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84 Comments
- bmccaff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3To the young Firefox fans out there, you probably haven't had the opportunity to work in a corporate environment yet.
Here's the deal: Your school system has very limited resources. The people that manage your computer lab are probably also the librarians and teachers' helpers. Your school can't afford a full-time IT staff. The folks that are running your computer lab just want to keep it running and keep the kids out of trouble.
They baseline a system that works and lock it down the best they can. They don't have time to clean up after every kid who thinks he's an admin on the taxpayer owned systems.
Yes, Firefox has fewer vulnerabilities and is a better browser, but the decision to use and install software isn't yours to make.
When you're at home, use what you want. Don't waste your school's time by making the admin folks' lives harder. There are ways of suggesting new software. Do it the right way and politely and they might listen. - patrickweber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Haha, my school is sweet. Two labs, one with Apples and one with Windows.. both with ~50 computers in each. And guess what. IE is not to be found on any of the systems. Firefox is the only allowed browser.
So I surf in peace. - MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My school techs asked me how I did that when I used a LiveCD and FireFox.
My school techs are morons. - Drax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2thecapitalizt:
The thing that I hate about high school administrators is that they ALWAYS expect that kids will do bad things, or accidentially screw things up, and then make crazy rules.
The problem is for every careful, inquisitive and and over-all technical minded student there are at least a dozen script kiddies all trying to out-leet each other. Furthermore there are some real winners out there who will gleefully destroy a pc during their class period, rendering it useless until someone can repair it. I'm talking guys who can barely tie their shoes, but someone from the script-kiddie group explained to them that if they boot off a floppy and type format C: then they won't have to do anymore work the rest of the day.
As for the first type, I don't mind you guys poking around my network. If I can identify you and determine that you are trustworthy, I love having your insight and opinions. The rest are too reckless and attention craving. Maybe they'll grow out of it, maybe not.
Believe it or not, it's hard work keeping the first group out of trouble. Because the teachers/administrators don't understand what they're up to, they realize this kid knows computers, so they tend to think anything outside the normal applications are "hacking." And usually these students are so curious, that they don't stop to think "this might get me in trouble." I try my best to single this group out and help them learn to step back and recognize that line, so they at least consciously decide to cross it. - SaintStryfe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Noah: Oh well thats where your wrong. It is a consern. IE is a poorly developed, security-hole ladenedm gaping maw of spyware and phreaking exploits. And companies are working to block it's use not because it's got an inherent flaw, but because Microsoft has twisted them to use some "feature", or just simply paid them off, to use IE exclusively. Schools especially have no reason.
My brother is the head tech for an IT school. He develops a very platform agnostic system (as well he should - he and I both run Linux and Mac as primary OSes). But the Freshmen each year get a little yellow slip of paper that says an-ever-fattening Dell system with Windows XP Pro is needed. Why? Because they pay him.
Screw MS. - castufari, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All of the laptops that I admin have firefox as the default browser and Thunderbird as the mail client. To sweeten FF I installed Adblock, Forecast Fox and the Netcraft Toolbar. Staff can still use IE but most have switched to FF.
We have a "no unauthorized software" rule also, had I not used FF for so long I would have not allowed it either. Makes life a lot easier when you streamline what you can support. - .mark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wah, wah, wah! Guess what, if you are using a school computer then chances are that you are agreeing to follow the school's rules. If you want to use Firefox, and can't at school, then do it at home and quit your crying. And if that still isn't good enough for you, go get a job with a school district that has to support about 10,000 computers on both Mac and PC, and then you'll understand exactly why Firefox isn't used in many schools.
- thecapitalizt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not exactly firefox related, but its still related to school ignorance nonetheless...
Last year in high school (my senior year), the school replaced all of their inkjet printers with hp color lasers, and added a slew of black and white ones too. First of all, they started freaking out when I used their color laser, because the printer cost so much (I then reminded them that it costs less than a third to run, and asked them how many times a year they dropped $40 to replace the ink cartridges in the inkjet printers in every classroom.)
