Now that they have played that hand, the kids are screwed.
Gosh, you're right. Just think of the children!
These poor, foreign waifs, so abused by our domestic nazi security apparatus. Oh wait... 18 and 21 ("kids?") and entirely subject to the laws and law enforcement in their own countries. Breaking any law in Morocco or Turkey is a bad, bad trip for the bad guys. Of course, living there, they would know that. They'd have it easier if they had been arrested and prosecuted by authorities in the US.
So... this network is self-contained? Doesn't actually connecto to the larger internet (meaning, you're not using it right now)? If it IS connected to the net, who provides the bandwidth? At some point, those packets have to be handled by carriers that aren't doing it as a charity, right?
Perhaps not in the US, but over here in Western Australia, we've been building a free-as-in-beer network since the early days of wireless networking.
But... it's not free! Who writes the checks for the people that operate the network (or, in the absence of paid techs, who provides their own technical time)? Who buys (or otherwise provides) the hardware? Who pays for the grid power, the backup generators, and the pipes to the internet? I'm going to guess it's donors, sponsors, or taxpayers... probably even some that will never use the network. But, the point is that it's not free. It's a displaced expense, and it will help everyone who does pay for it, donate time/equipment to it, etc., for the end users to know that they're benefitting from other people's expenses and work. That's not "free," that's a gift (if everyone who ultimately pays any part of the expense does so voluntarily), or it's, essentially, network access socialism. But even free beer isn't free - the person who wants you to like them, and who therefore has provided the beer, is picking up the tab - as an investment in your future good will.
But you know that what we're really talking about here would be (to extend your analogy), "The old paradigm is fading away, and soon the city will come and insulate your house for free."
Which, even if they did, would not be "free," in the sense that people have to actually show up with materials and do it. And manage those people. And insure them. And pay for the dental insurance. Etc.
Yes, it's possible for an investment to return more than what it cost (um, otherwise it's a "loss"). But the investment requires, well, an investment. It's not "free" either. Even when more dollars eventually turn around to the investors, they had that captial (or time, or bloood and sweat - whatever was invested) tied up and unavailable to do other things. Still not free.
This will be the case with broadband as it will save more money in other expenses than it will cost.
I am curious which costs you think will be saved. Certainly broadband does save people time, and thus increases productivity (if they use it intelligently). But the infrastructure costs are still not negligible, the back end pipes end up having to be even bigger, the security risks are even higher, and the cost of being dependent on it is very real (and thus a risk in and of itself).
If what you means it that wireless is cheaper than wired (because you con't have to pull copper/glass all over the place), then that's definitely a factor. But I also find wireless to be fragile in its own ways (it's easier for some punk to jam the whole neighborhood's wireless service than it is for him to impact 50 POTS lines or a dozen cable drops).
and yes nothing is entirely free, but the old methodology for charging to use wireless internet is definitely changing
Well, let's see. There are only two ways that sitting out in a public space popping onto a wireless 'net connecciont is (or is going to be) "free" to the end users:
1. Someone provides that access because they want to (like Panera... "please enjoy net access and we hope you buy a sandwich")
2. Enough voters vote for people with the authority to use tax dollars to prop up that aspect of a business/middle-class-population-hungry municipality... ("please enjoy net access, and we hope that you'll stick around, buy things from the local businesses, and move here, and pay property taxes")
It doesn't matter if the billing mechanism shifts, or the technology gets cheaper than it currently is. A big pipe to the backbone will always cost money - it takes actual humans to tend to peering relationships, keep generators tested and running in advance of power problems, real with broadband pipes cut by construction equipment, and so on.
At no point will it be "free" as in beer. It might get pushed to the background of your personal accounting system, much the way that, say, city pothole maintenance is, but you're buying, or someone else is, no matter what. In many ways, I think it's a really bad idea to make this very elaborately maintained service "free" to end users. It disconnects them from the reality of what the infrastructure costs. Smarter politicians already know to put up signs on large road construction projects helping people to understand what it costs and who's paying. This shouldn't be any different. Otherwise it just worsens the entitlement culture, and makes rational tax policymaking even harder (since fewer people connect the dots). It's bad enough that people already say, "But I can get a wireless router from eBay for $30! My city should be doing this for free!"... but at least they're only complaining about what they want, and not complaining about hidden taxes on something that's already been built and deemed part of the local sunshine. I think this is mostly an argument for making sure that people understand how many people have to work to make a service like that available... and to make sure that once people start relying on it, it's not just one more thing that they bitch about when it's not perfect (like the pavement on their streets).
Needless to say, I'm also not terribly fond of having every packet I transceive hopping through a government-run network. This will manifest itself in other ugly ways, too: "you still owe us for that disputed parking ticket - no net access for you!"
Is there any doubt in someones mind that WiFi or WiMax is going to eventually permiate the metropolitan areas of the world and offer free access?
Yes, there is doubt. In fact, there is 100% certainty that it will not happen. Because it will not, and can not, be free. Someone has to pay for it. If your vision is correct (however badly described), I'd say that entity would be... people and businesses who pay taxes. Or, it will be indirectly so, by showing up as more arcane usage fees on your cell phone and cable bills. There is no "free" wireless service! It's not sunshine. Companies ("like AOL and other dial-up or broadband types") will be the ones providing this service, or companies like them, either directly, or through contracts with municipal or other governments. You say the market is dimishing, I say it's just re-arranging. But what about the millions that live in rural areas, or those that are out of line-of-site for these city-centered services? Traditional ISPs, in one form or another, will be around for a long, long time. Non-traditional ISPs will become the traditional, but someone still has to pay for the hardware, the people, the systems, the security, etc. Not free! Never will be - any more than tap water is, or electricity.
The solution for "less attacks" is simply to make sure that no one hates your guts enough to want to blow them up, a lesson most average-brained people learn quite early in kidergarten...
I don't know... sometimes there are kids in kindergarten that just walk right up to a kid they don't even know and smack them in the head. Those same irrational kids generally grow up and live their lives in a slight fog of irrationality that no amount of "making sure they don't hate us" will alter. I suggest that certain world views, and the cultures that nurture them (or are forced to do so), are that irrational kid that really doesn't care how "nice" you are to them.
In terms of international relations, you can't really "nice" the thuggish theocratic medeivalism out of extremist jihaddists. In fact, the very framework that most people would suggest using (open, reasoned education, an embrace of self-empowering democracy, etc) is exactly what those jihaddis perceive as the thing they want to stamp out, lest Allah be annoyed by women driving cars, or heretics not praying correctly, etc. You can make them not hate you only by agreeing to be one of them - not a solution I, or most people, find tolerable.
