I can't really answer all your questions, because future development of Maya is mostly confidential. The 6.0 release was targeted more towards the animation side of things, although future releases...

Simply make the gravity on the hairSystem node zero... it is simply there for convenience and efficiency. You can use normal Maya fields on the hair if desired.

Duncan

Here are two ways you could affect when a fluid starts.
1. set the startTime on the fluid
2.(if you want to get all the animated force effects, etc) cache the fluid then break the default time...

Make the elevation min/max 1.0 and the random 0.
Duncan

Select a flame brush then select the text curves and call paintEffects->applyBrushToCurves. Then edit the brush and change the colors to blue (from orange).
Duncan