There are 10kW electrical on demand heaters on the market for use in showers that handle input temperatures around that level and output temperatures of 35-50 C quite easily.
Sigh. Do a search for "electric shower" on the search engine of your choice. Then look at their specs. There are 10kW ones on the market that have no problems dealing with water supplies down to 2 degrees celsius (heating it to 35-50 or so degrees Celsius), which is sufficient in far colder locations than the ones you give (10kW is typically the most that is marketed for the UK for instance). For colder climates, there are models available at least up to 30kW.
And yeah, I do know what it's like to have to leave your tap dripping or face having your water pipes freeze up (I'm originally from Norway).
Re:Actually, it's not released yet
on
GCC 4.1 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
I guess you didn't see the "(released [date])" bit after the version numbers then... (and the corresponding lack of one for 4.1. Nor the lack of a release history on the 4.1 page.
Overrated, probably. But I still like his books. More so his "recent" books, like Idoru and All tomorrows parties, actually. He's had far too much to live up to with all the early 90's hype in particular.. I remember reading alt.cyberpunk and actually being put off from reading any Gibson for years because of the fanboy like worship going on... Except for Agrippa - hard to avoid given all the hype around it's release, but of course that was quite "different" from his novels. More performance art than literature, I guess...
The total economic impact isn't relevant. What matters is the cost/benefit of investing in rebuilding or improvement vs. resettling people.
The likely cost to society of resettling 440 people is far above $2250 per person in lost taxes, unemployment benefits to those that are unable to find new jobs, pressure on the nearby housing market etc. As such, it would likely cost YOU more in taxes if these people were resettled, and it might very well cost society as a whole more in taxes if these people voluntarily move as well, in terms of lost employment and other social costs.
Besides, assuming 300 million people in work paying taxes in the EU (a low estimate), the cost is 0.4 Euro cents per tax payer. I'll happily pay your share if you stop spouting nonsense like what you wrote.
And if people are willing to pay for mirrors like these it isn't a "bullshit industry" any more than anything else people are willing to pay for. At a cost of $1.2m for the EU, the company in question won't have to pull in much extra business before they alone have repaid the full cost in increased taxes without even taking things like reduced sick leave and higher productivity in Rattenberg into account.
Seems like the younguns catch on quick. If you don't like living there, then don't. Problem solved. Seems like they're better off than all the folks near the arctic circle, but you don't see/hear them complaining...
You obviously don't talk to people living near the Arctic circle much... Norway for instance have far more people living in areas where the sun never rises during the winter than this, and you'll always hear some of them complaining. More importantly, it affects productivity - that alone means a project like this would probably pay for itself in terms of increased taxes by boosting productivity alone.
It also have significant economic impact in terms of higher rates of depression and associated problems, higher rates of sick leave etc. You can see that problem to varying degree much further south in Norway too (that is, areas that DO get sunlight during the winter)
So once again the government/PTBs are footing the bill for people too lazy to move. *cough* New Orleans *cough* Florida *cough*
The difference being that in this case people aren't in any danger if they stay, and there's a well established town with historic roots and established businesses that aren't facing any forms of disruption, and the only problem can be alleviated at a cost to the EU of $3000 per inhabitant - a cost far below what the average citizen pay in taxes in a single year.
Quite likely the cost of these people moving in to larger towns with pressures on housing, schools, hospitals etc. would cost society far more than a measly $3000 per person.
Another issue is to what extent these people can affort to move - presumably their properties are going to go at an extremely low price.
It's extremely short sighted not to consider other costs than the immediately visible costs of a project.
Oh, and I guess you missed the part of this town being built in the 1300s, and currently being in decline because people are moving OUT of it, not in... Most people currently living there have lived there all their lives, and now they are getting what could be a significant improvement in quality of life at a small fraction of what they've paid in taxes over those years.
So it's not about cramming people into every nook and cranny, but about maintaining and possible growing a settlement which already have an established residential area, that employ people, that have established infrastructure etc.
The likely cost to society of having these people put pressure on house prices etc. by moving elsewhere would likely easily outweigh the $1.2 million the EU is spending all by itself.
... and for those that wonder how it turned out: The mirror never folded out properly, so the project failed, and I don't think they tried a second time.
