Prove me wrong suckers (and saying "everything might eventually be possible" doesn't work).
Prove something that hasn't happened yet. That's almost Zen.
Anyway. Anything logical can be emulated. The brain is, ultimately, just a process of chemical and electronic interactions. Ergo, it can be emulated. You just gotta understand it well enough.
As for proof, I can offer only this: Mouse Brain Simulated on Supercomputer. If we can sim a mouse brain, we can sim a human brain. Just takes time, computing power, and understanding.
I liked these "Internet Addiction Camps" better when they were called "Summer Camp".
Seriously, when I got too into games as a kid (Dragon Warrior 3, Wizardry 2, and Final Fantasy 2 being the early ones) my mother just walked in, hit the power button, and told me to go outside and not come back in until the sun was down.
Why is this such a hard concept? Is it an asian culture thing? I mean, think of Japan. You have hikikomoris, sitting in the dark in their rooms, with parents enabling them by just feeding them sliced cheese through the crack under the door. China and Kroea have people literally playing video games until their bladders burst and they die.
Granted, A+ for effort but big fat F for common sense, eh?
Is "He'll leave the room when he gets hungry enough" or "Just turn off the freaking router" such a hard concept?
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
Precedent is indeed the right worry here, but not quite in the way you're mentioning.
1984 was not legally sold on Amazon.com's Kindle store. It's legal in almost every other country on Earth -- basically any country without corporate overlords demanding Copyright be extended to "Age of Mickey Mouse +20 years" in perpetuity.
No, the real precedent that is very, very bad and very, very scary is that now, now publishers know that Amazon can remotely delete items from the Kindle, without user input.
Textbook companies want to sell a textbook that's only good for 1 quarter? Why not? Not like you'll need it after this year, since we're gonna release the 351st edition to make sure students can't resell the deadtree back to the bookstore.
Someone sues Amazon cause "Twilight" offends local obscenity laws? "Well golly gee, we're seeing you're connecting to a Cell tower in Bumfuck Idaho, we'll just auto-delete that Twilight book for you to avoid offending the prudes..."
Or better yet. "Hey Apple, Amazon can just delete stuff from their Kindle remotely, why can't you delete any songs with Metallica in their filename / ID3 tags that don't match up with ones they've bought from us off iPods when they dock?"
Amazon played a very bad hand here. They admitted they can screw over users on behalf of 3rd party companies. Worse, they admitted they will if asked.
The new version Kindle in the large size does PDF - they don't force all the content in their proprietary format (although of course they make that the easiest to get). I think that would be your best bet. Note the smaller size Kindle does not do PDF.
Not YET. The Kindle 1 had a firmware update after the Kindle 2 came out that backported the 2's features. I would not be surprised to see the DX's full PDF support backported to the 1 and 2 later, after the people who NEED PDF support get the DX.
Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
Rescind their business licences and enjoin the upper management from forming or working in another corporation for X years, where X is the years a normal person would be in jail.
Or better yet, rescind corporate personhood, it was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.
I don't know, it ended with some kind of lightning battle with an interdimensional god and a giant Stay Puft marshmallow man on the New York skyline... what category does that normally go in?
A replicator (ST) could be used to make a replicator (SG).
Correct me if you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of startrek, but self-replicating machines only seem to have featured in the form of the mines in DS9.
That's because something like that would fall into the range of Transhumanism, and as we all know, there's No Transhumanism Allowed in Science-Fantasy and Contemporary SciFi.
You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there.
We're the party of fiscal responsibility!
I would have agreed with this last year. But since the current party has tripled the deficit, it turns out that it's true!
Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.
I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot.
They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply!
Were any of these guys wearing a uniform? No? then the Geneva Convention does not apply. Why is this so hard to understand?
I have never heard a Republican say this, yet it keeps getting repeated over and over as if it's true. And what do you know, many of the exceedingly ignorant and borderline retarded believe it.
Not only that, it turns out we were torturing people to death and shoving flashlights up children's bums specifically to try and GET a fake link between Iraq and 9/11. Whoops!
Obama has excellent speech writers and the ability to read the teleprompter. Anyone who thinks Obama (or any other modern politician) is a "great orator" is either intentionally being an idiot or is just another one of the sheeple
I know you conservatives are upset that reality has such a well known Liberal bias but seriously, come out of the bubble sometime. The talking point about the teleprompter is a non starter outside of the wingnutosphere.
