The US governmental system is organized in such a way that third (or fourth or fifth, etc.) parties can't become viable. If we had a parliamentary system that allowed for coalition governments, then it would be, but the US has always (except for some brief transition periods while one of the two parties was dying) had two dominant parties, although those parties have changed over time.

It better not be playing games and music! I didn't spend $30 for it to spend its day messing around. Just like my boss doesn't pay me to spend my day... messing around... on Slashdot...

Nevermind, I don't care.

By having you set up an admin account, Mac OS would be defeating the purpose of using sudo. Every account is a normal account. Your fear is based on "the number of unnecessary admin accounts being used" while at the same time you admit that there are no admin accounts.

Apple knew that users would ignore the advice "not to run as admin" and so didn't even allow for the option. Instead they actually designed their OS (or rather, used a pre-existing OS model) so that you can actually use the computer as a user. A novel idea.

The user doesn't have different permissions between the command-line and the GUI. In both circumstances, when something is done that needs super-user privileges, the user is prompted for their password by sudo.

The only difference between the GUI and the CLI is that with the GUI you don't have to manually run sudo. You automatically get a pretty little window asking for your password. With the CLI, you need to run the program with sudo manually.

If you really want to have the kids 50 years from now be able to experience what computing is like today, maybe the best thing to do would be to just keep the computer and monitor enclosures. Then, keep a copy of the hard drive contents yourself, backing them up and maintaining them yourself, and in 50 years, go back to the school. You could install a display inside the monitor case, use computer innards of the time, and then use an emulator to basically simulate the whole experience.

It's not a perfect solution, and doesn't cover certain things like an authentic input device (mouse, keyboard), etc., but to me it would seem to be more important for them to experience a close simulation than for everything to be completely authentic.

It would mean keeping the files from corrupting over the years, etc., so more work for you, but it would take care of the hardware failure issues.

Even if the coupons were "paid for" by the proceeds from the bandwidth sale, that is still money that we could have put towards other things, thereby needing less tax dollars.

This is just another example of how with government regulation and socialism no one wins. Oh, except for the bureaucracy of course.