If you enjoy both gaming and programming, you're naturally going to attempt to program a game at some point... but note the "if" there.
Simply enjoying games doesn't mean you want to build them any more than enjoying movies means you want to direct or act in one or liking cars means you want to be an engineer or mechanic.
To be a coder, you have to like logic, puzzle solving, and the joy of automating stuff that sucks to do manually. Most coders start off by saying "hey, I want to build this", and figure it out from there. Your skills gradually improve, and eventually you reach the point where you say "ok, if I really want to get into this, I need to seriously study it." You then become a good coder.:) To enjoy game design, you have to be a creative person who likes building worlds, writing stories, etc. The best way to get experience is to do smaller projects - write a short story, run an RP campaign, that sort of thing to hone your design skills. Do it long enough, and you'll get quite good at it. To make a game yourself, you need both skill sets. Of course, it's always possible to focus heavily on one side, but then you need to find someone who can do the other half.
Note that being a gamer don't not require *either* of those sets of interests.
That being said, if the kid *does* have an interest, the key is to start simple. Yes, making a high end game takes a team of people years, but you don't start there any more than a novice director tries to make a 20 million dollar movie. I'd recommend starting with either browser games or flash games. You'll need one major language for either (PHP or Actionscript respectively), but you'll also need basic skills in a few other areas. A browser game maker needs to know the basics of making and querying a database, as well as how to do a decent web design. A flash game maker needs art.
Also, as others have said, you may want to start out by working with existing games. Some have some pretty powerful editors with built-in scripting languages, and this can be a good way to learn the basics of programming logic while building something others will actually want to play. Tools are another option - for instance, building a DB-driven fansite for a favorite game will allow you to learn all of the skills you then need to attempt an actual game.
Again though, I can't stress this enough - programming is NOT a common thing for people to enjoy. If there's no interest, don't try to force one.
It's not the abuses anyone is complaining about, it's the cover ups. Sure, every profession is going to have people who piss on the ethical standards of that profession, and there's no reason a religious profession would somehow dodge that.
The thing is, if a doctor violates the Hippocratic oath, he loses his medical license. A corrupt lawyer gets disbarred. A fraudulent scientist gets publicly shamed and unable to get money for future research. Jobs with less on the line usually just result in the offender being fired. Whatever the job is though, when someone is corrupt, they're generally removed, and when that fails to happen, the company they work for is punished instead.
With the catholic church, they covered up the pedophilia for decades, and now that they can't hide it any more, do they at least finally apologize, vow to fix it, and start making good on that promise by immediately kicking the most obvious offenders out of the clergy and turning them over the cops? Nope, they instead whine that that transparency of the internet is bad, because it makes their wrongdoing public. That isn't bad PR, that's a systemic failure of the morals they claim to uphold.
THIS is why so few still have any respect for them. Failing to discover abuse is one thing, but being fully aware of it and actively hiding it is when they very much cross the line between "good profession with the occasional douchebag" to "group that actively promotes evil behavior."
Similarly, you can look at the police in the US. Does anyone complain that there's a few evil, unethical cops? Of course not - sometimes you really can't weed them out until they majorly screw up... except they don't. They're "doing administrative work until an investigation can be thoroughly completed." Translation: We're keeping him off the street until the media focuses on something else, then pretending this never happened. Unsurprisingly, public opinion of the police is quite low - doesn't matter that the majority of cops are indeed good people, the system they work for actively promotes evil by refusing to punish the corrupt members of their organization.
There's 3 companies that pull this crap - EA, Ubisoft, and Activision. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Just avoid those 3 companies.
Then you realize they've purchased or destroyed nearly every other game company in the US, and you quickly realize those 3 are the overwhelming majority of the industry.
I do indeed vote with my wallet - indie games, Korean and Japanese imports, Flash game sites (you don't pay for these but every time you go to one, you're giving the company ad revenue), webgames, etc.
That's fine if you're aware of those channels, but someone walking into a game store isn't seeing indie games, will see few, if any Korean ones, and obviously, won't see *anything* that doesn't ship in a box. That leaves nothing but Japanese imports - not that there aren't plenty of good ones, but the bottom line is, the average gamer simply isn't aware of how many options they have to avoid these companies, and until that fact changes, they're going to remain multi-billion dollar companies.
We need to do more than vote with our wallets, we need to make our friends, and by extension THEIR friends aware that you very much CAN avoid this crap. Then, and only then, will the industry move forward on large scale.
IANAL, but AFAIK, there is in fact no federal murder law.
Is a life sentence mandatory on murder 1 & 2? Varies by state. Is parole possible? Varies by state. Does the death penalty exist? Varies by state. Is murder ever justified? Self defense is generally allowed, but exactly what constitutes valid self defense varies by state, and whether there's a "justified homicide" law as well, again, varies by state.
We might call in the FBI to investigate and arrest, but in the end, it's up to the state where the crime was committed as to what actually happens to the guy. The only exception is when the attack was directly on the federal government.
This is a much different situation than with something like pot. Should it be illegal, legal for medical use only, or legal always? If there are cases where it's illegal, what penalty should exist if you break the law? There is no consensus whatsoever on this.
-Can you warp your head around coding logic? -Can you avoid chaining yourself to a specific language, and instead choose one that works well for what you're trying to do, rather than force one to work outside of its intended scope? -Can you handle both procedural code and OOP, and are you aware of the pros and cons of each? -Can you write code others (not to mention you a month later!) can actually read? -Are you willing to take the time to truly learn programming, rather than just copy-pasting a few functions and hoping it works? -When you learn a language, are you willing to actually learn the language, and not just make it behave like one you already know? -Are you aware that debugging often takes longer than actually coding, and are you willing to put that effort in for the sake of quality code?
If you answered yes to all of the above, you're probably going to be a pretty good programmer, whether you started on C/C++, Assembly, BASIC, or hell, ZZT-OOP. Every language has places it really shines, and every language has glaring flaws - if there was a prefect language that was good at everything, we wouldn't need a few dozen of them.:)
Ragnarok Online is one MMO that's largely avoided this problem, and it's by no means the only one. I'll talk about that one as it's the one I've played the most, but again, PLENTY of MMOs have avoiding the WoW trap.
That game is a free download with free content updates - you just pay a sub. They supplement this with a *minor* cash shop that doesn't greatly influence the game. Result: Best of both worlds - no giant pile of updates to worry about because you don't buy those, and no exploitative cash shop, because they're only using it to make up for update revenue, not the subscription (which is the bulk of what you pay in a normal p2p MMO.)
