Totally anecdotal, but when I get the bug to read a book and really get into it, it sort of reactivates my my imagination. I start writing a few more random things and will pull out a pencil and doodle in my 'design' book, or I just have much more clearly defined thoughts about stories to write or things to make. I've always just associated this with any kind of excitement, but thinking about it, reading definitely gives a different kind of 'awake' feeling than a good game or movie would.

Coding doesn't really jolt my imagination, i typically feel good when a section is done and everything works well and is neatly organized, but have expended most of my energy in doing that, there isn't much left. When I read a book it is more coasting through someone elses work, so I feel awake mentally, ready to do something, rather than needing to randomly mash buttons in a game or something post coding.

Man half way down the page before we can get past all the judgement and hate of video games and technology. I thought I was on slashdot for a second.

I think good games are good games. Teenage mutant ninja turtles emulated was something they loved playing, but skipped over a lot of other games. My oldest is 4, and he's been playing a lot of mario kart 64 on an emulator. It is not that I am holding him back, my pc doesn't quite handle emulating double dash, and I never had it when i had my gamecube. We tried the SNES version but he wanted to go back to the n64 one, though after a bit he wanted to try the SNES one again, which he did for about 30 minutes before sticking with the n64.

He's played and seen AAA newish games with great graphics, but it is just that great art and gameplay is eternal. Still, I would try to get them the best versions of everything, and pull out the old stuff as a novelty. The best part though is emulators can run on anything, so if they like an older game you can pretty much get it anywhere to play instead of having to sacrifice a main PC or TV or whatever else.

I have loved games my whole life, board games, video games, outdoor games, they are all great and all have merit, and I really want nothing more than to share of that with my sons. We read books all the time, but I only really am seeing interest and confirmation in his reading/writing when we play gams and he has to pick the correct menu option, or even playing scribblenaughts, he wants to know how to type and spell out words so he can spawn them in.

But yeah on topic, I'd say just hold each game up for its merits, some old ones do have a certain magic that holds up beyond nostalgia and are worth looking at, but really, just get em the new fun stuff, no sense messing with their realities unnecessarily to recreate your own childhood for them.

I almost wonder if a PC ends up being cheaper in the long run. You can get a lot of games on sale for really cheap now, while buying for a console is still going to run you 60 dollars, even if the game is old, the price will hardly drop, while you can grab best of the year games at the end of the year for 7 - 15 dollars on the PC. If you couple this with free to play games that are done well where you are having fun without spending any extra in them, you have way, way more gaming available to you for way less.

Also don't get me started on mod availability for added gameplay length, and not having to pay more than your ISP costs to play the game online, and generally you can run your own servers for things as well.

I could see easily spending 1500 on games over the year for the 360, while being able to get about the same ~200 on the PC just a bit later after their release. After a year or two you probably have made up the cost of a 1500 gaming PC on the game prices alone.

Still, the ease of a console is there. The other day I was trying to play lego marvel with my son on a HTPC I had set up, which granted has onboard video, but I had to drop the graphics and had some issues doing that as the framerate tanked when we hit the open city level for the first time. I have little time with him between their bedtime and me coming home for work, and I thought I had it all set up ahead of time, but that was based on smaller levels early in the game. So about 45 minutes into the game crashing and doing some sort of slow 'rebuilding shaders' and hanging on menus for 15 minutes at a time, we got it going, but a part of me was thinking I should have gotten it on the 360 so it was pre calibrated and tweaked to work immediately.

Either way, going to try to skip the consoles this time around if I can, though I have a feeling as my son's get older they will probably 'need' to get on xbox live or the sony thing to play with their friends.

It's funny because HL2 made my puke all by itself when it came out. It wasn't until I could hit about 80+ FPS on it years later that I could get through the air boat levels. I can imagine combining it with an OR would be some sort of nightmare induced vomiting for me.

Am still super excited about the device and will attempt to train myself through disorientation. Strangely I was ok with the 3ds, took a touch of finding the right angle but overall ended up liking it.

But yeah I'm basically picturing the next IL-2 game with this on, should be pretty damn awesome. So much potential for many things with this device.

Should be deleted for 'non notable'. They have deleted much more informative articles than this monument to their pedantry.

Well, all very true points.

I guess when being a third party standing in judgement, with the cash falling into one's lap from another of a greater scale of income, it would be hard for me to fault the morals of the one in need, or at least standing where what they hold is of little comparison to the sum of what the original owner lost.

Personally I probably would have returned the extra tablets, mostly for fear of the cost should the company of vast wealth turn it against me in any capacity, and also while I could understand keeping the extra, the two additional ones via mail are stretching it a bit. Overall though it feels like small potatoes in scope of the wrongness that could be done.

As an example, growing up with software piracy aplenty I don't have too much of thought against people who do it, but I haven't pirated in many years since having a job, especially with all the great sales now. I do feel particularly angry at people who pirate small indies trying to make it, but don't feel thus against someone grabbing the latest call of duty as the harm I feel is less due to the scale of their sales.

I guess I strongly feel that the particulars of the situation lesson the 'crime' per say, where both are wrong, but the severity is lacking due to the scale of harm done to the 'victim'.

I get what you are saying, but your analogy is flawed. The scale of income difference is why you are so far off, it is not their money a property of how much more they have than you, it is their ability to generate it and the quantity of it.

