So where do proper adult gamers sit when they spend quality time playing a game with their own children or with the children they're babysitting?

Playing on a console with a child who is your own or entrusted to your care is borderline child abuse.

My daughter preferred singing songs, hearing me read a book or playing one of the many musical instruments in the house. Or, as she got older, playing with her microscope set or walking through the woods or older still, practicing martial arts and riding her skateboard.

At some point, she liked games, but preferred playing on her PC to consoles, because consoles are for nincompoops. She is now working on a PhD in Mathematics and can kick your ass. At Battlefield 4 or a with a 2-meter staff. Or the puzzle of your choice.

I don't like using the term, "master race", and I don't like to say that it was the choice of PC over consoles that made her grow so straight and true, but the result speaks for itself.

I think a lot of people are changing aspects of their behavior.

I encrypt most communications with friends and family now, just to be a dick to whoever's doing surveillance. It's not that I care so much about protecting what's in those communications as I just don't want their lives to be one bit easier than they need to be.

Sometimes I run Tor for the most mundane things, like looking for a recipe for chocolate flan cake, or the lyrics to songs by Bombay Bicycle Club. It really doesn't add more than a few seconds to what I'm doing and it gives me a tiny bit of satisfaction.

For all I know, they have a back door to GPG and other crypto, but I can't do anything about that.

they are mostly technophiles who wandered
over from collecting energy crystals and want to tell you what a genius tesla was

Except for the "energy crystals" part, it sounds like you're describing the average Slashdot reader.

You think someone is trying to impose death on you?

Do you really believe in the possibility that 1) there will be a transhumanist "solution" in your lifetime and 2) that you are going to be able to afford it?

Good luck trying to transfer your consciousness to your Dell laptop.

meh, "trans-humanism" takes many flavors, strictly speaking both cybernetic prostheses and gene-therapy etc. falls under "trans-humanism"

And they are both mechanisms of control by the elite.

Face it: when it comes to cybernetic prostheses and gene-therapy, it is very unlikely that you are going to be, as they say, "riding in the car".

As opposed to the "non-breakaway" US culture, where a small portion of very rich people - coincidentally "the very same people who benefit from the suffering of others" - can afford medical procedures that the rest of the population can't?

You're arguing for my position. Yes, of course they are one in the same.

You make it sound as if every transhumanist wished for immortality. I have strong transhumanist inclinations but I believe that immortality is a logical contradiction. How does that compute to you?

It sounds like you're not really a transhumanist. Which is OK, because it's just another mechanism of control by the elites. You're better off without it.

I was merely pointing out the actions of a rather notable atheist, much like you were pointing out the antics of some rather notorious religious figures.

Actually, none of the people shown in the pictures I posted were "notorious religious figures". They were just ordinary miserable wretches in the throes of a murderous superstition.

And I'd rather have a chapter of Westboro Baptist Church in my town than one such as he.

Funny you bring that up. It appears from today's news that God hates homophobes.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I'm surprised that you believe that the millions who died under Stalin were killed due to Stalin's lack of religious belief rather than his being a cruel and despotic tyrant. Do you believe that religious belief is some sort of inoculation against becoming a tyrant?
 

This is a job for...Ingo Swann!

"US Navy Strategists Have a Long History of Finding the Lost..." WITH DRONES!

And remote viewers!

This is a nongeek/nerd article.

Well, it is a little bit. Transhumanism is an artifact of the techie community. It's the geek version of religious extremism.

Further, transhumanism is strictly a fantasy of the 0.1%, who have now allowed their self-regard to reach a point where there is significant danger of creating a breakaway culture in which access to life-extending and death-defying technologies is strictly apportioned to a very tiny fraction of population, not incidentally, the very same people who benefit from the suffering of others.

I really don't think anyone should welcome our transhumanist overlords. And any geek here who thinks they're going to be included in this immortalist revolution is delusional.

There is no one alive whose immortality would be of any benefit to the world.

Fortunately, atheism is a viable alternative. In fact, let's make it a national requirement.

I think your idea of a "national requirement" of atheism is sort of a jump from the notion that religion does not make everyone happy. You might want to think it over a little bit. If you give it greater consideration, I think you'll change your mind.

Reduction to absurdity never, ever produces a viable argument.

Seems to me you're talking about SOCIALISM, or even worse, COMMUNISM.

I didn't sign no contract, and there ain't no such thing as society. That's a lie told by Karl Marx.

— All of America

A chair is as comfy as a sofa, unless you have a very wide butt.

Only children and people with very wide butts play games in the living room. Proper adult gamers sit at a desk.

The brain responds to challenges to closely-held beliefs the same way it does to mortal fear of death. You're not going to make any progress using logic here.

Smitty believes that anyone who isn't a conservative is a Democrat and all Democrats support Obamacare. He believes Obama is a "leftist" and anyone who doesn't believe the way he does is a "leftist" and that the two poles of the political divide are "Left" and "Right". He hasn't figured out yet that the divide is really "Top" and "Bottom".

Even if you could penetrate the quasi-religious certainty in his world-view, I'm not sure it would be safe to do so except in a therapeutic environment.

Valve has to make the same choices regarding price and hardware tradeoffs.

Yes, but remember, the PC gaming market has already shown a willingness to pay more than twice the cost of a next-gen console for a really kick-ass gaming experience.

The key to Valve's success with its Steam Box, IMO, is to keep in mind that PC gamers are a very different market than console gamers. And, they have more money to spend. If they try to position Steam Box as nothing more than a direct competitor to consoles, they will fail.

I'm already putting together a Steam Box that's going to end up costing about 4 times what a next-gen console goes for. A few more bucks for a groundbreaking controller is not a big deal.

Having said all that, I'm not sure a touchscreen in a controller is a good idea. Maybe just a simple touchpad, but a full-blown touch display would make the controller too delicate for me. My controller takes a fair amount of abuse. And I don't want to have to look at the controller at any time.;