As for avoiding abandoned maps, this is easy - they don't use WoW-style gear. By ensuring there's stuff you want in a variety of areas - including ones you don't care about for exp, they can ensure most areas get used. Sure, you're always going to have those few zones that everyone just loathes and won't touch with a 10' pole, but the rest of the world really does get used. The first dungeon the game ever released drops an item that can enchant armor so you count as water type (and all the bonuses and penalties you'd expect from that), and to this day, I still people down there looking for that... in a game that's now ~8 years old. Sure, the armor you're using said item ON may have changed a gazillion times, but you'll still want that item. Just about all of the old dungeons, in fact, have stuff people still want. Additionally, unlike WoW-style MMOs, there's no exp penalty for fighting stuff under you. Of course, the curve is exponential, so there's a point at which the exp just doesn't matter, but fighting swarms of things 10-15 levels under is a perfectly valid leveling strategy, and people do it in both solo and party play. Indeed, some maps are even specific designed to be basically impossible at the monsters' level, as they're DESIGNED for mobbing. Last but not least, since gear actually DOES stuff, rather than just modifying stats, there's no "this is the best item for this slot always". It's "this gives me more damage reduction overall, but this gives me far more vs a specific creature type", "this will randomly cast a useful spell, but this make all of my normal spells cast 10% faster". Etc. Result: People actually think about what they want to use, and it's not just "I'm wearing Tier X, you're in Tier X-1, you suck." Of course, everyone wants to try the new content, and whenever new stuff is released, everyone jumps in and tries it, but once that rush ends, you'll find the new stuff is still getting used... but so is the old.
Again, I'm using RO for my example as I've played it more than any other, but it is NOT in anyway unique in avoiding the WoW trap.
WoW, and the other railroaded MMOs that copy it, have major problems with their "tiered" gear, and rigid, guided level paths, because naturally, why would you hunt anywhere except the 2 places that drop this month's gear? You're going to discard all the old stuff the second you get the new. Pair that with stasis leveling (where nothing really changes as you level but your stats, and they simply scale to level such that all you do is throw bigger numbers around), and there's even less to think about on a character - hell, they even color code the monsters so you know you're on the map you're supposed to be on.
The solution to all of this can be summed up in 5 words: Don't play a WoW-like game. There's plenty of other styles, and just because the US might not make much else doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't stepped in to fill the gap. Try a bunch of different kinds, you'll probably find one that fits your style, and you'll definitely find a bunch that don't have the "pile of expansions no one plays" problem.
Although both logs will reveal everywhere you've been, a phone record reveals ONLY that - who you called, not why.
URLs, on the other hand, usually include variables that reveal things such as exactly which articles you clicked, and exactly what you searched for. Even worse, they can easily be used to break post anonymity - all they have to see is that you loaded the post form, and upon submitting it we're directed to a post with ID X, and they know exactly what you posted by simply loading that post.
At BEST, this is invasion of privacy. It can be far worse, however. Imagine, for instance, you're the guy trying to blow the whistle on a corrupt senator, and you know that in posting your evidence, your ISP will have no choice but to permanently record the link between your actual identity and that post. "Chilling effect on free speech" doesn't even begin to describe that.
In a more mundane example, when those logs are inevitably leaked, hacked and stolen, or both, it's only a matter of time before what you do on the internet affects your ability to get or keep a job. If an employer wants to get rid of you but you've done nothing wrong, he'll simply pull up something you looked at online... like that random 4chan you clicked out of curiousity 4 years ago.
This is another good point. I guarantee you if this passes, the ISPs are going to pass on the rather significant bill to do this to their customers. They really can't stay in the business otherwise.
The 4th amendment is supposed to require a warrant to BEGIN surveillance. The law doesn't say "they can tap your phones and record all of your conversations, but they can't actually listen to them until a warrant is issued against you." No, they can't tap until they have the warrant.
This shouldn't be any different.
Then again, we all know the results of the last large-scale warrantless wiretapping incident (no one was punished, and it's likely still occurring), so I guess it is, in fact, not any different.
The chances of a random terrorist group getting their hands on one of the many Russian nukes that they managed to lose are significant, and if not stopped in time, sure, I could see a city getting nuked. That's only going to result in the destruction of that city and that terrorist group (when basically every nation in existence works together to crush them.) Likewise, it's quite possible that a 2 nation nuclear war in the middle east could result in 2 destroyed nations, with fallout affecting nearby nations, and small climate effects reaching much further. While that would have a death toll similar to the world wars, that would not be an apocalypse any more than either of those wars were. It would truly suck as the civilian death toll would be insanely high, but the world would move on.
Worldwide nuclear war and annihilation of most intelligent life on Earth was a distant possibility even at the height of the Cold War (the US and USSR both had way too much to lose), and now I'd argue the odds are about as close to 0 as they can get without us colonizing other planets.
Arpanet was slow, incredibly laggy, incapable of supporting a huge userbase, and as a result, impractical except in limited military and large-scale academic applications. It was largely ignored by the general public, and was of little value to society at large. It became the internet.
The original GPS system was horrifically expensive, and had a large enough margin of error that it was mainly used for coordinating naval fleets, where being a few hundred feet off course generally wasn't an issue in the middle of an ocean. You can now buy a fairly cheap device that both visually and verbally directs you through cities, usually with a margin of error of no more than 3 meters.
Note that in both cases, it only took about 20 years to go from an expensive, limited technology that the military had limited use for and civilians had none at all, to a common technology that no one thinks twice about using. So yes... the original flying car is going to be slow, terribly inefficient, and useless except in battlefields that it fits perfectly... but give it a decade or two, and you just may be driving one.
Also, keep in mind that even if taking off burns a huge amount of fuel, and your air MPG is not better than your ground MPG, the fact that you can aim in a straight line to your destination instead of following roads is going to save fuel on anything but very short trips... and you can still drive for those.
SSDs have a much longer lifespan, which means that they don't have to become cheaper than traditional drives, they just have to be cheap enough that when factoring in their lifespan, their extra cost is more than justified.
Also, because SSDs don't rely on moving parts, the fact that you can't lose one because your laptop took a bump on a subway or you tripped over your tower is another selling point - not only in terms of lower the odds of needing to replace the drive early (and therefore the cost you're paying per drive), but because if what you're storing on the drive is far more valuable than the device itself, you are very much willing to pay extra to lower the chances of a dead drive. Even if you make daily backups, losing say... a day's worth of freelance work is going to cost you a lot more than the cost of the drive.
