Mathematicians Become Hollywood Consultants 521
techstar25 writes "With the recent success of movies incorporating mathematics, Dr. Jonathan Farley, a professor of mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo who is currently doing research at Harvard, tapped into his professional knowledge and headed west to Hollywood, where he and Dr. Elizabeth Burns, founded Hollywood Math and Science Consulting to help television and movie producers portray accurate mathematics on screen. Their first client: the CBS drama Numb3rs. 'In many cases, they want me to elaborate on some of the math already in the script,' said Farley. 'I help add dialogue and fine tune the math already in the script. It's not just about fixing mathematical mistakes . . . It's also about helping them get the culture right.'"
Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Informative)
Law and Order have simply digitized the technique. One season they were fond of zooming in on the name of the particular model of Ford driven by the suspect/victim/witness.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:4, Interesting)
The brain is damn good at that too btw. Try it, reduce a video to a really small resolution, watch it and you will be impressed about how much you can recognize when it moves.
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Informative)
My (least?) favourite was after a bit of "zoom in on this" and "magnify that" they did a "pan around to this side". I wish I could remember what that was from; it ruined the whole show/movie/whatever for me. First, a "pan" would keep the camera stationary, he meant (and the effect was) a "dolly" or "truck" or some combination of the two. Second...
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Insightful)
Why limit to computers? How about relatively simple technologies like radio, or jet engines? For example, it drove me bugshit when a character on that fine piece of TV work that is "Lost" said he needed three people standing out in the boonies with some weird contraptions for him to stand in a fourth location with a handheld radio in order to perform a "triangulation" of an incoming radio signal. WTF? Didn't the scriptwriters even look up what "triangulation" means before they tried to use it as a plot device? And then there's the pilot episode with the jet engine. Yes, a jet engine upside down on the beach still running after the crash made for a very scary noise, and having it explode in a huge fireball when some dude got sucked in was impressive, but they might as well have had a 50' clown catching people in a giant popcorn bag for all the plausibility it had.
Honestly, I can suspend disbelief enough to let it slide when TV/movie writers gloss over a few peripheral technical details; but when they employ patently absurd ignorant interpretations of easily researched technology as the linchpin of that episode's story, there's no good excuse. Having worked around script writers, though, I understand why this is: most of them are fools.
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Interesting)
The book?
Poetry. About the making of "The Bomb."
Look mom, top of the world. I'm an "acknowledgement."
There are two things I find interesting about the whole thing. The first being that the poet was perspicacious enough to understand that he couldn't just "wing" the science and claim "poetic license." He knew he was writing about deep juju that he didn't understand and that he'd damned well better make sure he got the juju right. Most poets are fools. This one isn't. Even poetry needs to get it right.
The second thing is where I, personally, come into the picture. The poet was a college English professor with access to the whole of the college's science department, but. .
We met in a coffeehouse.
So, it isn't enough to simply know your science. You have to also know how to convey the concepts to the foolish script writers in a manner that fools can understand and get it right. This would appear to be an unusual skill, but I believe one absolutely essential for all scientists to cultivate, because the populace at large is dependent upon us to explain these things to them; and if we don't do a good job we get nonsense like state legislatures introducing bills to make pi equal to 3, which carries far greater consequences them some stupid movie doing something stupid.
And I'm really rather flattered by the review, as it reflects the quality of my work on the book.
KFG
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Interesting)
I could live with those mistakes if they were intentional. A show where people talk with mouths in their hands would be interesting, but that has to be an intentional part of the plot. (And in general it should figure in some of the puzzles)
If a mathematical proof relies on a pi being 16 that is fine, but it better be intentional, and figure in the plot in other ways so that I can tell the writer is doing it intentionally. (Any writer attempting this had better be good at math because a universe wher
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Informative)
If you're doing this over any significant distance you may need to calculate in the difference between a 2D ma
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:5, Informative)
It's not wrong, you just misunderstood me.
Triangulation in order to find a radio source involves taking a bearing with a directional antenna tuned to the signal you're trying to find (which you don't know where it is) from 2 known positions. The point where the lines cross is where the source is (exactly, not within a small triangle).