Example randomly from googles, in 2008 walmart was making $42,754,109 per HOUR... HOUR. If I were making that an hour, I could easily say that 100 dollars holds little value to them, because in 59 minutes they will have made more than I will probably ever see in my lifetime. THAT is the scale of difference we are talking here, not a 'he has more money than me', it is, they have a disgusting, obscene, amount of money and resources, more value get's thrown out in the trash than this guy's entire ereader collection he got.

A proper analogy that is scaled is that I accidentally dropped a fraction of a penny into the begger's cup, and you are damn right, I would give it up for loss as that fraction of a penny holds no value to me and the beggar is 'lucky' to have a bit extra.

Look what your honor has gotten you, Ned Stark.

Worked at a grocery store when younger, I recall sticking my hand into a reusable bag to open it up and finding what would have basically been a smashed egg in there from a week ago. It smelled rotten and was goopy disgusting. The customer still told me to go ahead and put her food in there.

The best is that before I worked there I had no knowledge of reusable bags, so the first time I saw them as a bagger, I thought they had been purchased from the store and put them in a plastic bag, then started putting their other groceries in plastic bags. Whoops.

It really has to do with being a lazy coder mentally in your planning and execution ends up costing a lot more than in some other fields. Obviously there is a tradeoff in speed vs design, but some people just leave obvious bugs or oddities in there that means they didn't think for too long beyond making something just work.

That is the stuff that makes 3 round trips through 8 departments because they didn't pause a moment to think of a few more real obvious use cases, I mean, yeah, there is always weird stuff, but some of it is mind boggling that they use a PC to write the code but don't even notice the reasons why programs they use behave much better than their program in the same context.

Some people are just disorganized thinkers, they don't have long range planning, and can't follow a consistent process to save their life. Their code often works but is a god damn disaster zone, and even worse is when that code becomes 'blessed, untouchable', leaving competent coders shackled by underlying flaws.

Long range planning is one of those things few people seem to grasp out in the world, often people bull ahead with blinders on, making smart short term choices, but hardly step back to check if their path has a dead end later on, and when coding this type of behavior can lead down some really bad roads.

Replace "google" with "encyclopedia" and you take me back to my middle school days. Teachers say the same thing, fact is kids don't take certain things seriously till they get older, cause they are kids. I didn't, but do now that I'm older, yet I don't expect my perceived wisdom to suddenly transpose onto the generation behind me. They will be saying the same things about the generations behind them though.

I do agree with you though, if there is one constant it is a teacher's inability to handle technology. If they couldn't get the film projectors or overheads to work, they certainly aren't getting a 3d printer going. Though I guess they could be a good addition to any wood/metal shop a school might have.

Nah. I've heard this argument since I was a kid. Sure we are consumers, we are also producers. It is easier than ever to make things. There is a guide or place to ask how to make ANYTHING on the internet. If I am motivated to make or fix something on my own, I have the guidance to start at it immediately.

And in terms of building this online on our computers, there are more tools than ever out there. With unity I can make a game quite easily, and if I don't want that much detail I can get things like gamemaker, or make a mod, or any number of frameworks that exist out there to assist.

I enjoy making miniature terrain from time to time, and I'm only really into this because of finding some great websites with instructions on what materials to use and tips for building things.

Look, people are lazy, we have always been lazy, very few people are doing productive things with their time 24x7 outside of their jobs, if that. That is nothing new. To boot, if we aren't being lazy and consuming, then the incentive for production is gone as well. The two things work in tandem with one another and just because companies are trying to entice us with advertising doesn't mean we have guns to our head and have no choice in the matter.

Stop trying to speak sense to the technophobe. Them thar LAZER BEAMS FROM TEH SCARRRY MACHINE IS GOWNA BLOW MY EYEBALLS UP! He is probably out telling someone to get off his lawn anyway.

Square cares a lot about japan though, everyone walking around with portal devices up the wazoo. Imagine you could get your 'core gamer' games to penetrate the mobile space, tech like this would do it.

You are being silly. Things may seem different to you now, but thanks to the internet you are much more aware of what millions more are doing today than you were even 15 years ago. Before your snapshot of the world was limited to what your neighbors were doing and what the newspapers and television decided to show you. Chances are poorer quality creations were filtered out by cost of distribution, you would only see the best of the best.

The best of the best is still out there, it is just surround by a lot more stuff, giving the appearance of everything being crap, but in reality that crap just couldn't reach you, but thanks to the internet, it can.

Also don't forget to factor in your growing age and experience, priorities change and the amount of content you have been exposed to has certainly raised your expectations for what is good. I recently dug up some high school papers and recall them being 'really good' in my head, then rereading them seeing how crap they really were. Same with going back and playing older games, at the time some were quite amazing, but in hindsight the design of them has many flaws I just didn't see.

I am just kinda amazed that so many people think the world is going to crap when I think it pretty much has the same type of distribution it always had.

As for my brief opinion on my not RTFA, most meetings are largely pointless, they should just be for quick overview and status if the team is all working on the same thing. Not only that, it depends on the business, it might be that fielding calls and texts are a priority over the meetings and thus answering during the meeting is encouraged. I could very see that immediate response to a customer as a number one thing.