Monitors came from TVs which came from movie screens came from photography came from print came from reading and writing. Humans think in 2D. We can be trained for 3D (pilots, astronauts, sub drivers), but 99% of people don't need it. Going to the next town or city, driving, mass transit, video games, all of this requires nothing more than planar thinking. We build for flat levels. We dig to flat levels. It's why Spock pointing out that Khan was thinking in two dimensions is so important. So basically, until we colonize the solar system, we don't need to think in 3D and therefore 3D displays aren't useful :) Now, holograms could change that. But that's no longer a display in the convention sense.

If just for Minecraft, I've found it a lot less tedious to just rent a server space from one of those services like Kerplunc. $5/mo for a vanilla server up to 5 people concurrent (+$1 per person). They (and I assume others) tack on extras for Bukkit, FTB, etc, but my family really just prefers the virtual lego experience. Probably until they get older. Aside from cost, the other nice thing is if there's an issue, I just submit a ticket. I've already done my time for God and Country when it comes to building and administrating ;)

This is basically just a PR stunt. Nothing wrong with that. The kid shows he's a diligent worker and able to bend existing tools to his needs. Minecraft gets some PR. Northwestern gets some PR. The whole "3D printer" thing has another example. If this gets the kid a summer internship or a leg up in the job market, then it did everything it needed to do. For the rest of us, it's just "cool". To be honest, I was ready to scoff that he cheated by just doing the buildings in 3D but laying them out by hand (Minecraft doesn't do angles). But he even laid it out within the constraints of the tool. As a guy who used to hand draw circles in pixels on screen, I can appreciate the level of effort there :)

I stand about 8 total hours each day, but never more for 2 hours at a time. Sometimes I sit to take a call. Other times it's walking around to talk to folks or sit in meetings. This is one of those times when "balance" is key. Don't *just* do one thing. Never just sit or just stand or just walk. The body wants to keep moving to spread the exercise around the body. I personally am at my worst when I'm not following a regiment, as I err on the side of physical laziness. But that's what Outlook is for. I typically try to space my meetings so they *don't* all happen at once, giving me time to sit, stand, walk, etc throughout the day. I'm not coding fulltime though. For that I'd second what someone else said: drafting table. They can get pricey, even used; however, if you get one that is easy to raise and lower, you can stand and sit on an hourly rotation. The good ones can bear a LOT of weight. Back in the day, I had my big CRT right and keyboard right on it and the pneumatic bore the weight just fine. So any modern device is gonna be effectively weightless for the table.