I was a signal intelligence analyst in the army. The place where those two lines cross is NEVER exactly where those two lines cross. That's why you need to do a third "cut" from a third position. In a perfect universe, that third line would intersect exactly where the other two cross, giving you a perfect fix. In reality, that third line will be somewhere to one side or the other of the intersection of the first two.The three lines form a (hopefully) tiny triangle. Your fix is within this triangle. This is probably where you misunderstood wme. This small triangle is not where the process of triangulation gets its name. You are correct in that basic triangulation involves the signal bearing from two know points forming a triangle with the target, but a military man (as the character is purported to be*) with any training in radio direction finding will always take a minimum of three DF shots (four or five is better, six is usually overkill) before declaring a positive fix on a stationary target.
* The character is supposedly former "Republican Guard", but his back story has him torturing dissidents-- the sole province of the Mukhabarrat. This is like confusing the US Army with the FBI-- it's just fucking stupid. THe writers for the show are the worst kind of stupid: idiots that think they know what they're talking about and are so sure of themselves they never check their "facts".
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet (Score:2)
When I was at UCLA, we had a constant stream of production assistants coming through to check out lab design and setups, and to check details. They'd always start moping "Oh, I wish I'd done something worthwhile like this with my life!" while the grad students would chase after them with their screenplays and treatments.
Which episodes/scenes? (Score:2)
futurama is degree heavy also (Score:5, Informative)
david x cohen - physics at harvard (b)
- computer science at berkeley (masters)
stewart burns - math at harvard (phd)
ken keeler - applied math at harvard (phd)
bill odenkirk - chem at chicago (phd)
jeff westbrook - computer science at princeton (phd)
numb3rs huh? (Score:4, Funny)
maybe they should get a spelling consultant too?
Re:numb3rs huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Getting the culture right. (Score:3)
This needs to be done more! (Score:4, Funny)
American Pi? (Score:2)
Going over old notes from late-night sessions of coding graphing programs makes me glad that I don't get this anymore.
We've done science, forensics, now math. What's next? A hardcore squad of geek detectives solving crimes with Netcraft and Nagios?
I've almost forgotten when a crime show was actually about crime and police and stuff.
Spammers, 911 (Score:5, Funny)
Tonight! On Spammers, 911: The team finds a traitor in the midst, he purchased Viagra from South Africa. Will he be sorry! Stay tuned.
They do need help (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They do need help (Score:4, Informative)
Now if someone (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that I'm not the only one that gets sick everytime I see an actor "polishing" up an image by typing randomly onto the computer while looking at nothing but the image itself. Or someone hacking into a computer with 3 keystrokes.
I guess Hollywood thinks that most of the public are so mystified by computers that they'll believe anything.
Re:Now if someone (Score:2)
Re:Now if someone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now if someone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now if someone (Score:3, Funny)
Sarcasm aside, jim davis has made a astonishingly long career out of a single premise that has essentially 4 jokes. Repeated at naseum.
Re:Now if someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now if someone (Score:3, Funny)
Laughable more is that most seem like boxes drawn in basic VGA graphics in DOS using QBasic. If I see a *nix prompt, it is almost inevitably a phosphor terminal to an unidentified, but qu
Re:Now if someone (Score:3)
> I think I can do it." (five seconds pass)
> "Yeah, I got in." Was it "password" by any
> chance?
It could have been: "1 2 3 4 5" (the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage).
Swordfish (Score:4, Funny)
That's company policy around here and the only problem is that you take turns being the programmer.
Re:Or the teletype/typewriter sound effect... (Score:3, Interesting)
Twenty years ago, the match results used to come in using real teletypes across the UK, and so they had a TV camera placed right above the teletype machine, with the output line being subtitled on the screen. This was a simple and efficient solution.
But then, the switch to electronic transmission and computer display was made, and so instead of doing something new, they still pretend to have a 75 baud connection. Rather ironic, when the entir
Finally (Score:2, Funny)
...And while they're at it... (Score:2)
On a more personal note, if they're looking for someone to correct the ridiculous dialogue coming from tv and film psychologists, I'll offer up my resume.
