David: Perhaps

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David is a walking computer, the writers tossed a random high I.Q out there to try describe his intellect. @Indy; Yes I noticed that too, he did look crestfallen when Weyland said he had no soul.

Too much speculation on my part. But when did our crew member discover that David was not trustworthy? For Shaw it must have been when she found out she was with 'child'. David did not want to help her remove the being. At that moment Shaw must have questioned many of the events that are depicted in the show. Vickers must have also discovered that david was not trustworthy when he shut down the video feed of the orrery. I sort of wonder if she ever confronted David on this matter. Perhaps, as shown in the movie, she was more occupied with making ammends to her Father. Have I missed any body else that lost trust in David?

I think Charlie had an early hint ... well, it was too late for him, but still. When the team goes to look for Fifield and Milburn, and David says, 'take care, doctors', Charlie gives him an angry agonized look. Granted, that could just be the illness and general disdain for robots, but I'm going to clutch at straws and say, maybe Charlie suspected something was wrong because of David. Then again, he tells no one of such suspicions, if he has them. Also, there's the moment when David opens the room- an example of a moment when people should have started thinking something was up, but they didn't. "Sorry", he says, as the door opens. Yeah, sure. PS: Deciphering long dead scripts in seconds is magic. Proto-Indo-European, as a language, has a sound system and hypothesis for how the words were pronounced. NOT how they were written. In the interest of drama, we should gladly accept that David is smart enough to decode the Engineer script and move on with the plot. It's even excusable as the writing seems to resemble [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform]cuneiform[/url]. In real life, I dare say tales of ancient script decipherings are also interesting but they tend to be long, drawn out, nerdy affairs. Look for, as an example, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B]Linear B[/url] and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A]Linear A[/url]. The latter is still a puzzle, and likely to remain so because there aren't enough samples of it.

His I.Q is 350 and the writers have said David can see things in a different spectrum of light than humans, so he can detect a lot more of what is going on around him.

For a Scientist Holloway never seemed to embrace technology including the usefulness of robots. From the start Charlie was ragging on David rather that seeing him as a valuable research assistant to be used and even abused if he wanted to 'anything and everything' to meet his makers. So I , like you BLANDCorporatio, thinks Holloway suspects something a distrust perhaps stemming from how David summoned Shaw and him to Vickers quarters beforer the adventure begins. But really it .disrtrust, was there when Holloway woke up from being in stasis.

".. David can see things in a different spectrum of light than humans" That's right. David would be looking for, at and gather infiormation beyond what humans usually can perceive. IN addition I am sure his CPU is of a construction that can handle any extra processing that would be needed fro all of the data input. Addition visual spectrum might also be availliable. Still you would think that an advanced robot/android like David would be able to touch some goo and create an chemical breakdown.

Since I am a perma-grumpy bean counter, and I will not waste an opportunity to mention when tropes annoy me, I'll say that the IQ350 claim is ludicrous. To be clear, we are claiming David has an IQ of 350 because the writers told us. I'm saying the writers, in a rush to get on with the story, relied on an imo annoying trope. IQ scores are designed/normalized such that 100 is the 'average' score. Every 16 point increase (or 15 point increase, depending on the scale you're using, Stanford-Binet or Wechsler respectively) corresponds to one standard deviation from the average Joe's performance. That is, the distribution of scores among takers of the test will be a normal distribution (the famous bell curve of Gauss), there will be an average performance on the test (the peak of the bell), and there will be some 'spread' in the performance from individual to individual, which is the standard deviation (corresponding, roughly, to bell thickness if we want to keep things intuitive). Since the normal distribution is given just by mean and standard deviation, you can calculate how likely it is for a person to be at some number of standard deviations away from the mean. Meaning, you can convert IQ score into percentile, showing how many of the Earth's population you 'beat' at the IQ test. [url=http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx]For an IQ of 200, on the Wechsel scale, you nead to beat 190 billion people. A mere 10 billion on the Stanford-Binet.[/url] How about IQ 350? On Wechsel, this amounts to besting 4.6*10^60 people. Which is roughly 5 million billion billion billion billion billion billion people. Incidentally, the number of proton and electron particles in the observable universe is estimated around somewhere like 10^64, or a mere 10000 times the number of people needing to live, so that David could beat, so that he could earn his 350IQ. On Wechsel. On Stanford-Binet, the numbers are less punishing. A "mere" 2.6*10^53, or in other words 0.26 billion billion billion billion billion billion people. But still ludicrous. {EDIT: I am -WRONG- on the count of particles in the obs. universe, but the larger point still stands. Such estimates of particle counts are guesswork in any case, but the 10^64 figure isn't about fundamental particles, it's another number. [url=http://www.universetoday.com/36302/atoms-in-the-universe/]Current estimates for atoms in the observable universe are in the 10^80 range[/url], which is significantly higher, but still. [url=http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_04.html]The number of atoms in a human body, if we must put an approx. figure on it, is 10^27[/url]. So 10^53 people would need to consume 10^80 atoms to even exist, meaning we need to convert all the observable universe into human beings- forget about what they'll eat or anything else- just so that David has enough people to beat at an IQ test}