And what of, say, North Korea? A totalitarian Stalin-style communist dictatorship populated by a crazy military leadership, a well-fed military command structure, a thriving international counterfitting trade, and an otherwise completely impoverished, enslaved, starving society... never mind what the poor starving slave farmer thinks (he's too hungry to hate you personally), it's the loons at the top that you have to deal with. How would you make Kim Jong Il not be the way he is? His suggestion is that we ship him food and energy, help him build nukes, and not get in his way while he makes cash on the side dealing in drugs, missiles, couterfit US currency, etc. Shall we make him not hate us by doing what makes him happy?
Torture and violations of human rights didn't happen simply because we taught a our guys to kill
Right. It happened because some people are assholes, and some of them got jobs with the National Guard, just like some got jobs with the Post Office, and some work the cubicle down the hall from you. Further, some are in the chain of command supervising (or not, in this case) the people pulling guard duty at a prison. If your theory is correct, and this is policy all way from the top, there would be many, many more instances of what we saw in that particularly disfunctional unit. We're talking about a force of a couple hundred thousand people. What's your ratio of losers per thousand people you know? How about of losers per thousand bosses?
No accountability within the organization? Do you even personally know any people in the armed forces?
And the relevance to this issue is that when the school issues laptops to students, and these laptops are implemented specifically to interact with the network upon which the school and its other students depend, deliberately screwing with the system (of which the laptop is a part) is, and should be, alarming to the staff that has to deal with it. Their take on it, not to be confused with lab-type activity on machines and networks that exist for that purpose, is that it's almost impossible to judge a student's hacking/cracking on intent or degree (since most such kids have untold hours of reading on that subject invested, whereas the staff probably don't), and can only observe that a student has decided that the rules don't apply to them, and that they're going to start changing the system. It's not a question of whether they installed their own choice of questionable chat software, or whether they opened the door to some packet sniffer, malware, or other thing the school doesn't have the time or staff to fight... the point is that they did it at all.
Just like if the kid visited the school at night and came through a window, where he was caught. Was he there to put flowers in his girlfriend's locker? There to put poison in the staff coffee machine? Or just there to say he could be there? Doesn't matter -it's an incredible display of bad (or missing) judgement, and schools are finding out the hard way that tech-savvy kids with poor judgement are also the ones that crack into the school's servers, wherein they can, and have, caused serious mischief, including obtaining things like personnel records. No, most schools don't have the budget for multi-segmented, highly firewalled, actively intrustion-detected fancy networkds and servers. Just like before file servers, most of them didn't have anything other than a simple door knob lock (rather than a bank vault) between sensitive records and the outside world. In those days, an easily defeated lock didn't "cause" students to break into areas they weren't supposed to be poking around, and these days, a less-than-Fortune-500-grade network doesn't "cause" students to crack into school servers, either.
If I cracked into some school's IT infrastructure, I'd be a felon. So, how is it different when a 17 year old student deliberately does it? If he drives drunk and kills someone, he's just as culpable as I am. Now, a judge or jury (in their appropriate roles) can completely set aside the punishments that someone like you or I would get for doing the same things... but you can't prevent a school system (or church, or business, or household, for that matter) from pursuing charges when someone does something so specifically, identifiably related to more serious system cracking. Doesn't mean they have to convict, or sentence, etc., in anything like the same way. But they have to have the prosecutorial tools, or there are no consequences for the twits and script kiddies that take it as far as they sometimes do.
BTW,
What on earth would such valuable records be doing on a student laptop in the first place?
Not on laptops. On systems the laptops and other networked machines connected to. Teachers's machines, on the same network, need access to that sort of stuff, and thus there's vulnerabilities on the network if a kid feels like starting to hack. And if he can install comm software on a machine that's using the same network, that's an indication of being willing to screw around with the infrastructure - and that's a very real threat to the school's operational ability, and to their obligation to keep certain information private.
Spend a little time watching the documentaries coming out of Pakistan, Taliban-era Afghanistan, etc. On those occasions that a madrasah (Islamic school) has allowed western camera crews to record the setting, it's certainly disturbing in some cases.
But here is a decidedly sympathetic article by a guy that researched the role the madrasahs are (or are not) playing in the molding of young minds into what, in some cases, become extremist jihaddis. You'll note that even the author, who decidedly chastises the west for frequently "not getting it" when it comes to these issues, confirms that a subset of these schools, drenched in wahabism and fueled with some families' oil money, were the factories that turned out the core of the Taliban. That movement is brutally medeival in its treatment of its own women, of any other culture, and famous for happily hosting folks like bin Laden in Afghanistan - a country they moved into and took over like a violent cancer. I'm sure you've seen the lunchtime former-soccer-field executions of women who (gasp!) tried to work outside their houses, or send their daughters to school. But more importantly, it's the mullahs produced by some of these programs that leverage the wide-open immigration policies throughout Europe and set up shop. In some cases, they have very good luck finding impressionable, or addled enough young suburban Muslims to go out and carry (or be) bombs.
Your deliberate misreading of my comment, to suggest that every fundamentalist Islamic school exists only to train terrorists, is nonsense. But they don't all have to do it for at least a few to none the less lean that direction, as they demonstrably do. The leaders of these schools proudly say they do.
So, you can be surprised that I would know, or you can go and digest the information yourself, and then YOU can know. But I'll stick to my original point, which is that altering how US education dollars are spent isn't going to change the creed that's preached to 8-year-olds in some of the crazier madrasahs in Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and so on.
If you think he's free to call for the assassination of a foreign leader, then I suppose you also support the right of extremist Islamic Mullahs to call for suicide bombers? If not, then feel free to explain the difference.
Good, though slightly wrong question.
First, I do not think that he's in a position to (or free to) "call for" anyone's assassination. In much the same way that overblown yahoos saying that "Bush should be shot" or other over-the-top rhetorical nonsense shouldn't be confused with giving marching orders to people. A Mullah that has a loyal band of young men visiting his mosque every week, to whom he essentially says, "go forth and kill heretics, now" is, I think substantially different than someone saying (however stupidly), "we'd sure save a lot of trouble if we just took the head off the enemy instead of having to invade his whole country to accomplish the same thing."
