Agreed. Writing a game is something that one enthusiastic developer can at least sensibly aspire to in their spare time, trying to build a game on top of a custom engine is something else entirely- the amount of rendering code, tools, integration, and other side tasks just pile up too quickly.

A lot of the mobile games are written using Unity which allows C# to be used on all platforms, from mobile, through PC, and even consoles if you have the dev license for them.

The only issue with Unity is if you need the Pro version be ready to pay some serious money, but for a lot of mobile games the Indie/Free version is fine.

Microsoft are no longer actively developing XNA, and haven't been for quite some time now. Better to go with something which is going to support the systems which will be available when your development's finished.

The use of the word drone to describe these is correct.

The Oxford English Dictionary includes the definition for a Drone as 'A pilotless aircraft or missile directed by remote control', a use that dates back at least to 1946 ("The Navy's drones will be..led—by radio control, of course—to a landing field at Roi."). There's no definition listed for a completely autonomous unit.

Been using Steam since shortly after HL2 was released, and the few minor problems I've had with it have been sorted out quickly. Sorry your friend's had problems but personally it's my preferred way to buy games now.

When a paper is published it should include the methodology used to gather the results, and if that includes a lot of untested and uncertified pieces of kit then it's going to cast serious doubts as to the validity of the findings. Have they actually found something of significance, or are they just prodding round some experimental error which wouldn't be there if they used tried and tested setups? It'll be fine for teaching, and that will help it to gain some credibility, but for a lot of research it's going to take a long time to gain acceptance without a large testing and certification budget behind it.

Some 360 degree cameras will be great for VR, but this one wouldn't. The vertical field of view isn't that great and it'd just appear as a loop round you rather than actually giving you the experience of being there.

Something like the Bubl camera would work a lot better, there you almost have a full spherical capture so the user can look up and down.

People still use C? Really?

I think this'll collapse unless Sony decide to open it to PC and maybe other consoles. It's not something that is general-use enough to bundle it with every console they sell, and there's not been a truly successful aftermarket add-on for a console as game manufacturers don't include support for them.

I was supporting Oculus until the FB buyout, and then I looked to Sony as maybe they'd treat this as a general display device rather than a PS4-exclusive (You can plug an XBox into a Sony Bravia), but now I'm just hoping Valve wake up and Do Stuff with a few of Gabe's millions.

LESS is a CSS pre-processor, adding useful things such as variables and extensions to the syntax without breaking things as it compiles down to vanilla CSS at the end. http://lesscss.org/

As Carl Sagan said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe".

Over the last few years 3d printing has come on dramatically, it's great for rapid prototyping.

Unfortunately though the average home user doesn't really have much need for rapid prototyping, and most of the things which come out of current 3d printers just don't look polished enough to appeal. They're still very rough looking, more the type of thing which'd come out of a Christmas cracker than the type of thing most people would want as decor.

In terms of software I don't think a more user-friendly 3d editor will help too much. I view 3d product design as similar to writing software, you can make it more accessible but most people are just going to be interested in the library of things other people have developed. Make a library of designs which the average person (not the average current 3d printer owner, they're more enthusiast) will find interesting, attractive, and useful and maybe you'll break the mainstream- until then it's the realm of the tinkerer and the hacker. Most people don't need or want a print out of the Stanford rabbit.

I'm not saying this isn't of interest or use, I may have pledged for one myself if I didn't find paying the import duties to the UK to be so painful (Anyone want to Kickstart a business importing other business' Kickstarters?), but it's still just another 3d printer. I don't think it's the type of thing I'd be recommending to my parents and neighbours though, I just don't think they'd want to deal with the hassles that 3d printers currently bring in exchange for the benefits. How much 3d printing do most people actually need?

What I do see as becoming more popular is the shared printer. People at home make orders for larger and well-finished 3d objects selected from a catalogue and printed on a very nice printer, and they either post them or make them available for collection at central points. I know businesses like Shapeways do this already but the price isn't right for most people yet, it needs to be the case where printing a vase isn't that much more expensive than buying one, and printing a piece to fix your plumbing should be easily affordable.

Do you really expect any company to donate 'rival' equipment to schools? What I would really rather see MS do is to not cancel development of things such as XNA Game Studio, or at to give more support to other freely-available game engines. Game development is something that kids do enjoy. Make it easy for them to quickly and easily write games using proper programming languages, run them on their own devices, and share them with friends, and you stand a chance of actually getting a programmer out of the other side.

Agreed. People end up using things such as VBA because they spend a lot of time using MS Office and want to automate part of it, they don't do it for fun. If people want to get kids excited about programming then Excel will not help.

As you say stuff like Python/Ruby will as they're nice languages and web development is something people can have fun with, and I'd also throw in stuff like mobile development which seems to still be viewed with interest, Javascript which is an oddly odd language but allows a lot of cool web things, and nowadays freely available game engines.

The teachers do generally know about this, and a lot of them will share it with the kids.