I switched from Debian to OS X in 2004, then from OS X to Ubuntu in 2014. The story of the switch back is told in full here. That meant that the cheapest route for me was to install a distro on my MacBook, because I already owned it :). And it really is good hardware, so I'm happy with the amount I paid for a high-quality laptop that fulfils my needs. The interesting part of the switch for me is the question "why not use OS X"? There are all sorts of bugs in OS X and its applications, just as there are in Linux, GNU and their applications. The difference is that I'm allowed to fix the bugs in GNU, and other people can take advantage of those fixes. So I've been learning about GTK+ and Vala, as well as getting back up to speed with GNUstep, so that when I find a bug I can contribute a fix back. Plenty of other posters have discussed that there are cheaper GNU/Linux-compatible laptop choices, and indeed had I not already owned a MacBook I probably would've considered some of those. But "cheapest" is a non-goal for me, or at least far down the chain below reliable wifi, good battery, solid construction and (to the extent that this is at all an option on any laptop) decent keys.

I was doing this with SunRays sharing a Solaris CDE desktop back in 2002. Apparently the past is here, but it isn't evenly distributed. Unfortunately it's not likely to be. With the exception of VNC, most of the remote desktop systems are proprietary so you can't pick up for example a Sunray session on an Android phone. And the proprietary platforms don't uniformly support VNC. It'd be great to see a general cross-platform approach to this, but the vendors are all going for supplying their platforms "as a service" instead.

Meh. Back in my day, I had a 64Kb computer which had 65,536 addressable bytes in memory, with 49152 usable outside of the ROM. I never once saw a spurious "i" being inserted into the documentation, and in terms of memory storage there doesn't seem to be any real need for one. Also, we measured storage in minutes. Gerroff my lawn!

40th anniversary?
What is it commemorating, the animated series from the 70s?
The TV show begain in the 60s so the 40th anniversary was around 2006 (or earlier if you want to count the cage).

You'll spend so much time wandering around outside hacking portals you won't have time for any other apps.

int main(int argc, char **argv) {

I'd go for the royal. Hated that one.

There have been home projects to replicate the spectrum, ula included...
one was called speccybob which replicated the machine in TTL logic, meaning it would be possible to take that design and cram it onto a single chip.

But alas, the person running that project ran into lots of bad luck and had to abort it.

Well, I can certainly agree that it's under-spec at this point in time. Problem is that there's still no competition out there that matches what it can do even with the low-power. Full keyboard, game controls and a desktop linux installation? There aren't any cell-phones that to my knowledge can do all that and still fit in your pocket without external peripherals.

What about the OpenPandora? That's an actual linux box in your pocket, keyboard included.

Was a failure to stop what happened, no doubt about that.

No need to move to a proprietary hosting service like Github.

I wrote about this previously: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/savannah

Well, we have a rule in our trust that ensures we only have three stabs at a patient before we call an anaesthetist to do the job. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I've only ever needed two attempts... But then, some patients I refer straight on to the anesthetics chap without even bothering :)

This is very handy in emergency situations where it's literally the patient's life on the line if you don't get a needle in.

Yes, you have. I'm a nurse in the UK and it's been common knowledge for a few years now that a blank photo negative (ie, no picture, just black) stuck over a mobile phone camera lens coupled with an IR torch allows you to see the veins through the camera viewfinder. It's neat to mess around with a really useful with a difficult cannulation.