If you are worried that your laptop containing sensitive data might get stolen and thief would there by get the passwords stored in your firefox browser, then here is my suggestion.
Use the finger print or retina recognition so that the laptop operates only when it recognizes you. These are becoming standard these days with IBM T400 series having finger print recognition and Dell Inspiron 15 series having retina recognition.
If you are worried that there are so many passwords to maintain, then yes, I am worried about that too. Open IDs are coming up for help, but there are not there yet.

I, whenever possible use OpenID. then I store my passwords in firefox sxipper (with not all the values default, like I wont store my expiry date of the card, but would have input card number and password) and I dont use finger print recognition as I did not feel the need for it.

Caching. Without that Google, it's services and the whole of the internet would be sloooooooooooooooooow and boring one

Yes, you are right. With the development of Google we have similar seen development of Open Source technologies too. Google offers a convenience to a lot of users. They don't force themselves upon users. That is why they seem to be popular with both general crowd(solely for convenience) and technical /philosophy minded crowd ( not forcing down your throat). People who don't want it, can of course live without it.

Wait no longer, www.alice.org is already there.

Not to mention, how many of them are passing themselves off as "Researchers" doing interesting research on those "Gamers".

Not actually, he said "Linux is bloated" not "Linux is obsolete". There is a hell a lot of difference between bloated and obsolete. The bloated software never become obsolete. You have an excellent example, sorry, two excellent examples floating around.

Well, it is present as a required reading in many US schools, I suppose.
No wonder, how they got the Apple's 1984 advertisement properly. If it had not been in their textbooks, do you think Apple would be where it is today?

You probably are right. I have heard Negroponte a couple of times and have had the impression. I also have a couple of facts to illustrate that his vision is not shared by prominent people.

1. India did not participate in the OLPC project itself. If it had caught in India, it could have been a different story altogether. There are thousands of kids in India, who in couple of years come to grasp with technologies. Government of India, did not feel that OLPC was a viable thing to do for India schools. Instead of backing off, OLPC should have worked out a solution for Indian market. Considering that India is a third world country and where technology catches up pretty quickly and students catch up with the learning curve easily (British gift of English and Infrastructure being one reason)

1. Even before OLPC initiative, Negropontes Media Lab initiative suffered in India. Then minister Arun Shourie (who is a recognized leader and thoughtful person in his own right), felt that Negropontes Intiative's were not very convincing. Even if it had a tag of MIT.

Also I tend to trust Ivan KrstiÄ more than Negroponte. Those were the guys who sweated it out to bring OLPC. It was sad to see all the tech guys back off the project.

One more thing, If you beat your drums before you have something, you are basically full filling your ego, nothing else. OLPC did that from the first day.
It was also called 100 dollar laptop. Is it available for 100 dollars yet?