Last week, a student at Big Spring High School in Newville, Pennsylvania was given detention for using Firefox on a school computer. Quoted below is the key explanation from the official detention writeup: Posted on 12/17/2007 11:41:53 AM PST by twntaipan
Last week, a student at Big Spring High School in Newville, Pennsylvania was given detention for using Firefox on a school computer. Quoted below is the key explanation from the official detention writeup:
“Today in class [name] had a program launched called Foxfire.exe. I had told [name] to close the program and to resume work but he told me that is was just a different browser and that he was doing his work. I had given him two warnings but he insisted that it was just a ‘better’ browser and he wasn’t doing anything wrong. I had then issued his detention.”
I’m sure whether I should laugh or cry. It says so much about the state of technical education, respect for authority, what passes for civil disobedience and–of course–the all-consuming corporate hegemony of Microsoft. We live in a strange world.
Once again, hat tip to my buddy Lizard for the heads up.
The Kiddies can do what they want AT HOME!
The same goes with my users!
It is an easy free download. All you have to do is got to
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
They have a free one, and then they encourage you to upgrade (at cost?).
Whenever life was going a little too well, I sat down and tried to learn assembly language.
Sounds like he was given detention for not following his teacher's instruction. The district may have security measures set up through IE profiles that are in place to protect the district's computers. But, even if that isn't the case, the teacher told him and gave him two warnings, the kid should have been punished.
“This comment brought to you via Firefox.”
The above mentioned comment viewed via Firefox.
You VILL USE THE INTERNET EXPLORER OR ELSE!.........,
Once upon a time, there was a program called “NCSA Mosaic” ...
Your scenario assumes the student accounts have admin privileges. If IT gave the kids admin rights and is now mad because he’s using Firefox instead of IE, sounds like he’s more qualified than they are.
I have had NO problems whatsoever using FireFox. When I use IE, it crashes practically every time, so as to be completely unuseable.................
Then these folks should have the login-account privvys setup correctly. They probably have the kids logging in as root/admin...and they deserve what they get.
I use IE7, and I’ve found Firefox takes a bit longer to load. Plus IE7’s tabs are easier to manage.
Yes, gay porn involving ducks. Therefore qualifying as protected behavior at goobermint skewles.
“He got detention for not doing what the teacher told him to do.”
I agree. I’d also bet there is something more to the story than what the headline implies.
When I was teaching I used to have a saying for parents; “Believe 50% of what your child says about me and I’ll believe 50 % of what your child says about you.”
Today, I might hedge that down to 30%.
WRONG ANSWER: WTF? Dentention for you!
...posted via firefox, of course...
What a dumb article. Institutions have standards for a reason. It doesn’t matter if Firefox is better, and this has nothing to do with Microsoft. This kid should be following the rules instead of being a jerkoff.
Yes, Johnny you are a unique and special individual. Just like everyone else.
I loved the old C64... the 6502 (actually a 6510) was a breeze to code for, and the SID and VIC II chips let you do some very powerful effects with very little (relatively speaking) coding.
Closest thing I’ve touched since those heady days of C64 and C128 8 bit days have honestly been the video game systems. Particularly the Nintendo systems... The Gameboy in particular reminded me a lot of those systems, very open access to the hardware and ability to play around with it.
We need more information. This part makes me think he was suspended for not doing his web-based work. Since the teacher didn't see IE he thought the assignment wasn't being performed. There are a lot of people out there who still think IE=WWW, and unfortunately some of them are teaching our kids.
Still, the student should have closed the browser and then gone to the administration to tell them the teacher is a moron.
The class without the computers and the lab with the computers were two separate rooms with a locked door in the middle.
One day I programmed what I called a "sound bomb" to disrupt class. Just a quick program that ran silent for 25 minutes then made a whole hell of a lot of racket.
Hit run and turned up the volume all the way....on all 20 computers.
Learned two things: First, under stress Junior High teachers cannot unlock doors, second under stress Junior High teacher also forget how to turn off power and insist on just banging on a disabled keyboard.
She never did figure out who did it.
With Windows as I know it,...when you login YOU are the Root user and thus administrator....
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