Mind you, that whole discussion presupposes some sort of existing armed conflict in progress, and unlike Saddam, Chavez is certainly not shooting at NATO planes every day. I mean, he's a jerk, and he's definintely stirring the pot in Columbia and elsewhere, but he's not invading Kuwait or gassing non-communist-leaning villagers. So, in that context, Robertson's rhetorical musings are absurd, but probably not to be confused with suggesting that his loyal religious followers actually do anything about it. On the other hand, there's always the chance that some loon will perceive it that way and act anyway... but that's a lot like saying Grand Theft Auto made you kill a cop. BS.
On the other hand, sitting across the table from a Mullah (or any other figure) that has been droning on for weeks, months, or years about how you should consider yourself lucky to be in his influence, and don't forget the 70 virgins, and here's Ahmed, who has a special backpack for you to wear on a train, blah blah -- there's something rather more immediate and specifically instructive about that sort of thing. Of course, some jackass preacher who talks an anti-abortion wingnut into doing the same thing is the same thing. It's incitement.
I'd be delighted to see Robertson lose his public voice. And Falwell. And Louis Farrakhan. All of them and their ilk. I'm trying to draw the distinction, though, between tone-deaf punditry/musings and actual, specific incitement to direct violence, or logistical support thereto.
The Mullahs that preach, in broad terms, that the heretic cities should run with blood, etc., are certainly making use of free speech. How free that should be when they're in the country on a temporary visa - that's a separate discussion. How and when that general ranting makes the transition to direct, specific incitement, support, or instruction - an admittedly difficult line to draw. Britain is wrestling with that right now, and part of how they address the issue is by drawing the distinction between their citizens, and those that are there as visitors/guests. That definitely makes it easier to err on the side of caution. I'm reminded of the (Supreme Court, wasn't it?) justice who said he can't define porn, but he knows it when he sees it.
And, of course, I completely agree that Robertson is an ass. The main difference, though, is that he's free in this country to be an ass, even though his nonsense is terribly damaging to international relations. He's no different than that Cindy Sheehan woman protesting in Crawford, in the sense that either one of them can spout non-helpful, utter BS. I guarantee that similarly disruptive (meaning, counter to the politics/policies of whatever party is in charge) media-covered diatrabs from people in, say, Iran, would not leave the speaker quite as comfortable as it does here.
Robertson is not on "my" side. He's a counterproductive twit that actually believes his own mythology, to the point of real delusion, I think.
FWIW, I don't believe the administration considers the comments "harmless," but rather jumped (and quickly) to distance themselves from it. Definitely not helpful. The problem is that if they spend too much time talking about it, that just adds credibility to Robertson, something no one needs.
But back to the original point... education? Unless you mean "idealogical education," no amount of diverting money from Homeland Security is going to fix either Robertson or some operating cell of would-be train bombers here in the US.
So great, a bunch of cameras. Catch the guy blowing himself up on camera, really useful.
So, the Brits used their similar camera system to capture images of the four guys that they did catch, and whose support system they immediately started to dismantle - including those that fled the country. If the Spaniards had a similar system, they may not have taken so long to track down the people that left cell-phone triggered backpack bombs on several trains - not suicide bombers. Do you think that every person who wants to damage people and infrastructure in the west also wants to personally die doing it? Hardly. That's for the chumps in their ranks. Video of the smart ones is especially valuable.
I'd rather our government take the whole sum of money they have devoted to 'Homeland Security' and put it towards education
Education of who? The fundamentalist schools that are producing this whole "kill the heretics for Allah" are feeling plenty well funded, and certainly don't want what I'm guessing you'd think of as an education (the sciences, an embrace of reason, a respect for liberty and democracy). You indicate in your post that Israel and western support for it is the problem. But why is it a problem? Because it's a liberal democracy surrounded by backwards, mysoginistic, theocratic thugocracies? Only a younger generation of Palestinians have any chance of growing up thinking that there is a purpose in life beyond removing Israel from the map. Putting money into "education" isn't going to change your average jihaddist's world view. Only an open economy, transparent government, and regular elections and trade throughout the middle east will do that. Pretty much like what's shaping up in Iraq and Afghanistan, though there is a long way to go. You know, sort of like the decade-plus that it took the US to get a ratified constitution after the declaration of our independence?
I don't really know the US system - is it routine for children to be criminally charged if say, they wrote some notes in their books in pencil? (After all, if you've got just one guy looking after the textbooks, it'll take a long time rubbing all those notes out.)
No. But students who, say, steal stuff from the school, or break in after hours and screw around in the chemistry classrooms - they definately are subject to arrest and prosecution. Likewise if they were caught breaking into the office of the school and digging through staff records, financial/medical info, etc. It's criminal trespass, and when there's private and/or sensitive data involved, that's worse. So: when they do that with a computer, it's no different than when they do that by going through a broken window, picked lock, or even an unlocked door on the school at night where they know they're not allowed to be. The computer, per se, isn't escalating the perception of the criminality, it's a new vector for criminal activity.
The problem is that we actually have had teacher financial records stolen (their social security numbers and other private info that leaves them more vulnerable to identity theft), student medical records pawed through, academic records hacked, tests stolen, etc. It's the glee with which some students attempt such things that no doubt causes short-staffed schools to react hugely when they see students cracking machines and networks - the very things that are indeed preludes to the nastier activities.
Say a student is taking an automotive class - and while everyone else is learning about fuel injection systems, the one kid just can't seem to get enough of learning to disable locks, alarms, and other security features. In and of itself illegal? Probably not. But would a teacher get the idea that the student's off in the wrong direction? Yes. And if that same student that's been practicing lock-picking all month is caught at night in the school's records room?
Look, in my high school (there were over 2000 students - we were in suburban Washington, DC), there was only a small, un-networked computer lab (truly, the old days). But we had students who knew enough to tap phone lines in the ceiling to steal long distance service which was sold to other students, steal expensive lab equipment for their drug dealing businesses, etc. Actual, real criminal activity. These students were arrested, prosecuted, and some got felony records as a result. No computers involved - just the same sort of small-percentage-of-the-students issue that we're dealing with today. Except, the internet is now a complete how-to manual for much less physically risky ne're-do-well crap. And just because some kids think it's easy, they assume that the consequences should be too. But check with the underpaid teacher that now has a completely trashed credit record because some punk either had a grudge, or wanted to buy an Xbox with a stolen id.
