As a mathematics teacher and robotics club adviser to 7th and 8th grade students (12-14 years old), I very much second the VEX Robotics angle. They now have three different levels of complexity that scale nicely from one to the next with a C++-based programming environment.

^ This is probably one of the first AC comments I would mod up.

From his royal Weirdness...

All About the Pentiums

Find me a teacher that is good at his/her job, truly cares about the students, and doesn't have any of the grading assistants that used to exist that works less than 40 hours a week. I go start looking for a live unicorn that's butt fucking a dinosaur. Let's see who finds their target first.

+3 internets to anyone who makes a photo-realistic Rule 34 of my target. ;-)

As for the summers off, if you didn't hate children, I'd say try teaching for a week and see how much of your energy goes into presenting lessons and managing a classroom where 37 students can learn effectively, and see how tired you get. Don't forget to plan your lesson for the next day, either. Oh yeah, you'll also have to deal with parent emails about why their child is failing, even though he/she does no homework, but they "worked real hard last year to get an A" in a much easier class. Make sure you can handle having 5 of those 37 students with diagnosed learning disabilities, another 2 or 3 with undiagnosed issues, another 4 or 5 who are so advanced that they are bored no matter what you do (you can't switch them to a different class and have no enrichment materials for them unless you by the materials yourself), 20 or so on free or reduced lunch (if you're lucky and in a middle-class school), and an unknown number of students with drug, alcohol, and/or abuse issues. After ten months of that, just see how much you need your summer off in order to recharge and do it all again with 38 the next year (170 if you're teaching 7-12).

Quit bitching about teachers having summers off and go take your own vacation time and don't let your boss intrude upon it. Also, go thank a teacher or two (even if it was your own parents) for being able to read this and type your response. Don't forget about all of the other basics you've learned that have allowed you to have a job good enough that you can post to /. in the mornings.

Sorry for the reply to my own reply, but Pacman Vs. also wasn't so much a flop, as it was given in conjunction with another Pacman game (which was a flop, I believe). I bought the other game just to get my hands on Pacman Vs.

Actually, Pacman Vs. only needed one GBA. I bring this out and introduce my Jr. High students to it once or twice a year. It almost always is requested again later in the year. Pacman Vs. as an eShop download could be a very near killer app for the WiiU.

Tasty, tasty murder...

Mmmmmmmm... Bacon...

Very true.

Many to most teachers are very stuck in their ways and do not like trying new things or admitting that they do not know something. My personal turn on the phrase is, "One of the hardest things to do is to teach a teacher." I could go into many reasons for this, but suffice it to say, you are not far from the mark at all. Are all teachers this way? No, of course not. It's not even always a young vs. old divide. I do, however, find that some, if not all, of the "best" teachers are those that are willing to admit they are wrong, learn from their mistakes, and admit that there will always be more that they do not know.

Or the terms "stealing" and "theft," when copyright infringement in no way removes the original items from the copyright holders. Yes, it is infringement, and yes, it probably does impact their bottom line in some way (I tend to believe in more positive ways than negative than they realize), but copying an item is far different than taking it.

Miyamoto-san just 1-up'd Nintendo. I'm looking forward to his new venture.

Minor nitpick... a lynx is very different from a mountain lion/cougar/puma. Mayhaps you conflated the two four-letter feline names?

Let's not forget how Mario gets the Tanooki suit in the new game... By way of a floating, red, magical leaf. No animals were harmed... Unless Mario jumps on a Goomba or Koopa Troopa to get the the ?-block. ;-)

In the original, it's already a pre-made suit. Who say's it's real fur? It could be synthetic-fleece.

Gah! I'm debating the logic of Super Mario Bros. vs. PETA. Time to add a stamp to my Nerd Card.

"Any ol' port in a storm!"

While I won't argue your point about 8-bit mircocomputers vs. video game consoles, I fail to see how CD's, DVD's, and tablets have in any way created barriers. In fact, I would argue that while the creation tools for each of the earlier level technologies in your comparisons were less expensive by the time of the new technology's introduction than the new creation tools, CD's and DVD's both offered considerable improvements in the quality that a hobbyist producer could create. The creation tools also had a continual drop in price over time, usually while keeping the same higher quality compared to the previous generation. With regards to the walled garden tablets, if I recall correctly, the Andriod tools are free and the iOS tools are $100 a year (I could very well be wrong on that one). I hardly see that as paying dearly, especially given that to create for any system, one must have a version of that system to test on or an emulator running on more comprehensive hardware.