Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey well, such as a nervous breakdown—as Hal did in the film. Clarke noted that, contrary to popular rumor, it was a complete coincidence that each of the letters of Hal's name immediately preceded those of IBM in the alphabet. The meaning of HAL has been given both as "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer" and as "Heuristic ALgorithmic computer". The former appears in Clarke's novel of "2001" and the latter in his sequel novel "2010". In computer science, a heuristic is a programmable procedure not necessarily based on fixed rules, producing informed guesses often using trial-and-error. The results can be false such
2001: A Space Odyssey in popular culture "hugely inspirational", labeling Kubrick as "the filmmaker's filmmaker". Sydney Pollack refers to it as "groundbreaking", and William Friedkin states "2001" is "the grandfather of all such films". George Lucas provided a high appraisal of Kubrick's direction of the film stating: "Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, it can be compared, but personally I think that '2001' is far superior." At the 2007 Venice film festival, director Ridley Scott stated he believed