With that in mind, I'd say even at double to triple the cost, they're worth it. Right now it's more like 10x, but but getting it down to 3x won't take more than a few years, even if getting it equal IS more of a 2020 thing - although I seriously question that number too. 6 years ago I bought a 1gb flash drive for something like $150. 1 year ago I bought a 16gb one for 30 bucks. If 5 years was enough to drop the cost per gigabyte 80-fold, and it's at a 10x multiplier now, I don't think it's going to be long at all before it gets equal, or damn close... and again, damn close is more than good enough with their much longer lifespan.
Windows 7 is an upgrade to Vista, and it performs better. This isn't news.
The problem is that Vista is a HUGE downgrade from XP, and so far everything I've read says that 7 is simply less of an XP downgrade than Vista was. I couldn't care less if it's prettier - it either needs to have some major functionality that XP doesn't (and it doesn't), or it needs to offer a serious performance boost over XP (and it appears to do the opposite.)
If he's looking for the classic, best-known novels, then yeah, if he's planning on teaching a class on the subject, he should already be aware of most, if not all of them.
If he's looking for more obscure stuff - especially short stories - then there's simply no way he's read everything out there, and asking for suggestions he can read helps.
There's also the specific matter that this is a high school class - so if he can get insights from people who have run similar classes, parents of high schoolers into sci fi, and of course, students themselves as to what's likely to seriously engage people in that age group, that has obvious value. Merely being aware of a list of good books doesn't necessarily mean you know what's likely to work well in that age group.
Last but not least, there's the problem of time. High school is usually about ~7 classes at a time compared to the 5 in college, and college usually involves less time in class than work outside of class, whereas high school is the opposite. This means students can do a very, very, finite amount of reading for 1 course, and so the goal is be as thorough as possible with very limited time to work with - which again means that obscure short stories can be important here.
Their free account is rather weak, but I'm quite happy with what I'm paying $20/year for...
1. Actual security. It's the only webmail I know of I can log in through a secure connection, and it includes a no-cache mode so I don't have to worry about messages I read being in the cache on a public (and possibly infected) machine. You can also make a single-use password for when you have to use a machine that has a good chance of having key logging spyware.
2. On the flip side, there's a "log me in for freaking ever" option for when I'm on my own machine, which not only keeps me logged in, but sets the session to 8 hours so I can just leave it open when needed.
3. Long term file storage - especially when I'm developing something, there's a good chance the same file is going to get attached to a bunch of different messages. Needing to upload it only once (and having it already sitting on their servers for when I'm not on the machine I made said file with) is a huge time saver.
4. Full control of the spam filters, including custom entries. I have the tolerance set high (so I don't ever lose stuff to false positives) but deletion turned on for very high scores (so unquestionable spam is purged without me ever having to touch it.) Google gives you ummm... and "on" and an "off".:P
5. Full filter control, including the ability to autofile stuff into folders (the college I went to sends WAY too much crap, so I put that all in a folder, as I occasionally want to read some of it, but would rather not have it clog up my inbox.) Similarly, the ability to shove stuff you get from a mailing list in its old folder is good for the same reason.
6. File space can be used as webspace. Sometimes I need a temporary, quick, static webpage, and really don't want to be bothered downloading an FTP client (and risk leaving the password to my server sitting on a public machine).
7. Aliases - useful both for cutting spammers off, and for being able to select different sigs, whether to save sent mail, etc.
8. The "bounce" button - deletes a message and sends the sender the standard "this address doesn't exist" autoreply.
9. Real status updates - if something gets screwed up, they tell you exactly what went wrong, what they're doing to fix it, and when it'll be fixed assuming nothing else is borked.
10. Minimal downtime... I think I've seen them die 3 times in ~5 years. I DO have a Gmail account as well, and they're down far more often.
11. I CAN SEND.EXE AND.ZIP FILES. Seriously, as a freelance programmer, Gmail is often useless to me because they don't accept either.
12. Far more customizable, in general. I find Gmail's lack of options annoying.
1. The game minus the educational part should still be a solid game.
Imagine if I took Oregon Trail, but the game was about a colony on another planet running low on a vital resource on the other side of the planet. You choose your profession which determined starting stats, abilities, etc, and packed up a vehicle to drive to the other side... in other words, gameplay exactly the same as OT, but different setting and everything renamed. What's left is a sim with a survival goal, and a strong focus on resource management and random events. It would work just fine as a game on its own.
What if Number Munchers used colored dots on the squares instead of math problems, with each level displaying a list of colors you could or couldn't eat? It'd still be a game about choosing targets carefully and quickly while dodging various monster types.
If the player can't enjoy the game AS A GAME, then no one will stick with it long enough to actually learn anything.
2. Learning should be part of the game, not hastily tacked on.
Sure, you're looking up geography info in Carmen Sandiego, but what you're really doing as a player is following a trail of clues. In time, you'll actually learn stuff about various countries simply because it's part of the game.
There's a flash game called Super Energy Apocalypse. It's an defense RTS with zombies - they attack every night, and you build towers to gun them down. Of course, your base needs power to operate, and like many RTSes, you get this by building power plants. However, instead of just the generic plant, it has various types of actual power plants. For instance, you can build solar panels pretty cheaply, but they don't function at night. This can help you supply research operations during the day and store some energy, but try to rely fully on it and your base runs out of power at night you can get eaten by zombies. Oil plants are extremely reliable, but they pollute heavily, and that makes the zombies stronger. Etc. You have to come up with a power generation scheme that works - and true to life, you can't avoid polluting entirely on many maps, so you have to try to minimize it instead. Result: The player actually walks away with a decent understanding of alternative power sources and their strengths and weaknesses... but he's not taking a class, he's just figuring out how to kill zombies more efficiently.:)
There was a game where you run a lemonade stand and try to make as much money as possible in 30 days. The game is designed to teach you the basics of business - supply and demand, reacting to changing market conditions, long term planning to capitalize on unplanned good conditions and survive unplanned bad ones, etc. You'll never see any of that terminology though - you're just running your stand, making more stuff on hotter days, buying materials when prices are low, being wary of the occasional thunderstorm making you sell nothing, etc. You just try to figure out a strategy to land on a high score list, but ultimately, you're picking up the basics of business in the process.
3. The game needs replay value. Oregon trail has you trying out different professions and starting conditions, Carmen Sandiego has you working up the ranks of a detective agency, etc. This in turn means the player keeps coming back and getting more knowledge (Carmen Sandiego) or further improving a skill (Word/Number Munchers).
