I did not read TFA, so correct me if I'm wrong but... Was this woman smart enough to purchase an external CD-Rom drive or not (judging from the rest of the article she probably wasn't). Did she realize she was ordering a computer that did not include an optical drive? Again, maybe, maybe not. I'm sure if she had called Dell and said I can't install my "Windows Only Verizon DSL CD" any tech support person with half a brain would tell her she had purchased a computer without an optical drive! Just how did she expect to install software from a CD to begin with? There are a lot of holes in this story if you ask me. The fact that the woman knows enough to blame "Ubuntu" but shows such ignorance towards anything else computer related makes me think this is a B.S. story. Also, why does she need to refer to it as a "Windows Only Verizon DSL CD"? Seems like the Windows Only portion was a plug. (i.e. smart enough to know the O/S is the problem but not smart enough for anything else) Also, if given the choice of purchasing a machine with Windows or something you had neveer heard of called Ubuntu, wouldn't any rational person knowing very little about computers (as this woman appears to be, knowing very little about computers that is, not necessarily rational) go with a Windows machine instead of something they had never heard of? The price point is not that much higher for the XP model, so I don't see this as a point of contention. As an aside, I owned several Dell laptops back in the day and always found their tech support to be top notch. Far better than the horror stories I heard from other manufacturers. I have heard the customer service has fallen off over the years, but to me this story sounds a bit far fetched. Whatever, my $.02. It probably wasn't worth the 5 minutes it took to respond, but this article is just asinine.

This is a rant, be warned... Everyone who has commented that the school overstepped its boundaries here is completely missing the point. First of all, I played varsity football for three years at a public high school in upstate NY (I can feel the -1 troll coming already). I too was forced to sign a code of conduct, just like every other varsity athlete at our school, stating that I would abstain from drug and alcohol use (among other things, including maintaining grades, not cutting classes, not getting into disciplinary problems, etc.). This code was instituted because as student athletes, we were expected to be students and citizens of the community first, athletes second, and yes, perhaps even role models for younger students (gasp!). Just like we condemn pro athletes for making mistakes costing them millions of dollars, kick college athletes off of teams resulting in lost scholarships (and potentially lots of lost dollars), so too should high school athletes be held to a higher standard than the average student. "Eden Prairie High School administrators have reprimanded more than 100 students and suspended some from sports and other extracurricular activities after obtaining Facebook photos of students partying, several students said Tuesday." Emphasis here on suspended from sports and other extracurricular activities, with less emphasis on the Facebook angle of the article (I know its /. here, but try to keep an open mind). I was always taught that playing sports (or being in a band, science club, computer club, etc.) was a privelage, not an entitlement. For instance, the school in no way owed its students the right to participate in these sports and extracurricular activities, they could have dropped the programs at any time and for many reasons. Many parents and members of faculty quite often protest the amount of money being pumped into athletics as being too great. They make the argument that those monies could be much better spent elsewhere on more "pertinent" school items (I would disagree and say that student athletics is a vital part to any successful high school / college). My point here is that every day is a try out / job interview / spotlight shined on you / etc. for student athletes. You have to act appropriately despite having a lot more pressure than the average 16 year old at your school. You have to be smarter. At my school, if you missed more than 1 day of school in a week when you had a game, guess what, you were not eligible to play in the game that week. If your grades were slipping, teachers would report you to the administration, and guess what, you wouldn't play until your grades were adequate (You had to maintain above a C average week in and week out and not be failing any one subject). If you were given any measure of disciplinary punishment (detention, suspension, etc.) guess what, you wouldn't play that week. I know this doesn't seem like that great of a burden, but at a public high school of 2000+ students you'd be surprised. No other students were held to such lofty expectations, nor in my opinion, should they have been. Here's a personal example. Several members of my team senior year were suspended from our home coming game because an angry parent (of a student who had rode the bench all year thinking his son should have been the starter mind you) alerted administration that several of the starters had attended a party nights before the game. The guys were suspended for the rest of the year (3 games total) without any appeal, without being allowed to refute the claims. No facebook photos were required to suspend these kids, only a phone call from a parent and corroboration by a few other students who were trying to avoid their own parental involvment. My teammates didn't claim "they weren't drinking." The rules were strict, but the rules were simple. My teammates broke them. They got caught and knew it. They were done. End of story. We all knew the rules, the majority of us stuck to them. Some people just thought that they wouldn't get caught. They gambled and lost, so did the team. The facebook angle of this story is merely a way to put a clever spin on the fact that what these kids did was wrong, and they knew it (or at least should have since they all signed a code of conduct). You can call it invasion of privacy, outside the school's boundaries, whatever. They still broke the rules (of the code of conduct) and got caught. It really is that simple. A phone call from a parent or fellow disgruntled student would have resulted in the same thing. Ironically, probably requiring much less evidence than facebook pictures to condemn the kids. The kids were foolish to take pictures of what they were doing, yes. They were more than anything, however, irresponsible to their friends and teammates that they let down by disobeying the rules of the game. Above all, what I'm taking away from the article that some of these kids just made a mistake. There are far worse things in life than being kicked off of a team in high school. If they genuinely had chances at scholarships then they are even more foolish to jeopardize that, but learned a lesson. It's not like these kids didn't know the difference between right and wrong (not morally, lets not make this a drinking age thing, or puritanical debate) and what violating the code would result in. They still broke the rules. They took a chance and got burned. BTW, I drank and partied a ton in high school (and college), just NOT during football season. I wasn't on some moral high horse or soap box or anything, I just cared more about my team and the sport for a few semesters than I did drinking and partying. Also, after we had our players suspended, we lost our final 3 games and missed the playoffs. So if I seem a bit cynical, it's because I am. If these kids got caught by the police partying, they would have been in the same boat. If a "concerned" parent turned them in, same thing. This story is a non-story if not for the clever facebook angle. Sorry guys, but in the real world, sometimes you don't get a chance to explain your actions or defend yourself. Sorry for the rant, but I felt strongly about this one...