What To Load On a 4-Year-Old's Netbook?

nostrodecus writes "I have a nephew who is very young, but who has the techie gene — he found the Gruffalo on YouTube before anyone knew he could spell. Now he's almost 4, and I was thinking of giving him my netbook (Acer running XP), which I hardly use any more. So, of course, I will be deleting all the porn, but what should I load up on it? Are there tools/apps that I can load up on it to protect it and him from things he shouldn't see until college? Also, what apps or games could I load on it that a 4-year-old will get some use out of?"

Comments

Re:Hmm

[Belial6]

You seem to only be familiar with retarded children. I gave my son his first computer a couple of weeks after his first birthday. 5 minutes showing him how the mouse and keyboard work and loading gCompris for him, and a couple of hours later showing him how to properly shut down the machine, and how to load gCompris himself, and he was off and running. By the end of the first day, he was perfectly competent at using the computer for the applications he wanted to run. On his second birthday, I formatted his hard drive and gave him a copy of Ubuntu on CD. He had no problem installing it. No, he couldn't read, but it didn't take a 3 year old to figure out which button was the "Next" button.

By the time he was three, he had started looking up what he wanted on the internet. So, while you are aghast at the idea of giving a 4-year old his own computer, I am aghast that you wouldn't expect children to be raised well enough not to destroy things by the age of 4, and aghast that the level of retardation that you seem to think is normal. If I am wrong about what is normal for a 4 year old, and you are right, then I will have to severely lower my view of humanity.

Re:Hmm

[NurturingFather]

It has nothing to do with Home Alone. Kids have always been abused, traded, left alone, for all of human history, and it would have happened to whatever homo erectus and friends that existed before that. People who think that somebody saying they left their kid alone is some sort of indication of the decay of society is just unbelievably fucking stupid and naive as shit. Congratulations to you you stupid fuck.