[GRLUG] Linux @ school.

[Tim Schmidt]

On 9/27/06, Chris Strandt <strandtc at liquidweb.com> wrote:
> Keylogging isn't cool... period.

Agreed.

> Although it sounds like most people here are all for circumventing the
> censorship, I disagree, and suggest caution.  Depending on where you
> goto school, there may be policies in place which can get you suspended
> for circumventing filtering and security tools.

True.  Such policies, however, are misguided.

> I think its entirely reasonable for a school to censor web content
> available to students.  Is pornography acceptable?

Here's the problem...  define pornography.  Is this porn?
http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/vegetable-porn/

How about pornography in the context of a physiology class, or
history, or comparative religion, etc...  censorship is tantamount to
declaring that a subject is never to be discussed, explored,
contemplated, or learned from.  It's the antithesis of what a school
is all about.

> I seriously don't
> think students spending time on MySpace, fark, etc is useful.Full
> disclosure... I used to work in a public school district technology
> group, and I have a 2 year old kid.  At the same time.. I don't think
> its right for China, or any other country, to censor the Internet.  I'm
> just making a point about it being a public school environment.

Point made.  Fark bad.  Censorship good.  Eh.  How about we buy fewer
$3000 dells with 2 year replacement contracts and spend the millions
we save on getting our kids decent education in 15 student or fewer
classes.

My, better than average, public education included little or nothing
on the logical fallacies
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy), personal credit
management, business, ethics, or much else useful in the real world.

To their credit, my schools had decent hard science programs, I took
AP and organic chem, and a couple calc classes...  Physics could have
been better, but at least it was there.  Same for biology.

> That being said... keep going on your quest for Linux knowledge.  There
> are far more interesting things going on outside of keyloggers, myspace,
> gmail, and fark.

Agreed.  They're nice for an occasional release though...

--tim