The difference is all there in your opinion. Faith in God has credentials, but you don't acknowledge them as being valid. It's not "blind faith", only a matter of people viewing the credentials in an entirely different manner.

By this logic, the GUI should never have been invented, and computer code should be typed in assembly. And only people with a degree from MIT should be able to operate them because dumbing it down so the general population can use it is sooooo not kosher. Simplification is a good thing, it frees up more time you can spend actually thinking about the stuff you're doing, and less time spent wrestling with an obfuscated and overly difficult system.

Even "facts" can be distorted. There's a lot of wiggle room in picking which statistical interpretation to say is "correct" and which is "not correct". People use that all the time to bias the argument. If it became a government organization, I would imagine it would take all of two seconds before it becomes a tool for +1-ing statistical interpretations that support the party line.

Think of chess, small set number of pieces and places to move, but the number of combinations can quickly scale beyond what most modern computers excepting supercomputers can do.

There are vastly more scenario combinations that can occur on the open road with hundreds of cars and a whole slew of weather conditions.

It "can" be done, but it is by no means an easy task. The human brain is pretty amazing, we're not anywhere close to training machines how to react as well as we do in bizarre situations.

That's a good thing? I don't know how people don't go insane using those noisy things. Every time I've had to use one I get an irresistible urge to throw it on the floor and stomp on it.

Was that whole post sarcasm? Because I'm not sure how you could see all those problems in only 4 years as being "an example of quality" and a "good experience".

I would actually totally play such a game, if it worked out like Aiur Chef (StarCraft addon). Bonus points if you get to use the pan as a weapon against fellow chefs!

I suppose that's a lot more benign then my first reaction.

But I can't help but wonder if they use it as an excuse for a lot of bad things later on down the line.

Is this really where tax dollars need to be spent? I'm all for space, but I'd rather that budget go to NASA to get some exploring done, not to hire a private contractor to put an F-16 in orbit to defend against... what exactly?

I find the Win2k theme to be a lot like Mac OS9 was. It's space efficient (a little too much so, buttons were hard to click/fonts hard to read at higher resolutions), drab, and unappealing to the eye.

I can understand why people would use it, I just don't like it all that much myself. Given how bad the XP interface was I can't say that I blame people for doing ANYTHING to avoid the Fisher-Price.

Apple would have to be kinda suicidal to try a Set-top-box with Sony and MS hogging that spotlight, and the last time they tried it it didn't work so well.

The iPad is not a universal set-top box for playing "traditional" (AKA console controller based) games. The iPad/iPhone have a heavy dose of casual/popcorn/social network gaming, and that has been a huge part of their success. That type of gaming is shooting through the roof while more "traditional" gaming struggles.

TL:DR version: You won't be using an iPad to play Gears of War, but since everyone in the future is playing Angry Birds...

Osama missed the memo, the rest of the world is playing Sardines with China.

The more time you spend learning one method, the more comfortable you'll be with that method. The comfortable familiar trumps the slightly faster new method. To that extent, there is a downright massive section of the "geek" community that looks down on change.

I really don't see how spaceX is going to get the kind of money that a mars mission would need. Props to them if they can actually get investors to line up for it.

Not entirely. What's being described here is the difference between perspective-based "fun" and competitive "fun". Perspective based "fun" is something along the lines of one player getting to use something absolutely overpowered to decimate their opponent. This is a pretty key cornerstone of single-player. Some examples (Halo's Tank sequences, CoD Helicopter/Tank sequences, Nuclear Frikkin' Bombs, The Laser Drill on The Dig in SC2) This is bad for multiplayer. Competitive "fun" means that everyone has a more-or-less level playing field, and it is skill/strategy/reactions that win the day. This is great for multiplayer, but can make single-player rather dull.