I plugged in my iBook, and found that all of these printers showeed up in my Rendezvous printers pane. I was in a lab by myself, and the lab aide started yelling at me when I was printing from my laptop, saying that I was breaching the network's security by connecting to the server to lookup the list of printers. I explained to her Rendezvous, and then she started freaking out again because she feared that someone could plug in to anywhere on the network and print tons of pages to any printer and be untraceable. She was about to call the netadmin so that they could disable rendezvous on all the printers, when I told her that they couldn't do anything, because it was hardcoded into the printers. She was still mad, but she couldn't do anything.
Apparently a memo circulated the next day telling teachers to be on the lookout for kids printing using their laptops, because a "security flaw" has been discovered with the printers, and the kids might be using them for evil purposes.
The thing that I hate about high school administrators is that they ALWAYS expect that kids will do bad things, or accidentially screw things up, and then make crazy rules. Maybe they should look at themselves first... - Gnomelord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You have your own laptops? You can take them to school? What the hell are you complaining about? Many public schools barely have a funtioning computer lab.
- krschuerman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have been a K12 System Administrator for years in Microsoft environments and I can proudly say I fully support and promote alternative software. Firefox, OpenOffice and other free and/or opensource software is part of my default system image. Unfortunately very few people venture away from IE/Office. People tend the fear the unknown and stick with what they are comfortable with.
Don't blame the tech coordinators/network administrators because they have bosses they have to answer to and many don't have the authority to make decisions. If you want to change something in the technology? Then go to the school board and/or superintendent, provide thorough and appropriate information without whining like a baby and something might get accomplished.
Schools in general have limited IT staff and budgets, but they still remain responsible for the care and upkeep. If you want to do what ever you want with the systems, volunteer 20 hours a week to fix them. You might actually learn something even if it's through your own research. Rather than complain about the system, make it better.
I'd love to have kids come into my office and complain about the technology I've provided them or even better challenge my ability to administer it. My assistants and their classmates would chime in as I laughed them out of the room. The kids that are interested in learning how to manage a network properly usually find themselves with a pretty decent summer job at my school, some are even lucky enough to make some money during the school year.
If you have a problem with technology in your school another alternative solution would be to move to South Dakota. Statewide student to computer ratio is less than 2:1. My current environment in SW Minnesota has 1300+ students and 800+ desktop computers, 600+ of which are no more than 3 years old.
There's my rant for the evening. - JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This seems to be the industry default... I know that the tech people at my school are 102% moron. They ordered 32 New Mac G3s and locked them in a room and told everyone that they wern't allowed to use them... except for "skills tutor" class (where you're forced to answer 1st grade level questions in a poorly written Java program, and were suspended if you did anything else). They did the same with the graping calculators: Locked them in a safe... never bothered with batteries. Also... the administration of the school is primarily technophobic: Bring in a CD-ROM, USB MSD, or floppy and it gets confiscated... they're worried about hacking programs... Where would they get that Idea from? ;-)
oh yeah... thebroken.org is blocked on the firewall... "This site contains hacking and proxy bypass information. you have 30 Seconds to navigate away." - digitalunit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Seriously, the computers belong to the schools. They make the decisions about what to run on them and what not to run on them. Even if you disagree with them or think you know better than them (even if you *do* know better than them) it still doesn't give you the right to do whatever you like with their systems. Suck it up." - Nothlit
They're our computers. We paid for the school to have them. We learn with them, we use them, we BOUGHT THEM, It is our right to run what we'd like on them. - gmoney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Damn commies!
- hdenton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I find this funny considering before i graduated my whole school district was switching over to having all district computers use firefox.
- MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You don't have the right to use FireFox on your laptop depending on where you are?
Unless there's someone over my shoulder, I'll use whatever the hell I want to use. - ericpp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is the case with most high schools. Most of the staff have a very limited knowledge of computers and are afraid of anyone that doesn't use the standard suite of software. When I was in high school, I would regularly get harrassed for opening up SSH connections to my mail server.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It really saddens me that every comment on that page has at least 3 misspelled words on it from each person. What is happening in those schools? It turns out that students are too concerned with an Internet browser that they don't pay attention to their spelling tests ;-)
- vikramkr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You have to ask yourself, is it really Microsoft's fault, or that of the puzzled school instructors?
- youaredoome0, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1On Windows machines it's impossible to have a technilogical barrier to running exe's. Most sane schools will not punish someone for simply using the browser of their choice.
