Movies are dumbing down science, along with everything else

In one of the least surprising bits of advice ever, college professors at the University of Central Florida are suggesting that you don't take physics lessons from Hollywood.<BR><BR>Read More

 

[uberpenguin]

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/<BR><BR>Edit: Being a semiconductor sort of fellow, one Hollywood rule really hits home with me:<BR><BR>QUANTUM MECHANICS ARE MAGIC<BR><BR>That's right, invoke Schrödinger's ghost and you can explain away ANYTHING. Mind you, only writers that fancy themselves particularly clever tend to do this, as the mere mention of anything related to modern physics seems to have a stigma surrounding it.<BR><BR>My favorite example from recent times was the "particle accelerator" from Spider-man 3. The sign on the fence outside the facility already had me chuckling, though I can't remember exactly it read (I choose to remember it as something that should be axiomatic for Hollywood; 'DANGER: SCIENCE'). When I realized that the writers had opted to relate the 'particles' in 'particle physics' to something a little more tangible for the lay audience, I was nearly rolling on the floor. Oh, but at least the particle physicists were easy on the eyes...<BR><BR>*sigh* and to think that this is what we're feeding a generation that just might be the one to see the birth of economical fusion-based power generation... Scary.<BR><BR>Bonus: For another bit of amusement, consider the typical Hollywood concept of "energy" (roughly analogous to magic) versus reality.

 

[johnseeking]

I loved Red Planet, but one line makes it almost unwatchable for me... Tom Sizemore's character (the planet's foremost geneticist) cites the four bases in DNA: "A... T... G... P..."<BR><BR>Arrrrgh.

 

[BubbaFett]

This is one reason Firefly/Serenity and BSG are awesome. No "phasers" you can see in a vacuum traveling slower than bullets. No sound in space. No oddly human-looking aliens. They have nukes and bullets! And the physics of the vipers are a nice touch. Sure there are technologies we don't understand, and maybe they're even impossible, but they don't blatantly violate what we DO understand.

 

[willyolio]

i've noticed that people in movies generally have an allergy to the ground. or water.<BR><BR>if a character touches the ground, or water, they are dead. if they don't, they survive. this rule can be applied to any situation from tripping, to falling out of a plane. acceleration (or deceleration) or velocity don't matter at all. if there is anything in between the character and the ground/water, i.e. a rug, a piece of paper, a spiky giant metal robot, it'll save their life.

 

[Dianne Hackborn]

Pretty much any time at all a movie (or TV show) does something involving computers. For example, the one you see all the time: zooming in to an image and then magically sharpening it. Argh!!!

 

[gwguy]

God any 'Hacker' in any movie since War Games. It's not physics per se, but they get everything so wrong that it actively detracts from the movie.<BR><BR>Oh and humans as batteries from the Matrix, that one still annoys me.

 

[willyolio]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by johnseeking:<BR>I loved Red Planet, but one line makes it almost unwatchable for me... Tom Sizemore's character (the planet's foremost geneticist) cites the four bases in DNA: "A... T... G... P..."<BR><BR>Arrrrgh. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>is that the same movie where a character looks at a sequence of about 6 base pairs and says "that DNA looks human...?"

 

[Kressilac]

Any movie with a modern computer in it. If my computer clicked and beeped that much I'd throw it out the window. Everything in The Net that had to do with anything Net related.<BR><BR>I've lived, ate and breathed computers for 20 plus years now and none of them behave like they do in the movies. The file copy procedures are either too slow or the tech is way too fast. I love it when a government computer in a movie instantly opens a half a dozen evidence photos or when a delete all command in a directory puts up a progress bar for each delete. I mean what operating systems are these guys using?<BR><BR>All this said, I'm not sure why one would bring up Star Trek. For the most part these guys do ok with what they do. Hell there's real life people working on trying to figure out some of the concepts presented in the series so it has to have a bit more credibility than say all of the other films mentioned in the article.

 

[zorneatsham]

Aren't there copyrights involved with using existing (commercial) OSes in movies? That wouldn't stop filmmakers from using some tasty shots of a character using a Gnome or KDE desktop, right?

 

[apocryphal triptych]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">All this said, I'm not sure why one would bring up Star Trek. For the most part these guys do ok with what they do. Hell there's real life people working on trying to figure out some of the concepts presented in the series so it has to have a bit more credibility than say all of the other films mentioned in the article. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I can't remember which episode, but there was one of TNG where some Romulan guy who was "out of phase" was chasing a crewmember all over the ship. I think he ended up passing through a bulkhead into space and floated away. If he could pass through a bulkhead, why was the floor holding him up? I can suspend belief to a point, but when you break your own rules....

