And, at about the same time, Basic on a CP/M machine at my high school...

Later more Basic on Commodore 64, moved on to Pascal and Modula-2 on Atari ST.

Nope. First of all, re-read the original article: we are talking about people working illegally in European countries. It is entirely possible to move to Europe illegally - just like in the USA, get there with a student (or tourism) visa and just stay in the country instead of going back home. Sure, it sucks because you can be caught (asked to provide valid ID, etc.) and sent back to your country, opening a bank account, renting a place, etc. all of these things are somewhat harder to do when you are illegal, but they can be done in every European country that I know of.

Second, European laws are sinking very fast to the level of the USA. More and more EU countries, under pressure by the same kind of people that are described in the article, are dismantling the only thing that makes life bearable: the protection they gave to their workers. In France, where I reside currently, a law is being considered that would make hiring/firing even easier than in the USA, while reducing social benefits, including firing compensations and unemployment benefits. And it's the same thing pretty much all over Europe.

Remember that unemployment is rising to never-before-seen levels. Youth unemployment stands around 25%-30% in Southern Europe, and sometimes much higher. In the meantime, start-ups are looking at illegal immigrants for techie jobs... Why is that? Because, yes, these people want to stuff as much money in their pockets as possible.

Again, this has nothing to do with finding labor - it has everything to do with screwing Joe Techie. Same as the US H1-B visas.

Yeah, right.

It's more like: "We don't want to pay proper wages for good techies, so we are breaking/bending every rules to exploit cheap illegal labor and keeping more of the venture capitalist money for ourselves".

Seriously, I have seen this in many a start-up, in France and elsewhere: pay people low - even though their knowledge is what makes your bloody start-up possible - and fire them as soon as they start demanding correct wages and reasonable working hours. Meanwhile, the CEO is looking for the nearest Porsche dealership. It's simply disgusting, and it has nothing to do with France laws and regulations (which can be a pain in the neck, I admit).

... And it's called Slackware. Around 2GB if you install everyhting and much, much less than that if you know what you are doing. Easy to keep out stuff like X11, KDE, XFCE, or anything else for that matter - simply make sure the little checkbox is not checked while installing.

But, hey, why take my word for it? Go ahead and install it, you will see.

(Oh, and don't bother whining ''Slackware is hard to learn'' yadda yadda yadda - you wanted customization, right? Live and learn)

I have a very conflicting view of Bitcoin. Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject:

1- Crypto: how do we know the bitcoin crypto is really good/really secure? Who has done an audit of the code?

Implications: Cryptography is a very hard subject to tackle. Many an encryption scheme has been cracked and left in tatters, that seemed formidable enough at first sight. If the bitcoin cryptography is cracked, then fake bitcoins can be ''mined'' (meaning: created out of thin air) and the whole currency disappears in a puff of smoke (so to speak).

2- Security: how do we know the bitcoin P2P client is really secure? Who had done an audit of the code? What about the currency transmission protocol?

Implications: if you can't "fake" bitcoins, at least you can intercept them out of thin air between Alice and Bob. What then? The same bitcoin exists twice and that cannot be good for bitcoins.

3- Obscurity: who is *really* the creator of Bitcoin? Why is he hiding behind a pseudonym?

Implications: Yes, being paranoid here - but, really, who is this "Satoshi Nakamoto"? Please read more here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto before criticizing this position. Essentially, and as long as we do not know who "he" is, the whole bitcoin-is-a-secure-digital-currency could be some very elaborate scam... Also, see point #1 and #2 above: I would feel a lot more confident in Bitcoin if the currency had been created by a recognized researcher in cryptography and digital currencies.

4- Economics: Bitcoin is essentially a ''fixed size'' currency... As someone has already pointed out, this has ''interesting'' properties, for various values of ''interesting''. If all bitcoins are mined then what?

Implications: once all bitcoins have been "mined", the only result can be a very serious "inflation" in the value of bitcoins if demand for this currency helds up - the only way to maintain a sustainable level of economic activity would be to raise the price of bitcoins by using it sub-division properties (yes, you can split a Bitcoin into smaller values). So right now 1 BT is, say = US$ 1. But what happens when 0.1 BT = US$1? This would imply staggering inflation in the implied value of Bitcoins and a Ponzi-like scheme, where the very first "miners" of BT would reap a staggering reward, leaving everyone else holding the bag. This could potentially bring a crisis of confidence in Bitcoin, and crash the entire currency, tulip-mania style.

You think I am going too far? There is now a cottage industry dedicated to selling you computing platforms (usually using Nvidia/ATI and OpenCL) to mine more Bitcoins. This, to me, smells of a ''mania'' phase, since, lest we forget, Bitcoins are completely immaterial and are not recognized anywhere except within circles of a dubious nature (Silk Road, anyone?).

In other words, yes, Bitcoin is fascinating in many ways... But I am not 100% sure this thing has been thought out in all of its aspects...

Right. This is why I have Slackware VMs all over the place, with uptimes in the hundreds of days.

Oh, and "cloud" computing can be based on any distribution - not just Ubuntu or Fedora. Slackware is ideal for this, since it is (IMHO) much easier to personalize, manage and configure on a daily basis.

In 3... 2... 1...