Buying old broken machines allows you to do a full restoration, exempting hardware, that flawlessly plays classic games. When you buy the machine with the ROMs, or a machine from an owner you bequeaths you all rights including his right to all information on the ROMs all lost parts, et cetera, then get the right to run the game. You can buy a crapped out box and gain the legal rights to a full restoration in a commercial or private environment. Someone could probably make a hand-some amount of money selling replica machines with the rights they gain. One could even secure the old ROMs inside a new case as proof of its legality. Emulation has made it so some of the very fun cult classics could make their way back into bars, or even in gamer cafe's. One game on a machine, period. Mastering a really hard game makes one want to play more. Anyone who has ever played Defender:Stargate understands the urge to pump in more quarters to get a shot at them Yllabians.

I'm curious to see what processor they will use. ARM-based I'm sure, but will it be one of the Nvidia Tegra series?

This would be awesome. Simply set up a web page where people can donate to help you carry out your messianic duties, sit back, and collect a shit load of cash.

It would be no worse than what the fifty churches in my town do. Plus instead of using the money for purely evil reasons you could do the world favor and donate it to the ACLU, Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason and Science, the Reason Project, or cancer research. There are a millions things that could be done with that money, after taking a hefty sum for yourself, of course.

It is all just people's perception. A videogame can't be too expensive, but it damn well better work so the market pushes high quality at low prices. In the medical world we expect devices to cost out of the ass and be complex. That is the exact opposite of the videogame, or rather, the general technology world. It is about time there is direct market competition with the medical device manufactures who rip us off and overcharge for clunky hard to use equipment that doesn't work that well in the first place.

What we should all do is send letters of protest to the school. I have just written them asking them to apologize to the student and his family. I have suggested that the vice principal in question should be counseled on the proper way to react in such a situation. I know the chances of the school issuing an apology is low, but enough of public pressure will eventually force them to. And anyone who lives near this school should be their for the next board meeting to protest what has been done. You can contact them here: http://www.mtechmiddle.org/apps/contact/