Not millions. $1.2 million to improve quality of life for around 400 people. In other words around $3000 per inhabitant, or far less than most of them are paying in taxes in a single year. Combined with the fact that this project serves a dual purpose of helping this town and also of growing interest for the EU based mirror manufacturer's business worldwide, and it's likely economically a good long term investment - Both promoting growth in a town that's currently in decline as well as increasing exports from the company involved and boosting taxable revenue that way.
I'd add Karel Capek as another non-English writer that would deserve to be on the list. Read "The war with the newts". Incidentally he was also the first author to use the word "robot" in his play Rossum's Universal Robots (though the word was apparently invented by his brother - see the linked page for background)
I used to agree with that distinction. However then I realised that it's highly location specific. In some areas geek have some positive connotation and nerd only negative, and other places it's the other way around.
Two reasons: That would obstruct genuine security requirements and he'd probably just not get admitted - and if you read Perens' blog entry Stallmann didn't appear to want to prevent the security team from doing their jobs. Second: It would not make a point against RFID. I doubt UN security was the primary target for this demonstration - RFID in general was.
If you RTFA you might notice that according to Perens he willingly unpacked the RFID for scanning when asked - what he protested again was wearing an id that could be scanned without his knowledge. In other words the problem wasn't about showing an id.
It also seems more a symbolic objections to RFID than an objection specific to this particular use of it.
You miss the point. A large number of those machines will still be NAT'ed or firewalled and so will still need that extra layer because security or whatever hardware/software they're behind won't let them connect directly.
France has plenty of innovative, high-tech companies (look at Thales, Alcatel, Airbus, etc.) French workers (the 90% not unemployed) actually are more productive per hour on average than U.S. workers, but the French work fewer hours per year and are less productive on a yearly basis.
What France doesn't have is GDP growth and low unemployment. These are explained by high tax burdens and strong labor regulations.
French GDP per capita compared to the U.S. is now at about 70%, down from about 80% during the early 1980's.
Compare it to other European countries, though, and it's interesting to note for instance that France's GDP per capita stands at about 95% of the UK's, despite UK employees working massively longer working hours. If anything, the UK economy is the closest you get to US style economic policy in Europe, so there are apparently significant other factors affecting overall efficiency as well.
Interestingly, the U.S. has a more equal distribution of income (in terms of Gini inddex) than France - before government income redistribution. Only after government income redistribution does France has a more equal distribution of income than the U.S.
In any economy with a highly progressive tax system you will find that the higher income groups needs higher increases to get the same net increase in salary, and so you should expect the income differences to be greater if the economy can bear it. It doesn't have to happen, but it certainly shouldn't be a surprise.
Copyright is not property in the legal sense no matter how many times people try to say it is, and the crimes of copyright infringement and theft are wholly separate.
The whole "copyright is theft" mantra is something the major IP owners invented as a way to prevent people from questioning their continuous attempts at tightening (read: removing) as much as possible peoples fair use rights and tie us down with DRM.
It has no basis in the law nor in tradition. While protection of physical property or services from theft is generally seen as a natural right and have been excercised by society since before organised government to warying degrees, copyright (and patents) have the distinction that they were explicitly created by government in recent history as artificial monopolies to meet specific goals (copyright originated as a way for the British monarchy to grant favors to people by protecting them from competition, but modern copyright law is based on the idea of a time limited monopoly to further the arts and sciences).
As such calling it theft is nothing but a way of trying to bias the public against the rights the public have always had, and take away what is ours.
If anything, what they are doing is much closer to theft than what copyright infringement is.
Except for the fact that food production has been high enough to "cure world hunger" for decades. It is NOT a production problem, but a distribution problem (aka a problem of poor people not being able to pay for the food).
That problem will increase not decrease with what you are suggesting, as it will remove the livelyhood of millions of farmers in the third world that currently depend on being able to compete with larger scale farming or industrial food manufacture.
Want to solve world hunger in one "easy" step?
Drop agricultural subsidies in all developed countries and spend the money on providing farming tools and infrastructure in the developing countries instead, while gradually removing all trade barriers on exports from third world countries without forcing them to go first.
Yes, you'd have a rebellion of farmers on your hand, pissed off that they're suddenly having to deal with actual competition instead of being sheltered in every way possible. And yes, a lot of them would face going bankrupt. And yes, food prices would rise at least temporarily...