Still, it's another fine example of, "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true."
Also known as "The Republican Campaign Platform, 1996-2024":
Reagan was a good president! 9/11 changed everything! The following things are not torture: Beating someone (to death), waterboarding someone (to death), anally raping a boy in front of his parents, hanging someone upside down from the ceiling / walls via cords and hooks (until they lose limbs), putting someone in a 3' box/cage for weeks at a time, throwing poisonous insects and animals inside said cage, preventing someone from sleeping for weeks at a time... It's still not torture, and it works, so that means it's vital that you let us keep doing this not-torture! Ok, so it's torture, and it doesn't work, but it'd harm our CIA operatives if you investigate it! We told Congress all about the Torture, so it's ok! We actually got viable intel from torture, so it's ok! It was all to prevent a smoking bomb, and totally NOT to try and get fake intel linking Iraq and Al Qaeda! Iraq had something, anything to do with 9/11! Saudi Arabia didn't have anything to do with 9/11! It's not illegal if the president's lawyers say it isn't! The Geneva Convention is not binding United States Law! They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply! You're either with [Bush] or against [The US]! We're compassionate conservatives! The United States is a Christian Nation! We're the party of fiscal responsibility! We're the party of family values! We're the party of national security! The estate tax isn't fair! Obama's going to raise your taxes! Teh GAYS are coming to steal yer marriages!!!!11
Did I miss anything? I'm not fully up to date on my Republican Talking Point lies lately, frankly ever since the election it's been just... too sad to bother giving them any attention.
Basically. While the sympathetic media reports them as "gaffes" if any Republican said half the stuff that he did, he'd have a lower reputation than Quayle.
Seriously, google "Biden Gaffes".
I did. Most of the "Biden Gaffes" are either from Conservative wingnut blogs or from the media, but upon further examination, they're complete non-issues. Like telling people not to go into enclosed places if people are sick -- well, duh, that's common sense. But the Media has "BIDEN MAEK GAFFE" as a meme right now, so, doesn't matter what he says -- if there's a negative way to take it, zomg, GAFFE.
And I'll have you know that after 8 years of a free pass from Bush basically running this country into the ground by the "liberal" media the very idea that the media has any form of "liberal" bias is laughable. Sure, the reporters might be liberal, but the decision-makers are hardline conservatives. Suddenly the media might "wake up" (read: start actually doing their jobs instead of just copy/pasting press releases) to avoid giving Obama a free pass, but that's fine, because outside of some fabricated scandals, so far, smooth sailing.
Just remember: any self-respecting king has to have a court jester. Obama's got Biden, Bush 41 had Quayle, and Cheney had Bush 43.
Obama is a court jestor. You can watch his teleprompter ping pong, count the urrr's and ummm's, watch him completely lose the ability to talk when the teleprompters go out, etc.
No, that would be Bush. Obama is a professional orator (psst, that means he's dun got trainin' in how to speachify). The whole teleprompter thing is the Republicans attempting to attack people on their strengths. They've done this for decades now.
Obama's a phenomenal speaker, the Republicans have jack and crap for charisma this generation. So, attack him on that, make him look like he's "cheating" or really NOT a good speaker, and hope the public are willing to believe your talking points over their lying eyes.
Fortunately they're so far out in the wilderness now (they're even attacking Obama's little dog, too) that this kinda thing isn't working. People are tired of National Enquirer style politics.
It convicted Libby on four of the five counts against him: two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice in a grand jury investigation, and one of the two counts of making false statements to federal investigators.
All the convictions were a la Martha Stewart (giving false information during an investigation). Not for some "crime" that was never established...
The crime wasn't established because Libby screwed with the investigation. That was the entire point of the matter. Did you not pay any attention to Patrick Fitzgerald's findings? Or are you really trying to spout off talking points that were discredited hours after they came out?
What Google did is more like walking around in front of a Ford dealership while wearing a sandwich board advertising Chevrolet.
Which is legal. Public sidewalks, and all that. A local pizza joint has a guy out on the street corner with signs telling them to stop on by and get a pizza from a locally owned mom and pop pizza joint.
