"childish, immature people" ?
C'mon, this is Slashdot.

"Business is a good game lots of competition and a minimum of rules.
You keep score with money."
Nolan Bushnell

So you're telling me there's wrinkles outside Uranus ?

What could possibly go wrong??

Commodore 128 to Windows 95 to Windows ME then dual boot Suse. A few versions of Suse later the whole thing did a meltdown due to hard drive failure. One new drive later and a newer Suse distro got the box up and running, no Windows. Now dual booted with Suse and Puppy Linux. Meanwhile, a laptop with Windows Vista lasted a bit over 3 years (the warranty period) and promptly burned up the AMD processor. Now using a laptop with Windows 7 and an Intel CPU. Much less heat. Still use the Linux box when I need to use my old but trusty scanner.

Just because she's so good looking.

After reading only a few posts I was finally motivated to dedupe my SkyDrive. Using FastDuplicateFileFinder I found many dupes and sorted through them. My number of files was a mere fraction of the OP's files, but this worked for me. I was surprised to find some I no longer needed and some I barely remembered from back in 1993.

Let's look at this from a cost benefit perspective.
California spends about $10k/student/year. They are ranked 47th on the science test.
Utah spends about $6k/student/year. They are ranked 4th on the science test.
It seems obvious to me 'more money' does not mean 'better educations'.
I am a retired public school teacher and I have to agree with your characterization of public schools as "gigantic and expensive fail-whales"

I understand how they work. I dislike them because I find them to be unreliable.

When I saw "The New York Times examines" I knew we had a very reputable source.

Bullwinkle, was that you?

Why does Ebay need my phone number? It never stops, does it?

Where is the "LIKE" button?

The whole point of high tech is to make something look easy that is hard for most people to understand . Else why do it? That almost always brings with it a high price unless you're MacGyver. I think the OP is barking mad if s/he thinks it can be done on the cheap.