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually this irritates me so much.
The match on fingerprints is actually lighting fast (and doesn't have any graphical comparison crap), but the scanning in and identifing points can take even an experienced tech hours.
I really hate DNA match magic that CSI uses... not only does it set a false image into people's mind as to how easy it is, but jurors will often beleive that if no DNA evidence is entered, that gives them resonable doubt, regardless of the massive amount of evidence in front of them.
Hmmm, while we're at it, I'm sick of the shows where people just seem to be able to hack into stuff (NCIS--Very irritating), or where they just start spewing mumbo-fucking-jumbo. ("I hacked into the Router's backbone NAS Mainframe, where I adjusted their DSL lookup server to allow me to track the GPS Meta-quad jigaflops." ) --eh, NCIS is bad for that too.
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's real damage done here--- for instance, how many americans serving on jurors believe that fingerprints can be used to tie someone to a crime? Probably almost all of them-- and because they've seen a lot of BS TV shows where fingerprints are "proof" that the bad guy did it.
Hell, I bet most slashdot readers are under this misimpression.
But the reality is, fingerprints are not unique.
Hell, not even DNA is unique in the way that it is used. (To do an actual DNA match, you'd have to sequence the entire genome... which was only done finally within the last decade and they used a bunch of people's DNA, not one person's.)
Also the odds given for false matches are completely absurd, based on pseduo science.
But all this pseudo science presented in fiction is taken as reality.
Real people think that computers can be hacked really quickly and locks picked in 30 secons and fingerprints are unique. (And even more absurd, that you can tie a gun to a crime based on the markings on the bullets-- reading tea leaves is just as fruitful.)
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:3, Interesting)
In independence day Jeff Goldblum (sp?) sees a captured alien ship which has not been opened or examined by humans before. The ship is sealed and one cannot get inside of it or open it to see its internals. They know nothing about alien technology.
So what does Jeff Goldblum do? He sneezes and that gives him an idea. Why not give the ship a virus? He proceeds to open his apple notebook and somehow interface with the ship to give it a virus.
Re:...And while they're at it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because current entertainment is focused on instant gratification does not mean that it is necessary for it to be entertainment.
Summer popcorn movies are not the only kind of movie, and to say that those movies are dumb is legitimate-- how can you say that any other kind of movie would not be entertaining?
Intelligent drama is quite possible. It could also be quite profitable.
But too many people think that people are stupid and so they won't watch it.
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh, I look forward to having the movie theaters all to myself when these new movies come out. :)
Here it comes (Score:4, Insightful)
GET OVER IT!
It is just entertainment. Does anyone think that anything shown on the large or small screen is real!? You think geeks are the only "insiders" cringing when they see something on screen? If so, don't be so arrogant. Bus drivers cringed through SPEED. Pilots can point out problems in any script. Don't get started on "medicine" on TV. Even tarot card readers think Hollywood gets it all wrong.
Say it with me know, "Window dressing" and for the advanced students, "Plot device".
Re: (Score:2)
Talk about niche (Score:3, Insightful)
imagine this scene: (Score:3, Funny)
The terrorist chief (Travolta) uses his right hand woman (no pun intended here) - (Halle Barry) to coerce the matimatician (Hugh Jackman) into this entire deal.
The matimatician is given a task to complete: he has to prove Poincaré conjecture - a rather simple task for such a super intelligent person but he only has 60 seconds to do it (including the side axioms and whatnot) while one of the terrorists is holding a gun to his head and a beatiful girl is sucking on his dong.
Now a serious question: how is Travolta's character supposed to know whether the theorem was proven correctly? I say they should still have instructed the girl to byte the guys dick off. Just for good measure, to show this brain-guy they are not kidding around!
