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Comment Re:A good test platform (Score 1) 156

Yes, but it would take the *entire* industry, inclusive of Sony, Nintendo, and MS. They refuse to allow AO games on their systems. So, it's something of a catch-22. If AO games could be proven to sell (and that the negative PR wouldn't be too bad), they might allow AO games. But that can't happen until they consider an AO game...

Comment Re:How is any of this bad? (Score 1) 369

I have a desktop that I built 4 and small change years ago for a bit under $1000. It's stuck with me through a whole bunch of gaming, coding, hardware design, etc. I replaced the graphics card last year with a $130 graphics card. It can still play games that are coming out today at decent settings. So, uh, what the fuck are you talking about? Maybe if you buy a $500 Dell piece of shit every 2 years, that will happen, sure.

Comment Re:Early Development (Score 2) 382

The problem with merit pay is that it then pushes teachers away from wanting to teach those that are hard to teach, and towards kids that are 'easy' to teach. Teachers that teach students with mental handicaps or are also learning English as a second language *along with* the standard school subjects rarely do as well or improve as much as other students. How do you account for that? You did mention that in 3), at least, but it would be very hard to make the system fair.

Then, on the other side of the problem, students that are already "advanced". Those that tend to get in the highest percentile/grade of exams every year. If you base merit pay on score, the lucky teachers have it easy. If you base it on improvement, well, how do improve on being in the 99th percentile? Further, how do you base the merit pay? A standardized test? That's the system that's been proposed (and shot down) in Florida. Which is a horrible system, as, well, standardized tests are rarely good.

Sigh. I mean, I do agree with you, to a large extent. I actually *want* to be a professor. And while I'll be the first to admit I'm not top of my class, I think I could do the job well - Until we get to the politics of the matter. And I've thought a fair amount about fixing K-12 education (partly as an idle thought, partially because my sister does teach ESE/ESOL 4th graders), but it is not an easy problem to figure out a solution to.

Comment Re:Honeymoon (Score 1) 326

Except that, with the Y changed to X, the sexual-behavior structures of her brain will develop as female. So she'll be thinking of sex about as much as any other woman.

True story! At various points in history, women were considered the prurient gender, the gender that always wanted sex, the gender that wanted sex more than men, etc. Current culture praises men for being very sexually active and criticizes women for the same (which has been the most dominant cultural value). I wonder if maaaaaaaaaaybe that's the cause, more than the physiological differences? Just throwing that idea out there.

Comment Re:That's nice... (Score 1) 342

Uhm?
No?
That's not how OSes work at all. They mediate programs accessing hardware, not do all the work for the programs. They control what program gets what memory (and if things are in RAM or virtual memory) and take care of getting things from the hard disk, etc. But software runs directly on the processor. That's (part) of what virtual machines do.

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