Which is why little ends up actually being done to stop world hunger - whichever way you look at it, it requires the third world to have more control over their own food supply, and the only way that will happen is to make it more profitable to farm there so that local farmers can afford to take precautions against droughts etc. (including building up grain caches etc.) - the volatility of food local food production is the main cause of hunger and famines today.
All of this WILL force farmers in the developed countries to have to make significant adjustments, and at the moment they're simply too powerful for any politicians to dare push that kind of agenda very hard.
Ignorance is a defence, but depending on jurisdiction it will likely only reduce the damages. In the US I believe the cap for statutory damages for accidental infringement is $30,000 and that the cap for willful infringement $150,000. I believe those numbers are "per infringement" however the lawyers define that.
Copyright infringement in the US allows for statutory damages to be awarded - that is there is a presumption of damage even if the copyright owner can't prove any actual loss (monetary or otherwise) as a result of the copying.
And they say in the article that the laptops will include a programming language... a kid can program just as well on a Mac or a PC as he can on a Linux box, and the basic concepts and disciplines of what he learns will stick with him regardless of what platform he programs for when he grows up.
Yes, he can, but he can learn far better when he can also modify and tinker with the system itself rather than being artifically restricted to some nice little sandbox just because someone was too shortsighted to give him or her the opportunity to go further and easy access to the tools to do so.
I usually positively dread having to interview people with mainly Windows background whenever I hire software engineers. Sure, there are the occasional good ones, but the vast majority of good software engineers I have come across - whether or not they are Windows users today - are people that have spent a significant amount of time on platforms that were either open, or at the very least easy enough to tinker with at the system level, and have used that opportunity to learn things most people lever learn on a platform like Windows.
And as far as Apple and Microsoft committing to continue development... sure, why wouldn't they? If, as you say, this is a marketing opportunity, then why would they let it become a PR disaster? Besides, Microsoft already has to work with a HUGE amount of third-party components, so they would almost have to go out of their way to break compatibility with the laptop.
Because it costs money? Because they at some point decides it's time to start making money in these markets? Because they see the needs of these users as not in their interests to meet? The possible reasons are endless - Why would anyone willingly take the risk of suddenly being in that position when they are locked into the platform and a proprietary vendor - the only vendor of that platform - suddenly pulls the rug if they have an alternative that meets their goals?
And since when have Microsoft at least ever shied away from doing something over bad PR?
Apple has had less of a commitment to backwards-compatibility with OS's, but it's always been with hardware that has aged out, anyway, and would run the latest OS very poorly. I'm just not seeing a problem here. These laptops are going to last maybe five years, and that's about it.
Ah, and so in five years time this project is potentially going to have to make a choice:
Possibly have to upgrade the platform and maintain the same price point to be able to support OS bloat, or cut the manufacturing price to a fraction and be able to push out vastly larger numbers of new machines to supply far more children with but have to go with an old unsupported version that they can't modify themselves if needed, or (gasp!) picking a platform where vendor control doesn't prevent them from doing what they want and/or need.
You're either arrogant, ignorant, or both to think that children won't quickly learn to use these (and even worse if you're somehow trying to imply that third world children will be less able to learn how to use these than kids in developed countries).
After all it's not much more than 20 years ago lots of children learned to program before even starting school thanks to being given a chance to tinker with home computers without ever having seen one before. I know, I was one of them when we got our first machine 25 years ago (I was 5).
At the time, I had not yet used a remote control, had not used a digital radio, had not seen a touch phone, had not seen a digital watch, nor a VCR. In fact I can't really think of a single digital device I'd used or really anything much more advanced than an old fashioned rotary phone and perhaps a calculator. I hadn't even used an electric typewriter - only played around with an old mechanical one.
If my parents had showed the same attitude that you do, and hadn't let me play around with the computer on my own without trying to cushion everything things would have been very different (I've worked as a software engineer and development manager for the last ten years or so).
So, yeah, give these kids Linux and give them a chance to tinker, and within a couple of years these kids will start teaching their parents about computing, and within decade these countries will have their own homegrown army of software developers to help grow their economy as these kids grow up and a significant part of them will have far better understanding of computers than most normal users in the developed world has.
Is the purpose of the $100 computer to learn about computers and programming them? I thought it was supposed to be a communication and learning tool for the low income millions who may have never even seen a computer. Of all OS in existence, OSX seems closest to a simple communications box, yet powerful enough to be satistying to geeks also. In schools, if configured for a limited user, it can be used easily by almost anyone and there is little worry about malware installation. Three or four appropriate programs set up by the administrator into limited user accounts makes a very secure, easy to use machine.