Killjoys (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Killjoys (Score:5, Interesting)
Momentum cannot be "absorbed" by the slide because it is conserved. The force can be spread out in time, but the momentum transfer is unchanged. Check out the Mythbusters episode in which they shoot a human-sized hunk of meat hanging from a hook with powerful rifles. It barely moves. There simply isn't that much momentum in a bullet.
Re:Killjoys (Score:4, Informative)
This is equivalent to a 186lb man travelling one foot every 6 seconds. Doesn't really sound like a whole lot, now does it?
Hollywood cares about accuracy? (Score:4, Funny)
- Cars that explode in midair when they go over a cliff before hitting anything
- Ducati 916 motorcycles that can't outrun a Lincoln Town Car (Fled)
- Tom Cruise shooting behind him over his shoulder using a motorcycle rearview mirror to aim
- Tires squealing on dirt roads
- Soundtrack to John Connor's dirt bike upshifts 20 times without downshifting
Re:Hollywood cares about accuracy? (Score:5, Funny)
- Cars that explode in midair when they go over a cliff before hitting anything
Easy: bombs in the gas tank. You should always check for angle activated bombs in your gas tank before driving over a cliff.
- Ducati 916 motorcycles that can't outrun a Lincoln Town Car (Fled)
You've gotta remember to use premium.
- Tom Cruise shooting behind him over his shoulder using a motorcycle rearview mirror to aim
Even I've done this on one occassion. A star with proper training should have no difficulty.
- Tires squealing on dirt roads
It's the people just under the dirt squealing, and believe me you would too.
- Soundtrack to John Connor's dirt bike upshifts 20 times without downshifting
That was a custom bike. He clearly did work on it in one scene earlier. He added a lot of gears.
I'll bet [objoke] (Score:5, Funny)
His friend the bet. Then while his friend is in the washroom, he calls the waitress over and says "There's a $20 tip for you if, after my friend comes back, you come over and answer my next question "four thirds pi r cubed."
So his friend comes back from the washroom, and the waitress comes over and he says to her, "What's the integral of pi r squared?"
"Four thirds pi r cubed," she says, "plus a constant."
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:4, Funny)
Q: What does the employed mathematician say to the unemployed mathematician?
A: Do you want fries with that?
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:5, Funny)
Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?
He worked it out with a pencil!
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, I can play this game.
A man walking along the road at night sees a mathematician standing under a street lamp, staring at the ground. The mathematician explains that he's looking for his keys. The man asks where he dropped them. The mathematician points at his house, three doors down. "But the light is better over here!"
...
What's purple and commutes? --- an Abelian grape.
What's purple, commutes, and is worshipped by a limited number of people? --- a finitely-venerated Abelian grape.
What's yello
Re:I'll bet [objoke] (Score:4, Funny)
"Whoa! That's a week of my salary! For replacing a simple seal!"
"Want to earn as much as I do? Become a plumber. It really IS that easy."
So the professor decided to give it a try. And it really worked out great. He left the university, he was repairing pipes, replacing seals, several works a week, salary about 20 times what he would get from the university. It lasted several years.
Until the Union decided all plumbers need to have at least high school finished. So, there were some classes to refresh the memory and then a test. And the math class, teacher calls our professor to the blackboard and asks to write the formula for surface of a circle.
And the professor realises it was so long ago since he used it last, sometime during studies yet, that he forgot! But he thinks, "I'm a math professor. I can derive that formula". So he starts deriving it. Draws a circle, splits into infinite number of infinitisemal pieces, adds Jacobian for radial projection, integrates and satisfied, writes: S=-pi*r^2.
But hey, that minus must be wrong, surface can't be negative. So he starts checking his calculations, looks at them, examines, can't find the mistake. Time passes, the teacher looks, more and more annoyed, whispers rise from the classroom, and after a while they become recognisable: "Reverse the limits of the integral! Reverse the limits of the integral!"
Dumbed Down (Score:3, Insightful)
And then he or someone else dumbs it down so that the normies can get it. I may only be a Junior student ME in a math minor, but even I can see that the stuff about Riemann's hypothesis and fluid mechanics is grossly simplified to save time and make it friendly for a greater audience. I expect this for a show like Law and Order. But it is surprising for a show like Numb3rs which is (I thought) supposed to cater to being accurate.
