Terribly interesting that you seem to believe that your children's peers are likely to be a better influence than an adult teacher. Terribly sad if it's actually true, but it's almost certainly not. Even given the rather notable exceptions of teachers sleeping with high school aged kids, sex is hardly the worst you have to worry about. The other children are offering drugs, illegal activity (trespassing, and street racing were favorites in my day), and sex. Not to mention that peers are far more likely to reject adult supervision, and adult ideals of behavior.

That's all ok though, because we all know your kids haven't listened to you in 5 years, and they aren't going to start now. Your kids get their culture from TV, movies, games, and other kids, you as a parent have only a minimal influence over this, especially if like most people, your kid has been raised on multi-media with little or no oversight.

I've often laughed about this privately. You see, many years ago, in 8th grade I was in an advanced class called project science. Among many other things, we created contact explosives, a heat seeking missile, laser holography (including forging an existing hologram sticker), a rocket powered RC car capable of ground effect flight at over 150mph, and a dozen different chemical concoctions with various properties.

What makes all this funny is that it was an 8th grade class of school kids and a good teacher. Nothing more. So when people talk about airline security, I always chuckle a little bit. Off the top of my head, and for less than $1k, I could think of a couple ways to down a commercial aircraft. Most of which would not require a suicide bombing at all.

Fortunately, people with the kind of geeky knowledge to do it aren't motivated to do it. And the kind of people with the motivation rarely have the exposure to the tech needed. Which is actually kind of an interesting dynamic.

I think the game you are looking for is called StarFarer. http://fractalsoftworks.com/ It's still in alpha, but it's progressing well so far, and the alpha is playable and modable today.

This is what you choose to take issue with against biblical literalists? That's a tiny bit myopic, isn't it? Perhaps we could get a bit of a bigger picture.

I'm pretty sure that is originally from Hicks. It's worth noting that Hicks was never ever on stage without a smoke, and a drink. Not once ever as far as I know.

That depends on what you mean by legally. The civil aviation authorities in Stockholm might have something to say about you flying a drone over their city. But they don't get much say once you beyond the economic boundary lines.

Come to think of it, you might want to check where the international air routes are first, because if you knock down an airliner with your drone, international water or not, you are going to have a BAD day.

No, that is horribly incorrect. If the entire point is loiter time (uptime in your parlance), then a helium inflatable HALL (high altitude Long loiter) drone with solar panels could easily achieve 2-3week flight times. EASILY. I could build this from local hobby shops, and have it flying by months end. Granted it's not on par with standard server uptimes, but then, I don't have a few million to invest in the project. I think I could achieve 100% uptime with an ongoing program releasing X number of drones to keep N in flight at all times, thereby providing at least 1 layer of redundancy. That even using only off the shelf solutions and doing no actual development on a HALL drone body and electronics package, or just buying one from Boeing/Raytheon/whoever.

It's amusing that you seem to be too young to have any idea what "true hacker fashion" means.

When you can get yourself elected while simultaneously proclaiming to be Wiccan, Muslim, or Buddhist, we might have something to talk about.

The US isn't a theocracy, it's just run entirely by Christians. I'm not sure how that would make my point more salient. It's not like the US goes around trying to force our values on the rest of the world... oh yeah hmmm. Well it's not like we evangelize Christian morality or belief structures... Ok OK, but we don't go around killing people that don't agree with our values/way of life... Oh right.

So while we are busy not being a theocracy, we just walk like one, talk like one and act like one. But we aren't one, so it's not an issue, right?

Funny, if you were better educated (or just smarter) you'd probably know that your 5 year old self had considerably more brain power available to him than you do in adulthood. Particularly in regard to memory.

So... using a bank account should be done with the consideration that the usage I put it to might come under scrutiny from a corporate entity that has paid my bank for the privileged, meanwhile failing to ascertain my disposition on the matter? Kindly go fuck yourself. Take your corporate spy lords with you.

Not a theocracy? Please see the US Congress and House, now list all members, and now put a check box next to the ones that claim to be Christian or offshoots there of.

Now, I'll give you a minute to collate that data. Done? So, Theocracy? If not, then how would you define it?

Don't kid yourself, you life in a theocracy, run by people that believe ultimate judgement will be at the hands of their fairy god father or his evil counterpart. You can believe whatever you want, the facts are clear.

You mean like huge digital repositories of educational material freely available to anyone with an internet connection? That would be really cool if we have something like that...http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/education/index.htm

How can you be so foolish as to think that students are the consumers? Let me introduce you to the concepts at work here. The CONSUMER is the one paying money for a service. Which means that the ultimate consumer are the taxpayers (not even the parents alone, arguably not them at all). The money flow is simple and straight forward. From my pocket, to your corrupt bureaucracy, to shady text book suppliers. If the text book suppliers can make more money by rewriting the books every couple of years, they will. If they could make more money having a really good book, they would. Can you guess which of those two options is reality?

Oh good, invent bezerkers. This is NOT the kind of thinking we need.