Student Given Detention For Using Firefox [UPDATED]

An anonymous reader writes "Several sites are reporting that a student has been given detention for using Firefox to do his classwork. No, really. The student was in class, working on an assignment that necessitated using a browser. The teacher instructed him to stop using Firefox and to do his classwork, to which the student responded that he was doing his classwork using a 'better' browser (it is unclear whether the computer was the student's own computer or not). The clueless teacher (who called the rogue program 'Firefox.exe') ordered him to detention." Update: 12/17 20:09 by SM One of the school officials was nice enough to contact us and let us know this is a hoax. If you are planning on calling the school please refrain from doing so, I'm sure they have had enough excitement for one day.

Comments

Here's his teacher

[VJ42]

Anyone want to contact his teacher? or at least /. the school website?

*stands well back*

Re:Here's his teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

Some other contacts.

Mr. John Scudder, High School Principal
jscudder@bigspring.k12.pa.us

Mr. Christopher Boyd, Assistant Principal
cboyd@bigspring.k12.pa.us

Re:Here's his teacher

[VJ42]

Anybody with half a brain will tell you that discipline is critical for kids when they're growing up, and here you are telling people to harrass a teacher who dared to punish a disobedient student.

Absolutely pathetic. No where in my post did I tell anyone to "harrass"[sic] his teacher, I just told everyone his teacher's email address*, for all I know, you might want to use that email address to congratulate him.
Indeed I even went to the length of typing

*stands well back* in order to distance myself from what people wish to do with the information I provided.

*something anyone with access to TFA, google & a working brain should be able to find.

Re:Here's his teacher

[VJ42]

"harrass"[sic] That is what we call in the industry a 'mistake'. This you would know from the fact that you typed 'nowhere' as two words. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. You're right I apologise.

Considering that the article is in fact a hoax, So I noticed.

I hope you're prepared to accept the consequences of doing so. What exactly would they be? All I did was link to publicly available information. I didn't do anything further with it myself, what others did with it is up to them. If anyone really did abuse it (and I doubt that they did; any looneys would have looked up the info themselves) they will have to live with the consequences, not me.

Aside: I note that my original post has earned me what I think is my first ever troll mod though, I can't say that it wasn't deserved, flamebait was uncalled for though.

authority figure is a moron

[Foofoobar]

In the military, A commanding officer can order you to drop your pants and shoot yourself in the left testicle too but you have the right to disobey. Especially if the order is stupid, immoral, without merit or could get you into trouble. On always has the right to disobey when the authority figure is a moron.. such is the case here.

Re:UPDATE! Cory Doctorow just reported...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that account is just as damning for the school. Why did a computer that has Microsoft Word (an unlimited-power macro-execution shell), also have access to the Internet? Firefox and Word should never be on the same computer, unless Firefox is just being used to look at local files or intranet sites.

It's bad enough to have Windows, but to have Microsoft's seriously dangerous applications (which make Windows itself look as secure as OpenBSD by comparison) loaded, and still have internet access, shows that someone really fucked up. If they had configured the network correctly, students using the Word machines wouldn't be distracted by web browsers, because they wouldn't be able to access anything outside of the building.

I wonder how much of my spam is coming from the botnet hosted by that school.

Re:No, not wrong.

[Lumpy]

very few teachers act like adults let alone even apologize to a student for being wrong.

hell they rarely apologize to us IT guys when they try to throw us under the bus for some made up crap and we call them on it.

EXAMPLE: IT staff refused to fix my laptop!!!!
answer: We will not touch personal computers owned by the teachers, teacher demanded I join her pc to the domain AND support her home computers as well, I am glad to do so at $125.00 an hour plus travel costs for personal computers not owned and supported by the school. I was also asked once to install a new car stereo in a teachers car and was told, "what good are you guys?" for saying no.

It work at schools is a hoot! and we are going to support another 10 of them by the end of the year.

NOTE: I like the charter school teachers way more than the public school teachers. They tend to be younger(and HOT!), and more educated in computers and electronic thingy's.