Through an SSH tunnel to some publicly routed host.

Please do not operate heavy firewalls while under the influence.

You haven't mentioned your budget. If it is small, you want to go with Linux and LTSP. Get 3 servers, 2 of which have sufficient disk space for your media. Setup LTSP on server A, your media stuff on server B, everything backs up to server C, which is a warm spare in case A or B dies.
The desktops would be Fit PC2 or equiv with LCDs and USB keyboards and mice.

What you gain : only admining 3 computers, desktops are interchangable. If something breaks, you just swap parts. Security is centeralized and simplified.

While mirrors are easy to make, if you want non-line-of-sight wireless, use a spark gap emitter. The receiver would much harder to build, though.

That's why you buy a Sempron.

Or you buy a computer from a big box and install Linux.

... there was much of it. Very much of it!

"forced out of town on threat of fraudulent criminal charges"
What the hell kind of messed up police state do you live in?

Your first solution is the best. There is also

find /some/path -type f | egrep '\.(temp|tmp|junk)$' | while read file ; do rm "$file" ; done

and

find /some/path -type f | while read file ; do
  if [[ "$file" =~ "\.(temp|tmp|junk)$" ]] ; then
      rm "$file"
  fi
done

The first rule of shell scripts is "you don't write programs in shell."
The second rule of shell scripts is "you DON'T WRITE PROGRAMS IN SHELL." Seriously. You want perl or some other high level language.
The third rule is to start your script with "#!/bin/bash", not /bin/sh. Your script probably contains bashisms and you don't even know it. What's more, bash has some great features that are only available if you use it explicitly in your shebang.
The fourth rule would be to read the bash faq at http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ as it contains many tips and tricks that won't be obvious just by reading the man pages.

How many websites have hundereds of flying images? None that I visit regularly.

Websites are slow because the internet is slow and Javascript is slow.

Hardware acceleration might be needed by Flash, but this wont provide that.

Where does one find an LTO-4 drive for 300$ A quick google reveals they are actually in the 1000-2000$ range.

[[citation needed]]

Not to be too flippant, but "very often" is a weasle phrase. And that I find this entire sentence hysterical. Not as in "funny" but as in "perpetuating in a mass hysteria." You might be old enough to remember the "satanic ritual abuse" hysteria, or the "recovered memories" hysteria. If not, wikipedia might help you.

I must however point out that I do not think that child porn is victimless. The children are abused, yes. You do not need to add "kidnapped, raped, assaulted or even murdered" to the discussion.

I work with legacy systems written in Pro/5 BASIC. Yes, pain. But... if a user calls you up and says "Error 11 on line 31210" you can know pretty quickly what the problem was. Because all our programs are structured in such a way that we know roughly what 31210 is doing.

I don't really handle the BASIC stuff (my part is in Perl and Javascript), but I've heard my associate dictating a new line of code over the phone. Basically a one-line patch, improvised on the spot.

I was very impressed.

They are also going to drop support for Firefox 2. Which I still use because Firefox 3 requires a newer version of GTK. Which I don't have because I'm using FC5 on my desktop computer. And I haven't upgraded it because I can't be without a working desktop computer for the length of time an upgrade would take.

Yes there is a cost; a company installs a plug-n-play device A. It works for a while (months, years). Then it stops working or they want something changed or it doesn't work with some new device B. So then they call me to figure out the integration. Now, I need to log in and find out as much as I can about the device in as short a time as possible. I'm over 100 km from the device, have never used one before. The person who originaly installed device A has retired and is now snorkeling in the Solomon islands. So, what is root password? Either "123456" or I Google up a list of default passwords for the device. If I can't, that's a support call to the company that made the device (cost to maker) or the company that deployed it has to ditch the device and find something else (large cost to user).

So yes, complex passwords have a cost.