Mind you, the street corner he stands on is about 3 blocks away from said joint, and coincidentally right next to a local Pizza Hut...
And you're forgetting one important thing, which makes it even more legal.
What Google did is more like walking around in their own business in front of a Ford salesman that they invited into their business while wearing a sandwich board advertising Chevrolet.
www.Google.com is not public property. We go to their private servers and bring them our business because they have the best search resource available to us, and because they are mostly neutral.
But they don't have to be. They are, but they are not legally required to be. And no one would ever accuse them of being neutral on the "Sponsored links" sections.
For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.
Urban myth.
1. McDonalds had been warned, repeatedly, that their cups were faulty, especially when being used to contain coffee of the temperature they were serving. Specifically, the plastic lids were melting due to the heat. 2. They had been cited, repeatedly, for said coffee's temperature, as it was unsafe for human consumption at that temperature. 3. The grandmother who got said third degree burns that required skin grafts over a rather large portion of her lower body only sued after McDonalds offered her an absurdly, insultingly low settlement that would not pay for her medical bills.
Please do not fall for the FUD on behalf of the Corporationists. Some companies deserve to be sued.
Pardon me... what the hell is "faster than real time"? Does that mean it comes up with the answers before you ask the question?
Faster than the human brain thinks.
IIRC, the human brain fires off at like 200 mhz. That may not be 100% accurate, I cannot recall where I read that factoid and a quick Google search doesn't collaborate -- but ultimately the specific numbers don't matter.
Assuming a brain does go at 200mhz... Once a simulated human brain goes faster than 200 mhz, by definition you have something that can think faster than a human.
Currently a cheap desktop will run at about 10-20 times faster than that, speaking in pure mhz. In 10-20 years 200mhz will be something the little CPU in a teddy bear runs at or the little kit you can buy at Radio Shack for a 5 year old science geek in training to play with.
We won't be talking about Gigahertz, Terahertz, or even Petahertz. We MIGHT be talking about Exahertz, if the term isn't meaningless by then.
So assuming that we have a working emulated brain by then, it's not unreasonable that we'll just run it at 200thz instead of 200mhz. Instantly you have someone who is seeing "weeks" pass per second. Combine that with the not unlikely idea that that simulated person will be hooked up -- and gaining all the benefits of -- a computer with an network connection, and it's not unreasonable to imagine that said person is going to be really, really good at thinking new stuff up. Especially when you consider the first people they'll likely do this to are the people that are working on doing this in the first place.
And that's assuming we're not able to reverse engineer our consciousness by just looking at what this simulation does. And once we have someone hooked up to one of these systems reverse engineering one of these systems... well, sure, it might take hundreds of years to get done, but when those hundreds of years are passing in a few days in a computer simulated brain...
Don't discount the effects of new hardware on software projects. They said the human genome project was a huge waste of time because computers at the time would take hundreds of years to finish the project. Computers got better, that time got cut down exponentially. This may look insurmountable right now, but in 20 years we won't recognize computers as they are now.
Slashdot Mirror
So why was it granted in the first place?
Because the Patent Office doesn't have enough computer geeks and is underfunded.
Do either the Kindle or Sony ebooks have color displays?
Not yet. Color eInk is very new. The Kindle 3 (2011, probably) will probably have it.
Awesome news for us Kindle fans, we'll be seeing a price drop AND a Kindle Touch soon.
Sony? Who the hell cares about Sony?
Not that I wish to start a heady argument, but I doubt the result of replacing your brain with a chip would still be you.
But presumably I wouldn't know the difference, and I'd still own all my stuff, so who cares?
The only question is when.
And the answer is never.
Prove me wrong suckers (and saying "everything might eventually be possible" doesn't work).
Prove something that hasn't happened yet. That's almost Zen.
Anyway. Anything logical can be emulated. The brain is, ultimately, just a process of chemical and electronic interactions. Ergo, it can be emulated. You just gotta understand it well enough.
As for proof, I can offer only this: Mouse Brain Simulated on Supercomputer. If we can sim a mouse brain, we can sim a human brain. Just takes time, computing power, and understanding.
I liked these "Internet Addiction Camps" better when they were called "Summer Camp".
