Everybody has ideas. They're a dime a dozen. Even original ones are near worthless when standing on their own. Most ideas are bad. Many are mediocre. The rest are expensive and time intensive to build.

G5's are great when you're working on PPC embedded hardware. I've had luck using VMs where full emulation was too slow. I think MS even used G5s for original XBox work, but that's just a rumor.

Windows 7 is really expensive for the service pack that it is.

They wanted the rights to BeOS. :)

WiSpy + walking around = finding your noise

Xbox 360 has dev kits. There are also game dev camps, out of work coders who pimp themselves out as tutors, easy iPhone rags-to-riches dreams (unlikely, but a motivator), etc. Motivation depends on the kid. Personally, I loved disassembling the games I loved and hacking in new functionality. Circumventing copy protection, finding easter eggs, upping stats, etc. The "hacker" angle might cause someone to gravitate toward game dev naturally.

I've made a lot of discoveries in neurofeedback, operating on myself as a guinea pig. I wouldn't entirely recommend it, BTW. The problem is, even if I find a practical cure for Alzheimer's, the medical & scientific communities will shun me. My protocol, research & trials could be flawless, but I'm an outsider. Rarely does research from the "outside" of academia get ANY acknowledgement. Often, the "real" scientists take your work, rearrange your data and then publish their own papers that essentially elaborate the exact same findings. After they steal credit for your work, they arrogantly condescend you and label you as simply "lucky" if called on it. They do this to each other too. Not all, but most... like lawyers. :p I'd recommend acquiring patents instead. Don't let the universities & journals fool you into thinking that the universe of science revolves around them. There's plenty of proper science going on behind closed doors. There was plenty going on before "them." Benjamin Franklin didn't finish high school, yet he gave birth to modern meteorology. There hasn't been a major breakthrough in the field since. If he were alive today, he'd probably be cast aside in favor of sacrificial offerings to rain gods.

I'm totally in agreement with telecommuting, in so long as it demands IRC / chat room presence and total availability.

Unless everyone on your team is battling ADHD, I'd recommend as close quarters as possible. The absolute best ideas, in my experience, have come from overhearing interesting discussions. Open work areas are also great for mentoring junior coders without inviting them to every single meeting. They get to overhear juniors & seniors alike conversing about things that may not even apply to their own jobs. The social aspect can also serve as motivation for peers to bone up on tech for the sole purpose of taking part in discussion. It builds report unlike formal meetings with agendas. This eventually leads to an incredibly strong & balanced team.

RSA keys are notoriously time intensive to brute-force. As far as I know, no one is crazy enough to automate an attack. If you disable password authentication altogether, you eliminate your risk of an automated dictionary attack. It might confuse the hell out of some users, which is a con.

COCOMO II models are based upon SLOC (source lines of code) estimates. You plug in a bunch of other metrics, like the language, type of application, quality of coders, calendar, etc. What you get out is a reasonable estimate, built from the analysis of 1,000's of real-world projects.

"How many lines of code?" is often easier to answer than "how long will this take?" Is SLOC accurate? No. But, it's only a small part of the process. You can always factor out waste from guys you know are gaming the system. With a decent tool, you can even plug in actuals from previous projects for fine tuning.

It's very similar to other methods, but tends to be a bit more accurate... despite asking for lines instead of hours.

That low-level access gave the Amiga several firsts:

Hardware accelerated 4-channel digital audio

4,096 colors (when the PC was limited to 16... Hercules offered hi-res monochrome)

Hollywood acceptance as an A/B video editor + SFX engine (commercials of the 1980's & Babylon 5 + others)

The exclusive screenshots to every PC title for a decade

Granted, computers have come far today. Consider their inspiration. The Amiga really did pave the way for advanced technology. It was a brief moment in PC technology that shaped the entire industry. Had Commodore had decent management, they would have ruled the world. The Amiga was at least 10 years ahead of everything that followed. Claiming superiority more than 20 years later is slightly lame. Of course we've surpassed the original hardware. You still need to acknowledge the masters of history.

I have a Genesi PPC box and run Morph OS on it. It's excellent, although, only if you're a major geek. Compatibility primarily consists of old-school Amiga applications. You need to be Amiga minded. heh. Boots quickly. Power off is as simple as pulling the coord. The development API & tools suck. Sorry. They just do. You need to be motivated to develop (or port) for the platform... or simply have an existing Amiga application's source. Power PC native apps are supported as well as old Motorola CPUs (w/ an impressive JIT emulator).

Now I don't have to see Fox news headlines anywhere online!