Guy, a couple of Qs for you Minecraft players:
My nephews (aged 7 and 11) want to buy this game, and my sister asked me about it…
Is it age appropriate? I told her that from what I knew it was, but any adult content would come from other players… so how does it measure up in that regard?
Can online/multiplayer mode be done on a really slow internet connection (think dial up speeds)?
Thanks!
It’s a fantastic game for kids, because it’s a sandbox game, letting you play your own way. Kids take to it like budding engineers, and really learn a lot from it. I know a few parent/child players too. Dial up wouldn’t be fun, even if it were possible.
No one building adult video shops or anything? No adult chatter, etc.?
Thanks!
I’d say it’s primarily a single-player game. There are many multiplayer servers, but they are private and fairly small individually - there is no massive multiplayer like WoW.
Joe
The singleplayer game is completely private. No one can enter the world you are creating.
Oh, can you buy just the single player game? Sis is concerned about the multi-player because they’ll be playing unsupervised most of the time…
There is only one version of the game available, which permits multiplayer, singleplayer survival, and creative. They would most likely need a parent’s help in order to sign up for and set up playing on a multiplayer server, so they shouldn’t be at any risk – unless they’re computer wizards.
'K… I think we’re safe then! 
Thanks guys, appreciated.
If they don’t know the password for the Minecraft account they can only play single player. A failed login gives you the options to try again or play offline.
I’ll just leave this here…
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1155279-better-ways-to-hide-redstone-wire-block-suggestions/
Occasionally, Minecraft starts getting bad frame rate (or “lag”, in the MMO sense).
Watching Youtube “let’s play” videos, I see other folks do, too. The videographer always says “I’m going to see what’s causing this frame lag, I’ll be right back…”. But they don’t say what they did.
Other than exiting the game all the way to the desktop and restarting it, are there other ways to “check” and fix frame rate lag?
My guess is that they think something NON-Minecraft related is causing it, and they are checking their task manager or something. Just a guess though - I haven’t had any lag issues.
Joe
Good idea, though I don’t use much redstone myself.
Joe
What are you, some kind of Luddite? 
I do virtually nothing with redstone. I’m just redstone retarded.
I second that affliction!
I’m afraid to get involved with Minecraft; I already spend enough time on the computer. I had my wife asking me about it though after our **3-year-old ** mention it. Tracing it back to the source (his sitter’s son) we found Minecraft is a big thing at a local Middle School! To think, I used to be worried about middle school kids getting involved in drugs.
My daughter taught art in kindergarten classes, and she said they all talked about Minecraft! I think it’s one “game” that really benefits kids: in their relationships with parents, and in the ways it stimulates creativity, visual-spatial skills, and even an interest in engineering. I wish it had been around when my kids were younger.
Yesterday I put a 3-inch square creeper face decal in the bottom of my back, side window of my car. Anyone who’s played the game will have a momentary conditioned response of “oh shit” when they see it.
… and either run off the road trying to avoid you, or try to kill you before you explode.
I just spent two days trying to build a machine to hide or expose light (in essence, to turn a mob spawner on and off), using sticky pistons. (24 sticky pistons with 24 glow stone cubes, shuttered by another 24 sticky pistons with cobblestone on a seperate circuit)
But I think the close proximity of the some pistons to others caused problems. (Some pistons stayed on/extended, even after ripping out the wiring.)
So the second day, I set up a simpler machine that pushes glowstone cubes into “slots” to block off light. The machine works fine, but light from the cubes “leaks” around to edges of the blocks and piston pad, so the spawner room still looks pretty well lit.
*sobs