Seriously, when I got too into games as a kid (Dragon Warrior 3, Wizardry 2, and Final Fantasy 2 being the early ones) my mother just walked in, hit the power button, and told me to go outside and not come back in until the sun was down.
Why is this such a hard concept? Is it an asian culture thing? I mean, think of Japan. You have hikikomoris, sitting in the dark in their rooms, with parents enabling them by just feeding them sliced cheese through the crack under the door. China and Kroea have people literally playing video games until their bladders burst and they die.
Granted, A+ for effort but big fat F for common sense, eh?
Is "He'll leave the room when he gets hungry enough" or "Just turn off the freaking router" such a hard concept?
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
Precedent is indeed the right worry here, but not quite in the way you're mentioning.
1984 was not legally sold on Amazon.com's Kindle store. It's legal in almost every other country on Earth -- basically any country without corporate overlords demanding Copyright be extended to "Age of Mickey Mouse +20 years" in perpetuity.
No, the real precedent that is very, very bad and very, very scary is that now, now publishers know that Amazon can remotely delete items from the Kindle, without user input.
Textbook companies want to sell a textbook that's only good for 1 quarter? Why not? Not like you'll need it after this year, since we're gonna release the 351st edition to make sure students can't resell the deadtree back to the bookstore.
Someone sues Amazon cause "Twilight" offends local obscenity laws? "Well golly gee, we're seeing you're connecting to a Cell tower in Bumfuck Idaho, we'll just auto-delete that Twilight book for you to avoid offending the prudes..."
Or better yet. "Hey Apple, Amazon can just delete stuff from their Kindle remotely, why can't you delete any songs with Metallica in their filename / ID3 tags that don't match up with ones they've bought from us off iPods when they dock?"
Amazon played a very bad hand here. They admitted they can screw over users on behalf of 3rd party companies. Worse, they admitted they will if asked.
A very, very bad precedent all around.
The new version Kindle in the large size does PDF - they don't force all the content in their proprietary format (although of course they make that the easiest to get). I think that would be your best bet. Note the smaller size Kindle does not do PDF.
Not YET. The Kindle 1 had a firmware update after the Kindle 2 came out that backported the 2's features. I would not be surprised to see the DX's full PDF support backported to the 1 and 2 later, after the people who NEED PDF support get the DX.
What? You don't sign at compile-time, you sign the package after.
Sssh! Don't go letting logic get in the way of perfectly good FUD.
call me when your computer can wear a tight skirt and make me a cup of coffee...
Ok, what's your number?
But manslaughter.
Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
Rescind their business licences and enjoin the upper management from forming or working in another corporation for X years, where X is the years a normal person would be in jail.
Or better yet, rescind corporate personhood, it was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.
I don't know, it ended with some kind of lightning battle with an interdimensional god and a giant Stay Puft marshmallow man on the New York skyline... what category does that normally go in?
Acid Trip.
A replicator (ST) could be used to make a replicator (SG).
Correct me if you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of startrek, but self-replicating machines only seem to have featured in the form of the mines in DS9.
That's because something like that would fall into the range of Transhumanism, and as we all know, there's No Transhumanism Allowed in Science-Fantasy and Contemporary SciFi.
I'll pick a few here:
Teh GAYS are coming to steal yer marriages!!!!11
Never heard this from a Republican
You are a liar. Bush's "re-election" (his first actual election) was won primarily because they snuck so many anti-equality laws on the ballots. The bigoted wingnuts came out of the woodwork and voted for Bush while they were there.
We're the party of fiscal responsibility!
I would have agreed with this last year. But since the current party has tripled the deficit, it turns out that it's true!
Yes, I am absolutely certain that Obama, in 100 days, managed to triple the deficit, compared to 8 years of Bush spending like a drunken frat boy.
I totally believe that, because, apparently, I am an idiot.
They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply!
Were any of these guys wearing a uniform? No? then the Geneva Convention does not apply. Why is this so hard to understand?
Because I have a soul, and the idea of shoving flashlights up little kid's asses in front of the kid's mother is abhorrent to me.
Oh, and here's a POW being waterboarded:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/
Iraq had something, anything to do with 9/11!
I have never heard a Republican say this, yet it keeps getting repeated over and over as if it's true. And what do you know, many of the exceedingly ignorant and borderline retarded believe it.