 

[apocryphal triptych]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by zorneatsham:<BR>Aren't there copyrights involved with using existing (commercial) OSes in movies? That wouldn't stop filmmakers from using some tasty shots of a character using a Gnome or KDE desktop, right? </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I recently saw Breach, and I believe they were using Windows 98. (That would be period correct IIRC)

 

[simifilm]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Anything that makes a noise in a vacuum. Which covers just about every movie set in space aside from 2001. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Obviously, someone here needs to watch <I>Destination Moon</I> which got this right already in 1950. Ok, the movie is boring as hell, but the science is pretty correct.

 

[kuya]

forget fourier transfers and start thinking quantum mechanics!

 

[IgniFerroque]

Part of the reason I've liked the Bourne movies is that their inaccuracies in physics aren't too egregious. Though the scene in the first movie where he rides a dead body through a free fall of about one hundred feet does make me wince.

 

[gorp959]

Party Poopers!!!!<br><br>-- View image here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif --<br><br>Now you are going to tell me that Santa Claus cannot give presents to every good child on Christmas Eve.<br><br>Yet another illusion destroyed.

 

[zuben]

One of the best aspects of 2001 was the silence allowed for scenes in the vacuum of space. The time given to those scenes also enhanced the intended spatial effect. Today, such "empty space and sound" would fall, cut to the editing room's floor.<BR><BR>Kubrick and Clarke created a masterpiece, however, from Wikipedia:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> The film is scientifically inaccurate in minor details, many explained by the technical difficulty inherent to producing a realistic effect:<BR><BR> * The gravity in Clavius moon base appears to be that of Earth rather than the Moon.<BR> * The dust raised by the lunar shuttle's exhaust billows upwards from the landing pad instead of radiating outwards, in straight lines, as would happen in the near-vacuum of the lunar atmosphere.<BR> * Immediately after the previous scene a shot overlooking the test site shows the lunar surface with Earth's moon in the background.<BR> * The height of lunar mountains and the extent of meteoric erosion were overestimated, as the film was made before the Apollo program expeditions.<BR> * The Earth is shown in different phases during the Aries-1b moon ship, (a continuity and scientific error).<BR> * In the scene where astronaut Bowman blows open the hatch of his space pod in order to enter, without a helmet, Discovery's airlock, he bounces about in the airlock chamber, yet his space pod remains stationed outside the airlock door. Since the pod is not fixed to Discovery, the forced blowing of the pod's hatch should have pushed it away.<BR> * In the airlock scene, Bowman is seen holding his breath before being ejected from the pod craft. Before exposure to a vacuum, NASA states, the person must exhale, because holding in the breath would rupture the lungs.[29] (See also vacuum.)<BR> * When Dr. Floyd is flying to the moon, weightless, he sips food through a straw, yet when he lets go of it, the fluid falls back to the container, showing that the fluid in the straw is not weightless.<BR><BR>The Centrifuge in Discovery One — Exercising astronaut Frank Poole jogs its circumference.<BR><BR> * Though the crew quarters in the spaceship Discovery are arranged in a rotating wheel to simulate gravity, the wheel's short radius would require many RPM (5-10 RPM, depending on the actual radius) to produce Earth-like gravity. In the film, the centrifuge rotates at about 3 RPM (once every 20 seconds).<BR> * In the Pan Am Clipper, the stewardess grabs the sleeping Dr. Floyd's pen as it floats in zero gravity. The pen is rotating, but not on its own center of mass; it is rotating on an external center.<BR> * In many scenes, the stars move past the spaceships while the camera keeps pace with the ship; impossible unless the ships were traveling extremely fast or they were turning.<BR> </div></BLOCKQUOTE> <BR><BR>Not even considering when the movie was made, it still ranks as my favorite sci-fi ever.

 

[willyolio]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by IgniFerroque:<BR>Though the scene in the first movie where he rides a dead body through a free fall of about one hundred feet does make me wince. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>a hundred? if we're thinking the same scene, it was only a couple floors down... so i'd guess 40 at most. hell, bourne's a tough guy, and i'd bet he'd survive that if he just jumped. the human cushion was just used to prevent him from breaking both his legs and all his ribs.

