When you are talking about switching between "like" platforms, for example Windows Standalone -vs- OSX Standalone -vs- Soon-to-be-Linux standalone the changes can be very minimal or almost nothing. My experience with the Windows/OSX standalone builds is that you can sometimes deploy with zero changes. The most common issues that seem to crop up are related to custom shaders.

I maintain a bunch of games and demos that we use as examples for our networking middleware, and they basically never need platform customizations for Windows/OSX. The Linux client isn't available yet but I would assume that it would be quite similar.

"Total nonsense. Almost every game these days is written in C++ and while they all vary in the amount of applied OOP and generic meta programming"

I think this is a rather dubious assertion unless you further qualify this by saying "console games" or possibly 'box retail games". Even with that caveat, it might be hard to argue, since the majority of the code for these games might be in a high level language backed by a core that might be c/c++.

I would also argue that the component/data driven design of many games and game engines primary goal is flexibility and extensibility, with a huge side benefit being the possible memory and performance benefits. I concede that my opinion there is highly subjective :)

I would just point out for the record that Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO are not rural. While it is true that rural Kansas schools are facing serious problems as a result of depopulation, nobody is lining up to send their children to school in KCK or KCMO.

I'm not entirely sure this deserves a response, but you might want to double check your assumptions about the demographics of Kansas City, KS. I admit this is an assumption on my part, but you might be surprised to know that Kansas City is largely in Missouri. KCK is by comparison very small, but I admit for this topic either might technically be correct since Google has deemed it fit to fiber them both up.

The AVM program has little or nothing to do with drones or robotics, I believe this is just some creative reporting done by the author. The "Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach" part of the program is really just about getting manufacturing technology ( rapid prototyping hardware, cad software, etc ) into the hands of kids and getting them interested and excited about science, math, and engineering.

  My understanding of the 'wanting unlimited rights" is that all the designs will be 'open source' and available to everyone. If you look at the Vehicleforge portion of the AVM proposal, I think you would see that what they are proposing is very similar to a traditional 'software forge" (sourceforge, github) but applied to design of physical systems.

I was really excited about this when I saw it earlier this week. In fact I thought it was so cool I attempted to buy one. The company appears to be selling them on Amazon, but won't ship them to the USA.... so, has anyone actually purchased one?

I believe the required disc for PS3 and now Wii is meant to get around the exclusive Xbox360 / Netflix streaming deal that exists currently. My understanding is that when the exclusive deal is over, the Netflix Player could move over to a normal installable program.

Many undergrad classes are actually wildly profitable for traditional universities. It is apparently acceptable that many of the basic prerequisite courses are huge cattle calls with tons of students, and the universities still charge the same price per credit hour as much smaller and relatively more expensive classes.

The demand for students is actually heating up as many decide they would rather take these crappy classes online or at community colleges :)