The Filth from The Tick, "The Tick Vs. The Filth."

I was about to make a joke about how they should have never turned Sam Lowry into "Samantha" for this sequel.

As someone who writes comedy for a side-job, obfuscation doesn't amuse unless you're very very careful about how you use it. Clarity, in all forms of creativity, is king. Even when you're obfuscating.

That was, and I say this as respectfully as I can, a rather incoherent and ranty pile of stuff. I'm not saying that it didn't make good points- the idea that the Ghouls are as chained to the myth as we are is a powerful idea- perhaps more powerful than the filmmakers were even aware of.

I have two cats, one of whom is exceptionally burly for a cat. He can (and has) used his tail as a trip-wire. He also is apparently half sheep-cat, because he's pretty good at herding humans- towards the closet where his food is kept.

1) I'm not really sure why you say this. Operations-per-time-unit is a pretty convenient measure. And, as it turns out, there are physical laws that govern both the maximum number of operations-per-second and the number of bits that can store meaningful information in the computer- and these are both functions of the…

Carnies run Hollywood. And Bartertown.

As I watched this episode, I wondered- "Hey, is that DubDub? HOLY CRAP! DUBBY!" And that made me miss "The Middleman", and that, in turn, made me sad. Because as great and daft as "The Cape" is, it'll never reach the level of awesome that is "The Middleman".

He, um, makes it deeper, kinda. Hey, if Clark Kent's disguise is a pair of dorky glasses…

You're talking about how actual Turing machines make implementation differences matter. I'm pointing out that for a quantum computer, that isn't nearly as significant.

You're missing the beauty of quantum computing. Do you want a faster CPU? More memory? Easy: chuck more matter and energy at it. Voila, you've built a faster computer. Significantly faster- at least if you have clever programmers; each qubit in the system doubles the number of operations the system can perform…

That definition results in nonsense.

Well, you don't need additional tools, unless you want to share that information with a human being. But a hydrogen atom, to a human being, isn't a terribly interesting system. A bunch of hydrogen atoms isn't terribly interesting, for that matter. Unless you mix them with oxygen and a sudden influx of heat, but that's…

Now we're moving into "what level of abstraction is sufficient"? Humans can't see down to the atomic level, so we could easily not simulate atoms, and just their behaviors- or can we?

No output? The output's right there. It's a hydrogen atom, modeled with perfect fidelity. You can observe it with a number of tools and record whatever you like about it. You can tickle it with lasers or use it in chemical reactions to produce any sort of behavior you like.

At least a 100 times better. Probably more.

What's the most efficient way to simulate the behavior of a hydrogen atom with perfect fidelity? If the universe is parsimonious, you cannot simulate the behavior of hydrogen with any less matter and energy than is contained in a hydrogen atom. Ergo, you could not arrange matter into a form that has a higher…

Pattern matching is math.

Well, the real issue is this: the universe is already made of computronium. The mythical version of computronium assumes that the observable universe is a) non-computational and b) highly compressible. Which is to say, if one were to build a computer, it could accurately emulate a system larger and more complex than…

It should be obvious that retrieving stored data on a Droid, or a Blackberry, or a WP7 phone is equally easy. Gaining physical access to a device is tantamount to pwning the device.