Looked at the prices of RAM on VPS recently?

That was the last thing to come into my head. Clearly you've never played rugby. A "scrum" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(rugby)) is the first thing that comes into my head when I hear scrum (unless its within the software engineering context) and certainly not parts of the male anatomy...

The company I'm currently subcontracting for use non-techie types for UI development all the time. The actual implementation is done by techies, but the development of the UI, that's done by UX types in combination with users, followed by sessions with the techies to discuss platform/integration issues that the UX expert is unaware of. The result tends to work quite well.

I don't get this. What is unusable? Why? You have OpenJDK and it is the reference implementation for Java7. Everything should be targeting that platform. If "Aleks" (whatever that is - got a link?) is broken on that then they should fix it.

I think there is a bit of a difference between being able to do something, and having to do something.

I can code quite well in a basic text editor. Would you catch me doing it in a professional environment? Hell no. I have better tools available. Would I employ someone that can't code without the crutches modern development tools provide? Probably not - I want people that can understand what they are doing so that when something goes slightly wrong (which it does all the time in pretty much all jobs) they can figure out how to fix it.

Almost all of my textbooks are primary school had times tables printed in the covers, and many of the notebooks I had for maths did too. My pencil cases also had times tables printed on them, one also had common formulas printed on them.

We also had thin notebooks, but they weren't discarded. We had to number them, and keep them for revision purposes (which were used alongside past papers, from many years before as they were much harder, to aid with revision).

My partner is now doing a GCSE in mathematics as a mature student as she feels she didn't learn enough at school, but she's flying through it and is appalled at the attitude of the younger students she's on the course with. None of them see the relevance of basic mathematics (through no fault of the tutor), many of them talk through the lessons, and two that consistently get basic questions wrong were this week listening to music on their phones until the tutor asked them to get out if they didn't want to be there. In the UK, IMO, the problem exists in society in general, and not necessarily in the education - many people don't see the value in an education, and their parents don't either.

The technique you describe is how my mother taught mental arithmetic to primary school children here in the UK.

Shame you started that with Sarah Palin. Nobody with a brain ever trusted that monster - at least on this side of the pond (we were actually quite scared of her in fact).

If you mean (and I know you dont, but it can, and does, easily fall into that category in an enterprise) "being able to enter a path into Explorer and it allow you to go there" as opposed to navigating to it from "My Computer" or "Network" directly, then sure. If you mean being able to right click on an application in the taskbar so I can close it, then sure. I complain like hell at these restrictions; it makes my life a right PITA.

Sacrificing basic usability because of some BOFH is under the impression that it will improve security (it wont; there are plenty of ways round these things) is a big nono and just pisses off the technically competent and confuses the incompetent even further.

CVS? Seriously? That would make me leave almost faster than being forced to use ClearCase. There is no place for a VCS that doesn't work with changesets these days.