I'm guessing that your local community probably has some needs for your skills, whether its an elementary school, charity organization, adult education program, etc....You'd be surprised how many people are held back by their lack of basic computer skills Slashdotters think they were born with.

I share your same desire to be able to donate my skills to humanitarian organizations in need (I can't build a house with my hands, but I can sure set up networks, workstations, infrastructure, etc), but many people in the world need basic services like toilets a lot more than they need electronics.

A few options for backup (I used all of these for my collection):

* Buy a bunch of USB external HD's, put the movies on them, and send them off to various members of your family (they'll love to have them too)!
* Upload everything to a Private YouTube account, then give your family access to them
* Backup to a Hard Drive, and place it offsite
* Carbonite or Dropbox

I just got a firm foam anti static floor mat for my workstation, and it is the greatest money I have ever spent. Even standing for 20 minutes is greatly improved by something a little squishy under my feet.

If any person might be standing in some spot, put one on the floor.

As for software and digital copies of stuff, buy a big honkin NAS device and store everything in ONE PLACE. Just the fact that its on the same physical machine eliminates people's need to search anywhere else.

IAAP

The concept of using ADS-B to spoof position reporting doesn't hold water, since there are backup systems (Mode C/S xpdr)...though it may trigger a traffic alert on a neighbor's TCAS if it only relies on ADS-B reports (which it shouldn't). You can't control anything with just ADS-B spoofing.

Hacking the FMS via something like vulnerability in the ACARS receive stack....ok that might be in the realm of possibility. Except its not very useful, because any deviation of course or altitude would be detected by the pilots and ATC nearly immediately. Redundancy is built in at the human level.

I ran a similar test like this when I was having performance troubles with one of my QA apps.

I had written it in C# because I was bored and wanted to explore the language a little bit. I ran into issues with threading and performance when ramping up TCP connections and data processing.

I did a line-by-line rewrite into C++ (seriously, I copied the source and translated each line)....and all my performance problems went away.

In my experience, both Java and C# are easy to write, but abysmal when it comes to performance.

if you're 5'10 ish, blonde/blue, I can help you out

I've got extra copies of certain documents

come anyways, the worst they'll do is just turn you away at the door

hindsight is finally catching up with me, as I realize my username was created by some 19-year old kid with no real thoughts toward the future

my French is also tres tres mal, so please have mercy on me

nah, the crude humor is that all the flights in the game are on-time, and you get a meal + beverage for free

go buy 2 or 3 cheap 8-10TB NAS devices

cycle one of them through every few months for a backup, and then store it at another physical location

that will run you less than $3000 total and a lot fewer headaches

"Academics come first hands down so male/female ratio and party scene aren't too important."

Part of college is to have fun, because once you are older, you're not "allowed" to be irresponsible like you were in your college days. I studied engineering, and looking back, I wish I had been to more parties and met more people.

When you start interviewing for jobs, you need to be able to hold a conversation, be interesting, talk about different things, and generally be a likable person. An active social life will help you with that.

Life isn't all about academics - enjoy it a little.

OK

Then I want access to a record of where every public employee is at all times of the day, fed right into my Google Maps

This sounds like the automated baggage handling system installed in Denver a while back.

Hundreds of millions of dollars later, it was a complete failure, and they resorted to hand carts.

Holy crap how do you get away with that small amount of maintenance?

Have you had any trouble finding parts?

Continental or Lycoming?

Think of stupid the average guy is, and then realize that 50% of them are stupider than that!

Write up a one page document about the project, then go look at the code you are modifying. Make your best guess estimate, then double it.