Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> John VanSickle wrote:
>>
>>> I seem to recall reading that operating frequency of the human brain 
>>> is on the order of 40Hz.
>>>
>>> I wonder how long it would take a human brain to render POV-Ray...
>>
>> I heard 200 MHz, but even so... I would think the human brain could 
>> run POV-Ray quite fast. Sure, low clock speed, but it's *insanely* 
>> parallel. :-D
>>
> 
> Are you sure about the brain being so parallel?
> 
> The problem is the low RAM (short term memory). If you try to think 
> about a dozen things at a time, there's lots of swapping and greatly 
> reduced performance.

Is that a problem with the brain, or just the way it's wired up?

If you just see the brain as a collection of several trillian 
transistor-like switches with an astonishingly dense connection set 
with, further more, is rewirable, it certainly looks pretty parallel in 
theory.

Of course, unless somebody figures out how to grow braincells and wire 
them up so as to create a programmable device, this is all kind of 
academic. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Somehow it feels that they went digital before the technology was really
ready for it. I wonder why is it. Whose interest does it serve (besides
temporarily boosting digibox sales)?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Bill Pragnell <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> The Matrix is not a film that can be rationally dissected IMO; it's all 
> utter nonsense from beginning to end

  I disagree. Most of the things have plausible explanations. A few of
them might be far-fetched retconning, but they are still plausible.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (Perhaps they didn't design in that feature when they built the Matrix? 
> Who knows. But after building it 5 times, you'd think that'd learn...)

  There was a reason why the Architect even allowed people to get free and
for a "the one" to be born every time. As he said, the very first Matrix
was perfect, but failed (because of some aspect of human psychology). He had
to introduce imperfections in the next designs. I assume that he consciously
*allowed* some people to get free (or deliberately turned a blind eye on
them).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Of course, unless somebody figures out how to grow braincells and wire 
> them up so as to create a programmable device, this is all kind of 
> academic. ;-)

Old news, dude.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6573

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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Darren New wrote:

> Old news, dude.
> 
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6573

Interesting. I swear to God I saw this exact story debuncked on 
Snopes.com... [Except it was an FPS, not a fighter plane.]

Well, maybe I *did* read that, and it has since become an actual reality.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:
>   Moreover, one could argue that in areas with bad reception the situation
> has got worse. With analog TV bad reception means more white noise, but
> at least you get to see and hear something, which may be quite important
> if you are eg. watching the news or weather report.
>   With digital TV, however, bad reception means that the broadcast stops
> playing at moments.
>   The human visual system is more permissive of noise than intermittent
> playback. Intermittent playback may even mean incomprehensible message.

I was in Las Vegas during a wind storm couple of months back, and they 
eventually had to switch the televisions in the sports betting area from 
digital (some sort of HDTV in this case) to analogue for exactly this 
reason.  People were not so pleased when the picture and sound cut out 
right before a big play was about to be made.  It ended up being a 
pretty good advertisement for analogue television though.

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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> I was in Las Vegas during a wind storm couple of months back, and they 
> eventually had to switch the televisions in the sports betting area from 
> digital (some sort of HDTV in this case) to analogue for exactly this 
> reason. 

Maybe I'm dense, but I'm not sure I understand what a wind storm has to 
do with whether the TV is broadcast in analog or digital. Was it shaking 
the tower too much or something? Or did it knock down the digital 
antenna? Was the problem at the arena or the broadcaster?

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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I assume that you're familiar with this site?

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

It has a list of movie reviews at the bottom (none for Waterworld 
unfortunately).  They did give a special nomination to "The Core" though 
for having the worst physics of any movie they'd ever seen:

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html


Gail Shaw wrote:
> I remember going to watch WaterWorld with some of  my 1st year physics
> class, the evening after our final exam. We tore it to shreds/
> 
> Comments about spring constant, static friction, pressure gradients and the
> like.
> 
> Fortunatly it was a big movie house, and we were towards the back

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Well, maybe I *did* read that, and it has since become an actual reality.

I can't find it on snopes (for good or bad), but I've seen similar 
results in several fairly respectable magazines online.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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