CS Research Ruins Lives of Some Already Sad, Lonely Dudes

CS Research Ruins Lives of Some Already Sad, Lonely Dudes
So let's check in on exactly what those cutting edge researchers are doing in Gates. Reinventing the internet? Building Terminators? Looking at pr0n?

No, they're just making a completely unbeatable checkers program. This took 18 years. Supposedly it's useful for something besides checkers. Perhaps King's Court. It seems pretty useful for holding on to an associate professorship, eh?

A rep from the American Checkers Foundation -- probably being interviewed in his mom's basement -- had this to say:
In some sense, it's not interesting. People play games for fun, and knowing you can never beat it isn't fun.
Translation: those smart-ass computer people are spoiling my Saturday night entertainment, and I'm not going to acknowledge that this was maybe actually kind of hard.

Still...checkers? Really? Who knew 8 year olds were handing out grants?
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Cranky Kitten
Fortunately at least a few of the guys in the Gates geek squad are working for the side of truth, justice and air hockey-playing robots: http://www.stanford.edu/~paulr2/robothockey.mp4 Posted 08/06/2007 9:57 PMReply

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