What controls are used for the second paddle in this Pong clone? If a gamepad, then since when does GLUT support gamepads? If another computer, then since when does the same networking code work without modification (not even WSAStartup()) on Windows?

The problem with advertising on the internet is that people who want to advertise are not considering customs. When people watch television, they expect to see commercials. It has become a part of social life. When we go to a movie theater, we expect film advertisements before the show but not during it. When we read a newspaper, we expect ads to be printed in a certain way. If we want to buy something online, we go to something like craigslist, Amazon, or we just search for it.

But it is not our social custom to just click on ads blinking on the screen when we are not looking for something to buy. Our brains just blocked it out. When advertisers realized that, they became increasingly aggressive. They even went as far to become malicious. Now peoples' perception of browsing is that they must do it safely. Because of all the malware propagated through ads and the methods these advertisers use, this kind of business is effectively dead.

Unless the game was developed using the Allegro library. Distributions that switched to PulseAudio broke sound in Allegro games because PulseAudio does not like unsigned 16-bit PCM.

The way a lot of programming goes today isn't any fun

It's not fun because it's a job. If it was supposed to be fun, you'd be paying your boss to do it, rather than the other way around.

A photo might take care of the window, if looked at from a distance. But having small plastic mockups look way cooler.

It adds costs. Besides, many people already pointed out that Intel would be happy to provide its partners with "mechanical samples" of the processor - its early prototypes. All it takes is to apply some voltage/amperage to some pins to burn the bonding wires, and then the chip is dead. There is plenty of reasons to ship mechanical samples because customers would like to hold them in their hands - something you don't do with real parts. Milling or die-casting an aluminum hunk to look like the CPU does nothing to promote the product, costs extra money compared to free prototypes, and hurts Intel's credibility.

what if for some reason (building entire walls out of them...) Asian countries needed huge amounts of these demo boxes? Which would give them a plausible reason to manufacture these locally.

Reason - yes, but not the right. The boxes carry Intel's trademark and claim to contain Intel products inside. They even have the barcode that matches a real product. What reason could possibly exist to create a real barcode for a demo box while any fake one, with a wrong checksum, would do?

If customers were already paying a ABC channels, I hope Cablevision reduces the bills for all of their subscribers, otherwise it's going to be even more clear to their customers that Cablevision is screwing them over.

If you decide to create a website, or a blog with original content in it, you are not entitled to profit, consider yourself lucky if you even get any. The more annoying people make advertising the more intensive scripts will be made to ignore them, advertising companies and content creators need to realize that the popup add and sidebanners are becoming more and more obsolete in this day, people will not be buying random bullshit that they see in an ad on their internet browser, especially in this economy. The consumer knows what they want, and they will use the correct resources to make these purchases when the time comes (Google, Newegg, Amazon, etc). Ad companies need to realize that they are in an obsolete business and need to either adapt or die.

Doing it with a plough might work, but copper is a lot more robust than fibre (especially for fairly vague definitions of connection quality). Running it alongside the power lines is probably the most cost effective way to do the planning, but you still have to pay someone to go up the pole and add another one. Again, you're not saving a huge percentage by already having the poles (probably enough to pick it over trenching though). Long-haul fibre can span transoceanic distances. If you have dispersion-compensating segments you can get it up to a few hundred km without significant bandwidth loss on the to-the-home scale.

Fine. How much would you like to go and dig a trench across 100 km of sun-scorched dirt? Oh, and it has to be properly done - not just buried, but surveyed and ducted, and flood proof, and bushfire proof, and wombat proof (no I'm not kidding, the little buggers dig like mad). The cost of the fibre is, in comparison, bugger all. It's the cost of laying it that makes the difference between fibre and satellite as the best choice to Farmer Trev.

To answer your questions: Yes. Yes. Marketing.

Yahoo and Hotmail do that already, by appending an advert to any email you send.

Good thing Windows doesn't make a clicking sound every time you press a key.

The first Microsoft Natural keyboards came with "Intellitype" software. It included a function that made Windows (3.1) do exactly that - play a 'click' sound every time you pressed a key.