America is swamped already by illegal migrants. Some of them started arriving in the XVII-XVIII century. We failed to protect the borders of our great, glorious nation — And yes, they overthrew us and reducted us. Nowadays, the USA is flooded with all those dirty white do-no-goodies. They walk and drive around what used to be our forests and plains, as if they were the lords of the land. And they now don't want to allow any further migration After teaching us that migration was just a natural phenomenon, after telling us that Europe is overcrowded and they needed to pursuit the Great American Dream... They want to deny that same dream to newer migrants...

YES. YES, completely with you.

Language and literature are not directly marketable. Highschool-level algebra is not directly marketable. Biology, physics and chemistry are not directly marketable. Same goes for geography, phylosophy, history, and basically every other subject we learnt at high school.

Still, it would be absolutely foolish to get rid of all that.

We don't send kids to school to make them marketable — We send them to get a general culture, to get a baseline of education in all major areas of knowledge. And, of course, I will argue over and over that nowadays the basic workings of a computer are as central to understanding our world as algebra.

So, yes, forget about marketability. Think about getting enoug foundations to understand the world and society they will have to develop in.

Back in 2009, I was at the Debian Conference (DebConf) in Cáceres, Spain. We had the presence of two blind Debian Developers, Sam Hartman and Mario Lang, both of which have continued to attend the conference at later editions, and are today very active project members.

They gave this talk on how they use their computer — Completely different ways, both very interesting to appreciate:

Accessibility and Debian (OGV video)

I don't live in a communist state (I live in Mexico), but you will find some of the line you quote applying here — Sadly, every time less. The national government is the sole owner of strategic areas, such as petroleum, electricity generation and distribution, water extraction and distribution. some other areas, such as mining, are operated by concessions: The State is the sole owner, but specific companies can bid for the right to exploit it for a given amount of time.

And yes, the current trend in government goes quite against this. Our last decades' governments have excluded or dilluted many areas from this monopolic aspects.

You will find, however, this line is not clearly defined among different countries. There are many countries in Europe and Latin America where the areas I mention are under different government-owned and/or government-operated schemes. And the ideologic moments do shift from time to time: Ten years ago, Bolivia was privatising everything. That even led to what they called the "war for water", a revolution that outed a president. Today, they are again nationalizing resources. And while still a strongly underdeveloped country, they are faring much better and much stabler than in their past many decades.

You are no historian, right :)
1. The revolution got to the power in 1959, not in 1953.
2. The businesses were expropiated, not stolen (that means, their owners were offered an indemnization... Maybe they didn't find it to be enough, but it was determined by the authorities to be the right value).
3. The US wasn't quite peaceful on its attack on the Cuban way. There was a large-scale invasion (Playa Girón / Bay of Pigs), and many paramilitary operations.
4. If you measure something one way, it should be measurable the other way around. Please go ask people in every country that has been militarily intervened by the USA in the last 50 years how were they restituted for stolen or destroyed property.

Cubans *do* have access to Internet. I (Mexican) have been there several times. In 1998, I became a close friend with a Cuban university teacher, and in 2000 I travelled to Cuba with tens of Linux and Free Software books, hundreds of CDs with distros of the day. I was quite in close contact with the Linux user groups in Santiago and La Habana, and less so but still met some people from Pinar del Río and Baracoa.
My friend later moved to Spain. Yes, he didn't go out the most legal way there is — But he kept in touch with his family. I kept in touch with his family as well (Internet access is not restricted to the university). His mother and his sister both travelled to Spain to visit him, and went back to Cuba.
I went again to Cuba in 2010; I stayed at the Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas, ~10Km from the capital. The university is in a decomissioned soviet naval base; it is a huge university city, with hundreds of student dorm apartments. Every apartment has a computer connected to Internet. They do have strict quotas, but they all have network access.
The embargo, as you mention really harms Cuba. The country is clearly among the materially poorest I have visited. Hopefully things will now improve. No, it's not (only?) a communist regime that has kept them from developing.

It is tricky, yes. I also have a friend in a similar situation, as well as an uncle.

There is a clear line (to me) on this: If the student is enrolled with the teacher then they start developing a relationship, it's wrong. It's a conflict of interests, the teacher cannot judge the student on the same grounds as other people in the group. Where I teach, that would be grounds for contractual job termination.

