I was in a similar siatuation a while ago and chose to host everything on my own. Sure it means a bit of work (and I have to admit I'm not quite done yet) but if you enjoy sysadmin stuff it's not too time-consuming and you might be able to learn something, i.e. I chose to use FreeBSD which I'd never used before. Plus things like owncloud should make calendar and contacts synchronization quite simple without relying on third parties to keep their services running.

Of course the major downside is that you will have to do backups and hard drive replacements on your own. With a reasonable RAID configuration and using one of the many cloud storage providers for (of course highly encrypted) backups that shouldn't be too bad though.

Or you could do something in between, i.e. rent a "server" from somebody like amazon or gandi if you don't want to worry about hardware.

To me, the small amount of work and money that is required to run my own infrastructure is certainly worth it not to have to trust a third party with my data, plus running your own things gives you great options for random hacks and fun little projects.

This indeed, tt-rss is pretty nice!

I've been using Tiny TIny RSS for a while now and it does everything that I used to use Google reader for except you can host it yourself.

Well, I envy you. I haven't felt any effect from coffee in ages (I literally cannot remember if it ever affected me) and I can easily go to sleep after a strong cup of coffee. I may have to try significantly higher dosages but I don't really like the idea. Having a substance as easily available as coffee actually keep you awake must be awesome...

Low-sec still offers plenty of opportunities for solo / small gang PvP, whether you learn it on your own or as part of a noob-friendly corp is entirely up to you. I went pirate after some dreadful months in high-sec and I have to say it was probably the best EVE-related decision I ever made.

As long as you enjoy it you're not wasting your time, are you?

Very unlikely. The way this is calculated is to take the monthly fee (about 15$) and the amount of in-game currency that you would have to pay to play the game for free (last time I checked that was around 600 million but it's a player-driven market) and then apply basic math.

Well yes and no. Money allows you to buy game time which in turn you can sell to other people for in-game currency. While in reality the difference is not too relevant, you can't directly buy in-game currency, you can however pay for someone else's monthly subscription in exchange for in-game money.

Technically he didn't jump to enemy controlled territory but to an area that isn't strictly controlled by players. From what I read the idea was to drop some big guns on top of a handful of enemies in a "neutral" system, a couple of enemies that were pleasantly surprised when instead of a sizable fleet they got a juicy target.

Then everybody called in reinforcements plus the locals also wanted to join the party.

Obviously the whole clowd stuff is dumb but if the device is cheap enough it could be an interesting platform for running XBMC.

Ah, good point.

Very much so. Plus you can talk to anyone who has a Jabber/XMPP account, including everybody on Google Talk.

OK, looks like someone did no resaerch. Linux is actually officially supported on a considerable number of Thinkpads. So, they're certainly nolaptop with one of those awful mac-like toy keyboards.t Windowa only.

I was actually talking about the ability to buy the laptop without buying Windows along with it -- I haven't been able to find any such offers with current Thinkpads.

Did you actually try the keyboard, or did you merely assume that the style of the keycaps tells you about what's underneath them?

Admittedly I haven't tried it, I have used other similar keyboards though and I find the spacing between the keys to be highly irritating (and utterly pointless), regardless of what's underneath.

would be unhappy if Lenovo decided to sacrifice build quality for coolness

Hmm I'm not quite sure where you've been living but that has already happened. I just bought my first non-Thinkpad in well over a decade because I don't see a reason for the Thinkpad other than nostalgia -- these days it's just another random wide-screen, windows-only laptop with one of those awful mac-like toy keyboards. I'll be back once they release something like the X80, a nice compact 12" laptop with a 4:3 display and a proper keyboard.

They also denied access to my Nokia N9 - definitely not a Windows phone.