So there is also an issue of food availability. When I was young I split all entrees at restaurants with the person I was with. I don't do that anymore and it has become an increasing issue. Also, one does not burn off calories and fat as easily when one gets older
A couple cases of kids going to jail will limit the problem. Teenagers are always going to test limits, and some do so to the extent that the adult legal system is required to help motivate them not to cause problems for other people.
It was not so long ago that the telephone was a new thing, many parents were not raised with it, and did not really know how to manage it with the kids. Kids got into trouble, and laws were passed to help define what was good and bad behavior.
I know that adults say this all the time, but if we do not figure out how to play with our toys nicely, we are going to lose the privileged of unencumbered play.
From a personal point of view, from personal experience, in my opinion there is no punishment too great for someone who files false police reports, and that goes doubly so for those cowards who hide behind computers.
Also, I think TexShop is the best LaTex editor. I tries some for Windows, and they universally suck, IMHO. I can't believe how much time I wasted trying to use word for technical stuff when I was in school. Learn Latex. I will save you life.
In school I did all my data analysis on a Mac using C and C++. Of course some of it was too much for the Mac, so I telnet to the SGI. I was still able visualize everything in GNUPlot and output on or plotter through my mac. Again, I wasted a lot of time in excel until I learned to use GNUPlot. Later I also did some work using Graphviz.
There are a lot of C++ and general IDE for the Mac. Of course there is Eclipse. If you want an OS with a side of IDE, there is always the old standby EMACS. Actually, I use AquaEmacs for my IDE. learn to use GIT.
What I find most interesting is how powerful modern machines are with respect to the requirements of most research. For instance any physics student should invest in Mathematics. It saved my hide in the numerical methods class. It could probably run well on any mac made within the past three years.
Only caution is that a separate graphic card is recommended if there is a lot of data visualization involved. That means a the high end 15" macbook pro.
The missing step here is a practical fusion reactor.
The reason we need to think about industry on the moon is that if we are going to be a space faring culture, eventually, we need to have resources that are not locked up in the gravity well of the Earth. It is too expensive and is going to continue to be too expensive to life everything needed for space travel from the earths surface.
Before that I had a significant experience writing programs, at least for a 13 years old in the nascent PC world. The problem was that it was very mechanical. The problem is that most kids in the 9-12 year old range do not have a great deal of abstract thinking skills, so can't really program computers, any more than they can do algebra. Yes, they can do some coding, but not the analytical work. Yes, some kids can do algebra at 10, but not many.
So this is why things like Alice are used to teach the concepts to pre-teens and children. Using heavy scaffolding, which means I wrote most of the programs myself and just let the kids type it in, I have taught 11-13 year old kids to make games in python as a web based application.
For pre-teens with minimal abstract thinking skills, the most interesting thing that can be taught with programming is cause and effect, a critical skill for children. This leads directly to more abstract skills as the child ages.
Presumably this was not good enough for U-2, so we have this intrusive method of stuffing iTunes user accounts with unwanted music. For the record I was never a U-2 fan, and now it just seems like some desperate cut rate band.
The new Star Trek says violence is the way. That the violent people win. And brings a new level of suspension of rational thought. That the Earth would have no defenses against a rougue star ship. That a meeting would have no defenses against a rough droid. That we would be running across the city chasing a suspect. That civilization could build a starship, but could not protect the citizenship. It is not so much a dark world, but a world that reflects the fears of technologically illiterate audience.
Life is pretty bad when your star trek movie makes less sense than the Fifth Element, which at least had good actors.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.