http://servicesbeta.esri.com/demos/web-tiled/xkcd-1110.html Totally amazing work, my favorite XKCD. Now if someone turns it into a game...

The odds that you would create something that isn't already covered by some one else's patent are pretty low. As someone else mentioned, copyright is all you need. I'm pretty sure it would cost you a lot of money and time to even patent your "amazing" software. So now, that big company would not only steal your software anyway since they are bigger than you and have millions of patents already that you do not... but would also probably come and sue you for infringing their patents. At least with copyright if you didn't know about someone else's design, you won't be willfully infringing, but you can't just say "I didn't mean to infringe your patent" like you can with copyrights.

As on offshoot if you do learn animation / sound recording and the such, you can go into the video game industry as well. Its hard to break into, and you actually have to be quite good at animation and very creative. If you can do that though, I think it could be a very fun atmosphere to work in (minus the likely long hours) Similar issue that the other post near this points out though, is that most video game jobs are also in California, though smaller companies exist all over the US and the world.

Apple will tell you thats illegal =0 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/1722237

And what about then the light goes through their atmosphere?

Split the Internet into many littler Internets! Start over!!

Do I really want EA freely searching my hard drive.. haven't they done enough.

I used OpenGL for almost 10 years and loved it, then I learned DirectX and I have completely stopped using OpenGL because its just so much easier to use, the tools are easier to use, and its overall better, that seems to be a good excuse. I don't have to worry "Is multi-texturing supported by this card? Can I use a VBO?" It's all supported or the card wouldn't support DirectX anyway.

Unless its Saturday night and you need that printer for a report due Monday... You'll be missing that brick-and-mortar store then...

Netbeans, while normally used for java programming, has a text editor. When you combine it with the plugin named "Local History" you are able to see every version of the file that's saved. You can have it show you the differences also.