It is also the only sci-fi series (AFAIK), where the characters have to go take a dump.

Yeah, I had a memory slip there, 5-6 weeks is correct. Still too little, IMO.
And Latin or French; how many people chose Latin over French?
Austria has two types of high schools: real-gymnasium with a technically-focused curriculum (i.e. STEM, but still with a second foreign language of choice and availability, usually French, Latin, or Italian) and gymnasium with a liberal arts and languages focus (3 mandatory foreign languages, usually English, Latin, and French).

I went to several in Berlin + surroundings, and it's hard to find latin here (not that I was looking for it either). I'd be interested to know how many kids actually chose to take Latin/ancient Greek themselves. ; )
Also, if you're talking about Bavaria (which is regarded as having the "hardest" schools in DE), my guess is that they're leaning more towards the Austrian system.

In the USSR summer vacation used to be roughly three months, however children got a list of books to read (and I'm not talking about one, or two. More like 10-15 mandatory and another 10-20 optional) and, come September, were questioned on them.
9th or 10th grade (don't remember) contained such gems as War and Peace (the complete four-tome!), Crime and Punishment, Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades, and other quite serious works.

I've experienced several school systems and neither Austrian, German or US systems came even close to teaching as much as the Soviet did. I went to "good" schools, some of them quite expensive. In the latter three countries, students were quite vocal about objecting to having more than one exam in a week, even though they had to be announced up front. In the USSR, you just *had* to be prepared for *each* class or risk getting a bad grade for the quarter.
The Soviet system also separated literature and language, as well as math and geometry, whereas the other three systems lumped these subjects together into language+literature and math+geometry.
All in all, the Soviet system was *much* more satisfying and intellectually stimulating than any other system I had the "pleasure" of experiencing.

A short anecdote: we've learned matrices in 7th grade in the USSR. When I was called to the board to solve a system of linear equations in 9th grade in AT, it was quite amusing to experience the surprised teacher say that this is something people learn in University for their STEM degrees.
On the other hand, I had to catch up a year of Latin there, so I guess that even out the surprise. When I later moved to Germany and asked the principal there whether Latin is part of the local curriculum, he asked me if I was planning on listening to Radio Vatican. I thought that's funny at the time, but my little knowledge of Latin still helps me understand a great deal of languages I don't speak and I wish I'd have learned more.
The US school I visited was a jack of all trades, more focused on creative education and quite boring, as I've already went through most of the curriculum in other countries (i.e. it lagged behind all other systems! You people there really gotta work on that, before it's too late.).
BTW, Austria had two months of summer vacation, and Germany around 3-4 weeks (it sucked big time, so unproductive and slow the whole year!).
For my kids, I'd prefer them to go to school in Russia and Austria, as that's a very good mix IMO.

I've heard the Japanese school system is even more intense (with students even committing suicide over the workload, etc.). Maybe someone would like to provide a short comparison in a reply.

I still have faith in humanity, so I'd put them in the first and second categories and assume that they are a minority.
Also, I'll assume that these cheapskates don't have enough income to distribute for all their consumption habits, so again, make it convenient enough (e.g. watch now pay later, pay as much as you can, etc.) or available for a flat fee and they'll pay.

No, just Artists. You know, the ones that have an urge to produce a work of art regardless of pay. For some recent examples, you can just look at the millions of FLOSS developers.

Second category was supposed to say "not accepting <insert payment method here>" in brackets.

And in those circumstances, you are the one being unethical.

Here's a universal truth for you (i.e. no matter what the marketing and law shills are telling you, this applies at the base level).
There are three main categories of freeloaders:

1. 1. Those, who'd like to pay but didn't find a way (i.e. unavailable on netflix/itunes/etc.)
2. 2. Those, who'd like to pay but didn't find a convenient way (i.e. DRM issues, different platform, too much of a hassle to register, not accepting , etc.)
3. 3. Those, who won't pay as a matter of principle (i.e. "all copyright is bad")

In all three cases, chances are that the person consuming a media product has friends who will be willing to go to lengths to pay for a specific product and get a collector's edition, because the freeloader told them that the product is worth consuming.

Also, most true (for common values of true) artists, could't possibly care less if someone paid for their work or not, as long as they get as much exposure as possible. And if you do care, go to your studio/distributor/manager and tell them you're upset that categories one and two don't have a possibility to pay for your work, and/or sue them for the difference in missed opportunities.

Mr. O'Reilly, why didn't you join the Free Software movement back in the day and subverted the community with your Open Source initiative? SCNR

Thanks, I'll try to find this again, when I need I'm shopping next time.
In my post, I was referring more to the given use case and associated health and weight benefits of using copper instead of lead. Then again you'd be breathing in all the fumes from inside your laptop anyway, so not sure if that even matters for an average life-span.

Copper, young one, copper. Now go and maw my lawn!

Obviously, you're only supposed to consume fakebook and buy apps and music through it. Didn't you know? ;)
Don't ever try to use it as a portable ARM development board with multi-touch.

It's not your computer, it's your cell phone.

Speak for yourself, please!
It might be a phone for you, for me, it's my portable, pocket-computer.
Please do elaborate on what cap you're talking about, but if I want to saturate LTE (which I'm not using, btw), I'll saturate LTE from my own pocket (no pun intended); with or without a jailbreak.

they get a hitcount over 3000

It's 3000 unique visitors.

"The draft introduced the definition of a popular blogger as someone whose internet page attracts at least 3,000 readers every day (earlier this week the authorities announced that these should be unique visitors, not just page hits) [...]"

And

Individuals who violate the law can be fined between 10,000 and 30,000 rubles (US$285-$855) and in cases when popular blogs are maintained by legal entities fines can reach 500,000 rubles ($14,285)."

Source: http://rt.com/politics/177248-...
I'm not saying that I agree with their line, but what was the last ruling on slander or defamation in the US? I think it was more than USD 855.
Also, after what happened with the US backed NGOs trying to influence public opinion around the former USSR resulting in color revolutions (and, arguably, what's happening in the Ukraine now,) I'd have probably done the same to protect my national interests.

I'll bite.
First and foremost: firewall and SSHd, then: nginx, python, perl, java, haskell, adblocker, ... Also the ability to edit and customize (hidden) settings, hosts file, themes, go fuck yourself, it's my computer and I do what I want with it.