I found that I truly detest reading on the new kindle, but the e-ink version and the e-ink Nook are both pretty nice.

I really like the new stuff, makes me almost want to start coding C++ again.

Hasbro has no idea what to do with it. They're probably not even sure what it is - so I guess we're just lucky it's not "My Little Pony Conan Adventure"

Interesting, as I'd argue that 3.5 and Pathfinder are like 99% the same, with the exception that Pathfinder doesn't have R.A. Salvatore on call, and they smoothed a few rules.

But hey - play your game your way, that's what it's all about :)

Totally agree. I'm a big fan of Pathfinder, and strongly disliked 4E, have literally no interest at all in 5E. For me, class D&D died with TSR did, Pathfinder sorta brought it back.

I like their books, too, as well as their excellent online/mobile tools.

If you allow children to watch movies like the Expendables, you're part of the problem.

My kids didn't get to see much in the way of action/violent films or shows until they were in their mid to late teens. As I often say "Why the taboos on sex, and not on violence? I hope my children have sex some day, and I hope they never have to kill anyone".
Not that I let them watch porn, either ;)

Mostly they grew up with mythbusters, documentaries, science shows, and a freaking ton of books.

working "short on time" with "wife and children around" "in a recliner" does not sound conducive to quality code.

Great dad, in my opinion. My kids grew up involved in hunting, fishing, and shooting sports - but a trip to a refugee camp would probably have cured them of the FPS BS faster than anything.

Fortunately, they were never really into videogames.

Exactly. This has been the goal of NASA from day 1. To inspire people to actually go *DO* this stuff.

NASA was ever only a way to encourage private industry to make these leaps themselves. Well, and probably to be the FAA for LEO

I use vim almost exclusively (windows or linux), and use it for PHP, Perl, and C++.

It just works, why get all fancy?

Late 1989, on a VAXstation II/GPX running VMS 5.0. Not exactly a desktop workstation, it was a desk-side box as big as a 2-drawer file cabinet. That newfangled DECWindows came out and killed off the old VMS GUI "VWS". Right about that same time the VAXstation 3100 came out, a true desktop VAX workstation...

The early versions ran a "desktop" called "XUI", which was replaced with Motif in 1991.

Another commenter wrote that the performance has not improved that much since the early 90s. My current desktop Linux box has the equivalent CPU horsepower of 10,000 VAXstation 3100s, but it boots to the login window only about twice as fast. Progress?

Michael Jackson, and Hitler?

What utter bullshit!

This is like mining Facebook to decide who the best rock band ever was! Think there's any bias?

My vote goes to Gutenberg. You want to talk about inflection points in human knowledge? Gutenberg, and then Tim Berners-Lee.

Jeff

Sun stood on the shoulders of giants.

That 68000 processor that Sun used? Modeled after DEC microprocessors. That ethernet wire they connected to? They don't call it Digital-Intel-Xerox Ethernet for no reason. That "new thing" unix Sun used? And the C language? Built on DEC PDPs. Your terminal emulator? Emulates a DEC terminal. USB? A consortium, including DEC. That X-Window System sun used after NeWS tanked? Yep. Came from Project Athena, sponsored by DEC. MIT & IBM.

One of the many reasons that DEC died was that many people in the company were blinded by the brilliance of VMS and the layered products, and could not understand why anyone would want to settle for less. Digital had stuff in the 80s and 90s that the rest of the industry caught up with 10 or more years later, and in some cases, have still not caught up. The problem was that DEC's stuff was very, very expensive, and very proprietary, and DEC was out-marketed by other vendors selling supposedly "open", and certainly cheaper unix based solutions (See "snake oil".)