I agree here too. I gave up schooling after I got my BS in comp sci. I remember quite clearly on graduation day hanging up my cap thinking "never again". I know I should have continued on with a masters in some way, shape or form, people really do look at it for salary caps and such, it would have meant more money etc, but I honestly was just so fed up with school... but I'm still not fed up with learning, not by a long shot.

I have seen some pretty rational, critical thinking people, just shut their brains off when they begin speaking of their religion, it is the only way I can describe it. You can have hours of conversation where you discuss code, engineering, culture, mass media etc, where it is 'normal'.

You ping ideas off one another, discuss the angles behind things, where falsehoods or agenda might lie etc, but if the conversation steers to religion, their face goes blank, their tone goes flat, and they spout of a set of rules/angles on things, their tone and body poster changes to one in which there will be absolutely no argument or discussion.

If you've ever been with someone in therapy whom is going over difficult subjects that they have walled off or uncomfortable truths, they sort of go into that same sort of 'dead' posture. They look off in one direction, don't blink as much, breath more shallow, sort of like they put their body/brain on pause and are waiting for you to finish, and then the topic hurriedly changes.

I feel like when I've been put in a position like that, my brain is rapidly composing internal defenses to to shut out and defend what it already knows as truth. I think that is very similar to when religion comes up, and really not just that but any kind of argument. People are set in how they want to believe, and no amount of argument is really going to change that.

I used to call myself agnostic, saying you can't disprove the existence of some sort of godlike creature in which every religion perhaps 'feels' an aspect of, or the fact that the need/want to have a religion in our lives taps into 'something' about ourselves or our universe that we can't quite detect (4th dimension! ;) ), and we call that our spirituality. Something along those lines, it felt more precise to say 'who knows' rather than 100% certainty atheism.

Then I married a catholic, and had to attend various church functions for varying christian faiths in the area, the usual, funerals/baptisms etc. I went to church on holidays and stuff because it didn't matter to me either way. Well, after listening to what people were saying, how people were acting etc, I feel much more comfortable calling myself an atheist, and actually it became very important for me to not go to any church functions short of the birth/death/wedding functions (because those are about the people) to show how much I disagree with the things I've heard and seen. The way money collections and 'mandatory donations' are integrated into the religion is quite frankly disgusting, not only the selective morality and bigotry I hear preach towards members of other religions that is wrapped up in the things they say.

"We should trust everyone.... so long as the believe in Jesus our lord"

A lesson to children: *holding a stick* "What happens to people's morals if they don't have faith in our lord" *Snaps the stick* It breaks!!

I had to attend a baptism class, the deacon there was just spouting of some of the most insane logic I've heard, including stuff I've read on the internet. It was pure madness, and the worst part was everyone around me nodding their head going 'ohh, ooohh!!'. I wanted to stand up and yell WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! The guy actually printed out a picture of a water strider "Have you heard of this guy?! It's called a water strider." People in the class "Ohhh, yeah yeah, I think I've heard of those" Continues deacon "Well, this little guy here, walks.... on water." "If there exits a creature in this world that can walk on water, so to can jesus walk on water. If one things is true, another thing must be true!"

People were like raptly looking forward eating this stuff up, noding, going OOOH, yeah, yeah!!! to his insane logic.
These are all pretty reasonable people from what I can tell, college educated, do rational things, make smart decisions when it comes to many parts of their life, but when it comes to religion, the brain shuts down, and they enjoy the ride.

That is ok for plenty of people, just so long as they don't try to force that view down other people's throats, we are all good. Still though, I just cant understand why many people don't apply the critical thinking they use daily to all aspects of their beliefs.

Meh, longer rant than I expected.

+1 here, works great and can notify xbmc when it updates. The best part is if it finds the wrong show you can manially hand it an id and be done with it.

I think using a higher level scripting language doesnt have the same potential that allowing raw access to a cpu in your ship does. As for alienating people or relying on an IDE, much is left to be seen. I would not be surprised if there is a default 'os' or scripting language that will be a part of the ship, so maybe the best of both worlds there.

But having the virtual PC lets there be a community IDE or individual ones, or pretty much whatever it'll let you get away with, which is the interesting part. All in all I think it is a pretty cool concept, and I don't think it would work right if you abstract it to writing "if( shield_levels 75 ) turn_up_shield_power();" things.

One version feels like you are way back in the early days of computers, the other feels like you are setting up dragon age or final fantasy 12 companion behaviors.

Either way it is all for naught if the game surrounding it doesnt kick ass.

I always read people complaining endlessly about not enough difficulty or complexity in games. Here you go, here is a fucking 16 big cpu, write assembly to run your ship. Then every one gets pissed off.... Make up your minds. A "real" cpu in the ship is geeky and fascinating, a made up scripting language is a made up scripting language. He could also let you run ship systems by pushing keys on your keyboard, but that layer of difficulty in doing things is supposed to be the whole point of the game.

