Autodesk Maya

Say what? Autodesk have never had anything to do with LightWave. It's still owned by NewTek.

2000 strong, but that seems to be the limit based on the 500 error I saw.

I tried that once. The road rash took longer than expected to heal.

Right..... That explains : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15769886 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9681545/UK-may-never-recover-66bn-spent-to-rescue-banks-MPs.html Your faith in the government is touching, but probably unfounded (see PFI, HMRC failures, FSA failures). Heck, pick up a copy of Private Eye to see just how often government utterly fails when working with commercial entities.

And less money for education, infrastructure, social services, ....

NPR? Why? As a non-American, it seems like NPR is somewhat akin to the BBC, despite the lack of significant financial support from the state. Given that it is propped up by funding drives, and seems to attract criticism from both sides of the US political spectrum, it seems to be doing a good job of justifying its existence and avoiding partisanship. Like the BBC, it seems NPR is also being cowed by those who are too easily offended.

I've enabled full disk encryption on everything, purely to reduce the scope for problems to occur if we get burgled.

I'm working on a non-immigrant visa. Due to my working life, for the last 6 years I've not been resident in a country where I can vote.

Oddly, in the UK and Europe, full service is available without having to scrawl on a piece of paper. The whole paper/pen thing is replaced by a portable device for handling the card payment. I had serious trouble using my US visa card in the UK because there was no chip, and they won't accept cards without chips in most places now.

Use VNC, LogMeIn, TeamViewer or similar and run it on a dedicated Windows session remotely? That's worked very nicely for me here on an iPad 2.

Wonder if they have fixed their flash implementation so that it stops randomly turning that part of a web page into a window through to applications/windows behind Chrome.... This is my biggest problem with the browser on OS X, and I wish I could find a way to reproduce it reliably.

I've not yet RTFA, but your statement seems like a sweeping generalisation and overlooks other possibilities. In various industries, a doctorate is a pre-requisite for most roles (e.g. semiconductor engineering). You might just squeeze in with a Masters degree, but more often a Ph.D. is required to even get your foot in the door. Given the erosion of standards for 'regular' degrees (B.Sc., B.Eng., etc.), the demand for a higher degree is easier to understand. You'll get more applicants as a result. What I find interesting is the ability to study a highly technical field, get a Ph.D. and then find next to no employers in that field within the country. That's what I ran into in the UK - by the time I was out of the Ph.D. grind, the relevant employers had all left for greener shores. I had to follow them. As a result, the UK has benefited very little from the expenditure on my education. Even before undertaking my Ph.D., it was very clear that working in academia was not going to be my thing. The lack of resources and funds stood in stark contrast to the facilities available for similar R&D within companies. Having to fight for funding every n years was far from appealing. This is from a UK-perspective, but I hear similar concerns from those in the US.

Possibly to be considered NSFW

This one? http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/startrek/