very... same... experience... completely...

no one is saying you can't be paid for your work. I write free software as well, and i make money selling support and warranties. my code comes with absolutely no warranty, and anyone can use it, but seeing as it's aimed at schools (i design school administration systems), you can bet they want some guarantee the system will function, support availability if something malfunctions, bug fixes when released, and for the "pro" package they get to suggest custom features that i'll happily implement.

some choose to be charged by hours of actual support, others buy annual support packages. and then, some might want to just use the system themselves, without my support, it's their choice, i really don't mind.

oh, and i make some profit selling hardware, almost all schools here don't have a proper server, and some have horrible networking that requires some changing, to which i charge money as well...

it just works :)

The government wouldn't waste time doing a background check just because you flew to modern-day Democratic Russia

no, they would now do it if you flew to yemen or china

we spend years in university, paying thousands of dollars, to study networking and communication, not to sit at home and watch... but to answer those questions for you. hire a network engineer, and he'll be well worth it for you.

*you* wouldn't... the majority of the world's sheeple would be drooling at its sight, though...

they sure do make it a lot easier, with some downsides as well. i use keepassx on *nix, and keep a portable keepass on my USB thumb drive for windows computer. all my passwords are store in it, all are 25 characters, with around 200 bits of entropy each. the only thing to worry about, is the master password, which was created using keepassx's password generator as well. as long as i remember to exit it before leaving, or at least locking the computer, there's not much to worry about. all passwords different, all strong, and auto-type makes things very easy. the downside is... you dont really know any of your passwords, and become reliant on the program. that's why i keep at least 2 complex passwords committed to memory and use them for common stuff, like my email. it's quite embarrassing to sit by your university project partner, be asked to login to the university website, put hand in pocket, realize you forgot the thumbdrive home, and exclaim "i don't know my uni password at the moment".

oh you'll be surprised... don't be alarmed if one day you discover someone inside your own house is ad-clicking, or worse, can't tell the difference between a real button, and a flash-drawn ad button... and here i thought, my people would know better after all these years of obviously useless rants from my side....

that's why firefox has this nice addon called "ghostery". even better yet, if you don't mind creating exceptions for every new website you visit, "request policy" along with "ghostery" can completely kill this method of tracking, and i find it much saner than using "noscript".

It seems like you have the right idea of how to deal with him.

You are right, it's not a disability. The most important thing to consider, is getting him ready for the world outside. His interaction with society will never be as normal and easy as with the majority of people, but with proper training, and education, he can act like it is. People with autism lack empathy, and don't understand human emotions properly. It confuses them, and can put them in awkward positions as they rack their brain trying to guess what a non-autistic person would have done in similar circumstances. And this is the part to be focused on. Teaching them standard social behaviour. Autistic people love rules, love routine, and teaching them proper responses to common questions, proper behaviour to common incidents, will certainly make them much happier in life. If they dont know how to respond to something, they'll try and remember taught rules, then try to remember past experiences, maybe something they've seen in a movie, or read from a story, or happened with another family member.

For example, if one day, your son got married, and his wife bought him a bouquet of flowers. You shouldn't expect him to be as delighted as most men would be. But with proper training, he'll understand the gesture, he'll understand what she means by them, and will display the delight she's expecting, even though in reality, he really doesn't care about flowers at all. Eventually, he'll be capable of understanding most social interactions, understand expected responses, and cope with society, hiding his syndrome from everyone except those close to him.

All it takes is the basic understanding of what he has, and what *others* are like, and why he should try and cope.

Hope this helps you.

... and hacking your electronics into oblivion when provoked.

Indeed. Once you get used to it, you find it hard to believe that the rest of the world can't think like you. For the autistic (the high functioning ones), they find their minds highly logical, and can't understand how that is a "weird" thing. As far as I'm concerned it's an advantage one ought to be proud of.

Actually, Skype DOES use relaying. I use skype from behind a NAT, and so do most of my contacts, we're all inaccessible through our external IP addresses, and sometimes, me and my contact are from the same ISP, and hence behind the same NAT, sharing same external IP address. why it works? because our communication goes through skype servers!

it's not democracy, or republic, and far away from fascism yet. i prefer to call it "elected dictatorship". you elect a group of people to rule you dictatorially for few years, while ensuring whoever succeeds them, will have the same agenda.

indeed, and that's my point

the code is still out there somewhere, someone has a copy of it, the copy has a license file saying it's GPL'ed, and it can continue with the GPL, and original author can't force them to switch license regardless of what he did to his copy of code

well, technically... GPL cant decline unless a project is taken offline, the license doesn't permit the project to get another non-free license after it gets GPL'ed