4. There needs to be an actual challenge. The crook can get away (Carmen Sandiego), you get eaten (Number Munchers), your base is overrun by zombies (Super Energy Apocalypse). To move on in the game, you have to actually learn something AND actually get better at the game.
5. At ALL times, it plays like a game, not a class. The lesson MUST be part of the game, forcing a player to read stuff that he isn't going to use IN the game results in skipped text or the player simply walking away.
MS released a server product. They recognized that for it to be as profitable as possible, it needed to support Linux, so they produced the drivers to make that happen.
Result: MS makes more money, Linux is usable on more systems. Everyone's happy.
Obviously MS only cares about the money part, but who cares as long as: 1. The code is of sufficient quality. (The reviewers will determine this.) 2. There's valid reason to include it. (There is.) and 3. They're not trying to exert control or otherwise screw with the Linux model (they GPLed this code, so they pretty much can't.)
There's a LOT of reasons to fear some of MS' moves, especially when it comes to open source, but in this case, we're simply looking at a business decision that happens to be beneficial to all parties involved, so why not just take the code (assuming it doesn't suck) and move on? There are MS decisions that need to be fought, but I really, really, don't think this one of them.
A cookie is acceptable if one of the following is true: 1. The user has directly requested it, such as by clicking a "remember these display settings" button. 2. The user has been warned in advance, and EXPLICITLY OPTED IN to it. Explicit means the warning was in plain, easy to read text, in a single paragraph if possible - not buried on page 7 of a EULA or shoved in a privacy policy that's linked in tiny text and no one ever reads. 3. The cookie is a session cookie, and once the user has closed his browser, it will not be possible to link any data gathered with that cookie to that user. (Aggregate data is of course, fine.)
If you're setting a cookie that doesn't meet one of those 3 conditions, then you're violating your users' privacy. Period.
When your copyright expires, the work enters public domain, but the record that it was previously copyrighted doesn't disappear. This means NO ONE can claim to own the material, and EVERYONE can use it in whatever manner they choose.
There is zero risk of a company trying to take ownership of the code, because a work with an expired copyright, is by definition, owned by all.
This is different from someone releasing a piece of code, never claiming copyright on it, and then some random company stealing it and declaring it proprietary, leaving the actual creator unable to use his own code. THIS is the scenario that the GPL was written to prevent.
The only difference between currently GPLed code and formerly GPLed code with an expired copyright is that once it expires, you now CAN choose to use the code in proprietary software as well. It has zero effect on existing (or new) open source projects already using the code. Yes, it stops the "free" label from being virally attached to the code, and Stallman of course hates that, but that doesn't harm open source, only the Stallman ideology of everything MUST be free, including all variants.
All of the gamers I know play games as much as ever, and while the economy has affected many of us, gaming for the most part isn't a very expensive hobby, so very few of us are spending less for that reason. What we ARE doing is spending it in different places.
The numbers can be explained by: 1. The huge popularity of MMOs. Most people are active in an MMO put around half of their gaming time into it, at ~15 bucks/month. That means for the other half, you're more choosy as to what you're willing to buy - and it does also mean you're spending less over all. Very few $50 games are played for more than 1-2 months, but MMOs are usually good for several... a few years in some cases. 2. Webgames and Flash games becoming popular. These ARE profitable games, but there's no buying involved, as they're usually ad-supported instead. Time spent on these games is time when SALES are down, but PROFITS are not. 3. The fact that "US" is in the title. I've been seeing a lot of innovation from KOREAN MMO developers, but basically none from US ones - everything over here is yet another WoW clone, which means I've spent a grand total of 0 on US online gaming this year, and a good amount on Korean. Regular games are slightly better off, but even there, Japan seems to be making most of the games people are actually playing. 4. The fact that It's no secret that EA destroyed most of the US gaming industry, and it never really fully recovered. People were buying mediocre crap when there wasn't anything else to buy, but as translations get better and better, we're simply taking our money elsewhere. (See also: US car industry) 5. Indie gaming has become a significant part of the market... and likely not a part that's being polled for this article's numbers. Again, when the overwhelming majority of the big gaming companies suck, we don't stop gaming, we just take our business elsewhere.
The industry is doing fine, it's just a few crappy US companies that happen to be 1)Huge and 2)Failing. No one will miss them if they finally collapse, and once they do, new companies will replace them - ones that actually produce games we want to play. In the meantime, the rest of the world is supplying us just fine - as well as the US through indie and other side channels.
Is Stallman also saying Open Office should be discontinued because it can read a Word document? The.doc standard is closed, heavily patented, rigidly controlled, and arbitrarily changed... yet I think we all agree an office suite that wants to be relevant better be able to save files in that format. So sure, use.odf as your default... but if you can't convert to.doc, you pretty much can't use it in the business world.
What about Wine? That implements the entire freaking Win32 API. If Mono, which implements a single language and a single programming technology for using multiple languages (.net) scares him, Wine must have him jumping at shadows.
Hell, even drivers could fall into this category. If you allow an MS mouse to function in Linux, are you afraid of patent suits there too? I certainly hope not, as mice are something you very much expect to work with zero effort.
C# may have been developed by a big bloated corporation that many consider evil (or at least unethical), but so was C! (AT&T - anyone boycotting C/C++ over warrantless wiretapping? Didn't think so.) Does anyone coding in C or C++ (or making a compiler or IDE for it) seriously fear a patent lawsuit from AT&T?
.net was clearly built as a Windows technology, but that's simply because MS made it. MS pretty much CAN'T claim patents on it, because.net itself implements so many languages that MS had nothing to do with developing, that I think it's safe to say any.net-based patent suit would die in seconds.
I'm no fan of MS, but I really don't see a problem with Mono unless you have Stallmanian paranoia.
With ad hoc networks, security generally IS nonexistant, so this is a definite concern in this sort of situation. The problem with a radio feed is that your only method of data transmission is talking, and your only method of recording is having a recording device on the other end - which might very well be a pencil and a pad in some cases!
A combination approach may be better - if you need to send something urgently and anonymously, radio is probably the better answer, but if you need to send a lot of data around and it's not something where getting snooped will significantly harm the effort, the ad hoc network is probably better.
Slashdot Mirror
If you enjoy both gaming and programming, you're naturally going to attempt to program a game at some point... but note the "if" there.
Simply enjoying games doesn't mean you want to build them any more than enjoying movies means you want to direct or act in one or liking cars means you want to be an engineer or mechanic.
