The goal of school education in computers is not to prepare pupils to use commercial software and become better consumerists. They already know how to use commercial software anyway, most of them even better than their teachers. What they lack and need to learn is the fundamentals of how computers work, how operating systems work, what safety and security means (especially online), and the basics of programming. In a nutshell: No, Windows is definitely not needed or desirable in schools. To be fair, iPads and Android tablets are even less useful, because it is almost impossible to teach programming on them in a fruitful way.

I'd even go farther and state the obvious that commercial software packages should be banned in public institutions entirely when there is an acceptable free substitute for them.

To give a typical example of how Windows computers are used in such environments, our institute at a public university in Europe has dozens of +5 years old PCs that are overloaded with tons of viruses and trojans and the crappy paid anti-virus we're using fails to detect them. The machines have become even slower after they had to be upgraded from XP to Windows 7 recently. I've test run Ubuntu on one of them for years and it worked better and faster in each and every respect except compatibility of LibreOffice with Word (which is broken intentionally by Microsoft, but strange enough it also breaks routinely between versions of their own software). The tax payer is paying huge fees to Microsoft with no benefits at all - and you have to check your USB stick for viruses each time you've used one of those machines.

However, this technology will very probably disappear like so many others. Anyone remember the technology that allows you to store giga- to terrabytes of data on a few layers of Tesa strip? Read by laser without any moving parts, prototyped at a time when CDs were still the standard medium? Well, this never made it into a buyable product either.

My humble theory is that market forces do not always promote the best solution. After all, why should corporations put something new on the market if it would give them less opportunities to rip you off in the long run? :-(

The good news is that this technology has better chances of success than the Tesa strip solution, because ... ink cartridges! ;-)

That's right, Putin is leading a secret proxy war like the ones that were common on both sides of the iron curtain during the Cold War. It's so sad that we still have to watch such a retarded behavior nowadays, what a bad and disconcerting beginning of the 21st Century. Not to speak of the long-lasting harm Putin's 'soviet union light' aspirations cause to Russia.

The "rebels" do not receive their weapons from "Bob the arms dealer", they receive them directly from Russia. More specifically, they received the BUK launcher with a large transport on rails from Russia sometime around June and were subsequently trained by Russian specialists in using it. Unfortunately, they were not trained in distinguishing civilian from military planes.

As a matter of fact, probably every third of the "rebels" you speak of is a Russian intelligence officer or another member of the Russian military without insignia. That alone is a breach of the Geneva Convention (Article 4).

Not every change is progress.

The ebook sales statistics are forged anyway. Most book sales are still print books, and things will stay that way until there are cheap ebook reader that aren't destroyed immediately when you take them to the beach.

It's much more likely that they mistook the plane for a Ukrainean military machine. That's what happens when you hand over advanced surface to air missile systems to violent thugs and morons.

You've got the facts all wrong. Like Russian TV?

These operations are massive in many countries, they have for example been going on for months in German news forums like the "tagesschau" meta comment section. These forums are swamped daily with hundred of pro-Russian comments, even on stories that have nothing to do with Russia.

Not sure what they want to achieve with it except pissing off everyone. Perhaps the idea is to cast doubt by constantly repeating bullshit. After all, it worked for the US in the beginning of the second Iraq war for some short time period, so perhaps Putin thinks it will work for him this time, too. It won't have any noteworthy effect, though, because it is crystal clear who shot down the plane.

What's wrong with those Trojan authors nowadays? There are whole programming language implementations that run in less than 20KB!

Don't they code in assembler any more?

Why wouldn't he?

The important question for me personally is this: As someone living in Europe, how can I ensure that I see the US search results? Does switching to google.com suffice? Or do I have to use a proxy or VPN?

The sad fact is that your justice system is totally broken, and it probably has been since you've been hanging horse thieves on nearby trees.

Microsoft is giving other governments the possibility to install their own backdoors by cooperating in special "transparency centers", provided they pay for it and are buying enough Microsoft products instead of switching to open source alternatives.

First, malware is primarily spread by Microsoft Windows. And secondly, I want to access my home server, which does provably not spread malware, and Microsoft and some US court have just cut down the dynamic IP system I need for this.

One more evidence that using a .com domain is insecure. I'll be sure to only support business with a .eu domain in future.