The same thing can happen if you change job within a company and no longer need access to certain systems. At one large financial company I work with, it is now *your* responsibility if someone uses your credentials to access a system once you've left or changed job. Not sure if that's a regulatory requirements or just policy for that company.

If you can't remove yourself and your company doesn't have a set procedure, I'd send an email or even hardcopy memo to the sysadmins requesting that your access be revoked. Make sure it is copied to your private email, to your boss and to the IT security guys, so that everyone knows you took your responsibility seriously. Then if someone does get in using your old credentials later on, you should have a first line of defense, at least.

Yeah... I was working in Boston last year and wanted to go and visit some friends down on the New Jersey Shore one weekend. I costed out various options in terms of time and money: fly Logan to Newark and pick up the train down to Bayhead, hire a car and drive, and take the train all the way (Amtrak to Penn Station, then NJ Transit). To my surprise, they all came out pretty close to one another, both in overall cost and the time it would take. And when you figured in the general hassle associated with flying and the tiredness I'd end up with after umpteen hours driving, there was only one choice.

Living in London as I do, I can drive to the coast, drive my car onto a train, and 35 minutes later drive off the train onto the French road network. Coming back from Paris the other week I timed it: from turning off the autoroute (motorway, freeway, whatever) to parking on the train (including drive-thru check-in and passport control): 12 minutes. 10 minutes till departure, then a 35 minute journey. That's just under an hour from driving on a French road to driving on the M23 back to London. And it cost me £29 (about $45US) each way.

It is an excellent way to travel, and makes driving on the continent a simple extension of driving at home. I now won't take a plane to get to Paris, Brussels or anywhere within a couple of hundred miles radius of Calais: not only is it a lot more expensive and you have all the queueing hassles, but you can't bring cases of wine back with you...

The problem for me is *which* OS it is close to ;-) I wrestle with Windows enough on the desktop without wanting to have it on my phone as well.

I have an HTC Touch HD. Nice screen and OK for making basic phone calls, but apart from that it's not impressive. My daughter has an ipod touch... we can wander into a cafe, find free wi-fi, and try checking our mail. Nine times out of ten she can connect and get online... it just tends to work. Nine times out of ten I can't, and get told to 'check my connection settings' in a maze of twisty little dialogs. I don't worry that Skype on WinMo is so unreliable, because I so seldom get a chance to try it. Media Player is a joke as far as managing ones music is concerned. And then there are the lock-ups and crashes. It is, indeed, close the actual OS.

Maybe my old Nokia 6310 wasn't so bad after all...

Interesting idea, and surely better than setting limits based on vote-catching, but...

What about the vast number of people who obviously have no idea whatever about safe stopping distances, or how much damage is done when colliding with someone at 20mph rather than 40?

It isn't driving at 70/80/100/whatever that worries me per se, it's seeing a string of cars driving at 80 with about 10 feet between them. And most especially, looking in my rearview mirror and seeing one of them behind me. If folks don't know how to drive safely at high speed then they shouldn't be doing so, but lots of people don't seem to be able to judge what is an appropriate speed for the situation.

I don't think it is necessarily 'funny'... people staying in the economy chains are often counting the cash, and these places need some sort of selling point. I know that I've chosen budget hotels in the UK based on what the net access was like and how costly it was. Folks staying at the bigger hotels, OTOH, either don't care about wi-fi (there for a night or two on a package tour, or a wedding party) or it's where the company has booked them, or they're on expenses anyway.

The big places used to gouge you with phone charges: now few people have to use the hotel phone, so it's Internet access. In the UK and Europe, checking into a hotel that has its Internet access provided by iBahn is a *bad* sign. 15 UKP or more a day for indifferent access. That's where the mobile internet dongle proves its worth.

At least the Westin I've been staying in for the past two months has decent wired and wireless access, and that has been a life-saver. But it wouldn't be cheap if I didn't have enough loyalty karma to get it free...

Maybe not, but I live in London and sometime have to go to Shanghai for a few weeks for work. I would be on that train in a flash... what a great way to travel.

I'm currently commuting to work through the rush-hour traffic in Mumbai, and I cannot tell you how scary this idea is. The thought of adding a third dimension to Mumbai traffic quite takes my breath away.

That may be true, but many times a day it isn't the impression I get. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedos doesn't begin to describe it.

Although I have to use quiche-type programming languages a lot of the time, I've always reckoned that Fortran, C and Lisp would enable me to do most things...

Finding phones and computers without cameras is a pain. I am, however, waiting for a digital SLR containing a phone...

For those times when I have to go into 'no camera' environments, I use a Nokia 6210 phone. In fact, I tend to use the 6210 a lot, because it is a nice phone and isn't burdened with all sorts of mediocre battery draining extras that I don't need. The laptop is more of a problem, and I normally end up using a PDA if they're fussy.