We had the Cold War making the US and Western Europre scramble for every visible indication of technical, cultural, and economic superiority over the totalitarian/communist model (good thing, too - we were right). OK, so that's done now, and we're all down to squabbling over cheese tarrifs and in what particular way to express ourselves about crazy jihaddists, etc. But the next stop will be the looming competition from the Indian/Chinese zone - and that will light it all right back up again. Moon bases, fast planes. Sorry, no flying cars - that appears to be unachievable for some reason.
mess with anything we don't approve of and go to jail
You're missing my point. There should be (and are!) entire schools devoted to every conceivable kind of messing around with what you can (or can't yet) do with a computer. Schools have classes for that purpose. When the school is issuing computers for everyone to use for basic scholastic purposes, especially in lieu of text books - that's a special case. And when the whole point of the school (a consistent offering of a curriculum to students on the same track) is skewed by some students deciding that they aren't beholden to the same things that everyone else is - that not only sets a bad precedent, but specifically it suggests that they (teenagers) aren't worried, at all, about the ramifications of introducing their own software (or anything else that might be along for the ride) onto the their school-issued machines and the network they all use.
If they've got the aptitude, time, interest - they should be on a track that specifically provides for messing around. Just not on the equipment that is there to be textbooks for everyone, and which has to be supported by a no-doubt airtight public school system budget. The inquisitive and bright aren't punished for being inquisitive and bright if they exercise those traits in the right venue. But if they jot down their bright ideas over top of the text in a school issued textbook (or the laptop analogy - though it wasn't that simple, we're talking about them thinking it's cool to install chat software - hardly an exercise in innovation, creativity, or even brightness), they'd also be jerks. Should abusing the laptop be a felony? Not unless it was done in the service of trying to do something felonious - like cracking. But the problem is that the average school staffer can't tell the difference, but have read about students hacking grades, grabbing teachers' employment records and financial data, etc. It sort of sets the tone. When I was in high school, you could get your water pistol confiscated because you'd be an annoyance with it. Now, anything even shaped like a gun means you're in a world of hurt... because some students made it fashionable to actually shoot up schools.
Every school should have labs with machines kids can burn down every day and build back up. But schools that also issue laptops for use by all students in a managed way have every reason to expect that a handful of students won't consider that to be license to hack those machines.
We probably are much more on the same page than not, here. I think the issue in this case isn't whether the particular piece of software that the students installed is malware, or if poorly implemented would have mal-impact on the network or tech support guys. It's that the entire arena of students deciding to install stuff, period, inevitably contains that prospect. It's painting with a very broad brush to say, "this isn't up to you, and if you screw with it, you're in deep trouble" but the alternative would be to have to delineate a jillion variations on what is or isn't bad vs. Extremely Bad. I can definately understand why the simplest policy is, "you don't get to anything like that, period."
Schools are an odd societal subset, and they should be. But some students do things that absolutely rise above the level of simple discipline problems, and call for law enforcement. Should this case have been handled this way? Probably not. I think I'm arguing for the latitude. I've taught kids before. In my case, the classes involved large, dangerous equipment. I had (out of self defense interest), a completely zero tolerance policy for any sort of screwing around. Could I imagine a situation when I would have wanted the cops involved? Actually, yes. But not reflexively.
It is when you've probably got one IT guy taking care of the machines used by hundreds of students. But it's exactly the typical student's complete disconnection from the reality of that sort of thing that allows some of them to think that they own everything, and should be able to do anything they want with taxpayer-owned equipment and services. It's not about whether the particular hack in question was terribly impactful, it's that when you have a rule that says there is no hacking, and it's for a reason, you can't leave it up to the kids to decide when and whether that's really important, because most high school kids have absolutely no judgement or the experience to think about the longer ramifications (or even the possibility that there IS such a thing).
Well, then I'm guessing that in a school without a nicely compartmentalized lab environment, there is one simple message: "This school, and the taxpayers that pay for all of it, don't at this time provide you with anything that you can simply screw around with as you see fit."
Followed by the corallary, "Feel free to do that at home!"
Of course I'm not a fan of capricious and irrational rules, nor their enforcement just for the dogmatic sake of it. However, there certainly are some rules that are rational, but may appear unfounded or crazy to adolescents.
A major factor in school system rules and regs is often the crazy pressure applied by noisy (or worse, litigious) parents and other groups. That being said, there are some things that make sense, especially when you're dealing with minors. In your school lounge (enhanced) example, I'd say, let's direct the attention down the hall to the school cafeteria, or nurse's office. There are places where some jackass might put some peanut butter in food prep equipment and effectively kill some allergic students. Or, there are cabinets in the medical office where controlled substances (or private medical records) are stored. Trespass into those places by anyone should attract serious police action. A 17-year-old "kid" is no different, obviously.
As for the student's assesment that a rule shouldn't stand... well, I like your example of making a rational case for taking it down. If you'll pardon the cliche, that's a "teaching moment." There is no better preparation for the real world that having to factually persuasive to a resisting audience. If the kids can show why having 3rd party chat software on the school-issue boxes doesn't pose any risk, and won't interfere with the very reason they've been issued the machines, then more power to them. But they should also have to justify and propose funding for, the additional tech support, changes to machine images, etc., that it would bring with it. The point is, kids are welcome to change the system from within its framework, but haven't earned the right, yet, to just do what they feel like (in the chemistry lab, machine shop, or on the school's network).
I'll reply in more detail when I get a chance, but you should know that at our local county dump (where residents take basement junk, recycling materials, that sort of thing), there's a container specifically for PC's and related hardware (old monitors, printers, etc) that eventually go to reclaimation facility. But it's free for the taking. You could leave with half a dozen older machines and probably Frankenstein something together. Most towns probably have something similar in their recycling programs... so ask your city or county where to TAKE old computers, and just go there to recover some, instead.
1) The local LEOs aren't specialists in making the distinction between one form of crack school computers and another. The local laws are that you make unauthorized use of the school system's computer resources, felony charges are what you get.
2) This is what Juries are for. This will not wind up in felony convictions - it'll get whittled down to misdemeanors, and there will still be the option to trot out the heavy duty charges as needed when another student cracks a machine with local network access and does take it one act further and winds up heisting teacher employee records, medical info on fellow students, etc. - which has happened in other schools, and is exactly why school administrators feel it's important to make this sort of dicking around with school hardware/software/networks something that students don't even want to contemplate. Should a school full of kids who like to hack machines maybe have a better lab/playgroud if their parents can't provide the same? Maybe. But should some kid who really wants to actually spend her day learning about what the computer is supposed to connect her to be impacted by slowed down networks, or over-busy tech support dealing with machines that have been co-opted by students who think they've been issued a shiny new personal toy?
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Now that they have played that hand, the kids are screwed.
Gosh, you're right. Just think of the children!