To be a coder, you have to like logic, puzzle solving, and the joy of automating stuff that sucks to do manually. Most coders start off by saying "hey, I want to build this", and figure it out from there. Your skills gradually improve, and eventually you reach the point where you say "ok, if I really want to get into this, I need to seriously study it." You then become a good coder. :) To enjoy game design, you have to be a creative person who likes building worlds, writing stories, etc. The best way to get experience is to do smaller projects - write a short story, run an RP campaign, that sort of thing to hone your design skills. Do it long enough, and you'll get quite good at it. To make a game yourself, you need both skill sets. Of course, it's always possible to focus heavily on one side, but then you need to find someone who can do the other half.
Note that being a gamer don't not require *either* of those sets of interests.
That being said, if the kid *does* have an interest, the key is to start simple. Yes, making a high end game takes a team of people years, but you don't start there any more than a novice director tries to make a 20 million dollar movie. I'd recommend starting with either browser games or flash games. You'll need one major language for either (PHP or Actionscript respectively), but you'll also need basic skills in a few other areas. A browser game maker needs to know the basics of making and querying a database, as well as how to do a decent web design. A flash game maker needs art.
Also, as others have said, you may want to start out by working with existing games. Some have some pretty powerful editors with built-in scripting languages, and this can be a good way to learn the basics of programming logic while building something others will actually want to play. Tools are another option - for instance, building a DB-driven fansite for a favorite game will allow you to learn all of the skills you then need to attempt an actual game.
Again though, I can't stress this enough - programming is NOT a common thing for people to enjoy. If there's no interest, don't try to force one.
It's not the abuses anyone is complaining about, it's the cover ups. Sure, every profession is going to have people who piss on the ethical standards of that profession, and there's no reason a religious profession would somehow dodge that.
The thing is, if a doctor violates the Hippocratic oath, he loses his medical license. A corrupt lawyer gets disbarred. A fraudulent scientist gets publicly shamed and unable to get money for future research. Jobs with less on the line usually just result in the offender being fired. Whatever the job is though, when someone is corrupt, they're generally removed, and when that fails to happen, the company they work for is punished instead.
With the catholic church, they covered up the pedophilia for decades, and now that they can't hide it any more, do they at least finally apologize, vow to fix it, and start making good on that promise by immediately kicking the most obvious offenders out of the clergy and turning them over the cops? Nope, they instead whine that that transparency of the internet is bad, because it makes their wrongdoing public. That isn't bad PR, that's a systemic failure of the morals they claim to uphold.
THIS is why so few still have any respect for them. Failing to discover abuse is one thing, but being fully aware of it and actively hiding it is when they very much cross the line between "good profession with the occasional douchebag" to "group that actively promotes evil behavior."
Similarly, you can look at the police in the US. Does anyone complain that there's a few evil, unethical cops? Of course not - sometimes you really can't weed them out until they majorly screw up... except they don't. They're "doing administrative work until an investigation can be thoroughly completed." Translation: We're keeping him off the street until the media focuses on something else, then pretending this never happened. Unsurprisingly, public opinion of the police is quite low - doesn't matter that the majority of cops are indeed good people, the system they work for actively promotes evil by refusing to punish the corrupt members of their organization.
There's 3 companies that pull this crap - EA, Ubisoft, and Activision. That doesn't sound too bad, right? Just avoid those 3 companies.
Then you realize they've purchased or destroyed nearly every other game company in the US, and you quickly realize those 3 are the overwhelming majority of the industry.
I do indeed vote with my wallet - indie games, Korean and Japanese imports, Flash game sites (you don't pay for these but every time you go to one, you're giving the company ad revenue), webgames, etc.
That's fine if you're aware of those channels, but someone walking into a game store isn't seeing indie games, will see few, if any Korean ones, and obviously, won't see *anything* that doesn't ship in a box. That leaves nothing but Japanese imports - not that there aren't plenty of good ones, but the bottom line is, the average gamer simply isn't aware of how many options they have to avoid these companies, and until that fact changes, they're going to remain multi-billion dollar companies.
We need to do more than vote with our wallets, we need to make our friends, and by extension THEIR friends aware that you very much CAN avoid this crap. Then, and only then, will the industry move forward on large scale.
IANAL, but AFAIK, there is in fact no federal murder law.
Is a life sentence mandatory on murder 1 & 2? Varies by state.
Is parole possible? Varies by state.
Does the death penalty exist? Varies by state.
Is murder ever justified? Self defense is generally allowed, but exactly what constitutes valid self defense varies by state, and whether there's a "justified homicide" law as well, again, varies by state.
We might call in the FBI to investigate and arrest, but in the end, it's up to the state where the crime was committed as to what actually happens to the guy. The only exception is when the attack was directly on the federal government.
This is a much different situation than with something like pot. Should it be illegal, legal for medical use only, or legal always? If there are cases where it's illegal, what penalty should exist if you break the law? There is no consensus whatsoever on this.
-Can you warp your head around coding logic?
-Can you avoid chaining yourself to a specific language, and instead choose one that works well for what you're trying to do, rather than force one to work outside of its intended scope?
-Can you handle both procedural code and OOP, and are you aware of the pros and cons of each?
-Can you write code others (not to mention you a month later!) can actually read?
-Are you willing to take the time to truly learn programming, rather than just copy-pasting a few functions and hoping it works?
-When you learn a language, are you willing to actually learn the language, and not just make it behave like one you already know?
-Are you aware that debugging often takes longer than actually coding, and are you willing to put that effort in for the sake of quality code?
If you answered yes to all of the above, you're probably going to be a pretty good programmer, whether you started on C/C++, Assembly, BASIC, or hell, ZZT-OOP. Every language has places it really shines, and every language has glaring flaws - if there was a prefect language that was good at everything, we wouldn't need a few dozen of them. :)
Ragnarok Online is one MMO that's largely avoided this problem, and it's by no means the only one. I'll talk about that one as it's the one I've played the most, but again, PLENTY of MMOs have avoiding the WoW trap.
That game is a free download with free content updates - you just pay a sub. They supplement this with a *minor* cash shop that doesn't greatly influence the game. Result: Best of both worlds - no giant pile of updates to worry about because you don't buy those, and no exploitative cash shop, because they're only using it to make up for update revenue, not the subscription (which is the bulk of what you pay in a normal p2p MMO.)