You entirely miss the point. Learning about computers is one of many ways for this system to be a learning tool.
I had never seen a computer up close when I was 5 years old. Within weeks I was programming the damn thing. Within months I had surpassed my dad. Now I have ten years of professional software development experience (and 25 years of computer experience overall).
Why do you want to offer these people a limited, crippled setup when you can give them an open system that the kids can learn and tinker with as they please? Worst case the system needs to be reinstalled.
If I had been subjected to that kind of misguided handholding when I was a kid, I'd never had the chances to learn a fraction of what I know about computers now.
You mean except all the fellow students, who thanks to having an open system actually get a chance to learn about how computers actually work instead of just how to be a (l)user?
See, that's how kids who learned to use computers before Windows got along.
Most of my friends knew far more about computers at 10-11 than what my parents did or will ever do, thanks to having platforms that encouraged tinkering thanks to relative openness (even if the OS's weren't open source they were small enough and well documented enough that it wasn't a problem to figure things out by ourselves, including by using a disassembler, and so was the hardware) - most of that knowledge was acquired with little or no help from adults (because most adults we knew had no clue about computers).
Slashdot Mirror
There are 10kW electrical on demand heaters on the market for use in showers that handle input temperatures around that level and output temperatures of 35-50 C quite easily.
And yeah, I do know what it's like to have to leave your tap dripping or face having your water pipes freeze up (I'm originally from Norway).
I guess you didn't see the "(released [date])" bit after the version numbers then... (and the corresponding lack of one for 4.1. Nor the lack of a release history on the 4.1 page.
Too much religion (that is, retelling of the Bible) for my liking..
Overrated, probably. But I still like his books. More so his "recent" books, like Idoru and All tomorrows parties, actually. He's had far too much to live up to with all the early 90's hype in particular.. I remember reading alt.cyberpunk and actually being put off from reading any Gibson for years because of the fanboy like worship going on... Except for Agrippa - hard to avoid given all the hype around it's release, but of course that was quite "different" from his novels. More performance art than literature, I guess...
The likely cost to society of resettling 440 people is far above $2250 per person in lost taxes, unemployment benefits to those that are unable to find new jobs, pressure on the nearby housing market etc. As such, it would likely cost YOU more in taxes if these people were resettled, and it might very well cost society as a whole more in taxes if these people voluntarily move as well, in terms of lost employment and other social costs.
Besides, assuming 300 million people in work paying taxes in the EU (a low estimate), the cost is 0.4 Euro cents per tax payer. I'll happily pay your share if you stop spouting nonsense like what you wrote.
And if people are willing to pay for mirrors like these it isn't a "bullshit industry" any more than anything else people are willing to pay for. At a cost of $1.2m for the EU, the company in question won't have to pull in much extra business before they alone have repaid the full cost in increased taxes without even taking things like reduced sick leave and higher productivity in Rattenberg into account.
You might be thinking about this. It was launched I believe, but the mirror supposedly never folded out, and so the project was abandoned.
You obviously don't talk to people living near the Arctic circle much... Norway for instance have far more people living in areas where the sun never rises during the winter than this, and you'll always hear some of them complaining. More importantly, it affects productivity - that alone means a project like this would probably pay for itself in terms of increased taxes by boosting productivity alone.
It also have significant economic impact in terms of higher rates of depression and associated problems, higher rates of sick leave etc. You can see that problem to varying degree much further south in Norway too (that is, areas that DO get sunlight during the winter)
So once again the government/PTBs are footing the bill for people too lazy to move. *cough* New Orleans *cough* Florida *cough*
The difference being that in this case people aren't in any danger if they stay, and there's a well established town with historic roots and established businesses that aren't facing any forms of disruption, and the only problem can be alleviated at a cost to the EU of $3000 per inhabitant - a cost far below what the average citizen pay in taxes in a single year.
Quite likely the cost of these people moving in to larger towns with pressures on housing, schools, hospitals etc. would cost society far more than a measly $3000 per person.
Another issue is to what extent these people can affort to move - presumably their properties are going to go at an extremely low price.
It's extremely short sighted not to consider other costs than the immediately visible costs of a project.
So it's not about cramming people into every nook and cranny, but about maintaining and possible growing a settlement which already have an established residential area, that employ people, that have established infrastructure etc.