These poor, foreign waifs, so abused by our domestic nazi security apparatus. Oh wait... 18 and 21 ("kids?") and entirely subject to the laws and law enforcement in their own countries. Breaking any law in Morocco or Turkey is a bad, bad trip for the bad guys. Of course, living there, they would know that. They'd have it easier if they had been arrested and prosecuted by authorities in the US.
So... this network is self-contained? Doesn't actually connecto to the larger internet (meaning, you're not using it right now)? If it IS connected to the net, who provides the bandwidth? At some point, those packets have to be handled by carriers that aren't doing it as a charity, right?
Perhaps not in the US, but over here in Western Australia, we've been building a free-as-in-beer network since the early days of wireless networking.
But... it's not free! Who writes the checks for the people that operate the network (or, in the absence of paid techs, who provides their own technical time)? Who buys (or otherwise provides) the hardware? Who pays for the grid power, the backup generators, and the pipes to the internet? I'm going to guess it's donors, sponsors, or taxpayers... probably even some that will never use the network. But, the point is that it's not free. It's a displaced expense, and it will help everyone who does pay for it, donate time/equipment to it, etc., for the end users to know that they're benefitting from other people's expenses and work. That's not "free," that's a gift (if everyone who ultimately pays any part of the expense does so voluntarily), or it's, essentially, network access socialism. But even free beer isn't free - the person who wants you to like them, and who therefore has provided the beer, is picking up the tab - as an investment in your future good will.
No, they get richer! I love the US medical industry.
About, which, apparently, you know nothing.
But you know that what we're really talking about here would be (to extend your analogy), "The old paradigm is fading away, and soon the city will come and insulate your house for free."
Which, even if they did, would not be "free," in the sense that people have to actually show up with materials and do it. And manage those people. And insure them. And pay for the dental insurance. Etc.
Yes, it's possible for an investment to return more than what it cost (um, otherwise it's a "loss"). But the investment requires, well, an investment. It's not "free" either. Even when more dollars eventually turn around to the investors, they had that captial (or time, or bloood and sweat - whatever was invested) tied up and unavailable to do other things. Still not free.
This will be the case with broadband as it will save more money in other expenses than it will cost.
I am curious which costs you think will be saved. Certainly broadband does save people time, and thus increases productivity (if they use it intelligently). But the infrastructure costs are still not negligible, the back end pipes end up having to be even bigger, the security risks are even higher, and the cost of being dependent on it is very real (and thus a risk in and of itself).
If what you means it that wireless is cheaper than wired (because you con't have to pull copper/glass all over the place), then that's definitely a factor. But I also find wireless to be fragile in its own ways (it's easier for some punk to jam the whole neighborhood's wireless service than it is for him to impact 50 POTS lines or a dozen cable drops).
and yes nothing is entirely free, but the old methodology for charging to use wireless internet is definitely changing
Well, let's see. There are only two ways that sitting out in a public space popping onto a wireless 'net connecciont is (or is going to be) "free" to the end users:
1. Someone provides that access because they want to (like Panera... "please enjoy net access and we hope you buy a sandwich")
2. Enough voters vote for people with the authority to use tax dollars to prop up that aspect of a business/middle-class-population-hungry municipality... ("please enjoy net access, and we hope that you'll stick around, buy things from the local businesses, and move here, and pay property taxes")
It doesn't matter if the billing mechanism shifts, or the technology gets cheaper than it currently is. A big pipe to the backbone will always cost money - it takes actual humans to tend to peering relationships, keep generators tested and running in advance of power problems, real with broadband pipes cut by construction equipment, and so on.
At no point will it be "free" as in beer. It might get pushed to the background of your personal accounting system, much the way that, say, city pothole maintenance is, but you're buying, or someone else is, no matter what. In many ways, I think it's a really bad idea to make this very elaborately maintained service "free" to end users. It disconnects them from the reality of what the infrastructure costs. Smarter politicians already know to put up signs on large road construction projects helping people to understand what it costs and who's paying. This shouldn't be any different. Otherwise it just worsens the entitlement culture, and makes rational tax policymaking even harder (since fewer people connect the dots). It's bad enough that people already say, "But I can get a wireless router from eBay for $30! My city should be doing this for free!"... but at least they're only complaining about what they want, and not complaining about hidden taxes on something that's already been built and deemed part of the local sunshine. I think this is mostly an argument for making sure that people understand how many people have to work to make a service like that available... and to make sure that once people start relying on it, it's not just one more thing that they bitch about when it's not perfect (like the pavement on their streets).
Needless to say, I'm also not terribly fond of having every packet I transceive hopping through a government-run network. This will manifest itself in other ugly ways, too: "you still owe us for that disputed parking ticket - no net access for you!"
Is there any doubt in someones mind that WiFi or WiMax is going to eventually permiate the metropolitan areas of the world and offer free access?
Yes, there is doubt. In fact, there is 100% certainty that it will not happen. Because it will not, and can not, be free. Someone has to pay for it. If your vision is correct (however badly described), I'd say that entity would be... people and businesses who pay taxes. Or, it will be indirectly so, by showing up as more arcane usage fees on your cell phone and cable bills. There is no "free" wireless service! It's not sunshine. Companies ("like AOL and other dial-up or broadband types") will be the ones providing this service, or companies like them, either directly, or through contracts with municipal or other governments. You say the market is dimishing, I say it's just re-arranging. But what about the millions that live in rural areas, or those that are out of line-of-site for these city-centered services? Traditional ISPs, in one form or another, will be around for a long, long time. Non-traditional ISPs will become the traditional, but someone still has to pay for the hardware, the people, the systems, the security, etc. Not free! Never will be - any more than tap water is, or electricity.
The solution for "less attacks" is simply to make sure that no one hates your guts enough to want to blow them up, a lesson most average-brained people learn quite early in kidergarten...
I don't know... sometimes there are kids in kindergarten that just walk right up to a kid they don't even know and smack them in the head. Those same irrational kids generally grow up and live their lives in a slight fog of irrationality that no amount of "making sure they don't hate us" will alter. I suggest that certain world views, and the cultures that nurture them (or are forced to do so), are that irrational kid that really doesn't care how "nice" you are to them.
In terms of international relations, you can't really "nice" the thuggish theocratic medeivalism out of extremist jihaddists. In fact, the very framework that most people would suggest using (open, reasoned education, an embrace of self-empowering democracy, etc) is exactly what those jihaddis perceive as the thing they want to stamp out, lest Allah be annoyed by women driving cars, or heretics not praying correctly, etc. You can make them not hate you only by agreeing to be one of them - not a solution I, or most people, find tolerable.
