"How often do you really use the command line anyway?"

You gotta' be kidding me? Forget work, even in my daily personal use I open a terminal at least once or twice a day. Once you understand how things work & learn the tools you have at your disposal, the command line is faster & more efficient by far.

Starting & stopping services;
Debugging processes;
Load management;
Checking logs;

If it hadn't cut my teeth on Slackware, I'd have no clue how to compile a program from source, have no idea about how to work around dependencies & would have only the vaguest idea of what a kernel is. If my experiences were limited to the likes of Debian & Red Hat (heck, even OpenBSD) then I'd be heavily reliant on general use binaries & package managers, & be completely stuck when it came to dealing with conflicting dependencies or rebuilding programs with obscure flags. I might as well use Windows.

If you have to ask that question, Slackware isn't for you.

You jest, but what's the old adage? "If you want to learn Debain, use Debian. If you want to learn Linux, us Slackware."
(replace "Debian" with your packaged distro of choice)

It really depends on what your aim is. Is this for personal use, or career/study? If the former, then go the Ubuntu/Mint route as most people are is suggesting, but if the latter, then throw yourself in the deep end & learn to swim.
The major desktop distros are so stable now that you will rarely, if ever, need to delve under the hood. This won't teach you "Linux". If someone sat you down at a terminal, or with a distribution you had never used before, you'd be completely lost. But if you go for a system that requires you to get your hands dirty, then you will learn very quickly.

The lessons you learn with Slackware will be transferable to every Linux/POSIX environment you find yourself in.
The lessons you learn with Ubuntu/CentOS/$distro will only teach you how to use that particular distro.

Check out sixxs.net for a decent tunnel broker. They're also a good starting point to find ISPs who can provide native IPv6 routing (those same ISPs would also be likely to be have the infrastructure in place to provide the standard services you require).

If you're UK based, Goscomb are v6 native, provide static addressing (free & by default) & FTTC, don't perform any traffic shaping & offer 30-day rolling contracts.
Their caps are a little low for me, but it's a good service & I get what I pay for.

I'm another +1 to this.
I don't have an issue working from home occasionally, but there's no way I'd want to do it full time (again).

When I focus on something, I don't want to stop until its done. I deal with this in the office by giving myself a cut-off time, and once I've left the building, that's it.
At home I don't have that "boundary" to go from work-mode to leisure-mode, so even if I try to remove myself from the computer, my mind is still set on work.
I get "cabin fever" if I work from home for several days on end - occasionally, I used to go a week without leaving the house. I'd have to purposefully take myself out on walks to get a change of scenery & clear my mind.

I'm not a morning person, so having to get up & out for my commute helps get my brain into gear, ready for the day's work.
I'm also a social person, and having experienced both having my own office & working in an open office, I actually preferred the open office. Communication was just that bit slicker, and we all respected each other's space & need for concentration.
I think it really just depends on the size of the office & the kind of people you're working with. I don't think "cube farms" are all that popular in the UK, & I don't think I'd like to experience one. I've always preferred working with smaller companies & have never had to work in an office (or company for that matter) with more than 8 people.

I use my 7" tablet almost exclusively for reading the news & as a remote for my media centre.
Video & CPU intensive stuff slows it to a halt & kills the battery, however it's superb for the less demanding work.

If you enable DLNA on whatever device you store your media on, it will be automatically discoverable on the network & controllable via the tablet.
You can stream music to/from the tablet, or any other DLNA enabled device. It's very straightforward to setup on Windows, Linux & (I would assume) OSX.

For my personal setup, I have an XBMC box connected to my TV & Hi-Fi which I control via Yatse (way better than the official XBMC remote) & 2player.
As well as acting as an XBMC remote, Yatse allows me to organise playlists, browse & preview (album/movie art, reviews, trailers, lyrics, etc.) my entire library & then command my media centre to play it.
2player is just a straightforward DLNA controller, allowing you to play music from the selected source, to the selected destination.

None of this needed any geeky fiddling around or delving into config files. I simply enabled the appropriate network sharing options on my devices & it *just worked*.