 

[HerdedHome]

Not movies, but any book by that scribbler Dan Brown. Yeuch, makes my brain dribble from my ears just to think of what I had to forget to be able to read half way through Digital Fortress.

 

[grimlog]

Not really a movie, but since Star Trek was broguht up, I have to mention Babylon 5 as a series which had a good representation of real physics. I always loved how the animation of the Starfury's would show detailed vector thrust navigation and the general reaction of the Starfuries to each burst of exhaust.<br><br>Also, the animation of the end of B5 was superb IMO. *SPOILER Warning* Instead of showing it all being obliterated in a gigantic bang as with most sci-fi anything, the explosions took it out in parts, with individuals parts <b>tearing off</b>, not blown off as a result of the explosion and very large sections surviving the blast after being blown/torn off the station. <br><br>There was some bad physics in the show though..like the nonchalance with which moving between different atmospheric areas was handled and the fact that anyone could hold on to an extending Ranger staff that extended with enough force to completely shatter a door strong enough to barely bend under blows from a fairly strong man.<br><br>One more mention. Phil Plait (a real astronomer) has been running the Bad Astronomy site for several years now and it has a few humourous reviews of movies with bad science. Worth a read if you're geeky and bored. -- View image here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --<br><br>My own example of bad science in a movie: That scene in the Transformers trailer where Starscream(? haven't seen the movie) transforms from plane to robot in mid-air, sticks out a hand to grab a bridge or a pole or something while doing so and flips himself so that he lands on the bridge/pole/something. So here we have to several ton robot, hurtling ahead at great speed and he's able to flip around a weak structure without completely shattering it?

 

[Ludwigk]

i. MovieOS can do anything! Enhance! Extrapolate! Zoom into the bottom corner, fill in the missing parts! Hack into the secret computerz.<BR><BR>ii. Having a physics degree, along with a concentration in chemistry, pretty much any film with an explosion, collision, freefall, or an object moving over 30 miles an hour makes me wince at times. While watching kong, i kept thinking about how manu times the lovely Ms Watts would have had her neck and limbs torn asunder during the action sequences. Not to mention that kong wrestles with a dinosaur.

 

[indigenous]

My favorite bit of <I>deliberate</I> bad science in a movie is in "Amazon Women on the Moon" when one of the crew takes off his helmet on the moon (after seeing the ship's chimp mascot do the same), takes a deep breath, exhales and exclaims, "Ah, good old H2O!"

 

[bicarb]

<blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Grimlog:<br>Not really a movie, but since Star Trek was broguht up, I have to mention Babylon 5 as a series which had a good representation of real physics. I always loved how the animation of the Starfury's would show detailed vector thrust navigation and the general reaction of the Starfuries to each burst of exhaust.<br><br>Also, the animation of the end of B5 was superb IMO. *SPOILER Warning* Instead of showing it all being obliterated in a gigantic bang as with most sci-fi anything, the explosions took it out in parts, with individuals parts <b>tearing off</b>, not blown off as a result of the explosion and very large sections surviving the blast after being blown/torn off the station. <br><br>There was some bad physics in the show though..like the nonchalance with which moving between different atmospheric areas was handled and the fact that anyone could hold on to an extending Ranger staff that extended with enough force to completely shatter a door strong enough to barely bend under blows from a fairly strong man.<br><br>One more mention. Phil Plait (a real astronomer) has been running the Bad Astronomy site for several years now and it has a few humourous reviews of movies with bad science. Worth a read if you're geeky and bored. -- View image here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --<br><br>My own example of bad science in a movie: That scene in the Transformers trailer where Starscream(? haven't seen the movie) transforms from plane to robot in mid-air, sticks out a hand to grab a bridge or a pole or something while doing so and flips himself so that he lands on the bridge/pole/something. So here we have to several ton robot, hurtling ahead at great speed and he's able to flip around a weak structure without completely shattering it? </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>To be fair the starfuries couldn't enter any atmosphere until they got the upgraded next gen ones from earth in season two or three. I don't remember the scene where the ranger staff shattered a door, but I thought I remember marcus(?) giving a technobabble explanation of how it works at one point early on.

 

[decastud]

ARMAGEDDON<BR><BR>it was SO full of impossible stuff I can't bgin to recall it all:<BR><BR>- asteorid the size of TEXAS?<BR>- two space shuttles which get launched together a few hundred yards from each other<BR>- the MIR space station rotating in orbit simulating gravity?<BR>- the two shuttles docking with the MIR WHILE it is rotating?<BR>- the astromauts talking to each other while their ships are going 10+ G<BR>... and SO SO many more<BR><BR>sigh!