And what of, say, North Korea? A totalitarian Stalin-style communist dictatorship populated by a crazy military leadership, a well-fed military command structure, a thriving international counterfitting trade, and an otherwise completely impoverished, enslaved, starving society... never mind what the poor starving slave farmer thinks (he's too hungry to hate you personally), it's the loons at the top that you have to deal with. How would you make Kim Jong Il not be the way he is? His suggestion is that we ship him food and energy, help him build nukes, and not get in his way while he makes cash on the side dealing in drugs, missiles, couterfit US currency, etc. Shall we make him not hate us by doing what makes him happy?
Torture and violations of human rights didn't happen simply because we taught a our guys to kill
Right. It happened because some people are assholes, and some of them got jobs with the National Guard, just like some got jobs with the Post Office, and some work the cubicle down the hall from you. Further, some are in the chain of command supervising (or not, in this case) the people pulling guard duty at a prison. If your theory is correct, and this is policy all way from the top, there would be many, many more instances of what we saw in that particularly disfunctional unit. We're talking about a force of a couple hundred thousand people. What's your ratio of losers per thousand people you know? How about of losers per thousand bosses?
No accountability within the organization? Do you even personally know any people in the armed forces?
And the relevance to this issue is?
And the relevance to this issue is that when the school issues laptops to students, and these laptops are implemented specifically to interact with the network upon which the school and its other students depend, deliberately screwing with the system (of which the laptop is a part) is, and should be, alarming to the staff that has to deal with it. Their take on it, not to be confused with lab-type activity on machines and networks that exist for that purpose, is that it's almost impossible to judge a student's hacking/cracking on intent or degree (since most such kids have untold hours of reading on that subject invested, whereas the staff probably don't), and can only observe that a student has decided that the rules don't apply to them, and that they're going to start changing the system. It's not a question of whether they installed their own choice of questionable chat software, or whether they opened the door to some packet sniffer, malware, or other thing the school doesn't have the time or staff to fight... the point is that they did it at all.
Just like if the kid visited the school at night and came through a window, where he was caught. Was he there to put flowers in his girlfriend's locker? There to put poison in the staff coffee machine? Or just there to say he could be there? Doesn't matter -it's an incredible display of bad (or missing) judgement, and schools are finding out the hard way that tech-savvy kids with poor judgement are also the ones that crack into the school's servers, wherein they can, and have, caused serious mischief, including obtaining things like personnel records. No, most schools don't have the budget for multi-segmented, highly firewalled, actively intrustion-detected fancy networkds and servers. Just like before file servers, most of them didn't have anything other than a simple door knob lock (rather than a bank vault) between sensitive records and the outside world. In those days, an easily defeated lock didn't "cause" students to break into areas they weren't supposed to be poking around, and these days, a less-than-Fortune-500-grade network doesn't "cause" students to crack into school servers, either.
If I cracked into some school's IT infrastructure, I'd be a felon. So, how is it different when a 17 year old student deliberately does it? If he drives drunk and kills someone, he's just as culpable as I am. Now, a judge or jury (in their appropriate roles) can completely set aside the punishments that someone like you or I would get for doing the same things... but you can't prevent a school system (or church, or business, or household, for that matter) from pursuing charges when someone does something so specifically, identifiably related to more serious system cracking. Doesn't mean they have to convict, or sentence, etc., in anything like the same way. But they have to have the prosecutorial tools, or there are no consequences for the twits and script kiddies that take it as far as they sometimes do.
BTW,
What on earth would such valuable records be doing on a student laptop in the first place?
Not on laptops. On systems the laptops and other networked machines connected to. Teachers's machines, on the same network, need access to that sort of stuff, and thus there's vulnerabilities on the network if a kid feels like starting to hack. And if he can install comm software on a machine that's using the same network, that's an indication of being willing to screw around with the infrastructure - and that's a very real threat to the school's operational ability, and to their obligation to keep certain information private.
Spend a little time watching the documentaries coming out of Pakistan, Taliban-era Afghanistan, etc. On those occasions that a madrasah (Islamic school) has allowed western camera crews to record the setting, it's certainly disturbing in some cases.
But here is a decidedly sympathetic article by a guy that researched the role the madrasahs are (or are not) playing in the molding of young minds into what, in some cases, become extremist jihaddis. You'll note that even the author, who decidedly chastises the west for frequently "not getting it" when it comes to these issues, confirms that a subset of these schools, drenched in wahabism and fueled with some families' oil money, were the factories that turned out the core of the Taliban. That movement is brutally medeival in its treatment of its own women, of any other culture, and famous for happily hosting folks like bin Laden in Afghanistan - a country they moved into and took over like a violent cancer. I'm sure you've seen the lunchtime former-soccer-field executions of women who (gasp!) tried to work outside their houses, or send their daughters to school. But more importantly, it's the mullahs produced by some of these programs that leverage the wide-open immigration policies throughout Europe and set up shop. In some cases, they have very good luck finding impressionable, or addled enough young suburban Muslims to go out and carry (or be) bombs.
Your deliberate misreading of my comment, to suggest that every fundamentalist Islamic school exists only to train terrorists, is nonsense. But they don't all have to do it for at least a few to none the less lean that direction, as they demonstrably do. The leaders of these schools proudly say they do.
So, you can be surprised that I would know, or you can go and digest the information yourself, and then YOU can know. But I'll stick to my original point, which is that altering how US education dollars are spent isn't going to change the creed that's preached to 8-year-olds in some of the crazier madrasahs in Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and so on.
If you think he's free to call for the assassination of a foreign leader, then I suppose you also support the right of extremist Islamic Mullahs to call for suicide bombers? If not, then feel free to explain the difference.
Good, though slightly wrong question.
First, I do not think that he's in a position to (or free to) "call for" anyone's assassination. In much the same way that overblown yahoos saying that "Bush should be shot" or other over-the-top rhetorical nonsense shouldn't be confused with giving marching orders to people. A Mullah that has a loyal band of young men visiting his mosque every week, to whom he essentially says, "go forth and kill heretics, now" is, I think substantially different than someone saying (however stupidly), "we'd sure save a lot of trouble if we just took the head off the enemy instead of having to invade his whole country to accomplish the same thing."
Mind you, that whole discussion presupposes some sort of existing armed conflict in progress, and unlike Saddam, Chavez is certainly not shooting at NATO planes every day. I mean, he's a jerk, and he's definintely stirring the pot in Columbia and elsewhere, but he's not invading Kuwait or gassing non-communist-leaning villagers. So, in that context, Robertson's rhetorical musings are absurd, but probably not to be confused with suggesting that his loyal religious followers actually do anything about it. On the other hand, there's always the chance that some loon will perceive it that way and act anyway... but that's a lot like saying Grand Theft Auto made you kill a cop. BS.
