AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student's Linux CD

Austinist ^ | Dec 10, 2008 | allenychen

[ari-freedom]

In an age where Windows and OS X reign supreme, it's no wonder that a local AISD middle school teacher became enraged after discovering one of her students distributing what she believed to be bootlegged copies of an operating system in class.

While teacher "Karen" was clearly operating under the assumption that she'd scored a minor victory for the Microsofts and other downtrodden software giants of the world, the particular operating system that she ended up disciplining her student for was a freely distributable version of Linux.

To wit, the following is part of an email that the teacher sent to the person who originally provided said Linux to the student

[CE2949BB]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/e_to_the_pi_times_i.png

[padre35]

I disagree, I.Q scores mean little if the possessor of the high I.Q score lacks Diligence, or Drive, or Creativity or Focus.

And each profession, or indeed, no profession to speak of, requires different skill sets, a Lawyer for example does not have the skills to be a mechanical engineer, or vice versa.

And I did not notice Clergy listed in your bar chart?

[scripter]

Pretty funny, and sad at the same time.

[HangnJudge]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/e_to_the_pi_times_i.png

Cackling madly
ROTFLMAO

[Stentor]

And plug and play wireless networking is needed for Linux to be “there’ for me.

I guess me and my laptop ain't posting tonight using Linux Mint that grabbed my linksys wireless router immediately.

[padre35]

Well now, as soon as I download the .ISO, and then find and use a .ISO recorder to then burn a CD...

[Laptop_Ron]

It’s hit or miss with wireless depending on what your card is and what OS you’re using. I’ve tried mulitple Linuxes because I like to play with different ones. On some, my card was seen and configured during install. On others, the card wasn’t picked up during install, but could be configured after. On some, my card wouldn’t work at all.

[TheBattman]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH oh my dear sweet zombie jesus.

What the heck is that suppose to mean?

[MrB]

They weren’t the sharpest bricks in college, either, from my experience.

(mixed metaphor intended)

[TheBattman]

IQ does not equal common sense!!!

[Stentor]

ImgBurn

[kalee]

ping

[TheBattman]

Open Office is kinda clunky.

While I have been trying to bring myself to use Open Office, I find it not only "clunky", but also really horrid at formatting text.. some fonts won't display as themselves in Open Office... I have yet to find a fix for this. Just about a deal-breaker.

[Stentor]

True, true, and true. Got a Dell with Intel wireless.

[AFreeBird]

Installing even a PCMCIA “G” card is a royal pain..

Oh please. I'm running an IBM T30 with an old Linksys WPC54G card in it, under openSuSE 11.0. Granted, previous versions of SuSE required me to use NDSWRAPPER, but that worked fine. The latest version (kernel really) has support for the Broadcom chip that powers the Linksys WPC54G. It took a while because Broadcom wouldn't release the info required, but they managed to reverse engineer what they needed and now Ndswrapper is no longer required. Kwifimanager has been updated and supports multiple WAP's and encryption.

[chuckles]

My IQ has been measured at 132 years ago but I spent my whole life as a telephone company employee. I dreamed of owning my own business, but lacked the drive and the will to ditch the phone company. I enjoyed the technical aspect of working on the equipment, but hated the management. Most of the management were morons that worked their way up with their noses planted in the south ends of north bound higher management. The fault was all mine, I wouldn't compromise and I wouldn't quit.

The only advantage my IQ ever gave me was I usually scored higher on tests and grasped new concepts quickly. I could take something apart and figure out how it worked very quickly and fix things because I understood the principles it operated by. IQ really has very little to do with success.

As far as the teacher in this story goes, I thought the story was humorous until she threatened the student with legal prosecution. I think I would go after this dumbo with both barrels for the threat. Find out how much liability insurance she has and double it, then sue.

[Laptop_Ron]

Sweet! Laptop, you said? I’ll have to splurge one of these days.

I’ve got a mutt computer. I buy parts and put them together. Never had a hardware problem. The wireless is an Atheros chipset card. Quite a few Linuxes don’t like it without special tweaking. Just part of the fun. If it gets me out from MS’ boot, then I’ll pay the price and actually learn how things work.

[HangnJudge]

IQ does not equal common sense!!!

The post was made in reference to the word "Dumb"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dumb

The word is poorly positioned in the parent post

1 a: lacking the human power of speech b: of a person often offensive : lacking the ability to speak
2: temporarily unable to speak (as from shock or astonishment)
3: not expressed in uttered words
4: silent ; also : taciturn
5: lacking some usual attribute or accompaniment ; especially : having no means of self-propulsion
6 a: lacking intelligence : stupid b: showing a lack of intelligence c: requiring no intelligence
7: not having the capability to process data — compare intelligent 3a

The parent post to my comment did not reference "common sense"
for that I would have had a very different response

[NYFriend]

OpenOffice is just brillant. If I ever end up with a computer without MS Office, it’s OpenOffice for me.

As far as your college experience, I started work with a network terminal. Luckily I only had it a few weeks before the guy one up from me in seniority burned out, and I got his desk and OS/2 equiped computer.

[Rebelbase]

My ex BIL screws up his parent’s computer every time he visits by downloading all kinds of crap loaded with spyware and trojan viruses. My son is the family IT doctor and grew tired of fixing the same problems over and over again so he installed Linux on the machine. The goober ex BIL hasn’t been able to screw it up since.