As for avoiding abandoned maps, this is easy - they don't use WoW-style gear. By ensuring there's stuff you want in a variety of areas - including ones you don't care about for exp, they can ensure most areas get used. Sure, you're always going to have those few zones that everyone just loathes and won't touch with a 10' pole, but the rest of the world really does get used. The first dungeon the game ever released drops an item that can enchant armor so you count as water type (and all the bonuses and penalties you'd expect from that), and to this day, I still people down there looking for that... in a game that's now ~8 years old. Sure, the armor you're using said item ON may have changed a gazillion times, but you'll still want that item. Just about all of the old dungeons, in fact, have stuff people still want. Additionally, unlike WoW-style MMOs, there's no exp penalty for fighting stuff under you. Of course, the curve is exponential, so there's a point at which the exp just doesn't matter, but fighting swarms of things 10-15 levels under is a perfectly valid leveling strategy, and people do it in both solo and party play. Indeed, some maps are even specific designed to be basically impossible at the monsters' level, as they're DESIGNED for mobbing. Last but not least, since gear actually DOES stuff, rather than just modifying stats, there's no "this is the best item for this slot always". It's "this gives me more damage reduction overall, but this gives me far more vs a specific creature type", "this will randomly cast a useful spell, but this make all of my normal spells cast 10% faster". Etc. Result: People actually think about what they want to use, and it's not just "I'm wearing Tier X, you're in Tier X-1, you suck." Of course, everyone wants to try the new content, and whenever new stuff is released, everyone jumps in and tries it, but once that rush ends, you'll find the new stuff is still getting used... but so is the old.
Again, I'm using RO for my example as I've played it more than any other, but it is NOT in anyway unique in avoiding the WoW trap.
WoW, and the other railroaded MMOs that copy it, have major problems with their "tiered" gear, and rigid, guided level paths, because naturally, why would you hunt anywhere except the 2 places that drop this month's gear? You're going to discard all the old stuff the second you get the new. Pair that with stasis leveling (where nothing really changes as you level but your stats, and they simply scale to level such that all you do is throw bigger numbers around), and there's even less to think about on a character - hell, they even color code the monsters so you know you're on the map you're supposed to be on.
The solution to all of this can be summed up in 5 words: Don't play a WoW-like game. There's plenty of other styles, and just because the US might not make much else doesn't mean the rest of the world hasn't stepped in to fill the gap. Try a bunch of different kinds, you'll probably find one that fits your style, and you'll definitely find a bunch that don't have the "pile of expansions no one plays" problem.
There's a key difference, however.
Although both logs will reveal everywhere you've been, a phone record reveals ONLY that - who you called, not why.
URLs, on the other hand, usually include variables that reveal things such as exactly which articles you clicked, and exactly what you searched for. Even worse, they can easily be used to break post anonymity - all they have to see is that you loaded the post form, and upon submitting it we're directed to a post with ID X, and they know exactly what you posted by simply loading that post.
At BEST, this is invasion of privacy. It can be far worse, however. Imagine, for instance, you're the guy trying to blow the whistle on a corrupt senator, and you know that in posting your evidence, your ISP will have no choice but to permanently record the link between your actual identity and that post. "Chilling effect on free speech" doesn't even begin to describe that.
In a more mundane example, when those logs are inevitably leaked, hacked and stolen, or both, it's only a matter of time before what you do on the internet affects your ability to get or keep a job. If an employer wants to get rid of you but you've done nothing wrong, he'll simply pull up something you looked at online... like that random 4chan you clicked out of curiousity 4 years ago.
This is another good point. I guarantee you if this passes, the ISPs are going to pass on the rather significant bill to do this to their customers. They really can't stay in the business otherwise.
The 4th amendment is supposed to require a warrant to BEGIN surveillance. The law doesn't say "they can tap your phones and record all of your conversations, but they can't actually listen to them until a warrant is issued against you." No, they can't tap until they have the warrant.
This shouldn't be any different.
Then again, we all know the results of the last large-scale warrantless wiretapping incident (no one was punished, and it's likely still occurring), so I guess it is, in fact, not any different.
The chances of a random terrorist group getting their hands on one of the many Russian nukes that they managed to lose are significant, and if not stopped in time, sure, I could see a city getting nuked. That's only going to result in the destruction of that city and that terrorist group (when basically every nation in existence works together to crush them.) Likewise, it's quite possible that a 2 nation nuclear war in the middle east could result in 2 destroyed nations, with fallout affecting nearby nations, and small climate effects reaching much further. While that would have a death toll similar to the world wars, that would not be an apocalypse any more than either of those wars were. It would truly suck as the civilian death toll would be insanely high, but the world would move on.
Worldwide nuclear war and annihilation of most intelligent life on Earth was a distant possibility even at the height of the Cold War (the US and USSR both had way too much to lose), and now I'd argue the odds are about as close to 0 as they can get without us colonizing other planets.
http://www.instantrimshot.com/ covers this just fine. :P
Arpanet was slow, incredibly laggy, incapable of supporting a huge userbase, and as a result, impractical except in limited military and large-scale academic applications. It was largely ignored by the general public, and was of little value to society at large. It became the internet.
The original GPS system was horrifically expensive, and had a large enough margin of error that it was mainly used for coordinating naval fleets, where being a few hundred feet off course generally wasn't an issue in the middle of an ocean. You can now buy a fairly cheap device that both visually and verbally directs you through cities, usually with a margin of error of no more than 3 meters.
Note that in both cases, it only took about 20 years to go from an expensive, limited technology that the military had limited use for and civilians had none at all, to a common technology that no one thinks twice about using. So yes... the original flying car is going to be slow, terribly inefficient, and useless except in battlefields that it fits perfectly... but give it a decade or two, and you just may be driving one.
Also, keep in mind that even if taking off burns a huge amount of fuel, and your air MPG is not better than your ground MPG, the fact that you can aim in a straight line to your destination instead of following roads is going to save fuel on anything but very short trips... and you can still drive for those.
SSDs have a much longer lifespan, which means that they don't have to become cheaper than traditional drives, they just have to be cheap enough that when factoring in their lifespan, their extra cost is more than justified.
Also, because SSDs don't rely on moving parts, the fact that you can't lose one because your laptop took a bump on a subway or you tripped over your tower is another selling point - not only in terms of lower the odds of needing to replace the drive early (and therefore the cost you're paying per drive), but because if what you're storing on the drive is far more valuable than the device itself, you are very much willing to pay extra to lower the chances of a dead drive. Even if you make daily backups, losing say... a day's worth of freelance work is going to cost you a lot more than the cost of the drive.
