My variation on this is as follows: Large slab of wood screwed to the wall. 2 chunks of wood screwed to that at about chest height, switch screwed to those with their "bottom" facing away from the wall so you can just stand there and look at it's "front". Have 2 or 3 units in a line, wires below and guided along tacks and ties. to get to the "back" you sit on the floor.

Because in "civilized" countries the people who scam, fraud and exploit you are the legit corporations

True, but you can't put login in the Case in all the c-syntax languages that I use

what they should do, and I've only just thought of this, is let you hold down the $Platform keyboard key and click the left mouse button on whatever it is you want to change, be it a widget, the desktop background, an app icon or the volume-control-icon and have that launch the configurator for it.

I'm with the former, but I get tripped up by auto-indentation that either adds tabs to or b0rks when I write this

if( a==b )
{

}
else
if( c==d )
{

}
else
{

}

yes that's a lot of vertical space but I find it easier to follow, if it's my code in my project on my computer that I'm not even sharing then I should be able to do that!

Apple TV, tho you need to jailbrake it IIRC.

This

it's a "Media PC" skin for standard Humans to use. Mine is a low end single core Atom (which XBMC manages to squeeze 1080P out of!) wedged into an old DVD-recorder case. It runs windows 7 but starts XBMC on boot so everyone else who is in my house who isn't a hacker can press the power button and pick up the remote and select things to watch/listen to. The keyboard and mouse is also usually stashed away and only comes out when I'm playing steam. Portal 2 on a 42" screen is loads of fun for your inner ear I can tell you :)

I also have an original XBOX running the latest backport (XBMC4XBOX) and that is soon (when I get a 360) going to live in my children's bedroom having being loaded full of Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks, er, "backups" to replace the essentially dead collection of VHS tapes they have. And also so if I fancy playing Halo I can just fire it up.

Clearly I'm the only Martha Jones fan around here.

Seen a lot of "TV is a distraction" posts on this topic, but the only TV I have on is rolling news channels and it keeps my ears occupied and provides a welcome distraction at other times to compensate for the lack of people to talk to, does that count?

Yep this, hell, I couldn't take a day off sick without being tasked to deal with the children. If *she* was that sick I'd usually take a day off work to cover for her, but if I was in the house with two broken legs I'd probably have been expected to do some plumbing. We're divorced now.

My children (girls, aged 5 and 6) love Little Big Planet and I think it's brilliant. Not only does it involve the game mechanics of traps/baddies/checkpoints and scoring points it also has really good logic (switches,sensors) controllable components (pistons,winches,motors) and really good physics: dense metals can crush you, light cardboard doesn't, helium balloons float, cogs/gears really will turn each other when you place them with their teeth interlocking with no "cheating" going on inside the game engine.

It's superb fun and educational in so many ways. Needless to say, when they've gone to bed of an evening I fire it up and make things too, seen as I don't have any Technic Lego any more :)

until the entire south wall of my lounge (approx 4m x 2m) is a 300 DPI 30FPS e-ink behemoth with embedded tracking cameras that I can skype to any other similar setup anywhere on the planet just like making a phone call... I won't describe it as "plenty"

I've always maintained that parallax and subliminal vision make for a more immersive experience than 3D (citation: Imax).

(For prior art see Total Recall and Aliens Directors' Cut)

Yes indeed. I posted this elsewhere but to repeat myself: on my Win 7 machine to launch Google Chrome I press WinKey + c + Enter. Don't even touch the mouse.

this. you don't even need to use the mouse or type the full name, and it learns just like modern web browser URI bars do: WinKey + c + Enter starts chrome on my Win 7 box, fail to see how that can be slow or difficult for anyone

off topic: what is it with these multiple accounts inside an account that other countries have? In the UK my bank account is my bank account and all cheques, cash, debit cards and transactions just point to it. Remember trying to use a cash machine in australia and it asked my what account inside my account i wanted to take the money out of and I just kept pressing buttons until it gave me some. Mind blown!