?

I'm trying to remember a book from my childhood, but only have vague memories.

A young man has his idea for an operating system stolen (by a friend?), which then becomes wildly successful and makes the person who stole it incredibly rich. The man codes a virtual world, which starts to take over the real world (at least for some of the characters), and the main characters have to interact with this real world to resolve something.

I'm trying to recall a book from my childhood, of which I have only vague memories.

In it, a child stops experiencing his daily life, and wakes up disoriented. He is in space, and is a clone of that original character, experiencing a clone memory. He is part of a crew on a space ship, and they have (maybe?) samples of all sorts of life forms, and are travelling to the edge of the universe. There are large (black?) asteroids which have to be hit at the right angle to not cause damage, and figuring out this angle is what the main character is particularly good at.

I believe at some point they find another ship with dead clones of themselves, but I'm not sure.

My housemate's laptop is having issues. He's running Windows 7. The wireless adapter detects and connects to the WiFi network, and claims to have internet connection, but his browsers won't connect to anything. Steam connects to chat, but cannot access the store. Any ideas on a fix?

In theory, if an animal has died from a poisonous viper bite, will the venom deteriorate and the meat eventually become safe to eat, or will it remain poisonous?

Additionally, if it would remain poisonous under normal conditions, is there a way (such as heating, etc) to destroy the venom?

The video below is an example:

http://vimeo.com/4505537

How often do these events occur, and how would I find out about when and where it would be possible to see one?

Is there a website tracking such upcoming events? Not just in the immediate future, but how about the long run, too?

Thanks in advance!