 

[Yoozer]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">they're leaving a scientifically-illiterate public completely bewildered about what's actually possible here in the real world. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Not only scientifically illiterate, also incredibly gullible or so it seems. "But you can hear the sound of lasers in space, Star Wars tells me so!"<BR><BR>"No, you idiot. That's not recorded in space, it's a dark room with a carboard building of the Death Star and plastic models of X-wings flying."<BR><BR>What happened to the "it's only a movie" stuff?

 

[ignoreme]

It pains me to say it, because I love the movie. But "The Fifth Element" when they stick in 10 more backbones into Mila Jovovich's DNA to make it 'better' than humans'. That doesn't make it store any more information...<BR><BR>Oh, and one of the Mission Impossibles where he sneaks in through the skylight in the pharmaceutical company that opens to let light in so the viruses can 'grow'. wtf? I wonder how many people stay inside when they get sick now to stop the sunlight from making their cold stronger? Not that we're transparent though...

 

[Sulimo]

<blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">One more mention. Phil Plait (a real astronomer) has been running the Bad Astronomy site for several years now and it has a few humourous reviews of movies with bad science. Worth a read if you're geeky and bored. -- View image here: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif -- </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>I always liked Phil's site. I read it all the time. Some really good information there, and not just about movies.

 

[Bicentennial Douche]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Superman... uh, gets lots of stuff wrong: The authors, in describing a scene where Superman induces the Earth to reverse its rotation in order to have time move backwards, say it about as well as anyone could: "There are few scenes in all of movies ever produced that rewrite so many physics laws as this one does." The most basic mistake? Superman flies in the opposite direction from where he needs to go to reverse the Earth's rotation. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Um, instead of that, how about "progress of time is not tied to the rotation of Earth"?

 

[IdeaHamster]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dianne Hackborn:<BR>Pretty much any time at all a movie (or TV show) does something involving computers. For example, the one you see all the time: zooming in to an image and then magically sharpening it. Argh!!! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Dang, you beat me to it!<BR><BR>This one, bar none, is the worst. At least if Hollywood projects an inaccurate picture of partical physics, the only harm done is to perpetuate an already present ignorance of science. Zooming in on pictures/film and magically pulling increased resolution out of thin air actually sets unreallistic expectations about technology. I can't tell you how many times I've had the following exchange:<BR><BR>"Hey, how do you get Photoshop to zoom in on this blurry photo I took of this (wedding/birthday/family reunion)"<BR><BR>"You don't. It's impossible."<BR><BR>"No, but I saw them do it on (CSI/Law & Order/Bond/etc.)"<BR><BR>"Yeah, that was fake."<BR><BR>"I don't believe you. You should learn how to do that with Photoshop"<BR><BR>"...and you should learn how to take better photos!"<BR><BR>EDIT: Just to elaborate...one of my jobs involves actually selling software. I've actually had people refuse to buy Photoshop Elements because it couldn't do this.<BR><BR>Also, As a counterpoint: anyone watch House? Aside from the great acting, the science on that show is usually spot on. It's the only science oriented show I can watch these days.

 

[slam-o-rama]

my all-time bad science groaner is from Deja Vu. <BR><BR>ok so they are looking at a monitor showing some sort of scene from the past. Our Hero suspects that information is traveling two ways, and uses a pocket laser pointer... and points it at the *monitor*... and the beam shows up in the past! and the machine shorts out! and sparks fly out! because our trillian-dollar machine lacks a surge protector or cicuit breaker! oh no!<BR><BR>i'm like, no no no no! it's a monitor! just a monitor! it has no transmission ability! and yet later on when Our Hero needs to return to the past he must crawl in a little pod. why didn't he just jump into the monitor!<BR><BR>it's like expecting your LCD screen to transmit images just because you can see someone in skype in it.<BR><BR>or like pressing your document to the LCD screen expecting it to work as a scanner.<BR><BR>the time travel part i can accept. i dunno why.<BR><BR>slam

 

[vishnu]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Lasers producing visible beams of light. This would include just about any movie with a laser that's not used to play with a cat. Yes, they can reflect off dust particles, but in most cases, the dust would have to be too thick to actually see anything else in the room. And there's not much dust in most areas of space. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>eh, most movies that use them in "space" don't call them lasers. blasters or phasers or whatever device which functions by an unspecified mechanism may or may not realistically give off omni directional light.<BR><BR>sufficiently high powered lasers at the right frequency used in the atmosphere could conceivably superheat the air it passes through, which would then radiate light.

