Basically yes, it's just a bundle of the kinds of things a hacker type would like - both in terms of privacy and in terms of information customisation. So someo

Basically yes, it's just a bundle of the kinds of things a hacker type would like - both in terms of privacy and in terms of information customisation. So someone pays $5 a month, they have their https to a no-advertising DDG, an email address with them, an optional VPN link (cost more? depends on the economics) and jabber/irc permanently connected even when offline (available ram measured in 10s of MBs not 100s). So all your messages, searches, and browsing is nicely handled, advert and spam free. For people who don't want to pay, perhaps they could pay with tokens/karma from the stackoverflow-like part of the site to generate a helpful community. The key is costing less than the money (AND the trouble) of doing the same thing through a VPS for yourself. However, I see lots of people here who in their younger days were using more raw versions of linux but these days they use Ubuntu because they realise they haven't got their whole life to be fiddling with things that should be just working. I've heard similar discussions elsewhere about taking a sheevaplug-like approach to making a product for people to have at home that does this. Goodluck to anyone who can pull it off, I will be a customer.