the construction contract didn't require the replacement of the wall, or the contract was a fixed bid, and they 'ran out of money', like the robocops chasing THX1138.

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Google returns over 50M results on a search for political short stories. Why is my blog first?

In this case, they were actually attempting to accomplish something when the unexpected happened. What about all of the places in the world where there's a chain of events just waiting to be triggered? The more the infrastructure is neglected, the less stable it becomes, and the more prone it is to failure. But when that failure triggers something else, and a cascade of events starts to unfold, who's to say whether the person who triggered the initial event, whether intentional or not, is responsible for the indirect results?

I explored this possibility in a short story called "Cascade". It starts like this...

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It had all come down to Irwin's own testimony. Five nightmarish months of a high-profile court case in which his life was laid bare like a laboratory exhibit and washed with stain that allowed only one interpretation: terrorist. And all because he'd suggested a use for some cash left over at the end of a tech conference.

He looked up from the bible beneath his hand, and then over at the judge. His throat was dry from sitting for so long beside his court-appointed lawyer, agape at the fabricated version of his life that had been reeled out by the prosecution. "I do."

"You may take the stand."

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Read the whole story at http://klurgsheld.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/short-story-cascade/