Holy crap. I made a joke in my head about rebooting a car, but MS has again found a way to make truth stranger than fiction (from the wiki):

"For new car owners whose MyFord Touch systems crash, both Ford dealerships and Ford-sponsored websites have been recommending that owners disconnect the black (negative) lead to the battery for several minutes, reconnect, then run the car for at least five minutes to reboot the MyFord Touch system. Owners have complained that this is extremely inconvenient, even dangerous in many situations, and should not be required of owners who have paid tens-of-thousands of dollars for their new cars."

Given your unique position, I'd like to know your answer to this question:

What do you think is the currently a bigger threat to legitimate science:
- The growing wave of anti-intellectualism and anti-science that seemingly rejects science outright on certain issues
- Or the growing wave of pseudo-science that undercuts science by adopting the trappings of science but none of its procedures?

Thank you for your time.

And nothing of value was lost.

Given your rather unique history in show business, and the myriad of projects that you've worked on (who can forget Incubus?), is there any project in your past where, even now, you look back even now and say, "What was I thinking?"

Thanks, Captain.

... with various levels of privacy?

And right there your argument, such as it was, falls apart. There are no "various levels of privacy." This is one:

None.

I didn't even realize how bad it had gotten until I flew domestically in Japan. All of the bureaucracy parts of air travel took five minutes. I checked in, checked my bag, and went through security in under five minutes at the start of the day in at the second-busiest airport in the country. The experience was efficient, polite, and noninvasive. I went through a normal metal detector, was not groped, irradiated, or violated, and was treated with respect by the staff through every portion of the process. Japanese airlines advise passengers to show up no later than *ten minutes* before their flights. In addition, there had a bottle scanner. If you brought liquids through, they put it on the scanner and pushed a button. It took two seconds. How is it that we don't have these devices in our airports, but we do have cancer-causing backscatter scanners that have stopped zero terrorists? We've gone off the rails.

Is Saturday really the right time to be asking on the Web for helpful advise from people who have already foregone the Internet except at work?

Joco,

As some one whose career has pretty closely paralleled the "popularization" of geek culture (and perhaps benefited from it), how do you feel on the subject?

There seems to be a strong divide amongst nerds about public acceptance of larger swaths of what are traditionally "outcast" culture, and not a little bit of backlash against it (a'la Patton Oswalt). As a nerd who can't help but benefit from the continuing popularization (and, perhaps bastardization) of nerd culture, what are your insights?

Thanks.

You still do not know what the body of the elephant looks like - just like Civ has not reached perfection. Now, are you going to cling to the tusk and leg and claim that those are the only parts of an elephant?

No, but I am going to complain if I end up with an elephant ass.

"It feels almost as if someone described the concept of the renowned 19-year-old turn-based strategy series to a talented designer who'd never played it, and let him come up with his own version."

I don't want three blind men describing an elephant incorrectly. I want Civ.

There's a rather old-timey solution to this problem. I, too, was tried of wearing holes in my pockets from the numerous keys I had to carry around. Get yourself a leather key wallet. It is a wallet sized object with a set of key holders inside. You can store your keys in a relatively small area, and no more tearing up your pockets. Some of them even include change purses.

... if you're hiding behind a crate and want to take out enemies without popping up from behind it, shoot a hole in it. Bingo, you've got a comparatively safe firing vantage.

If you can shoot through one end of it, I'm pretty sure they can shoot through the other end of it.

As someone who saw it in IMAX, this film sucked even if you could see the pores of a Vulcan. It was inherently hamstrung by trying to be both a reboot and canon, and failing at both.

And now imagine that the system is compromised, and complete identity theft is available to anyone who can crack that one database.