> You cannot live in a free society if there is a class of people that are born with rights to which the majority have no claim.

You just described every society on the planet. Whether it's due to aristocratic privilege or good ol' money, that's how the world works.

Just don't plug it into a Mac keyboard.

For the last year or so I've been using an Amazon EC2 small server, running Xubuntu Desktop (and accessed via NoMachine remote desktop) as my main development environment. I'm a LAMP developer who works at home a fair bit, and since I already had the EC2 server running a couple of client sites I decided to try and get remote desktop access to it, as described here:

http://aws-musings.com/4-easy-steps-to-enable-remote-desktop-on-your-ubuntu-ec2-instance/
(ps - see step 6 here also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX or the 'sudo /usr/lib/nx/nxsetup --install' command won't work )

Why bother?

Well, I needed a static IP address to access certain things for work (private, ip-locked rss feeds for example). I had got around that previously by dialing in via GoToMyPC to my office Windows PC (where we have a static IP). The main problem there was it could be a bit laggy (especially when our office connection was being hogged by outgoing offsite backups), especially for some reason when I was using my virtual linux environment (running on VirtualBox).

It works really well - I have nice and reliable (linux) desktop environment that I can get access to from any of my machines, with the added bonus that I can demo things straight from my 'local' dev envirnoment as it's actually on the web.

I'm amazed by this thread - at my current position (where I'm now the lead dev) I have it written in to my contract that I'll give two months of notice (this was a requirement when the gave me a raise). That's not really that odd here in the UK - previously I've had a three month notice period.

YMMV - personally I learnt best by listening to the lecturer and digesting what they're saying (and, even better, asking the odd question). Writing things down doesn't help me remember, and never has - I actually find it distracting.

On the other hand (here in the UK) my Dad was rushed to hospital when he had a blood clot in his lung and received first class treatment. My wife was admitted straight away for a gall bladder infection (after a visit to the GP), and our baby was born in a brand new birth centre with fantastic facilities and great midwives.

Generally speaking, the NHS is fantastic when anything life-threatening happens, but after care can be crap (for example, my Dad having to queue up to get his medication outside the clinic every week, even in snowy weather).

Jeez, remind me never to go drinking with you around closing time.

I'd add:

* Don't use your phone while driving
* Keep your distance from the car in front
* Expect everyone else on the road to be an idiot

That's how.

If you're in London, I must recommend some local places for you to go.

There's a charming cafe chain called 'Starbucks' - they do pretty good coffee and usually have wifi. Don't be put off by the 'crazy' names for their drink sizes, just bask in that local charm. If you can't find one of those, do stop into one of the family restaurants in the 'McDonalds' chain - they often have wifi, and you can enjoy one of our local delicacies (cheese and meat at the same time, crazy!).

Not that famous? She's quite famous on that new internet thing, you know.

I bought a Casiq watch in Nicaragua - that's not a typo, it was a clear ripoff of the classic 80s Casio digital watch, with just the 'q' in the logo different (as I recall, logo copying is easier to prosecute than actual design / circuit copying). It cost me a couple of dollars, and:

* survived a little swim when my kayak upturned
* still worked at least 3 years later on the same battery
* had an awesome upgrade from the original in the form of multicoloured LEDs that pulsed randomly when the alarm went off. Wrist disco FTW.

You win the internet.

When was the last time anybody said "wow, look at that BMW"? Just sayin'.

"I don't remember"
" I've had many many hundreds of UK beers"

Could be related.... :-)