With that in mind, I'd say even at double to triple the cost, they're worth it. Right now it's more like 10x, but but getting it down to 3x won't take more than a few years, even if getting it equal IS more of a 2020 thing - although I seriously question that number too. 6 years ago I bought a 1gb flash drive for something like $150. 1 year ago I bought a 16gb one for 30 bucks. If 5 years was enough to drop the cost per gigabyte 80-fold, and it's at a 10x multiplier now, I don't think it's going to be long at all before it gets equal, or damn close... and again, damn close is more than good enough with their much longer lifespan.
Windows 7 is an upgrade to Vista, and it performs better. This isn't news.
The problem is that Vista is a HUGE downgrade from XP, and so far everything I've read says that 7 is simply less of an XP downgrade than Vista was. I couldn't care less if it's prettier - it either needs to have some major functionality that XP doesn't (and it doesn't), or it needs to offer a serious performance boost over XP (and it appears to do the opposite.)
If he's looking for the classic, best-known novels, then yeah, if he's planning on teaching a class on the subject, he should already be aware of most, if not all of them.
If he's looking for more obscure stuff - especially short stories - then there's simply no way he's read everything out there, and asking for suggestions he can read helps.
There's also the specific matter that this is a high school class - so if he can get insights from people who have run similar classes, parents of high schoolers into sci fi, and of course, students themselves as to what's likely to seriously engage people in that age group, that has obvious value. Merely being aware of a list of good books doesn't necessarily mean you know what's likely to work well in that age group.
Last but not least, there's the problem of time. High school is usually about ~7 classes at a time compared to the 5 in college, and college usually involves less time in class than work outside of class, whereas high school is the opposite. This means students can do a very, very, finite amount of reading for 1 course, and so the goal is be as thorough as possible with very limited time to work with - which again means that obscure short stories can be important here.
Their free account is rather weak, but I'm quite happy with what I'm paying $20/year for...
1. Actual security. It's the only webmail I know of I can log in through a secure connection, and it includes a no-cache mode so I don't have to worry about messages I read being in the cache on a public (and possibly infected) machine. You can also make a single-use password for when you have to use a machine that has a good chance of having key logging spyware.
2. On the flip side, there's a "log me in for freaking ever" option for when I'm on my own machine, which not only keeps me logged in, but sets the session to 8 hours so I can just leave it open when needed.
3. Long term file storage - especially when I'm developing something, there's a good chance the same file is going to get attached to a bunch of different messages. Needing to upload it only once (and having it already sitting on their servers for when I'm not on the machine I made said file with) is a huge time saver.
4. Full control of the spam filters, including custom entries. I have the tolerance set high (so I don't ever lose stuff to false positives) but deletion turned on for very high scores (so unquestionable spam is purged without me ever having to touch it.) Google gives you ummm... and "on" and an "off". :P
5. Full filter control, including the ability to autofile stuff into folders (the college I went to sends WAY too much crap, so I put that all in a folder, as I occasionally want to read some of it, but would rather not have it clog up my inbox.) Similarly, the ability to shove stuff you get from a mailing list in its old folder is good for the same reason.
6. File space can be used as webspace. Sometimes I need a temporary, quick, static webpage, and really don't want to be bothered downloading an FTP client (and risk leaving the password to my server sitting on a public machine).
7. Aliases - useful both for cutting spammers off, and for being able to select different sigs, whether to save sent mail, etc.
8. The "bounce" button - deletes a message and sends the sender the standard "this address doesn't exist" autoreply.
9. Real status updates - if something gets screwed up, they tell you exactly what went wrong, what they're doing to fix it, and when it'll be fixed assuming nothing else is borked.
10. Minimal downtime... I think I've seen them die 3 times in ~5 years. I DO have a Gmail account as well, and they're down far more often.
11. I CAN SEND .EXE AND .ZIP FILES. Seriously, as a freelance programmer, Gmail is often useless to me because they don't accept either.
12. Far more customizable, in general. I find Gmail's lack of options annoying.
1. The game minus the educational part should still be a solid game.
Imagine if I took Oregon Trail, but the game was about a colony on another planet running low on a vital resource on the other side of the planet. You choose your profession which determined starting stats, abilities, etc, and packed up a vehicle to drive to the other side... in other words, gameplay exactly the same as OT, but different setting and everything renamed. What's left is a sim with a survival goal, and a strong focus on resource management and random events. It would work just fine as a game on its own.
What if Number Munchers used colored dots on the squares instead of math problems, with each level displaying a list of colors you could or couldn't eat? It'd still be a game about choosing targets carefully and quickly while dodging various monster types.
If the player can't enjoy the game AS A GAME, then no one will stick with it long enough to actually learn anything.
2. Learning should be part of the game, not hastily tacked on.
Sure, you're looking up geography info in Carmen Sandiego, but what you're really doing as a player is following a trail of clues. In time, you'll actually learn stuff about various countries simply because it's part of the game.
There's a flash game called Super Energy Apocalypse. It's an defense RTS with zombies - they attack every night, and you build towers to gun them down. Of course, your base needs power to operate, and like many RTSes, you get this by building power plants. However, instead of just the generic plant, it has various types of actual power plants. For instance, you can build solar panels pretty cheaply, but they don't function at night. This can help you supply research operations during the day and store some energy, but try to rely fully on it and your base runs out of power at night you can get eaten by zombies. Oil plants are extremely reliable, but they pollute heavily, and that makes the zombies stronger. Etc. You have to come up with a power generation scheme that works - and true to life, you can't avoid polluting entirely on many maps, so you have to try to minimize it instead. Result: The player actually walks away with a decent understanding of alternative power sources and their strengths and weaknesses... but he's not taking a class, he's just figuring out how to kill zombies more efficiently. :)
There was a game where you run a lemonade stand and try to make as much money as possible in 30 days. The game is designed to teach you the basics of business - supply and demand, reacting to changing market conditions, long term planning to capitalize on unplanned good conditions and survive unplanned bad ones, etc. You'll never see any of that terminology though - you're just running your stand, making more stuff on hotter days, buying materials when prices are low, being wary of the occasional thunderstorm making you sell nothing, etc. You just try to figure out a strategy to land on a high score list, but ultimately, you're picking up the basics of business in the process.
3. The game needs replay value. Oregon trail has you trying out different professions and starting conditions, Carmen Sandiego has you working up the ranks of a detective agency, etc. This in turn means the player keeps coming back and getting more knowledge (Carmen Sandiego) or further improving a skill (Word/Number Munchers).
4. There needs to be an actual challenge. The crook can get away (Carmen Sandiego), you get eaten (Number Munchers), your base is overrun by zombies (Super Energy Apocalypse). To move on in the game, you have to actually learn something AND actually get better at the game.
