Completely unimportant (the fake email you use to fill out forms when you don't want spam later) -- mailinator doesn't use any password at all :)

Mostly unimportant (games and such, with no personal information and no credit card attached) -- pick something easy, because who cares?

Moderately important -- "correct horse battery staple", but keep it unique

Really important -- `openssl rand -base64 12`

You won't really know the difference until you're 45.

Jailbreaking doesn't mean getting apps for free. Apps from the iTunes store still cost the same, and come to that, I have a handful of paid apps from Cydia, too. In fact, the two most expensive apps on my phone are only available on jailbroken phones.

The point of jailbreaking is to be able to run more apps, including ones that Apple doesn't approve for the official store. Free apps are free whether you get them on a jailbroken phone or not, paid apps are paid whether you get them on a jailbroken phone or not. (Although, an app developer might not pay the same fees to get listed on Cydia as on iTunes...)

I hit the space bar twice in vim and then trust LaTeX (or the browser, or whatever's responsible for the actual rendering) to Do The Right Thing.

That depends entirely on your usage pattern. It sounds like your laptop use fits the "carry on bag" pattern -- you throw a few files in the "carry on bag" laptop, go hop on an airplane, and sync up with the "mothership" later. (That's pretty much exactly the market that netbooks and the MacBook Air target.)

There are other patterns out there. Mine would be more the "Winnebago" usage pattern -- I certainly could keep some of my stuff on a server elsewhere, but I'd rather have everything right there with me and live on my laptop full time. (Sadly, I only have a 500 GB drive at the moment, but that may change depending on what happens with prices.) This also influences choices like the 17 inch screen and full keyboard.

I'm sure you'll find opinions to the contrary, but I'm going to insist that neither way is "wrong". Do what works, but don't expect the same thing to work for everyone.

You "can't be arsed" to open a Word document? Seriously? Open a Word document? You're that close-minded that you feel it necessary to make your students jump through arbitrary hoops to appease your moral standing on a file format? I'm extremely grateful I'm not in a class taught by someone like you.

Naturally I can't speak for GP, but I "can't be arsed" to pay for a copy of Word, or to keep a machine around that could run it if I had it. Thankfully I'm not taking any classes at all just now, but if I were, I'd be much happier with a teacher that refused Word, than with one that required it.

In high school (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and TV was black and white) a group of us put together a game of assassination with toy guns, foam rubber knives, methylene blue and what-have-you. The rule was that your "weapon" couldn't do any actual physical harm to the target, but that it otherwise had to in some way resemble the real thing -- e.g. guns had to actually shoot something, poisons had to change the color or taste of the food, etc.

As a concession to school rules, we agreed not to play during class. Between classes, at lunch or on the way to or from school was fine.

I shudder to think where a group of kids would end up if they did that today...

Damn, you beat me to it :D

+1 for Password Gorilla. Although I haven't finished moving over everything I had in my plain text + PGP file yet.