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Yeah, my favorite time-wasters at the moment (most tend to rely on playing with other humans):

Web:
http://fantasticcontraption.com/ : build 2D rigs to solve puzzles.
http://freerice.com/ : buff your SAT words, earn grains of rice for charity
http://youdontknowjack.com/ : nice weekly trivia quiz, 1-2 players (maybe, haven't done this for a decade or so)

PC:
World of Tanks (15 minute battles, free to play)

Android:
Wordfeud: Scrabble where you can play multiple people at once, and have up to 2 days per turn.
Chess Online: timed games against similarly-ranked players... you can wrap up pretty quickly
SketchIt Online: Pictionary, and sometime penis.
Zombie, Run! : Get from point A to point B IRL, while running away from zombies on your GPS map.

But mostly I just Fark and Slashdot.

I find myself infatuated with Fantastic Contraption. It seems simple enough but once I got through the levels and was able to view other player's designs, I'm just staring at my computer muttering, "No fucking way.... Ju- oh what. the. fuck?"

Simple. Awesome.
Simply awesome.

I find myself infatuated with Fantastic Contraption. It seems simple enough but once I got through the levels and was able to view other player's designs, I'm just staring at my computer muttering, "No fucking way.... Ju- oh what. the. fuck?"

Simple. Awesome.
Simply awesome.

Honestly, I don't know anyone who uses Flash for things other than video... and Flash isn't particularly good at video so what's the point in fighting improvements?

Games?

Same here. Coincidentally, I discovered the online game "Fantastic Contraption" earlier today. It's highly recommended to fans of The Incredible Machine.

http://fantasticcontraption.com/

I would suggest that people try some different tools that demonstrate concepts in an interesting way early on. The first thing that popped to mind was Logo. This can be a fun introduction to machine interpretation. There was a Logo I played with once that had mazes along with the blank sheet for making geometric patterns. Fantastic Contraption is another interesting toy.

An important language that hasn't been discussed much from what I have seen is Algebra. Early students of computer science should put as much emphasis on math studies and seeing the symbolic relations between solving for x and the manipulation of variables. Understand binary and change of bases. Substitution and word problems will strengthen problem solving and symbolic logic. Computer science programs require math well past calculus, so math should not be taking a back seat to writing code early on.

As far as specific languages, most high schools probably teach in pascal and basic, which are good languages to start with, but hopefully the kid will be reading through this forum, seeing what everyone writes about the different languages and something will seem particularly interesting, then the self guided exploration of languages will give insights into syntax. I got caught up in Lisp in this way, although being in a class and going through whatever structured program they have is going to educate programming in a most rapid and robust way.

This is a good point. For my part, I never bought a PS2 until the PS3 came out and I could get it second hand. I bought a whole bunch of games, and enjoyed them thoroughly, but again, bought them all second hand. It's just not worth $50 to me for most games, I'd get more and better entertainment out of 6-7 new books, or dozens of used books. $10-$20 seems to me much more in line with the real value of a video game. I don't just buy used games; I recently paid for fantasticcontraption (an online flash game that I can't recommend strongly enough), but again, it's in the $10-$20 dollar range.

I don't know how big a market segment I represent, but the market's out there!

So it's like Fantastic Contraption but with crayons. Yawn.

Looks like it may have run under Fantastic Contraption...

I love how the algorithm just outright trashes some designs before they even hit the floor after spawning. "Nope, crap. Crap. Crap. This one can't even stand up straight! Crap. Crap. Crap."

On reddit, someone posted another neat GA algorithm which evolves a car to match terrain:

http://www.wreck.devisland.net/ga/

Nice. Just we just need to cross that with Fantastic Contraption and we might get some really strange solutions to the puzzles!

I got my 5-year-old nephew interested in the Fantastic Contraption http://fantasticcontraption.com/

It's just his speed for learning about physics and problem solving and he gets all beside himself every time he solves a level.

Hundreds of games get previewed and reviewed by all the major gaming sites. That is not enough for it to stand out from the herd. Sorry, but having a review buried on a bunch of sites is not marketing.

The video (because I can't be bothered to download the demo) makes it look like this, but it involves a download and payment. It looks about the quality-level of the numerous freebies in this genre, and so it would take a lot of effort for it to stand out from the crowd.

Before you respond for a third time with exactly the same point, consider this. I am not the OP. I replied because I agreed with him. There are numerous other comments from other posters also saying that they had never heard of this game before this story.

When it comes to popularity, lots of people are never wrong. Some people have heard of this game, but it was not marketed well.

Don't tell me about that fantastic game that you used to play on the C64 and have never been able to recreate the excitement on a PC. It's because you were a kid discovering video-games, not the Commode64.

Well, I'm going to tell you about it, because you're wrong. Lode Runner on C-64 is one of the greatest games I've ever played.

You're right that the C-64 has been totally, radically surpassed in every capacity by modern machines, but how fun a video is game isn't directly proportional to the quality of the computer language it's written in or the speed of the hardware it's run on. Today's Flash games are a good proof of that. The best games I've played lately are Desktop Tower Defense and Fantastic Contraption, even though the Playstation 3 and XBox 360 probably surpass a flash-window in a web browser much the way they surpass the C-64.

And it's not just findness for "the good old days" and my excitement as a kid discovering the game. I know that for sure because I downloaded a C-64 emulator and the exact same Lode Runner game I'd remembered as being great from when I was 10 years old, and it was still an absolutely fabulous game when I was 30 years old. It simply has very clever mechanics and level design that really make you think to get through the levels.

I just blew my free time this weekend finishing Fantastic Contraption

So it's a Flash game, and you need the internet to post your design and see other people's designs. But it was pure joy.

FWIW, on the forums they're having a design contest for the official level 21. Deadline is this Friday 8/26, though, and you need to be a $10 registered user to create your own levels.

There's an excellent point hiding here. There is value in "getting the needle in the arm", so to speak. Take an online game like Fantastic Contraption (something I lost a lot of time to recently): you can play 20 increasingly-difficult levels for free, and if you liked it, you can give the guy $10 and get access to additional content. I had no problem parting ways with $10 after the amount of entertainment I got out of it, especially when I consider how much it might have cost to spend that same amount of time at the movies, etc.

Of course, this model depends on what you're selling actually being desirable.