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Mon 15 Dec, 2008 01:36 pm
A news story that defies belief ... one for the category, Can People Really Be That Stupid? (Yes, They Can!)
Quote: Teacher threatens to call the cops over Linux
A teacher has thrown a student into detention and threatened to call the police for using Linux in her classroom.
The teacher spotted one of her students giving a demonstration of the HeliOS distro to other students. In [..] reaction, she confiscated the CDs, put the student on detention and whipped off a letter to the HeliOS Project threatening to report it to the police for distributing illegal software.
"I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom," writes the teacher, identified only as Karen.
"At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.
"I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting Linux on these machines is holding our kids back," she writes.
Not content with completely missing the point of Linux, Karen concluded by throwing down the ultimate insult to the Linux advocates: "This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all."
Read on...
@nimh,
For once, I am speechless.
I 'd like the student to complain to the police of robbery
and sue the teacher for conversion; some nerve.
David
@Robert Gentel,
Very interesting. Definitely a Part 2 of the story that anyone who read Part 1 (the news story above) should read as well.
It serves the kid right! He should be banished from the classroom forever! How is Microsoft supposed to make any money if that kid starts telling everyone Linux is free? He will tell some friends, they will tell their friends etc. until the entire country is using Linux! Microsoft will tumble, millions would be out of work, the economy would collapse into a hole it could never dig out of! A billion people would starve to death, wars would rage and before you knew it the planet would be destroyed!
She nipped this one in the bud!
@NickFun,
NF, I love the way you think.
I love tinkering around with my Linux machine. Right now, I'm playing around with a VERY user friendly KUBUNTU install that even automatically maps your hard drives.
On a related note, anyone heard the rumors that Google may dump a bunch of money into Linux and in the next decade release a Linux based Google OS. The rumor as I've heard from a few of my silicon valley chums is that Google is basically releasing all these web based apps like gmail, google maps, google docs and Chrome browser so that the public starts to trust their software ability and readily associate Google's style and theme into their daily computing needs. Then it's a little less of a transition for a typical windows user to buy a computer with a new OS and it will even have apps that they are very familiar with.
If it happens, the OS wars will truly be a 3 player battle royal. Oh man, I hope it's not a rumor.
T
K
O
@Mame,
Thanks Mame. She should be given a medal for selfless heroism.
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