Liar.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3119676.stm
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/21/bush-on-911/
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/bush-team-peddles-911-iraq-link-torture
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/lieberman-peddles-the-old_b_77198.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10164478
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00247.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0321-02.htm
Not only that, it turns out we were torturing people to death and shoving flashlights up children's bums specifically to try and GET a fake link between Iraq and 9/11. Whoops!
Obama has excellent speech writers and the ability to read the teleprompter. Anyone who thinks Obama (or any other modern politician) is a "great orator" is either intentionally being an idiot or is just another one of the sheeple
Except that Obama is an ex college professor, wrote 2 bestselling autobiographies, and, oh yeah, has been confirmed to write his own speeches.
I know you conservatives are upset that reality has such a well known Liberal bias but seriously, come out of the bubble sometime. The talking point about the teleprompter is a non starter outside of the wingnutosphere.
No, I do not pay attention to Novak, because I do not find him a trustworthy source. He is "ethically challenged" at best.
Still, it's another fine example of, "if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true."
Also known as "The Republican Campaign Platform, 1996-2024":
Reagan was a good president!
9/11 changed everything!
The following things are not torture: Beating someone (to death), waterboarding someone (to death), anally raping a boy in front of his parents, hanging someone upside down from the ceiling / walls via cords and hooks (until they lose limbs), putting someone in a 3' box/cage for weeks at a time, throwing poisonous insects and animals inside said cage, preventing someone from sleeping for weeks at a time...
It's still not torture, and it works, so that means it's vital that you let us keep doing this not-torture!
Ok, so it's torture, and it doesn't work, but it'd harm our CIA operatives if you investigate it!
We told Congress all about the Torture, so it's ok!
We actually got viable intel from torture, so it's ok!
It was all to prevent a smoking bomb, and totally NOT to try and get fake intel linking Iraq and Al Qaeda!
Iraq had something, anything to do with 9/11!
Saudi Arabia didn't have anything to do with 9/11!
It's not illegal if the president's lawyers say it isn't!
The Geneva Convention is not binding United States Law!
They're not prisoners of war, so the Geneva Convention doesn't apply!
You're either with [Bush] or against [The US]!
We're compassionate conservatives!
The United States is a Christian Nation!
We're the party of fiscal responsibility!
We're the party of family values!
We're the party of national security!
The estate tax isn't fair!
Obama's going to raise your taxes!
Teh GAYS are coming to steal yer marriages!!!!11
Did I miss anything? I'm not fully up to date on my Republican Talking Point lies lately, frankly ever since the election it's been just... too sad to bother giving them any attention.
>>Ahh, the Dem. version of Dan Quayle.
Basically. While the sympathetic media reports them as "gaffes" if any Republican said half the stuff that he did, he'd have a lower reputation than Quayle.
Seriously, google "Biden Gaffes".
I did. Most of the "Biden Gaffes" are either from Conservative wingnut blogs or from the media, but upon further examination, they're complete non-issues. Like telling people not to go into enclosed places if people are sick -- well, duh, that's common sense. But the Media has "BIDEN MAEK GAFFE" as a meme right now, so, doesn't matter what he says -- if there's a negative way to take it, zomg, GAFFE.
And I'll have you know that after 8 years of a free pass from Bush basically running this country into the ground by the "liberal" media the very idea that the media has any form of "liberal" bias is laughable. Sure, the reporters might be liberal, but the decision-makers are hardline conservatives. Suddenly the media might "wake up" (read: start actually doing their jobs instead of just copy/pasting press releases) to avoid giving Obama a free pass, but that's fine, because outside of some fabricated scandals, so far, smooth sailing.
Just remember: any self-respecting king has to have a court jester. Obama's got Biden, Bush 41 had Quayle, and Cheney had Bush 43.
Obama is a court jestor. You can watch his teleprompter ping pong, count the urrr's and ummm's, watch him completely lose the ability to talk when the teleprompters go out, etc.
No, that would be Bush. Obama is a professional orator (psst, that means he's dun got trainin' in how to speachify). The whole teleprompter thing is the Republicans attempting to attack people on their strengths. They've done this for decades now.
Obama's a phenomenal speaker, the Republicans have jack and crap for charisma this generation. So, attack him on that, make him look like he's "cheating" or really NOT a good speaker, and hope the public are willing to believe your talking points over their lying eyes.