It woud be unrealistic to expect a perfect answer with each situation that David is faced with. When dealing with Scientist/ high I.Q. individuals is perhaps a realiatic word you hear in the lab? Perhaps it is.. As far as dechiphering any message above or around the door for me, a non scientist., it would be of the highest priority. Somehow, somewhay I would want to know what is being communicated in the inscribed glyphs

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I'll give the FOX writers the benefit of the doubt that actual IQ values might mean something different in the distant future, where super-advanced artificial intelligences abound. Robots might need their own classification system. For example, David is very clever, but can he truly empathise? Something that we often take for granted. When David sees the writing on the wall, I'm well prepared to believe that he can rapidly assess the content and - in a relatively short time - form some kind of understanding, based on his previous studies. It will take a certain period of time, though, even with his vast intellect. So, saying "perhaps" may well be a reasonable and honest description of how he sees things at that time.

Aw you guys, listen: the whole idea is he's unfathomable, frighteningly intelligent. In sci fi, that's what AIs are supposed to be, incredibly uncontrollably smart. IQ of 350, so there.  He felt wrong to me from before they ever left the ship. The dialog, the music, the body language it added up to this surreal tension and he was at the root of it. The most capable being there and he was indifferent from the get go, a sort of automaton politeness. I found that to be really chilling. " Perhaps" is a reasonable answer, no one really knew his level of understanding. That's why Holloway asked. Otherwise he would have said: " You there. Translate that for me, chiphead. "

"..He felt wrong to me from before they ever left the ship.." In thinking back I am trying to recall when I also had questions about David's intentions on this voyage. After playing back the early David scenes for methe 'David Question' started to be in my mind during the crew meeting. When Weyland said David had no soul and David expression showed disappointmant all the previous scens with David expressing emotions came into question. Hid seeming watching movies for enjoyment, dying his hair just didn't seem to be right robotic charactor on a Scientific mission. I didn't feel in these early scenes that he was dangerous or even not a team player but part of crew going on an adventure. I was so wrong...

The whole opening with David alone was charming. Right up to the crew waking up he seems about what you'd expect from an android, though there are clues to a budding vanity. But there's a sardonic edge to his conversation that makes it clear he's pretty much the only one qualified for the mission and the others are sealed up billions of miles from home in an unknowably hazardous situation. Starry eyed explorers already in way over their heads. I wish I could adequately describe the feeling I got from those first exchanges because it was really creepy and I thought quite well done.     David doesn't necessarily lie, but when appropriate he provides vague answers, because he's a crafty little devil. He works for Weyland, not those other mooks. I think he knew perfectly well what those glyphs said, but the others had no way to confirm that. "Perhaps" as in, " Still collating", and they bought it, moving on to the next incredible discovery. Great, we'll figure it out later! And  later he says he has " The broad strokes " and the glyphs had to be part of that. 

Yeah, I think [b]Major Noob[/b] has it. Of course, David seems to be working for himself too, not just Weyland. "Crafty little devil" he is indeed. PS: what happened to [b]nostromo001[/b]'s posts? It's the second thread I go to where a post of his is just an X. I go to his profile- he's still good- but I see a message that's a line of m-s, and one that's a line of c-s.