That's true of a proper, structured programming language. The subject is dry and guaranteed to alienate even the geekiest among those children. Why on earth would you teach assembler or C++ to a kid? In the same way, would you teach an 8 year old Calculus, or basic math operations instead? A well designed subject that teaches them to rapidly write fun software in a simple and graphical manner would be a fantastic choice. There must be programming languages and environments out there that accomplish something like this. Hell, if you could design the subject around coding some very simple games in this fashion the little ones would love you forever. From there, in the same way it's done with any other subject, every year you can go a bit deeper into something more formal.

Kids do not need any computer literacy classes in the same way you didn't need any to operate a television or a vcr back in the day. People who need it are those who came in contact with a computer a lot later in life than nowaday's kids. That would be a complete waste of time.

Also, the region (I was born there) has plenty of experience on rolling out Linux on institutions through LinEx first (schools), then Debian itself (on the health system's IT infrastructure) later on. They were far from smooth at the time as mistakes were made, particularly when it came to re-educate and retrain staff. The region's government staff desktops is the last, and biggest, migration to make.

I completely agree. I built recently a new brain for my studio and looked into hybrid drives only to get a separate SSD and traditional HDD at the end - first, I need the physical separation of program data and music projects as it just makes life a lot easier for backups, possible reinstalls and moving projects across machines. Second, I could get a decent 120GB SDD + 1TB traditional 7200rpm drive for about the same money I would've had to pay for a hybrid half the total size of that.

For a normal computer to browse the web and do the usual computery things I wouldn't even think on an SSD either, just a fast enough traditional drive.

Yes you can. Turn the goddamn thing off and bob's your uncle.

I do understand what you mean however - I certainly do not want to associate my home with working. I quite like the parent's idea on a local office space to telecommute from and which provides the tools you need (stationery, computers, IT support). I would definitely be up for that. We definitely need to travel less, not faster.

Incorrect. "Derecho de cita" grants much the same rights as fair use, no matter what you just read on the Wikipedia - the article in English is just plain wrong and misleading. It gives people the right to re-jiggle any copyrighted work for as long as it's within a series of fair use parameters. The Spanish example is not common law, but explicitly allowed by "el código civil" and actually drips from several articles of their Constitution.

On the "feeling superior to the US", I'm merely pointing out the misconception by the post I was replying to that the EU equalises all their members legal framework to the same uniform mess, when it's just not the case. Europe is not just the UK, Germany and France.

Again, that's incorrect. To put just one example, Spain grants their citizens a so called "derecho de cita" which for all purposes is equivalent to the fair use construct in the US.

"no fair use" sorry dude but that ain't true. "Europe" is not a single country you know.

Where's the part in which he compares driving the bus with urinating on a hippie?

The ipad.