Fortunately they're so far out in the wilderness now (they're even attacking Obama's little dog, too) that this kinda thing isn't working. People are tired of National Enquirer style politics.
Did you bother reading your citation?
All the convictions were a la Martha Stewart (giving false information during an investigation). Not for some "crime" that was never established...
The crime wasn't established because Libby screwed with the investigation. That was the entire point of the matter. Did you not pay any attention to Patrick Fitzgerald's findings? Or are you really trying to spout off talking points that were discredited hours after they came out?
What Google did is more like walking around in front of a Ford dealership while wearing a sandwich board advertising Chevrolet.
Which is legal. Public sidewalks, and all that. A local pizza joint has a guy out on the street corner with signs telling them to stop on by and get a pizza from a locally owned mom and pop pizza joint.
Mind you, the street corner he stands on is about 3 blocks away from said joint, and coincidentally right next to a local Pizza Hut...
And you're forgetting one important thing, which makes it even more legal.
What Google did is more like walking around in their own business in front of a Ford salesman that they invited into their business while wearing a sandwich board advertising Chevrolet.
www.Google.com is not public property. We go to their private servers and bring them our business because they have the best search resource available to us, and because they are mostly neutral.
But they don't have to be. They are, but they are not legally required to be. And no one would ever accuse them of being neutral on the "Sponsored links" sections.
Hopefully EMI has not licensed the silence of a blank CD.
No, but they have retained several hundred lawyers that will be more than happy to use the "Napster Offense" on this.
"He's encouraging piracy and thus he should have to pay us $iEnoughToRuinHim!"
For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.
Urban myth.
1. McDonalds had been warned, repeatedly, that their cups were faulty, especially when being used to contain coffee of the temperature they were serving. Specifically, the plastic lids were melting due to the heat.
2. They had been cited, repeatedly, for said coffee's temperature, as it was unsafe for human consumption at that temperature.
3. The grandmother who got said third degree burns that required skin grafts over a rather large portion of her lower body only sued after McDonalds offered her an absurdly, insultingly low settlement that would not pay for her medical bills.
Please do not fall for the FUD on behalf of the Corporationists. Some companies deserve to be sued.
Free isn't even the correct English word for 'free of charge'... It's the word 'gratis', which IS an Enlish word (look it up).
Ya, but 'Gratis of Charge' makes my mouth feel dirty saying it.
Pardon me... what the hell is "faster than real time"? Does that mean it comes up with the answers before you ask the question?
Faster than the human brain thinks.
IIRC, the human brain fires off at like 200 mhz. That may not be 100% accurate, I cannot recall where I read that factoid and a quick Google search doesn't collaborate -- but ultimately the specific numbers don't matter.
Assuming a brain does go at 200mhz... Once a simulated human brain goes faster than 200 mhz, by definition you have something that can think faster than a human.
Currently a cheap desktop will run at about 10-20 times faster than that, speaking in pure mhz. In 10-20 years 200mhz will be something the little CPU in a teddy bear runs at or the little kit you can buy at Radio Shack for a 5 year old science geek in training to play with.
We won't be talking about Gigahertz, Terahertz, or even Petahertz. We MIGHT be talking about Exahertz, if the term isn't meaningless by then.
So assuming that we have a working emulated brain by then, it's not unreasonable that we'll just run it at 200thz instead of 200mhz. Instantly you have someone who is seeing "weeks" pass per second. Combine that with the not unlikely idea that that simulated person will be hooked up -- and gaining all the benefits of -- a computer with an network connection, and it's not unreasonable to imagine that said person is going to be really, really good at thinking new stuff up. Especially when you consider the first people they'll likely do this to are the people that are working on doing this in the first place.
And that's assuming we're not able to reverse engineer our consciousness by just looking at what this simulation does. And once we have someone hooked up to one of these systems reverse engineering one of these systems... well, sure, it might take hundreds of years to get done, but when those hundreds of years are passing in a few days in a computer simulated brain...
Don't discount the effects of new hardware on software projects. They said the human genome project was a huge waste of time because computers at the time would take hundreds of years to finish the project. Computers got better, that time got cut down exponentially. This may look insurmountable right now, but in 20 years we won't recognize computers as they are now.