It's so safe, that no one uses it! It's kind of tough for it to be unsafe when everyone refuses to touch it! That would be like Rosanne Bar being in the high-risk category for STD's.

You asked for a recommendation for a company, so I'll give you one. There's a company called Applied Integration. I used to work for them (appropriate disclosure, I think) designing digital video surveillance systems (I worked on the software side). The market dropped out after the dot-com bomb, and the owner went back to doing custom hardware designs. He's very good at what he does, has designed imaging systems for the telescopes of major observatories down to small surveillance systems, and he's nearing retirement. He may be able to do what you need for a reasonable enough price. I also would never expect him to rip off your idea, though I would of course make sure to have an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and the whole nine (legal-wise) yards in place. The website is http://appliedi.com/

I hope that helps.

As others have said, language isn't so important. That said, I can only recommend the tools I'm happy with: the Ganymede version of Eclipse for C++ with the Subclipse plugin (for Subversion). Gcc/G++ works well for me, though you can also use icc if you like. Other developers have told me that the Python version of the Ganymede Eclipse package is very nice as well, but I stick with C++, so that's only what I've heard. Find tools you like to use for development, and learn the libraries. You may want to take projects you developed for Windows in school and port them to Linux. That should give you an easy start.

Oh man, I am SO buying one of these for my yacht, along with some powerful solar panels. That way, if I get stranded on a deserted island somewhere, I'll at least know I'll have clean drinking water. Now I've just got to buy a yacht... anyone have one for sale, cheap?

As someone said, get a portfolio together to show companies. More importantly, follow how the coders get into the field: they write demo programs. Search around for opensource gaming projects which need a writer, and write for the opensource game. Make it good, and you can use that as a big feather in your cap to break into the industry. I suggest diving right in, too, rather than dipping your toes in with part-time stuff. Game developers make really good money. There's a Game Developer (I think that's the name) magazine too. I suggest you subscribe to that to get more insight into the industry. Also, look on usenet. People interested in coding for games talk on usenet, a LOT. Ask people there, and look for groups about game writing.

How about something on Internet Security, which has a focus on Penetration Testing?