5. At ALL times, it plays like a game, not a class. The lesson MUST be part of the game, forcing a player to read stuff that he isn't going to use IN the game results in skipped text or the player simply walking away.
MS released a server product. They recognized that for it to be as profitable as possible, it needed to support Linux, so they produced the drivers to make that happen.
Result: MS makes more money, Linux is usable on more systems. Everyone's happy.
Obviously MS only cares about the money part, but who cares as long as:
1. The code is of sufficient quality. (The reviewers will determine this.)
2. There's valid reason to include it. (There is.)
and 3. They're not trying to exert control or otherwise screw with the Linux model (they GPLed this code, so they pretty much can't.)
There's a LOT of reasons to fear some of MS' moves, especially when it comes to open source, but in this case, we're simply looking at a business decision that happens to be beneficial to all parties involved, so why not just take the code (assuming it doesn't suck) and move on? There are MS decisions that need to be fought, but I really, really, don't think this one of them.
A cookie is acceptable if one of the following is true:
1. The user has directly requested it, such as by clicking a "remember these display settings" button.
2. The user has been warned in advance, and EXPLICITLY OPTED IN to it. Explicit means the warning was in plain, easy to read text, in a single paragraph if possible - not buried on page 7 of a EULA or shoved in a privacy policy that's linked in tiny text and no one ever reads.
3. The cookie is a session cookie, and once the user has closed his browser, it will not be possible to link any data gathered with that cookie to that user. (Aggregate data is of course, fine.)
If you're setting a cookie that doesn't meet one of those 3 conditions, then you're violating your users' privacy. Period.
There's actually 3 uses of "free"
1. 0 cost
2. No control exerted - use the code for whatever you want, just don't claim you own it
3. Open source enforced - you MUST make everything that uses the code open source as well
#2 and #3 are both "free as in freedom" and are both open source, but only #3 is "RMS free."
What RMS hates about the Pirate Party's proposal is that expired GPLed code would become #2 instead of #3.
When your copyright expires, the work enters public domain, but the record that it was previously copyrighted doesn't disappear. This means NO ONE can claim to own the material, and EVERYONE can use it in whatever manner they choose.
There is zero risk of a company trying to take ownership of the code, because a work with an expired copyright, is by definition, owned by all.
This is different from someone releasing a piece of code, never claiming copyright on it, and then some random company stealing it and declaring it proprietary, leaving the actual creator unable to use his own code. THIS is the scenario that the GPL was written to prevent.
The only difference between currently GPLed code and formerly GPLed code with an expired copyright is that once it expires, you now CAN choose to use the code in proprietary software as well. It has zero effect on existing (or new) open source projects already using the code. Yes, it stops the "free" label from being virally attached to the code, and Stallman of course hates that, but that doesn't harm open source, only the Stallman ideology of everything MUST be free, including all variants.
All of the gamers I know play games as much as ever, and while the economy has affected many of us, gaming for the most part isn't a very expensive hobby, so very few of us are spending less for that reason. What we ARE doing is spending it in different places.
The numbers can be explained by:
1. The huge popularity of MMOs. Most people are active in an MMO put around half of their gaming time into it, at ~15 bucks/month. That means for the other half, you're more choosy as to what you're willing to buy - and it does also mean you're spending less over all. Very few $50 games are played for more than 1-2 months, but MMOs are usually good for several... a few years in some cases.
2. Webgames and Flash games becoming popular. These ARE profitable games, but there's no buying involved, as they're usually ad-supported instead. Time spent on these games is time when SALES are down, but PROFITS are not.
3. The fact that "US" is in the title. I've been seeing a lot of innovation from KOREAN MMO developers, but basically none from US ones - everything over here is yet another WoW clone, which means I've spent a grand total of 0 on US online gaming this year, and a good amount on Korean. Regular games are slightly better off, but even there, Japan seems to be making most of the games people are actually playing.
4. The fact that It's no secret that EA destroyed most of the US gaming industry, and it never really fully recovered. People were buying mediocre crap when there wasn't anything else to buy, but as translations get better and better, we're simply taking our money elsewhere. (See also: US car industry)
5. Indie gaming has become a significant part of the market... and likely not a part that's being polled for this article's numbers. Again, when the overwhelming majority of the big gaming companies suck, we don't stop gaming, we just take our business elsewhere.
The industry is doing fine, it's just a few crappy US companies that happen to be 1)Huge and 2)Failing. No one will miss them if they finally collapse, and once they do, new companies will replace them - ones that actually produce games we want to play. In the meantime, the rest of the world is supplying us just fine - as well as the US through indie and other side channels.
Is Stallman also saying Open Office should be discontinued because it can read a Word document? The .doc standard is closed, heavily patented, rigidly controlled, and arbitrarily changed... yet I think we all agree an office suite that wants to be relevant better be able to save files in that format. So sure, use .odf as your default... but if you can't convert to .doc, you pretty much can't use it in the business world.
What about Wine? That implements the entire freaking Win32 API. If Mono, which implements a single language and a single programming technology for using multiple languages (.net) scares him, Wine must have him jumping at shadows.
Hell, even drivers could fall into this category. If you allow an MS mouse to function in Linux, are you afraid of patent suits there too? I certainly hope not, as mice are something you very much expect to work with zero effort.
C# may have been developed by a big bloated corporation that many consider evil (or at least unethical), but so was C! (AT&T - anyone boycotting C/C++ over warrantless wiretapping? Didn't think so.) Does anyone coding in C or C++ (or making a compiler or IDE for it) seriously fear a patent lawsuit from AT&T?
.net was clearly built as a Windows technology, but that's simply because MS made it. MS pretty much CAN'T claim patents on it, because .net itself implements so many languages that MS had nothing to do with developing, that I think it's safe to say any .net-based patent suit would die in seconds.
I'm no fan of MS, but I really don't see a problem with Mono unless you have Stallmanian paranoia.
Only if you're referring to stocks. If you're talking about anything computer-related and say MS, I think everyone knows who you mean.
With ad hoc networks, security generally IS nonexistant, so this is a definite concern in this sort of situation. The problem with a radio feed is that your only method of data transmission is talking, and your only method of recording is having a recording device on the other end - which might very well be a pencil and a pad in some cases!
A combination approach may be better - if you need to send something urgently and anonymously, radio is probably the better answer, but if you need to send a lot of data around and it's not something where getting snooped will significantly harm the effort, the ad hoc network is probably better.