Giving up mod abilities to respond to this...

Yes, of course you can write in whomever you want to on the ballot. However, are you going to spend the millions to billions of dollars it takes to market your write-in candidate so that others will know to write him/her in too? What happens if they even misspell the name while writing it in? What if they can't write?

Or, as another option, are you going to go to your state legislature and register your own candidate so that his/her name gets printed on the ballot? Look at what happened to Colbert when he tried to run in South Carolina. He was shot down because "he could never win," which was more or less the truth, but it prevented him from running in the first place.

Elections are all about marketing yourself to the general public, regardless of how stupid or idiotic the public is. I'll use the 1896 presidential election as an example. William Jennings Bryan, part of the populist party, tried to market himself without spending too much money (he didn't have that much to spend) by going around the country giving stump speeches and parading through towns. McKinley, his opponent, who had much more money than Bryan did, spent that money on newspaper advertisements and also paid people to spread the word about voting for McKinley. Guess who won?

All I'm really saying is that you're being overly idealistic, and you're only likely to keep punching your fist into a brick wall with that attitude in regard to politics.

First, there's no way that you can take illegally obtained "evidence" and punish the student for it. It goes against the 4th amendment, and is unethical on so many levels. I strongly doubt that this case will go too far in court.

Second, why the hell do they need to spy on students anyway? It's good that they're giving the students laptops, but what they do at home (regardless of all the stupid shit they do) is none of the school's business, nor is it in their jurisdiction. I could make a rant about how parents need to step it up and take better care of their kids, but I'll just sum it up: schools should stay out of parental territories. It's bad for the student, and it's bad for the school.

Whoever was running this, either the school IT admins or even the higher school administration should be at least suspended pending further review.

Dude... If you really want to, sell the thing for something like $150 and put that money toward getting an actual media center PC if you really want it that much.

A modded Xbox is no good to anyone but yourself, and even so, you'll spend hours tinkering with it before it even remotely does what you want it to do. Also, if it does RROD, your out of luck getting it replaced if you mod it in any way.

That's largely because the high price of console games help subsidize the discounted cost of the console itself (with the exception of the Wii, which makes a profit with each console sold). Both Sony and Microsoft accept a slight loss with every console they sell, largely because they know they'll earn it back and then some with the boosted game sales. It's the cell phone conundrum. (Also the printer ink conundrum.)

With PC games, no subsidizing is necessary, as you already paid full price for the computer. At that point you're just paying for the content.

The contest has been going on for several years straight, and /. has had several stories about it. The article takes knowledge of the contest as a given.

See Wikipedia and Netflix's own site for details.

I think he was agreeing that the police should raid the pot-growing apartments, but that they should not raid his, without a warrant.

Not when I can sell it to the idiots of the world for $200 a pop...

So, if I somehow sent you the source code to Windows, you would just say that it was only a stream of "garbage packets"? I'm sorry, but data can be extremely valuable, whether it's in the form of code, movies, or music. Packets by themselves are only packets, but it's what they carry that counts.

I used to edit Wikipedia a lot, and during that time, I saw a lot of these debates. This is nothing new, just a heated debate over whether to include an image (in this case the Rorschach test images) based upon ethics and Wikipedia policy (which there is actually very little).

Essentially what will happen (or has already happened, I didn't read the whole debate), is that the definition of "consensus" will be called into question, as that's what runs Wikipedia, and is what decides these debates. However, the Wikipedia policy of consensus is so vague and non-standardized that many debates like this end without consensus, and can even escalate into an edit war, followed by admins having to step in. (which is one of the reasons why I no longer edit it)

I really don't see why this specific debate made it on the /. index, there have been many other and similar debates like it, many having much larger implications concerning censorship on Wikipedia by recommendation of a 3rd party organization.

NASA needs DJs to raise $400 for a littering fine applied 30 years ago.

Guys... It's not that hard to get a small business loan of $25,000, if you present to the bank that you have the know-how (and a business degree would help). Plus from the TFA of a related story...

In other words, this is $25,000 that they would be normally paying anyway.

This is why clustering is ABSOLUTELY necessary for as large a company as Authorize.net. As parent said, putting all your eggs in one basket is a stupid idea...

I wonder how many companies will switch to PayPal after this...

I honestly would like to see a good, bi-partisan healthcare plan come to the table.

However, if you actually think that the socialized healthcare systems in "every other developed country" work fine, then you should try going to France, where most have to be placed on year-long waitlists for a simple surgery.

Also, if you think that Medicaid provides remotely good healthcare, then you obviously have not talked to any doctors about it; Medicaid forces doctors to only accept 22% of a charged payment, and to write off the rest. So, if an orthopedic performed an $1,100 knee replacement, he'd only receive about $250, and wouldn't get anymore. And if that orthopedic happened to be a specialist in knee replacements, then the patient would also have to see a general orthopedic to get a referral, costing the patient unnecessary time. Many doctors have actually stopped accepting Medicare/Medicaid patients.

I think that I would honestly like to see changes made in the copyright law dealing with prescription drugs... When drug companies patent a drug (which usually happens as research just begins), they have 18 years to finish researching/developing the drug (usually takes 10-11 years), get it approved by the FDA (1-2 years, depending on what the drug cures), mass produce it, market it, and try to make a profit on it in the remaining time that they have. After the 18 years is up, the generic pharmaceuticals step in and make cheaper versions of the drug, virtually eliminating all hope for more profit on it.
Extending the copyrights for these would allow the companies to market the drugs longer and charge a lesser price on them, giving them a bigger chance at making a profit on the drug.

Overall, just remember that healthcare is a business and an industry, and costs a lot of money to run and operate. If the government wants to see an even bigger expansion on their current biggest expense (Medicare), they need to have the financial backing for it. Frankly, with the economy tanking, massively increasing our debt will not help matters almost any.