The likely cost to society of having these people put pressure on house prices etc. by moving elsewhere would likely easily outweigh the $1.2 million the EU is spending all by itself.
... and for those that wonder how it turned out: The mirror never folded out properly, so the project failed, and I don't think they tried a second time.
Not millions. $1.2 million to improve quality of life for around 400 people. In other words around $3000 per inhabitant, or far less than most of them are paying in taxes in a single year. Combined with the fact that this project serves a dual purpose of helping this town and also of growing interest for the EU based mirror manufacturer's business worldwide, and it's likely economically a good long term investment - Both promoting growth in a town that's currently in decline as well as increasing exports from the company involved and boosting taxable revenue that way.
I'd add Karel Capek as another non-English writer that would deserve to be on the list. Read "The war with the newts". Incidentally he was also the first author to use the word "robot" in his play Rossum's Universal Robots (though the word was apparently invented by his brother - see the linked page for background)
I used to agree with that distinction. However then I realised that it's highly location specific. In some areas geek have some positive connotation and nerd only negative, and other places it's the other way around.
Two reasons: That would obstruct genuine security requirements and he'd probably just not get admitted - and if you read Perens' blog entry Stallmann didn't appear to want to prevent the security team from doing their jobs. Second: It would not make a point against RFID. I doubt UN security was the primary target for this demonstration - RFID in general was.
It also seems more a symbolic objections to RFID than an objection specific to this particular use of it.
You miss the point. A large number of those machines will still be NAT'ed or firewalled and so will still need that extra layer because security or whatever hardware/software they're behind won't let them connect directly.
What France doesn't have is GDP growth and low unemployment. These are explained by high tax burdens and strong labor regulations.
French GDP per capita compared to the U.S. is now at about 70%, down from about 80% during the early 1980's.
Compare it to other European countries, though, and it's interesting to note for instance that France's GDP per capita stands at about 95% of the UK's, despite UK employees working massively longer working hours. If anything, the UK economy is the closest you get to US style economic policy in Europe, so there are apparently significant other factors affecting overall efficiency as well.
Interestingly, the U.S. has a more equal distribution of income (in terms of Gini inddex) than France - before government income redistribution. Only after government income redistribution does France has a more equal distribution of income than the U.S.
In any economy with a highly progressive tax system you will find that the higher income groups needs higher increases to get the same net increase in salary, and so you should expect the income differences to be greater if the economy can bear it. It doesn't have to happen, but it certainly shouldn't be a surprise.
The whole "copyright is theft" mantra is something the major IP owners invented as a way to prevent people from questioning their continuous attempts at tightening (read: removing) as much as possible peoples fair use rights and tie us down with DRM.
It has no basis in the law nor in tradition. While protection of physical property or services from theft is generally seen as a natural right and have been excercised by society since before organised government to warying degrees, copyright (and patents) have the distinction that they were explicitly created by government in recent history as artificial monopolies to meet specific goals (copyright originated as a way for the British monarchy to grant favors to people by protecting them from competition, but modern copyright law is based on the idea of a time limited monopoly to further the arts and sciences).
As such calling it theft is nothing but a way of trying to bias the public against the rights the public have always had, and take away what is ours.
If anything, what they are doing is much closer to theft than what copyright infringement is.
That problem will increase not decrease with what you are suggesting, as it will remove the livelyhood of millions of farmers in the third world that currently depend on being able to compete with larger scale farming or industrial food manufacture.
Want to solve world hunger in one "easy" step?
Drop agricultural subsidies in all developed countries and spend the money on providing farming tools and infrastructure in the developing countries instead, while gradually removing all trade barriers on exports from third world countries without forcing them to go first.
Yes, you'd have a rebellion of farmers on your hand, pissed off that they're suddenly having to deal with actual competition instead of being sheltered in every way possible. And yes, a lot of them would face going bankrupt. And yes, food prices would rise at least temporarily...
Which is why little ends up actually being done to stop world hunger - whichever way you look at it, it requires the third world to have more control over their own food supply, and the only way that will happen is to make it more profitable to farm there so that local farmers can afford to take precautions against droughts etc. (including building up grain caches etc.) - the volatility of food local food production is the main cause of hunger and famines today.
All of this WILL force farmers in the developed countries to have to make significant adjustments, and at the moment they're simply too powerful for any politicians to dare push that kind of agenda very hard.
