Slashdot \\\College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior///

[SKKY]

Pretty interesting article...

"The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/14/193217&from=rss

[pokerfan]

1. Are you now, or have you ever been a member of a Linux User Group?

[SKKY]

2. I frequented the San Diego Linux Users Group when I wasn't deployed...

...which unfortunately was a great deal of my time between 2002-2005. I wouldn't call myself a "member" as I wasn't one of the major "players", but I did go when I could, and helped during quite a few install fests. You ask because...

[RoyGBiv]

4. Play off McCarthyism ...

... I believe.

Standard question asked during congressional investigations was, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?"

IOW, the college police are the McCarthy-ites.

[pokerfan]

5. "Linux is communism." (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft)

"Ballmer wanted "to emphasise the competitive threat, and in some senses the competitive opportunity, that Linux represents. Linux is a tough competitor. There's no company called Linux, there's barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it's free. And I'm not trying to make fun of it, because it's a real competitive issue."

http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/2000073100220PSBZMS

[SKKY]

10. Ahh. I thought pokerfan was calling me out in some weird sort of way...

...It was late, I was tired. I missed it.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Did you read the one about the teacher?

EDIT: Corrected name of Linux distro mentioned.

This was from a few months back, and I don't have the link anymore.

Basically, a guy who runs a blog and an online LUG distributed some copies of HeliOS Linux to some computer science kids to play with. A group of these took them to school and were messing with them on the computers they were allowed to use for computer science projects - IOW, computers on which they are allowed to install software.

A teacher came along -- a computer science teacher -- saw what they were doing, decided they were using "illegal software" and sympathizing with the terrorists, confiscated the discs, and went into a total freak-out. She informed the principal, the parents, and the police. She said she knew there was something wrong initially because they were TYPING COMMANDS and only hackers and terrorists do that.

So, the kids informed the guy who gave them the discs, and he wrote a scathing commentary about this stupid teacher on his blog. It got picked up by Slashdot, and then all hell broke loose. Imagine the collective fury of a bunch of Slashdot geeks descending on the servers of a high school's computer and phone system.

In the end, the kids got their discs back, and the teacher had to apologize to the students. HOWEVER, she went on a tirade against this guy who dared to call her stupid on his blog, claiming he ruined her life, etc. She ended up calling the guy, and they had at least one very long phone conversation (he reported this on his blog) during which he educated her on the world outside of Microsoft and a GUI.

She'd never heard of Linux or Unix ... ever ... a computer science teacher.

[pokerfan]

6. AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student's Linux CD

http://austinist.com/2008/12/10/aisd_teacher_throws_fit_over_studen.php

When Teachers Are Obstacles To Linux In Education
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/12/10/001236.shtml

[RoyGBiv]

7. Ah, yes ...

Thanks. I knew I was misremembering some of the details.

She's just a gem.

[NorthernSpy]

12. "I, along with many others, tried Linux in college..."

:rofl:


Kids, Linux is bad, mmm'kay?

[SKKY]

11. That's right! The computer science teacher who had never heard of Linux...

...that's like an auto mechanic never having heard of hybrids.

[charlie]

8. If you read the petition for the warrant

it looks like the cop has what he needs to bag Calixte from server logs. The rest is just a fishing expedition to confirm other criminal accusations made by the roommate. It also looks like paranoia from a guy with a half-baked understanding of how computers and networking works. He knows enough to scare himself, but flails with the particulars. The request has anachronisms ("IBM-compatible" PCs, Zip drives), errors (writable CDs are known as WCDs), and goofy assertions (the suspect can prepare a computer so that it's impossible for "any system" to detect the presence of illegal downloads).

[X_Digger]

9. When we have movies like 'untraceable'..

Folks are gullible when it comes to computers. They really don't understand much of how computers / the net / etc work, therefore it's not a stretch for their imaginations to cook up something entirely fanciful to those of us who know better.