On the other hand, sitting across the table from a Mullah (or any other figure) that has been droning on for weeks, months, or years about how you should consider yourself lucky to be in his influence, and don't forget the 70 virgins, and here's Ahmed, who has a special backpack for you to wear on a train, blah blah -- there's something rather more immediate and specifically instructive about that sort of thing. Of course, some jackass preacher who talks an anti-abortion wingnut into doing the same thing is the same thing. It's incitement.
I'd be delighted to see Robertson lose his public voice. And Falwell. And Louis Farrakhan. All of them and their ilk. I'm trying to draw the distinction, though, between tone-deaf punditry/musings and actual, specific incitement to direct violence, or logistical support thereto.
The Mullahs that preach, in broad terms, that the heretic cities should run with blood, etc., are certainly making use of free speech. How free that should be when they're in the country on a temporary visa - that's a separate discussion. How and when that general ranting makes the transition to direct, specific incitement, support, or instruction - an admittedly difficult line to draw. Britain is wrestling with that right now, and part of how they address the issue is by drawing the distinction between their citizens, and those that are there as visitors/guests. That definitely makes it easier to err on the side of caution. I'm reminded of the (Supreme Court, wasn't it?) justice who said he can't define porn, but he knows it when he sees it.
And, of course, I completely agree that Robertson is an ass. The main difference, though, is that he's free in this country to be an ass, even though his nonsense is terribly damaging to international relations. He's no different than that Cindy Sheehan woman protesting in Crawford, in the sense that either one of them can spout non-helpful, utter BS. I guarantee that similarly disruptive (meaning, counter to the politics/policies of whatever party is in charge) media-covered diatrabs from people in, say, Iran, would not leave the speaker quite as comfortable as it does here.
Robertson is not on "my" side. He's a counterproductive twit that actually believes his own mythology, to the point of real delusion, I think.
FWIW, I don't believe the administration considers the comments "harmless," but rather jumped (and quickly) to distance themselves from it. Definitely not helpful. The problem is that if they spend too much time talking about it, that just adds credibility to Robertson, something no one needs.
But back to the original point... education? Unless you mean "idealogical education," no amount of diverting money from Homeland Security is going to fix either Robertson or some operating cell of would-be train bombers here in the US.
So great, a bunch of cameras. Catch the guy blowing himself up on camera, really useful.
So, the Brits used their similar camera system to capture images of the four guys that they did catch, and whose support system they immediately started to dismantle - including those that fled the country. If the Spaniards had a similar system, they may not have taken so long to track down the people that left cell-phone triggered backpack bombs on several trains - not suicide bombers. Do you think that every person who wants to damage people and infrastructure in the west also wants to personally die doing it? Hardly. That's for the chumps in their ranks. Video of the smart ones is especially valuable.
I'd rather our government take the whole sum of money they have devoted to 'Homeland Security' and put it towards education
Education of who? The fundamentalist schools that are producing this whole "kill the heretics for Allah" are feeling plenty well funded, and certainly don't want what I'm guessing you'd think of as an education (the sciences, an embrace of reason, a respect for liberty and democracy). You indicate in your post that Israel and western support for it is the problem. But why is it a problem? Because it's a liberal democracy surrounded by backwards, mysoginistic, theocratic thugocracies? Only a younger generation of Palestinians have any chance of growing up thinking that there is a purpose in life beyond removing Israel from the map. Putting money into "education" isn't going to change your average jihaddist's world view. Only an open economy, transparent government, and regular elections and trade throughout the middle east will do that. Pretty much like what's shaping up in Iraq and Afghanistan, though there is a long way to go. You know, sort of like the decade-plus that it took the US to get a ratified constitution after the declaration of our independence?
I don't really know the US system - is it routine for children to be criminally charged if say, they wrote some notes in their books in pencil? (After all, if you've got just one guy looking after the textbooks, it'll take a long time rubbing all those notes out.)
No. But students who, say, steal stuff from the school, or break in after hours and screw around in the chemistry classrooms - they definately are subject to arrest and prosecution. Likewise if they were caught breaking into the office of the school and digging through staff records, financial/medical info, etc. It's criminal trespass, and when there's private and/or sensitive data involved, that's worse. So: when they do that with a computer, it's no different than when they do that by going through a broken window, picked lock, or even an unlocked door on the school at night where they know they're not allowed to be. The computer, per se, isn't escalating the perception of the criminality, it's a new vector for criminal activity.
The problem is that we actually have had teacher financial records stolen (their social security numbers and other private info that leaves them more vulnerable to identity theft), student medical records pawed through, academic records hacked, tests stolen, etc. It's the glee with which some students attempt such things that no doubt causes short-staffed schools to react hugely when they see students cracking machines and networks - the very things that are indeed preludes to the nastier activities.
Say a student is taking an automotive class - and while everyone else is learning about fuel injection systems, the one kid just can't seem to get enough of learning to disable locks, alarms, and other security features. In and of itself illegal? Probably not. But would a teacher get the idea that the student's off in the wrong direction? Yes. And if that same student that's been practicing lock-picking all month is caught at night in the school's records room?
Look, in my high school (there were over 2000 students - we were in suburban Washington, DC), there was only a small, un-networked computer lab (truly, the old days). But we had students who knew enough to tap phone lines in the ceiling to steal long distance service which was sold to other students, steal expensive lab equipment for their drug dealing businesses, etc. Actual, real criminal activity. These students were arrested, prosecuted, and some got felony records as a result. No computers involved - just the same sort of small-percentage-of-the-students issue that we're dealing with today. Except, the internet is now a complete how-to manual for much less physically risky ne're-do-well crap. And just because some kids think it's easy, they assume that the consequences should be too. But check with the underpaid teacher that now has a completely trashed credit record because some punk either had a grudge, or wanted to buy an Xbox with a stolen id.
