It means that you can put a sim-card from any network into the phone. For example, if you buy a phone from orange, you can only put an orange sim in it. If you buy a sim-unlocked phone, you could put in an orange sim, vodafone sim, 3 sim etc.
If you go on the android developer site (http://developer.android.com/index.html), you can see some development devices. The "Nexus One" is listed, as well as the "ADP 2", though to use these for development, you have to buy them sim-unlocked from android or somewhere. Have a look round the site and see what you can find.
Offtopic: clicking sound could be caperjack's grammar and spelling fail? My advice would be to check power to each of the components (SAFETY FIRST! CHECK UP ON HOW YOU NEED TO BE EARTHED SO YOU DON'T ZAP YOURSELF!!!). If one or two components aren't getting power, then they are faulty. If many aren't getting power, then the power supply might be damaged.
I'm not too sure in this area, but seeing as the power light is on, it sounds like the plug is working, though you could test this out with a voltmeter to make sure the plug is supplying the correct voltage.
You would indeed use a while loop. You would want the console to be hidden, so save your script as a [*.pyw]. If you want to not use your CPU too much, you could put in a delay/wait/sleep or whatever you want to call it, so the program is checking the serial ports literally all the time. You could have it updating once a second, for example.
Do you mean program WITH the phone, or program FOR the phone? Not sure about programming with it. Seeing as it is an android device, there may be an android app for this, but you would haev to do some research. If you mean programming FOR, then of course you can! Do a quick google and see what you can turn out. Good luck :)
Welcome to DaniWeb! Don't worry about being knew and being knew in IT generally. We're here to help you ;) I started out here not knowing much about programming and being a complete noob generally, but I've progressed quite far with the help of this community and my aim now is to help others. Enjoy :)
I would use Python 2.7, simply because there are so many more tutorials and examples on the internet. Python 3x isn't yet supported by many useful libraries, so Python 2.7 is the way to go at the moment. One day there will be a big shift where the majority jumps across to 3x, but at the moment, just stick to version 2. (Please upvote my helpful posts :) ) EDIT: Thanks for the upvote :)
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMonkeyLords#p/c/0/RC5GeZIOZaU This is a guy who has a series of Python 3 tutorials. If the link works, you should see the playlist of the videos on the right. If not, you will need to find the "Python 3 Tutorials" playlist. Good luck :)
I would make a simple game. If the game is text based, you could do something like tic-tac-toe. If you really want to go for it, you could do a console version of space invaders, but this may be too challenging for a first project.
Wow! That's a lot of code! The best thing to do, before we read through your code, is for you to use "cout" statements to work out where the lions are disappearing. Look at the last console line when a lion disappears at the wrong time, and then you can work out where the line is, or where abouts it is.
Here's the stuff you need for C++ with Allegro (you won't be able to do OpenGL yet, trust me). These are downloads and a couple of tutorial links. Go on them in order.
It depends what you want to do. If you just want to start making basic 2D games, then you would want to learn C++ and Allegro. http://www.cppgameprogramming.com/cgi/nav.cgi?page=index (Double click anywhere on the site to bring up a menu). Start with the C++ tutorials and make some demo programs, then move on to using allegro to make games.
If you want to make more advanced games with C++, you will have to use DirectX or OpenGL, or one of the many game engines. However, this is entirely different from allegro and is a steep learning curve.
If you want to make fairly advanced 2D games, you should use Python with PyGame. PyGame is like allegro, but it also contains functionality for music and sounds, video etc.
If you want to progress further than that with PyGame, you can start using PyOpenGL (the python binding for OpenGL). This works through PyGame, so you are building on your existing knowledge. PyOpenGL is a fair bit easier than C++ with OpenGL, though it isn't as well documented and there are less tutorials.
It depends which way you want to go: C++ and Allegro Python and PyGame
My advice is to watch a tutorial for Allegro, then one for OpenGL (C++), then one for PyGame, then one for PyOpenGL.
