Mono and keepass has been working great for me on linux, you do have to install a few extra things to get it working on ubuntu and xdotool with a higher version than is supplied by 10.10 if you want autofill.
I agree that this is probably a bit to complicated for normal users.
My personal problem with lastpass is that by default your passwords are recoverable which means that by default lastpass or someone with access to their system has access to your passwords (you can disable this and read the source to their obfuscated javascript app for chrome to make sure that it is really doing what they say, encrypting locally then sending).[1]
Keepass at least is opensource and it works well when you use dropbox so long as you aren't accessing it on many different computers on a daily/weekly basis, then it just becomes a pain in the ass.
[1] This may have changed but I don't think they would appeal to many users if it has, and they do have an option to disable it but the obfuscated javascript is what stopped me from looking further.
There is another reason to choose Linode over Slicehost, Linode has consistently improved their offerings over the years through ram increases, hard drive size, etc while slicehost is now at half the ram and other shortcomings for the same price as a Linode.
I really like linode and have been a customer for a few years now so I might be a bit biased.
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are good books, especially for just starting to read again.
Ubik is my favorite PKD book followed closely by Electric Sheep.
The His Dark Materials isn't really sci-fi so much as fantasy but it is quite a good read (though if you didn't have a kindle it might be embarrassing buying them from the young adult section, they are quite adult though).
I think a huge thing missing from your list is the Foundation series from Asimov (I recommend going in order of publishing, start with Foundation move onto Foundation and Empire then Second Foundation and more if you are into it).
It's not actually single user mode but autologin, that is why the stolen computer user was still using the same browser and keychain as he didn't have access to admin rights.
Well you need some kind of service that updates your laptop's ip address like dyndns and the computer would have to log in automatically to an open network or another saved network in order for you to log in.
Given that it is password protected even if you had those I would suspect that the window would be extremely short to login if any and the most likely event is your laptop being formatted.
Best of luck, hope your christmas wasn't ruined because of some asshole.
I think plugging in something in the powerstrip under a desk and connecting it to an open ethernet port would take a very long time to be noticed in most offices whereas an iphone would be moved to lost and found or stolen or asked around whose it was.
That is pretty much the main point of my comment is that they bundle these old versions and so many people just click no when java asks to update (I haven't seen a popup for flash so I don't know how many answer yes to that) and adobe only has a tray icon when the reader needs to update (which is perpetually there on so many machines).
One of the biggest annoyances for me with new windows laptops is that many of the manufacturers no longer send the windows cd to reformat if they send a cd at all it is to recover back to the condition with all crapware installed.
HP now has a recovery manager to create recovery disks for you and the last hp computer I saw had to create 5 dvds in order to recover to that state (which would probably require something like a 6 hour reinstall).
It is a sad state if you ask me that you get this now because it allows manufacturers to take away cost by bundling shareware with the computer, just a few years ago toshiba was still shipping legitimate windows cds which allowed you to reformat to normal windows.
If they are a regular computer purchaser (i.e. buy from a manufacturer like hp, dell, etc.) it most certainly is preinstalled along with and old version of java and an old version of flash for their convenience.
It sounds like an okay idea other than the lying about worrying about your brother.
I would much rather a person be honest than take up my time while keeping up a charade about a crazy brother, if someone did this I would probably just tell them to talk to their brother rather than me.
As someone who has the option of low speed dsl and satellite internet moving through the system as quick as possible and getting answers quickly is very handy.
But if you have other worthwhile choices that's great, until you run out of choices and have to go through the same system again. (Most ISPs seem to run a similar support scheme.)
As long as it works for all browsers you plan to support and the site begins rendering quickly, i.e. people don't perceive the site as slow because your fonts aren't showing up quickly enough, it should be okay.
I can't really respond to the GAE thing as I don't have experience with it.