mmmmm.... having the first three implies the fourth is no problem... mmmmh.... welcome to france, let me explain.
in most countries, gifted kids are taken care of, teachers take good care of them, are aware of their specifities, feed their endless need of knowledge, encourage and guide them on the road of education.
well in france, no. gifted kids are most of the time ignored. they ask too much questions. they dont explain how they guessed the correct answer a second after the teacher asked. they end up at the age of 7 or 8, at the bottom of the classroom, bored to death, fighting against the urge of running away from school. That s what happened to me, and guess what, it kept happening in the companies i was working in.
being a Mensa member is considered a threat. 95% of the time, having a high IQ will make you fail your job interview. You have to hide, you have to shut up, if you get the job, you ll have to let your colleagues apply their "failed in advance stupid ideas" and witness the damages without saying a word. I heard UK, germany, northern countries act differently. I heard in USA gifted people are treasured. In france, they're shot on sight.
If i chose not to work full time so i can take care of my kids, it s to protect them from this kind of future. I spend weeks negociating and fighting with the schools so my kids are recognized as special, and taken care of correctly. At home i have to feed their thirst of new knowledges. Elite is a very good game for them. They discover stars, planets, understand how the galaxy is "in real", it s something else than looking at saturn's satellites through a telescope, it looks "real".
my elder wants and most probably will be a pilot. the younger seems very interested by the human body, maybe a future surgeon, or the best guitar player in the world. He s good with a guitar, since he was 14 months old.
i m moving sky and earth to see if i can get some 2nd hand hardware, waiting for next's week beta to see concretely if my wife pc can run horizon B2.0. My own computer is not a big deal, i dont need to play, in 2 months (i bought the game 14 months ago....managed to run it in september....) i managed to grind enough credits to get a 22M ASP, found a couple earthlikes, goal achieved. I just hope rovers wont be too much expensive so we can land somewhere and let the kids roam free on a moon somewhere far from pirates and troubles.
still, it hurts to be unable to provide a couple hundred euros, having myself a big (useless and uneducated) brain.
hurts even more when people assume being gifted means your life is great and paved with gold. it s everything but that. especially in a world like ours, where being hypersensitive is not exactly something easy to carry.
30yrs ago i played elite on a green monocolor monitor. I could cope with less antialiasing, less details, less shadows and less HDR effects, as long as the game runs. I hope Horizons will just "run" and wont crash with a message "your hardware does not allow you to play Horizons"
edit : oh yeah.... PSU.... forgot that both computers have less than 50W margin to 100% load. good thing they're seasonics... (2008's seasonics....)