In the same stretch, you would have to classify yourself as an agnostic when it comes to the invisible pink unicorns that live at the bottom of your garden.
Why do you believe in your Abrahamic god and not, say, Odin, Zeus or Osiris? What makes your myth more believable than theirs? (I'm not trying to mock you here, it's a serious question)

I think you're misrepresenting atheism. I'm yet to hear someone say "I believe there is no God" in a serious context, what is usually said is "I don't believe in God", or "I'm not religious". Very different statements & like with the unicorn analogy, I'm not going to position myself on the fence & bother postulating that perhaps there *are* invisible pink unicorns at the bottom of my garden, I'll just assume there aren't until proven otherwise - ergo, I define myself as an atheist.

I also feel it worth pointing out that the god(s) most people believe in *can* be (dis)proven. The only infallible god, is one that has never interfered with the universe - that includes creating worlds, burning bushes, producing offspring with supernatural abilities, the lot.

There's a big difference in believing there is no God & not believing in a god. One is a belief, the other is the absence of a belief.
What's the quote, "When you understand why you discount the many other gods people ascribe to, you will understand why I discount yours." ?

Technically I'm an Agnostic, but I hate that term - it makes me sound like I'm still sitting on the fence, so I prefer to identify myself as an Atheist. I have no interest in holding convictions for something for which there is no tangible evidence.

Libel laws are frequently used by people & organisations to silence criticism. Regardless of the strength of your defence the legal costs can be prohibitive, so many people cave to the pressure.

There was, for example, a well known case here in the UK where the British Chiropractic Association tried to sue Simon Singh after he wrote an article pointing out how many of the claims made by the practitioners are a crock of shit.
He won the case, but he had to sell his house to back the costs.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCA_v._Singh

Mod parent up.

The BBC article he's referring to is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19659801
...and more specifically on the topic, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12597245

I was under the understanding the money was only withdrawn once the product had reached its funding target? An all or nothing kinda' thing?

You seem to be under the impression that the only reason someone would want to go somewhere, is if they're running away?
This might come as a shock to you, but I'm interested in seeing the world beyond my own front garden...

If I'd never left the comfort of my own home, I wouldn't have my comfy career (based on the experience only achievable in a large international city), I wouldn't have anywhere close to the number & variety of friends I now have, I wouldn't have the freedom speaking multiple languages brings, I wouldn't have had the facilities or community to do the sports I enjoy, I wouldn't have experienced...so many things. I wouldn't have met my wife.
That doesn't mean I don't miss the friends I've made throughout it all - I intend to see every one of them again one day.

Feeding the trolls, but I'm bored

Not at all. The parent (thetoadwarrior) sounds very much like many other tech associates I have, whose social reach doesn't extend much beyond "geek" circles.
I'm afraid the majority of people simply don't hold the same views (they're unlikely to even be aware of the subject matter).

The quality of the content on you get on the site, can be directly correlated with the type of people you add.
If I haven't even had the minimum of a conversation with you in real life, I won't be accepting your friendship requests. If you only post inane drivel - zap, you're gone.

As for it being "impossible" to have x number of friends, I'm afraid that's entirely subjective & dependent on your lifestyle.
I like to travel & I've lived in several countries. At certain times in my life (alas, not currently) I've also found myself socialising in many different circles & have been heavily involved in various sports.
By all means, if I'd spent my entire life living in the same area & my social group hadn't changed much since the days of school/university, my social reach would be far more limited.

In short, Facebook is great for keeping in touch with friends across large distances. Email simply doesn't compare when it comes to sharing & commenting on media/photos & for having real time discussions - all in one place. When I go $home, it's as if I'd never left.

For the most part, they're talking FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) here. Although the last hundred or so metres from the DSLAM is over copper coax & the users would need to upgrade to a VDSL compatible router.
You can check your local FTTC availability here.

I'm not sure where FTTH (Fibre to the Home) stands, beyond the current trail areas.

If those IPs were geographically diverse, I would expect a bigger separation between subnets. Splitting one subnet over multiple distant networks would not only be a pain, but make little sense, as it still allows for a single point of failure.

I've just run a traceroute to a selection of those IPs via different continents, and it does seem to suggest those servers are on the same network segment.

> Perfect example of someone thinking he knows better.
Back at'cha!

Last I heard, shooting moose in Alaska...