Ignorance is a defence, but depending on jurisdiction it will likely only reduce the damages. In the US I believe the cap for statutory damages for accidental infringement is $30,000 and that the cap for willful infringement $150,000. I believe those numbers are "per infringement" however the lawyers define that.
Copyright infringement in the US allows for statutory damages to be awarded - that is there is a presumption of damage even if the copyright owner can't prove any actual loss (monetary or otherwise) as a result of the copying.
Yes, he can, but he can learn far better when he can also modify and tinker with the system itself rather than being artifically restricted to some nice little sandbox just because someone was too shortsighted to give him or her the opportunity to go further and easy access to the tools to do so.
I usually positively dread having to interview people with mainly Windows background whenever I hire software engineers. Sure, there are the occasional good ones, but the vast majority of good software engineers I have come across - whether or not they are Windows users today - are people that have spent a significant amount of time on platforms that were either open, or at the very least easy enough to tinker with at the system level, and have used that opportunity to learn things most people lever learn on a platform like Windows.
And as far as Apple and Microsoft committing to continue development... sure, why wouldn't they? If, as you say, this is a marketing opportunity, then why would they let it become a PR disaster? Besides, Microsoft already has to work with a HUGE amount of third-party components, so they would almost have to go out of their way to break compatibility with the laptop.
Because it costs money? Because they at some point decides it's time to start making money in these markets? Because they see the needs of these users as not in their interests to meet? The possible reasons are endless - Why would anyone willingly take the risk of suddenly being in that position when they are locked into the platform and a proprietary vendor - the only vendor of that platform - suddenly pulls the rug if they have an alternative that meets their goals?
And since when have Microsoft at least ever shied away from doing something over bad PR?
Apple has had less of a commitment to backwards-compatibility with OS's, but it's always been with hardware that has aged out, anyway, and would run the latest OS very poorly. I'm just not seeing a problem here. These laptops are going to last maybe five years, and that's about it.
Ah, and so in five years time this project is potentially going to have to make a choice:
Possibly have to upgrade the platform and maintain the same price point to be able to support OS bloat, or cut the manufacturing price to a fraction and be able to push out vastly larger numbers of new machines to supply far more children with but have to go with an old unsupported version that they can't modify themselves if needed, or (gasp!) picking a platform where vendor control doesn't prevent them from doing what they want and/or need.
After all it's not much more than 20 years ago lots of children learned to program before even starting school thanks to being given a chance to tinker with home computers without ever having seen one before. I know, I was one of them when we got our first machine 25 years ago (I was 5).
At the time, I had not yet used a remote control, had not used a digital radio, had not seen a touch phone, had not seen a digital watch, nor a VCR. In fact I can't really think of a single digital device I'd used or really anything much more advanced than an old fashioned rotary phone and perhaps a calculator. I hadn't even used an electric typewriter - only played around with an old mechanical one.
If my parents had showed the same attitude that you do, and hadn't let me play around with the computer on my own without trying to cushion everything things would have been very different (I've worked as a software engineer and development manager for the last ten years or so).
So, yeah, give these kids Linux and give them a chance to tinker, and within a couple of years these kids will start teaching their parents about computing, and within decade these countries will have their own homegrown army of software developers to help grow their economy as these kids grow up and a significant part of them will have far better understanding of computers than most normal users in the developed world has.
You entirely miss the point. Learning about computers is one of many ways for this system to be a learning tool.
I had never seen a computer up close when I was 5 years old. Within weeks I was programming the damn thing. Within months I had surpassed my dad. Now I have ten years of professional software development experience (and 25 years of computer experience overall).
Why do you want to offer these people a limited, crippled setup when you can give them an open system that the kids can learn and tinker with as they please? Worst case the system needs to be reinstalled.
If I had been subjected to that kind of misguided handholding when I was a kid, I'd never had the chances to learn a fraction of what I know about computers now.
See, that's how kids who learned to use computers before Windows got along.
Most of my friends knew far more about computers at 10-11 than what my parents did or will ever do, thanks to having platforms that encouraged tinkering thanks to relative openness (even if the OS's weren't open source they were small enough and well documented enough that it wasn't a problem to figure things out by ourselves, including by using a disassembler, and so was the hardware) - most of that knowledge was acquired with little or no help from adults (because most adults we knew had no clue about computers).
Don't underestimate kids.