While I love Mythbusters, they too are hardly without reproach.One episode refuted sinking SHIPS sucking people down when sinking.The test involved a rather small boat of @ 30feet length.

I would tend to ask some noted survivors; IE of HMS HOOD and IJN YAMATO what exactly was pulling them down until they broke free via an escaping huge air bubble or vigorous swimming.

As to chess, anyone knows it's not true chess unless played in parks on sunny afternoons.

If IBM's Big Blue was a harbinger of the future, kindly some one have a 'intelligent' brute coomputational discussion with the majority of PCs who seem to go down on mere whims.

Several years ago Texas Instruments matched a calculator vs a chinese grandmother with her abacus.She cleaned TI's circuit boards everytime.

*snickers* Or that a human would have programmed into a computer. Which particular move was it that Kasparov claims that only a human would have made? I've heard his claim, but I've never heard WHAT actual move it was. Now, here's the thing- you program a computer to win, and tell it how the pieces move. How many possible moves are there are on a chess board? It is a big database, but not insurmountable. That was just one more possible option, and the computer computed it had the best probability of a positive outcome.

I hear everyday "the computer screwed up" from people who can't bring themselves to admit they did it wrong and the computer did it right. And Kasparov has an ego that makes mine look tiny. Hmmm...

Oh, and some of the design, both hardware and software, was done about five miles from where I'm currently sitting. The word I've always heard around bars and restaurant tables about why Deep Blue was pulled apart was because it was too heat sensitive and had detectable performance degradation towards the end of the match. However, I will concede that that is a point in support for the conspiracy theorists. But if the thing was going to fry itself in under a thousand hours, IBM would bury it to save face. This is what the people inside IBM whom I know are saying, nothing about stuffing a bunch of chess masters in a box and not letting them out if they don't win. With custom components, I'd keep the stupid thing in a clean room-type enclosure to, with minimal EM interference.

If we are going to have a grassy knoll, let's find the trigger man. Or at least a smoking gnome. I will reiterate my first point- who were these chess masters?

Yes, I saw that. I was being a snot.

I smoked a gnome once. The smug little fella had it coming, all smirky in his big red hat.

-Blast, because someone had to be the voice of reality in this thread (or maybe just the voice of really high-powered cold medicine. )

Blakes Seven, now that's when TV was watchable. Ahh Saturday mornings in the 1970s watching Blakes Seven , Space 1999 , Captain Scarlet , UFO, Dr Who and The Tommorow People