I had a suspicion that the black/grey goo was bio-programmable in some way, and that what we saw was the effect of undirected goo. That the starmaps were intended to test whether we were advanced enough for their purpose, whatever that might be. Maybe like in 2001, where the intention was to advance us to the next evolutionary step? The fact is, Shaw said that they wanted to destroy us, but changed their minds, explaining why they didn't try again. The LV 223 Engineer didn't receive the order to desist, so thought his original orders still stood. The deleted scenes show that he was provoked into attacking on both occasions. He seemed only to want to kill Weyland, until he was shot.

Yeah,  my bad on mistaking the LV 223 system for Z2R, it's in completely the wrong part of space, above the head of Orion, whereas Z2R is in the southern sky. Honest mistake.
The point with the humanoid Engineers is that they were supposed to be our creators, and were meant to be linked with ancient images of people worshipping giant humanoid figures. I was initially hostile to their appearance, but I warmed to them quickly. Honestly, I find their uncannily human appearance makes them more frightening than their biomechanical creations.

Both moons orbit a ringed gas giant in the zeta 2 reticuli star system, unless there are two gas giants with saturnine rings, not impossible, it's probably the same one. The problem of terraformers not using LV 223 as a better option will likely be addressed in the sequel(s). Maybe the surface is an irradiated wasteland. Weyland Yutani probably believed the Engineer tech to be lost to them, until they picked up the beacon on LV 426, giving them a second chance. That bit is speculation, but the zeta 2 reticuli connection is addressed in the films, plus interviews with Scott and Lindelov.

A: Because AvP isn't canon with regards to the Alien franchise.
B: Those eggs in the derelict on LV 426 had been there for the better part of a million years before the events of Prometheus.

Yeah, it's one of the other moons of the same gas giant. The LV 426 derelict was already ancient during the events of Prometheus. It appears to be an older model ship, too. Like comparing a 19th Century steamer to the USS Nimitz.

 I would rather they put this version into the extended cut of the film, much as they put the 'babe' sequence into the AC of Alien³. Would have been better if Ridley had put both versions into the movie, we could have seen a progression, a la Brundlefly. Maybe they could have locked Fifield up, but then he would have mutated further, and gained the strength to break out and run amok through the ship, before the final fight in the garage. Might have made for an interesting subplot, if handled well. One that would have 'foreshadowed' Alien.

Makes sense that it would be the dominant respiratory gas, at least for mobile organisms. Oxygen is reactive enough to provide sufficient energy to such a creature, to my knowledge (enlighten me if I'm wrong), there are no other gases that provide the respiratory 'kick' that Oxygen gives. Plus, if they were tailored to suit humans, or similar lifeforms, they would already possess such specifications engineered into their genes.

Trouble is, he wasn't supposed to be a 'zombie'. He was supposed to be mutating along these lines, but they decided to make him more recognisably Fifield, so that retards would know what the fuck was going on.

My thoughts exactly.

Thanks guys! Had a great day, unfortunately only had three pints that evening, so didn't get wasted. The pitfalls of a birthday happening during the week, and when I'm skint. Oh well, there's always this weekend!

You've clearly never seen anyone rotting away from cancer then.

Exactly, he probably preferred that everyone would remember him for the man he was, not as a wasted cipher lying in a hospital bed. I wouldn't begrudge him that, but I'm not sure that I'd have the nerve to do what he did, in the same circumstances.

 In any other case, however, I'd agree with Hudson completely.

I am at a loss. Totally shocked.

Really feeling for Ridley here. That's two brothers gone now.

Yeah, I can't imagine what he's going through right now. A terrible loss!

Apparently, Tony was suffering from inoperable brain cancer, perhaps suicide was his only way out of a slow, inevitable, and undignified death later. Still feels like a terrible waste though.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/340867/Scott-had-inoperable-brain-cancer-/

Valles Marineris would make for some pretty spectacular photos if taken from the edge. Not sure about Olympus Mons, however, it's so huge, you can't see the summit from ground level, even if the mountain was on the horizon. It would just look like a vast, sloping wall without any apparent top. It would just stretch into the sky without end, and the sides would extend as far as the eye could see. So any ground-based image wouldn't capture the full glory of it, an orbital pic would be the only way.

Yeah, I'd heard about that. I'm shocked that you weren't already aware of this, Hieronymus! 

Actually, minimum pricing does work. At least according to the University of Sheffield which predicts that by the end of the 10 year cycle in Scotland, admissions per year to A&E would go down by 6500.  And save nearly a £1 Billion of the tax payers money.

 That's all well and good, but a prediction is light years away from actual, demonstrable evidence that it works. What I want to see is a situation where such a thing has happened. The past decade has been one price-increase after another, and yet, we see no such decrease in drink-driving. In fact, drink-driving has remained roughly the same since the early Nineties. It fluctuates, but there has been no significant drop in cases over the last ten years, during which both governments have set prices much higher than they were in 2000. Admittedly, the statistics only cover up to 2006 for England and Wales, and 2007 for Scotland, but both sets show the same trend. Any decrease in the intervening years can be put down to the recession causing more people to simply buy from shops and drink at home, as opposed to in pubs (most cases involve drinkers returning from a night [or day] out). End of the day, it's about taking more money from us, alcohol and tobacco are just easy targets. We live in a money farm.

 http://www.drinkdriving.org/drink_driving_statistics_uk.php

Also, only half of the people caught drunk driving are habitual drinkers.

 Point taken. However, it would be logical to assume that habitual drinkers are more likely to drink-drive than occasional drinkers, due to them being over the legal limit most of the time, they always have a high blood alcohol content, although, it may be that they are so acclimatised to the alcohol, that they are less likely to either get caught, or cause accidents. An occasional drinker wouldn't have such resistance, and thus would be more likely to be involved in an accident or conviction.

Also, the HDI for the "third world" has been increasing, as seen here with India, vs the rest of the world since 1980

I would say that India is a special case. The people of many African countries, such as Nigeria or Somalia, would disagree with your assessment, and HDI is not a measure of poverty, that's HPI (Human Poverty Index) you're thinking of, and the stats from that show that poverty has increased between the early 1980s and late 2000s.


http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/03/05/02/index.html;jsessionid=5f1ka3o4a63c2.delta?contentType=/ns/Chapter,/ns/StatisticalPublication&itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2011-32-en&containerItemId=/content/serial/18147364&accessItemIds=&mimeType=text/html

The gap between the rich and poor not only sucks, it's obscene! The fact is, the richer some people get, the less money is circulating. The less money is circulating, the global economy suffers, and thousands, or millions of other people go without. It's selfish greed, at the end of the day.

I agree with you about owning assault rifles. They may be cool weapons, but they're better left in military hands. A simple low-voltage taser is effective enough for self and property-defence, and to see some brain-dead thug go down twitching, well, that just sounds satisfying in a way that splattering them across your hallway just wouldn't do!