[SpardaSon21]

They also drank like modern-day alcoholics.

[iamzack]

And thought only rich white men should have any sort of political power.

These dudes really are sorta hit-and-miss.

[iamzack]

update: http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/20/lower-pervian-school-district

The kid that got in trouble based on images from his laptop? They thought candy was pills.

Why are these people in a position of power again?

[Kosh]

Wouldn't one solution to this be to just reformat the laptops and put linux on them?

[Dark Hunter]

If the school is renting the laptops out, and the students do not own them, I'm pretty sure they could justifiably get in trouble for that.

If the students do own them... then I agree 100% that they should install their own OS. Of course most people who are not major geeks would probably be intimidated by  the prospect and not possess the skills to install a new OS, especially Linux, which assumes some level of familiarity with computers and therefore is not meant to be used by the average user.

[karajorma]

Wouldn't one solution to this be to just reformat the laptops and put linux on them?

The solution you've come up with is to suggest that the students undertake a fairly difficult technical task (for under-aged students, many of whom have little computer experience) which may actually get them into trouble instead of getting the school district to stop an immoral and illegal practice?


Installing Linux isn't always the solution. What is wrong with you!

[TrashMan]

u...Linux?....Linux...LINUX!!!!


...ENCHANTMENT!!!!

[General Battuta]

Enchantment?

Enchantment!

(I can't decide if I love that dwarf or hate him.)

[S-99]

Use a livecd/liveusb. Slax on thumb drive or memory card would do the job
And if you don't have a thumb drive or memory card, then use mepis the livecd.
There's always a strong possibility of being able to bring a system to it's knees for you needs with live media
The college i went to didn't password protect any of there bioses.
I got locked out of my college computer account when i didn't remember my password 5 times in a row trying to remember because they made me change it too often (and the techs were too incompetent to be able to make resetting my password work). So, in a crunch for time on a number of occasions without my eeepc, i'd have to hack a computer with livemedia to get an exam done. Justification is a wierd thing, hacking the college computers is wrong, but it was something i needed to do sometimes to pass my classes when i didn't have all of my resources with me (ie, performing a wrong to fulfill a necessity).

Whoever does password protect there bios is a smart ****er. After the fact not many people will go through the trouble of popping out the coin battery or even know what that would do.

That's my 2 cents, this problem is seriously ****ed. Talk about stepping out of bounds/school property. And possibly the moral implications of hacking something you'd get in trouble for. In this case with this high school, i'd support hacking that doesn't leave a trace (livemedia) so that webcam bull**** doesn't happen.

[Klaustrophobia]

let me bring back up again the point that these are high school kids, not computer experts.  and the fact that before it happened, there would be no reason to suspect such behavior and therefor no reason to take action against it.

[jr2]

Whoever does password protect there bios is a smart ****er.

Thanks.  

EDIT: ever heard of Kon-Boot?  You could use that as well to get into the admin account and access the cached files on the computer.  Ophcrack works to retrieve your password, but IDK if it would work with their setup.  Prolly not.

[S-99]

My argument is why use those tools when you can just modify the boot sequence to be able to boot livemedia and access the internal hard drive of the computer as nothing more than a storage device. This leaves you to not needing to find out any passwords or account names since all of the contents will be right there before your eyes for any kind of manipulation.
And really a passworded bios wont stop somebody from popping out the coin battery in the computer, but it's better than no security at all for the bios.

Ophcrack and kon-boot sound legitimately handy for just resetting passwords in times of user forgetfulness and security auditing.

My main point is that it's easier to break into a system with livemedia and gain full access than it is by trying to break into the system via the OS on it's hard drive.

let me bring back up again the point that these are high school kids, not computer experts.

Point taken, just think of what i said as a recommendation for what the students could have done if they were computer experts.