Oh well. We see that once again the need for ratings overwhelms the need for completeness and accuracy.
Smarten Up (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously? What do you think people would rather watch, someone working through complex equations on paper or a chalkboard for hours on end, or generating a few models and then explaining how they apply to the real world? Is your need for accuracy so important that you are double-checking their work instead of paying attention to the plot of the show? Have you stop watching SciFi since you realized there are no such things as transporters and aliens, and that hacking into a Gibson isn't nearly as fun as they make it look?
Sure, it's not 100% accurate, but neither are the forensics dramas, murder mysteries, or hospital shows. People don't want to watch the all boring bits of someone else's life where they catalog swabs, fill out paperwork, or treat someone's rash. It's a drama, it's supposed to be about the story and the science or math is mostly there to give it some context. If it shows people that there are practical applications for otherwise cerebral stuff, then it also encourages education and research, which is a win for everyone.
I understand you, as a math major, had higher expectations for the show, but what's the point of making a show that only 0.1% of the population can even follow, let alone want to watch? Maybe you work on equations all day and want to come home and see it mixed in with your police dramas, but I doubt many people do. Still, I find their characterizations and science to be reasonable, maybe a little sophomoric but much better than most of the fluff out there.
The actor who plays the "genius" (Score:5, Insightful)
badastronomy.com & movies (Score:4, Informative)
The core problem with science/math in movies and TV shows is that reality is often too boring to make it on film. Writers/directors/studios feel the need to violate the laws of physics rather than violate the laws of entertainment. I can only hope that shows such as Numb3rs can reverse (or at least) minimize this tendency.
Great (Score:3, Funny)
For example? (Score:4, Interesting)
Care to provide examples of your claim?
Re:For example? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every specialist sees the errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Cops, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, social workers (I have a friend who can go on about Judging Amy for hours), military people, airline pilots, etc., etc. -- all of them can go on and on about how inaccurate entertainment portrays their job or profession. So scientists and computer specialists are not alone.
The bottom line, IMO, is that hey, it's entertainment, not a documentary, and whatever the *thing* is -- whether it's computers or legal procedure or spy technology or whatever -- is supposed to be in service of telling the story and revealing character, not the other way around. Yes, Hollywood makes lots of mistakes that could be fixed very easily, but the majority of any given set of viewers probably won't know or care -- in fact, they might even think something's wrong because the entertainment didn't conform to the cliche.
The way entertainment shapes real life expectations is a real issue, and one lawyers in particular are concerned about -- they call it the "CSI effect" on juries, the expectation that fancy forensics will be present in every case, when they usually aren't.
But as for the entertainment itself, it's usually good if the "stuff" is used in service of the story. I sucked at math my entire life (until prob/stat in college, which I was actually good at) but I really enjoy Numb3rs. The math -- whether it's real or not -- is used very effectively in service of the story, and there's a nice dynamic between the FBI brother and the math professor brother. And the professor Peter MacNicol plays reminds me of a brilliant but absent-minded professor I had once. On the library steps, after a conversation: "When you first saw me, was I going into this building or coming out of it?" LOL.
Re:Every specialist sees the errors (Score:5, Interesting)
However, some shows set really bad example. For example in Law and Order which is supposed to be the most serious and respected of the legal shows, the main hero of the show (the prosecutor) keeps doing things that are either illegal or immoral for an attorney in his position. It usually has something to do with hiding evidence that he is supposed to submit to the defence, or tricking a defendent or a witness. And the show celebrates these breaches of the ethics rules, essentially portraying the prosecutor in being really clever in getting the bad guy.
Pretty much every second part of every eposode is portrayed as a heroic battle between the good guys (that prosecutor and an ever changing hot female prosecutor) on one side and the forces of evil (the civil rights of the defendant and the rules of ethics) on the other side. I have yet to see a show where an innocent defendant has been spared inprisonment because of the proper observance of his rights.
