intelligence is hard to measure and certainly subjective. that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. one might as well say beauty doesn't exist. you could certainly make the argument. and yet for something that doesn't exist, it sure does correlate extraordinarily well with certain types of success.

the greatest threat is that it collides with another satellite and creates a debris field, so your solution is ... to blow it up?

"Rest assured that all lethal military androids have been taught to read and provided with one copy of the Laws of Robotics ... to share."

"giga" has the same greek root as the word "giant". the soft "g" (as in "gist") is the original and preferred pronunciation of "giga". tech nerds are to blame for getting it wrong with the common pronunciation of "gigabyte".

pronounce the following:

1.21 gigawatts

This is completely correct. Taken as a whole, his ouvre is entirely anti progress, anti scientists, and anti anything with any potential to change the status quo. it is tiny, scared writing, appealing to easy fears.

the constitution guarantees the right of people to hold racist opinions, but it does not protect them from being judged or called out for their ignorance.

Ii am not even remotely comprehending your point here. Who am i to judge someone for being a racist? Well, I am someone who thinks racism is completely repugnant. Furthermore, if _you_ don't judge someone "just" because they are a racist, then i am going to go ahead and judge you too. Just try and stop me.

i was picturing something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msp2xO_TdQ4

it's in the DoD's best interest for people to believe they are in posession of secret and unimaginable technological wonders. I think it's highly dubious (and optimistic, in my experience in this industry) to subscribe to the (conveniently non-falsifiable) notion that the U.S. military keeps all their most impressive toys 100% hidden from view. in fact, i suspect the opposite is closer to the truth.

love this.

nah, the geiger counter is no indication of radioactive material / nukes on board. You see, it turns out, most of the visible objects in outer space are actually humongous balls of radiation-emiting nuclear plasma. spacecraft are routinely dusted by bits of nuclear material. it's also possible (at least theoretically) for atoms bombarded by radiation to transmute into radioactive isotopes themselves. it's probably a good idea to wear a hazmat suit when approaching any spacecraft recently returned from long periods away from atmoshperic shielding.

sandbox games are personally very boring to me (i guess that makes me a boring person, haha), but i know there are people that like the, and that's fine. that's why i said in my post "if your'e making a game where the story element is important, tell a good story." emphasis on the "if" part. :)

i don't think the article was advocating sandbox games over plot-driven ones, though. it was arguing for plot-driven games with no borders or limits where the player controls where events take them. in other words, nonsense.

leaving aside the fact that it argues for more realism and complexity that consumes less resources and costs less (i.e. MAGIC), it also rails against a lot of the elements that make games, games. be careful what you wish for.

do you really want open-ended plotlines where the player truly controls the direction of the plot? there are real problems to that approach. dramatic fiction (which is a huge element to the appeal of, say, RPGs) depends on a cogent story being told. one thing must logically lead to the next. stakes should rise as the game progresses. events should build to a climax. that sort of thing. if you give the player true agency in their decisions, you have to actually program a compelling story for every possible choice. assuming finite resources, the problem here ends up a choice between either coding a tiny number of "alternate endings", or giving the player a large number of plot-inconsequential choices. personally, i'd rather have one great story than a handful of prefabbed ones riffing on the same theme. and i dislike games that pretend they're giving me a choice when all roads lead to the same place anyway. it's a silly dance. if your'e making a game where the story element is important, tell a good story. the choose-your-own-adventure books were fun when i was a kid, but so incredibly limited in narrative potential. games shouldn't try to emulate that model.

another stupid gripe from that article concerns indestructible objects and other walls and limitations designers wisely implement in order to keep things actually fun and balanced. games are not intended to simulate reality. levels are carefully balanced to provide a stimulating challenge. pac-man would not have been improved by letting him smash through the walls of the maze. the best games, of course, do a good job of blending the walls of their maze into the scenery. but those same walls exist in every game, in the form of unkillable NPCs, an out-of-order staircase, or a thousand other incarnations.

fivethirtyeight and other specialized blogs can often have worthwhile discussion taking place in the comments section. slashdot itself of course has a long history of being as much a place for discussion as it is for anything else.

however, in places where the comments section is ancillary to the main purpose of the site (primary-source news sites such as cnn, video sites, etc) seem to contain the most dire comments sections.

here is the truth: there is no single activity in which a man can engage more thoroughly disaffecting of the human soul than the reading of youtube comments.