 

[Bicentennial Douche]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by slam-o-rama:<BR>my all-time bad science groaner is from Deja Vu. <BR><BR>it's like expecting your LCD screen to transmit images just because you can see someone in skype in it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>That reminds me of "Clear and Present Danger". Harrison Ford is sitting in one room accessing CIA-documents that reside on a server, while another guy is sitting in the next room deleting those same files. Whenever he deletes a file, that file disappears from Ford's screen even as he's reading it. He then frantically tries to print just one of those documents before they get deleted. And he does manage to print one file, seconds before it gets deleted.<BR><BR>My first reaction to that was: "um, if you are reading a server-based document on your computer, and someone else deletes that file, it doesn't magically disappear from your wordprocessor...".

 

[venzann]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">zooming in to an image and then magically sharpening it. Argh!!! </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>View image: http://www.forty-two.co.nz/dave/forensics.png

 

[Virogtheconq]

<I>The Core</I> seems to be a favorite of the SPS clubs of which I've met members. I have not seen the movie, but just about everything in that movie was wrong - what did surprise me about the arXiv article was the scene it described usually isn't on the "Top 10 list of things wrong with The Core" lists I've seen.<BR><BR>I disagree with their description of why Magneto should have been glowing - their power derivation was strictly from the kinetic energy of the bridge, and if he <I>only</I> used energy to do work on the bridge, then he wasn't generating any heat.<BR><BR>Star Trek has certainly inspired its fair share of physicists (me included) - however, Voyager really rubbed me the wrong way with its insipid technobabble that inevitably turned into "reversing the polarity of the inverted quantum harmonic defibrillato and oh my god, we found the antiproton!"

 

[Gisboth]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Anything that makes a noise in a vacuum. Which covers just about every movie set in space aside from 2001. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Alien<BR><BR><I>In space, no one can hear you scream</I>

 

[Maarten]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by vishnu:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Lasers producing visible beams of light. This would include just about any movie with a laser that's not used to play with a cat. Yes, they can reflect off dust particles, but in most cases, the dust would have to be too thick to actually see anything else in the room. And there's not much dust in most areas of space. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>eh, most movies that use them in "space" don't call them lasers. blasters or phasers or whatever device which functions by an unspecified mechanism may or may not realistically give off omni directional light.<BR><BR>sufficiently high powered lasers at the right frequency used in the atmosphere could conceivably superheat the air it passes through, which would then radiate light. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Not quite, but Rayleigh scattering (you know: the reason the sky is blue) will cause any laser with sufficient continuous power to have a visible beam. Faint, but visible. Now the superheating only happens when the molecules can absorb the radiation, and guess what: it can't be from the visible wavelength range then.<BR><BR>M

 

[Mr_Didgers]

Transformers is full of stuff that could never happen, but I'll just stick to some of the physics stuff.<BR><BR>Adding to what Grimlog posted, what happens when 60 tons of metal hits concrete at 40 mph? In real life, it plows into the concrete, but in the movie, the tanks just bounce off the ground like they were cheap plastic toys.

 

[juanxer]

What about the whole "bodies explode when exposed to vacuum" thing?

 

[vertgo]

This just in:<BR>Porn does a really bad job of teaching kids about love, marriage, and fidelity.<BR><BR>That said, I sure learned a lot about double penetration from it.

 

[OrangeCream]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Kressilac:<BR>Any movie with a modern computer in it. If my computer clicked and beeped that much I'd throw it out the window. Everything in The Net that had to do with anything Net related.<BR><BR>I've lived, ate and breathed computers for 20 plus years now and none of them behave like they do in the movies. The file copy procedures are either too slow or the tech is way too fast. I love it when a government computer in a movie instantly opens a half a dozen evidence photos or when a delete all command in a directory puts up a progress bar for each delete. I mean what operating systems are these guys using? </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Funny, Vista at work seems to be that slow for file delete, for me.<BR><BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"><BR>All this said, I'm not sure why one would bring up Star Trek. For the most part these guys do ok with what they do. Hell there's real life people working on trying to figure out some of the concepts presented in the series so it has to have a bit more credibility than say all of the other films mentioned in the article. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>