As soon as the grades are set, I find no objection. If it's just a random student in the same school as the teacher, if it's a consenting relationship between two independent adults with no power hierarchy between them, it is OK.

Of course, *after* having been sentimentaly involved (successfully or not), a student should not seek to be part of a teacher's group. It's not always possible to avoid it (i.e. only teacher for a mandatory subject), but it's very recommended.

Maybe because they are a surrogate state lacking full self-determination, and belonging colonially to a country with a culture so different to theirs, they will never be granted full citizenship of any real country ever?

I was born in Mexico. So is my wife — A proud Argentinian. We are as Americans as Puerto Ricans, as Cubans, and as nationals from tens of countries.

...How can you qualify the NSA as "unamerican"? They do reside in America. So do I (although my country's language is not English, this is as much America as the USA).

Yes, there are a lot of foundational myths to your country. One of them is that it is the "Land of the Free". Most countries that have been born in the last 200 years or so have similar origins and claims. But, if the country stands for freedom, it should not impose a credo to its citizens.

Hence, labeling something as "unamerican" is an oxymoron. Saying it's unamerican because it goes against personal privacy... Is more akin to saying it's un-soviet because it fosters private investment and therefore deprives society of its full economic benefits.

And do note, please, I said "un-soviet", not "un-russian".

I don't know where do I fit in the statistics, but I believe I am way off your data point :)

I used to buy "good" laptops, as much as my budget would allow — I had two very nice Dell computers, both bought for ~US$1,000. But in 2008 I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook (one of the first, 9" models) for ~US$400. I loved it. Even if it was so underpowered, it was comfortable to just take along anywhere. Granted, I don't do heavy compiling, but did work on it (even with its tiny keyboard). While on vacations, it was my main computer, and I never felt too size-cramped on it because of the keyboard — The screen size, 1024×600, was too small, but workable.

After five years with it, I bought another Acer Aspire One. The newer models are 11", but still very very light. Not much of a workhorse, but works very nicely. I bought it for US$350, and just added 4GB RAM (for 6GB total). It is a very nice work machine now. I don't know what I'd do with more power, but I do know that my back thanks me for having a small machine.

And, of course: One of my Dell machines was eventually stolen. It hurted. But were this one to be stolen as well, I would be much less angry about having to replace it.

Oh - Sorry, I jumped to answering. You did say unoficiallyUS and Mexico work to keep the rates stable.

That's exactly true. It's not that the peso is artificially held at a fixed per-dollar level (as it happened in the past), but that it is kept in a relatively stable value through "real" action.

But, of course, this is because the USA is not only Mexico's closest economic partner but its neighbour country. But anyway, the reason I sent here my original comment is that in the 2002-2014 period, the Euro went to over double of its original value against the US Dollar, then down a bit.

Nope. The peso floats freely; twice in the last five years there has been economic unstability, and the central bank "intervened" by selling a chunk of its reserves in order to keep the peso from falling further. It has worked: In the 2008-2010 period (remember, global economic recession), stable exchange levels jumped from 10 to 12, but we did at some point reach (for just a couple of days) 16, then went back to 12. And a similar thing seems to be happening now, as the dollar jumped from ~12.50 to ~15, and seems to have stabilized.

But no, the Mexican peso is not tied to the dollar, or to any other currency.

Right, I see what you did there...

I am Mexican. We have been told the peso has been mostly stable for almost two decades... Well, lets say, a decade and a half. When Vicente Fox was appointed president (2000), one dollar was at about MX$10, and it has very slowly slided. This year started with the dollar at ~MX$13. (Our last couple of months notwithstanding, as we are now at about 15). You can look at the last 10 years' graph

However, when the Euro started circulating (2002), one Euro was at about 7 pesos. It has since gone up to 17, then down a little. That is, it has moved from ~US$0.80 to ~US$1.40; it has peaked at US$1.60, and in the last 10 years, had valleys of US$1.20. (you can see the last ten years exchange levels history)

So, in short: There's quite a bit more to it if you dig into the whole world of currencies :)

No. The owners and employees of "lesser" companies are terribly affected. The State should stop any company that is tending to become a monopoly.