And of course since more or less the whole population has seen at least several Law and Order episodes (and many people watch that show religously), when the government decides to curb civil rights, the people don't really mind, which is not what you would really expect from this freedom loving nation.
Re:Every specialist sees the errors (Score:3, Interesting)
My father, who was a retired district attorney used to tell me that Law and Order (the early episodes) was the closest to the real thing ever put on a screen. He would watch it every week, only every so often getting a little irked that they totally messed something up.
My uncle used to be a Captain in the Air Force whose job was to be a "key turner" in one of those ICBM silos. A few years ago I asked him about the ope
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Classic math mistake (Score:3, Interesting)
(They could have fixed this mistake digitally for the DVD release, one would think....)
Quite a few math movies (Score:3, Informative)
That's my dream job! My claim to fame is that I did consult a tiny bit for one of those movies, but as it has a score of 5.6 I'm embarassed to admit what it was.
Sneakers Consultant (Score:3, Interesting)
To his dismay, on the day of the shoot, he discovered that someone had just grease-penned some mockup slides to make it look more "authentic."
He said something like, "If I'd known thats what they wanted, I could have handed something over in a few minutes. And it'd be correct!"
Re:Sneakers Consultant (Score:3, Interesting)
The irony is he thought they wanted something that looked
Culture?!? How naive (Score:3, Informative)
(For current/former military types: "Hey, Hollywood! You work in a gas station? Fix your damn, cover!" -- you know what I mean.)
I pointed these out to the "technical consultant" (also a Reservist) and was told, "don't push it, no one cares."
Culture, uh-huh.
That aside I was very impressed at Hollywood's ability to duplicate the entire suite of field gear in foam. Foam rifles, foam body armor, foam (well plastic) helmets, foam in the rucksacks. Much ligher than the real deal
Good, maybe they'll remake _Contact_ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Math Culture? (Score:5, Funny)
The stuff found growing inside of a calculus textbook?
Re:Math Culture? (Score:2, Funny)
Mathematicians are just machines for transforming coffee into theorems ...
Almost... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Almost... (Score:5, Funny)
I had no idea that calculus was so ickey.
It's the Cult of the Red Heifer (Score:4, Funny)
"We were all in advanced analysis or something. We'd been working on a proof in class for a week, and we'd reached an impasse, an impossible stage, and in the dream logic, the only way we were going to be able to progress was if (and only if) someone cut off their arm: the requirement was 'proof by mutilation.' And the scary thing was, we were going to do it, there was no question or discussion about that, the only thing we hadn't settled yet was whose arm we were going to use."
Re:Math Culture? (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there's the jokes.
Q: What do you get when you cross a banana with a goat?
A: |goat| * |banana| * sin(t
Re:Math Culture? (Score:4, Funny)
Mathman: You wouldn't understand meer mortal. I grow weary of this conversation... away with you peasant!
Average Joe leaves in disgust to talk to women.
Mathman:
Re:Math Culture? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, well.. a theorist can dream.
Re:Math Culture? (Score:3, Funny)
It's the culture the people in the computer science culture failed to become members of.
Re:Tech in Twenty-Four (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tech in Twenty-Four (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tech in Twenty-Four (Score:3, Funny)
I ended up giving them a point for not assigning an octet above 255.
Everything I know I learned from watching 24 (Score:3, Funny)
Why is it that they can send Jack anything on his PDA whever he is, but they are constantly copying files to CD's to move data from one computer to another only a few feet away?
People complain about tech in CSI, but 24 takes the cake.
Re:About Numb3rs (Score:3, Funny)
I am sorry but since when did professors of Math become "real world." Those guys are out there man, didn't you see A Beautiful Mind?
Re:About Numb3rs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Erm, What Movies ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:CBS Isn't Listening... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have not seen the show I just see the commercials, and they really annoy me, for some reason. I don't know, maybe I am just a bitter person but I would rather have a specific reason to hate the show
Re:CBS Isn't Listening... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Interesting)
stuff like the shelf with the two books labeled "P" and "NP" (IIRC in "Put Your Head on my Shoulder"),