We had the Cold War making the US and Western Europre scramble for every visible indication of technical, cultural, and economic superiority over the totalitarian/communist model (good thing, too - we were right). OK, so that's done now, and we're all down to squabbling over cheese tarrifs and in what particular way to express ourselves about crazy jihaddists, etc. But the next stop will be the looming competition from the Indian/Chinese zone - and that will light it all right back up again. Moon bases, fast planes. Sorry, no flying cars - that appears to be unachievable for some reason.
mess with anything we don't approve of and go to jail
You're missing my point. There should be (and are!) entire schools devoted to every conceivable kind of messing around with what you can (or can't yet) do with a computer. Schools have classes for that purpose. When the school is issuing computers for everyone to use for basic scholastic purposes, especially in lieu of text books - that's a special case. And when the whole point of the school (a consistent offering of a curriculum to students on the same track) is skewed by some students deciding that they aren't beholden to the same things that everyone else is - that not only sets a bad precedent, but specifically it suggests that they (teenagers) aren't worried, at all, about the ramifications of introducing their own software (or anything else that might be along for the ride) onto the their school-issued machines and the network they all use.
If they've got the aptitude, time, interest - they should be on a track that specifically provides for messing around. Just not on the equipment that is there to be textbooks for everyone, and which has to be supported by a no-doubt airtight public school system budget. The inquisitive and bright aren't punished for being inquisitive and bright if they exercise those traits in the right venue. But if they jot down their bright ideas over top of the text in a school issued textbook (or the laptop analogy - though it wasn't that simple, we're talking about them thinking it's cool to install chat software - hardly an exercise in innovation, creativity, or even brightness), they'd also be jerks. Should abusing the laptop be a felony? Not unless it was done in the service of trying to do something felonious - like cracking. But the problem is that the average school staffer can't tell the difference, but have read about students hacking grades, grabbing teachers' employment records and financial data, etc. It sort of sets the tone. When I was in high school, you could get your water pistol confiscated because you'd be an annoyance with it. Now, anything even shaped like a gun means you're in a world of hurt... because some students made it fashionable to actually shoot up schools.
Every school should have labs with machines kids can burn down every day and build back up. But schools that also issue laptops for use by all students in a managed way have every reason to expect that a handful of students won't consider that to be license to hack those machines.
We probably are much more on the same page than not, here. I think the issue in this case isn't whether the particular piece of software that the students installed is malware, or if poorly implemented would have mal-impact on the network or tech support guys. It's that the entire arena of students deciding to install stuff, period, inevitably contains that prospect. It's painting with a very broad brush to say, "this isn't up to you, and if you screw with it, you're in deep trouble" but the alternative would be to have to delineate a jillion variations on what is or isn't bad vs. Extremely Bad. I can definately understand why the simplest policy is, "you don't get to anything like that, period."
Schools are an odd societal subset, and they should be. But some students do things that absolutely rise above the level of simple discipline problems, and call for law enforcement. Should this case have been handled this way? Probably not. I think I'm arguing for the latitude. I've taught kids before. In my case, the classes involved large, dangerous equipment. I had (out of self defense interest), a completely zero tolerance policy for any sort of screwing around. Could I imagine a situation when I would have wanted the cops involved? Actually, yes. But not reflexively.
It is when you've probably got one IT guy taking care of the machines used by hundreds of students. But it's exactly the typical student's complete disconnection from the reality of that sort of thing that allows some of them to think that they own everything, and should be able to do anything they want with taxpayer-owned equipment and services. It's not about whether the particular hack in question was terribly impactful, it's that when you have a rule that says there is no hacking, and it's for a reason, you can't leave it up to the kids to decide when and whether that's really important, because most high school kids have absolutely no judgement or the experience to think about the longer ramifications (or even the possibility that there IS such a thing).
Well, then I'm guessing that in a school without a nicely compartmentalized lab environment, there is one simple message: "This school, and the taxpayers that pay for all of it, don't at this time provide you with anything that you can simply screw around with as you see fit."
Followed by the corallary, "Feel free to do that at home!"
Of course I'm not a fan of capricious and irrational rules, nor their enforcement just for the dogmatic sake of it. However, there certainly are some rules that are rational, but may appear unfounded or crazy to adolescents.
A major factor in school system rules and regs is often the crazy pressure applied by noisy (or worse, litigious) parents and other groups. That being said, there are some things that make sense, especially when you're dealing with minors. In your school lounge (enhanced) example, I'd say, let's direct the attention down the hall to the school cafeteria, or nurse's office. There are places where some jackass might put some peanut butter in food prep equipment and effectively kill some allergic students. Or, there are cabinets in the medical office where controlled substances (or private medical records) are stored. Trespass into those places by anyone should attract serious police action. A 17-year-old "kid" is no different, obviously.
As for the student's assesment that a rule shouldn't stand... well, I like your example of making a rational case for taking it down. If you'll pardon the cliche, that's a "teaching moment." There is no better preparation for the real world that having to factually persuasive to a resisting audience. If the kids can show why having 3rd party chat software on the school-issue boxes doesn't pose any risk, and won't interfere with the very reason they've been issued the machines, then more power to them. But they should also have to justify and propose funding for, the additional tech support, changes to machine images, etc., that it would bring with it. The point is, kids are welcome to change the system from within its framework, but haven't earned the right, yet, to just do what they feel like (in the chemistry lab, machine shop, or on the school's network).
I'll reply in more detail when I get a chance, but you should know that at our local county dump (where residents take basement junk, recycling materials, that sort of thing), there's a container specifically for PC's and related hardware (old monitors, printers, etc) that eventually go to reclaimation facility. But it's free for the taking. You could leave with half a dozen older machines and probably Frankenstein something together. Most towns probably have something similar in their recycling programs... so ask your city or county where to TAKE old computers, and just go there to recover some, instead.
What metric will they use to determine if the world has cooled or warmed?
Ah, perhaps that's the sublime nature of this little jest! It's hard to settle a bet about a change when no one can settle on the baseline.
Two words and a questionmark: felony charges?
Two responses:
1) The local LEOs aren't specialists in making the distinction between one form of crack school computers and another. The local laws are that you make unauthorized use of the school system's computer resources, felony charges are what you get.
2) This is what Juries are for. This will not wind up in felony convictions - it'll get whittled down to misdemeanors, and there will still be the option to trot out the heavy duty charges as needed when another student cracks a machine with local network access and does take it one act further and winds up heisting teacher employee records, medical info on fellow students, etc. - which has happened in other schools, and is exactly why school administrators feel it's important to make this sort of dicking around with school hardware/software/networks something that students don't even want to contemplate. Should a school full of kids who like to hack machines maybe have a better lab/playgroud if their parents can't provide the same? Maybe. But should some kid who really wants to actually spend her day learning about what the computer is supposed to connect her to be impacted by slowed down networks, or over-busy tech support dealing with machines that have been co-opted by students who think they've been issued a shiny new personal toy?
Here's something like what you're talking about:
http://www.forterrainc.com/