I remember getting to know IL-2, the WW2 plane simulator. There was so much to learn about flight and the forces on the ship before you could get it up in the air, then turn it around and land it, then complete a few maneuvers and navigate somewhere, then finally you could actually start to learn combat maneuvers, finally culminating in actually shooting something down.

I thought that, wow, you know what would be cool, a made up space ship simulator. The same kind of idea of things you have to learn to get your ship going, but made up interesting mechanics. Here is a crack at that, and I think it will be neat.

The real thing that is going to make this CPU interesting or not is if the game surrounding it is interesting, and he hasn't really said enough to prove that. Minecraft had potential but I don't like ultimately where it landed, so with this game I am pretty hesitant to say it will be worth learning the CPU, but if the game around it works out, the cpu will be a pretty badass idea.

Really am surprised so many 'geeks' here get all up in arms about having a virtual environment to play around with that simulates a 16 bit cpu. Pretty sad actually.

Holy shit that is some pretty messed up stuff. I'm probably going to flip out when my kids get old enough for school and I see how much the landscape has changed. I think whoever is coming up with these sensitivity laws is doing exactly the opposite of their intent.

Most of the problems of school come from the fact that a child only knows their household and perhaps some family friends, who are most likely similar. They get tossed into school and encounter all sorts of different people. Most of the time our reaction to things we don't understand is cautious and hostile. Over time you become exposed to these differences and accept them as normal. This is a good thing.

If you censor these differences and try to present everyone in this homogenized "ONE OF US" pod people setting, it is just going to cause the inevitable reaction to come later in life or outside of school, or even worse allow the disdain for anything different to set in.

One of the biggest problems we have as a people is our all to easy ability to lump people up in 'alien' groups and cease to empathize with them as people. A huge advantage we have in the US is a pretty large pool of diverse cultures, and the more we see a slice of another culture and recognize and understand it, the better people we make.

So when on the test timmy has a little birthday, that one jehova's witness who raises their hand is all like WTF is a birthday, actually learns something (at school, crazy!!) when it's explained to them that, hey, most of your classmates celebrate their birthdays. Then the classmates can be all like 'woah' someone grew up not knowing what a birthday is, I wonder what that would be like, and learns something else also. I WOULD HATE FOR THAT TO HAPPEN, LETS MAKE SURE THAT WE ALL REMAIN IGNORANT OF EACH OTHERS DIFFERENCES!!

If we knew we could have donated at no cost and someone could have used it, my wife and I most likely would have done so. To me the whole thing seemed sort of like a big rip off, or something I'd do if I had excess money laying around. They like to gouge you for a lot of stuff involving your kids, its easy to whip people up into a panic about doing EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN TO PREVENT EVERYTHING.

Either way it feels a shame that it could have been used to help someone instead of it ending up as a puddle on the floor. I guess part of the reason I didn't save it is that there wasn't an urge to collect it if we weren't going to ourselves. If it was that precious hospitals would most likely not let it go to waste.

This. Good players are good players, they know what needs doing the same as you, when both people understand that they can take stock of the situation and take the most obvious path, supporting one another without needing to talk at all. Still if people play together often you can get the teamwork without as much skill.

On the age bit...some people are always bad at games no matter their age. The skill of the player base also collectivly goes up the longer a game is out...if you stop a while, more people get better, making your chances to play well decrease. Finally, older people generally have less consistant time to play and even fewer to practice specific skills. I dont really feel like at 32 my reflexes are poor vs 15, but more that it is harder to get a full nights sleep and have the time or even the desire to play games in a manner to be highly successful....screaming kids and good weather are beating out gaming time now a days.

XP never used start menu.
win 7, use it sometimes.

Usually I just desktop shortcut then drag it to quick launch. If the app is uncommon or is a reader, like acrobat, I start it usually by double clicking on the pdf I want to read, no point in starting it first. I have the bar show the 5 common ones I use like a text editor, im, etc. In win7 I pin email, firefox and windows explorer next to it since those are usually open all the time.

Games I'm currently playing go on the desktop, usually only 3 or so max at a time. When I'm done chuck it in 'games' folder or uninstall.

Anything else just type it out, no point in hunting and pecking menus.

All in all not much sorting and much easier to maintain since you start at a desktop icon after install and drag it right from there into the appropriate bin without having to open up a window or anything.

Sort of like the argument for using a hitstick (buttons for movement rather than a joystick).

No joystick throw == faster input times.

Yeah, you can't compete with AAA now, sure... but honestly I think especially now the indie game dev is back on the rise. With things like alpha funding and even looking at the kick starter success, people are ready to give money out for people doing unique things.

There are so many fucking amazing game engines out there to start with that would do things that would take you years upon years to get into the state that they are in right now. With the rise of smart phones and app stores and all that, now is a pretty great time to start churning out some quirky little games and have a chance to make some money, much like the state of things back in the 80's, only now there are tons more people doing it.

2D Sprite art really holds up over time, and plenty of people still enjoy playing those styles of games. Some of the more successful indie games this year like that VVVVV whatever game have pretty shit sprite art, yet still did reasonably well.

UNITY/UDK for 3d or XNA for 2d are all great start points.

Humorously I found the opposite. I think there were a ton of things I found interesting in high school, and I think I lucked out with some really good teachers (and some bad of coarse). In college most of the teachers that I had I felt were more in it for the research/write their own book aspect rather than teaching. Of coarse there were exceptions, but overall I found my HS teachers a bit better at delivering their stuff.

Actually had a pretty interesting comparision my senor year. Our physics teacher mid year went on to an administrative position and therefore had to stop teaching the class. This was a very good teacher who conveyed a pretty difficult subject really well, to the point that I still have constant acceleration formulas stuck in my head 15 years later (d = Vi*T+1/2AT^2) (...is that right? lol ) . Anyway when he left we had some teacher auditions in the class and the guy they settled on was pretty cool, but a brand new teacher. He covered the material, but nothing really stuck in or got conveyed or even really was as interesting as when the original teacher presented it.

Overall I have decided I hate school, but love learning. I failed a music class in college because I wasn't particularly interested in memorizing scales and musical notation/theory, but came out of the class with knowledge of a lot more classical music than I had in the past. It caused me to start listening to a lot of music I wouldn't normally have, so despite failing I've always been glad I took the class.

That has always been the problem with formal education to me, when it's a subject that is not relevant to my job or day to day activities, I prefer to pick and choose what I learn. When you go down that path, and find you truly love the topic, it gives you all the motivation in the world to go back and learn the tedium you skipped.

In a way a great class will show you what there is to enjoy about a topic, and give you reason and motivation to explore and learn the necessary "boring stuff" that one must understand in order to enjoy the "fun stuff".

Got an ipad as a gift this xmas... a very generous gift for sure! I had all sorts of ideas of stuff I wanted to create for it... After looking, it was just barrier upon barrier to get my stuff on there. I updated the ipad right away too before I researched so I couldn't even jailbreak it. Even then, I don't have a mac to develop on. I know there are some ways to get around this, it just ultimately seems like too much effort to write code for my own device, a huge shame really.

I can't tell you how many times I wanted to 'eat healthy'. I just don't know how, then you go out looking for information online and you run into like, massive huge debates. "The USDA recommended are bought for by corporations and is all wrong" Growing up I was told to eat carbs. Now I'm not supposed to eat carbs. Then people say watch out that is dangerous to avoid carbs. Now low carb! Wait, you should be vegan, look at how good that is, wait, if you eat vegan your body rots itself!

It is actually quite overwhelming to find information. So you settle on, ok healthier is not eating fast food and trying to cut down on going out to eat, buy from the store and cook it. Sadly I had been avoiding fast food, but with 2 young kids it has found its way back into our eating habits out of convenience .

So lets gauge my time by, I get home at 6, my oldest son (at 2 yrs old) goes to bed by 8. This is 2 hours a day to interact with him. At least 1 hour of this time is food prep and eating, which leaves me most of the time getting him all riled up before bed usually.

Now the question is, what do I like? Well, I don't know, because I've been eating premade crap all the time, and I don't know what store sells high fructose corn syrup because apparently that is what I have grown up on. So then you start making stuff, and you are hungry, and everyone is hungry, but oh look, I totally fucked it up now.

Yeah, did you know that when you make this soup that is actually starting to taste good, and you put pasta in, that pasta expands the fuck out of itself? So you think you can put that much in, and it doesn't look like much, but you come back in 10 minutes and you have now made yourself a giant bowl of disgusting pasta mush instead of vegetable soup. What does the family eat for dinner now?

Why does the chicken I make taste like ass every time I cook it? Yeah you can put it in the skillet, but it comes out like a dried out piece of shit or for some reason it just won't cook itself. The interwebs say cook it XYZ long or to X temp, but you do this and its not done, or its over done. How do you check a meat temperature, you buy some shit meat thermometer in the store and jam it into the stupid piece of chicken because you don't know how 'squishy' it should be to be done, or what it looks like. but the meat is too thing to hold up the thermometer so it keeps falling over and its just not reading anything.

Meanwhile, baby is screaming, everybody including yourself is hungry and cranky, and god damnit, I'd rather be eating food right now, watching some crap tv show, then helecopter spinning my son around and pile driving him onto the couch.

What's for dinner? Mother fucking chinese.

Whew, judgmental non parent! I love the logical jump that his children will be screaming nightmares that you see going out to eat because they can't afford to spend 3 hours in the kitchen every night. Don't talk shit until you try going for weeks on end without sleeping through the night and see how that lack of sleep infects every thing you do in your life.