- illu45, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Stupid school techs... Oh no! It doesn't say Microsoft on it! How can it possibly be secure???
Gah... fortunately, my school head IT guy is pretty good, he understands a lot of stuff, and isn't against FF, though he is a little paranoid with installing things (LiveCD is good), but I guess he has to cover his ass too. - TurkishSquirrel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1School administrators think we're all psycho evil uber hackers when all we really want to do is use a better web browser. I never use my schools computers becuase they're all crap and I have a pretty nice machine at home that's all mine
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Z3r02007:
It's Computer, and not Computor.
This is exactly what I am saying people! Pay attention in school since that is what you are there for. Forget Firefox for the time being because you have all the free time you would like to use it at home. - dnthomps, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Forget FF.... Use Maxthon. And for that pesky websense, find a good proxy and plug it into Maxthon. Has a proxy but.. one click and proxy is on... the next click it is off. What a great tool!
Down with websense! - V-Mob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Penn State York has just upgraded their labs so students can now use firefox!
- InfiniteZero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0OMFGWTF ?!?! U KIDS SO R0X0R WITH COMPUTERS!!!1!!!
WE PUNISH ALL THE SMART KIDS BECAUSE WE ARE TERRIFIED OF UR l33T SK1LLS!!!
U R NOT OVER-ENTITLED LITTLE LOSERS. CONTINUE ON YOUR DESPERATE QUEST TO MAYBE PUT UR HAND UP A GIRL'S SHIRT SOMEDAY. U R AWESOME. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh God, I want to throw up. This is the reason why technology will never progress as fast as it should. Damn perpetual ignorance. Stupid educators teach stupidity to students. Everyone go and watch the movie "They Live" and you'll have a good idea of what this world is beginning to look like.
- capn_crunch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I am pro firefox but it's like some of the posters said, you are at school to learn not to surf the web. You should be more concerned about getting an assignment in instead of fearing pop-ups. And teachers have a right to flip out if you're using a livecd, for all they know you have no right to access the network.
- capn_crunch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"If you have a problem with technology in your school another alternative solution would be to move to South Dakota. Statewide student to computer ratio is less than 2:1." -krschuerman
I live in Sioux Falls, SD. True our computer to student ratio is pretty good but the hardware is terrible, most computers are old Gateway's with Pentium 3's running XP, and it's slow as hell. the computers always take a few minutes to boot, and on top of that computer crashes are frequent (were told to save our data every 15 minutes). Believe me it's not so great. - Lesli, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Last year when I was in college, I had one lab that I worked out of every other day. Of course, this was a shared lab so other people had access to my main machine. I started noticing that there were a large number of popups occuring on a daily basis and I come in one day and log on.. over 100 IE windows begin popping up all pointing to random advertising and porn websites. The system kept freezing and rebooting as a result. It took the lab admin and myself all day to get that machine back in working order.
I'm not an anti microsoft person by any means. I use IE everyday alongside Firefox but I considered that day proof that IE in the right hands can ruin everyone's productivity.
Luckily, SP2 hinders the more computer illiterate user's ability to do stupid things to a machine and though I could never convince them to make the switch to Firefox I at least convinced them to upgrade to SP2. - Snowknight26, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Smarterdanu:
Thats what I hope will change soon. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0^^^^^Who cares about Firefox at college, its all bout the BEERS man THE BEERS AND PARTIES!
- Crazyguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My school does the samew thing click this pic of what happens when i try to go there:
http://www.thetannerfamily.net/filter.bmp - markbosky, on 05/23/2008, -0/+0My school is the opposite. We use SUSE Linux and Only Firefox.
- addisonj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0While i hate the concept of blocking firefox (in my opinion all the schools should just switch to firefox and save lots of money) but much of the software the schools have to set priviliages on older PC's without group policy of 2000/XP only support IE. My school has a lot of older PC's that run 98 and even 95, scary days I know, but at least we have them and software keeps them useable without some idiots ganking them up every day. I just have yet to con the admin password out of the techs, even though i am more qualified :P
- brbubba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You'll be happy to hear that my university, a tech school that takes part in Internet 2, is very firefox friendly. So just ignore the small time idiots running the high school and hold out for college where you will actually meet people who know what they are doing.
- mrmatchgame, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh, How High Schools try to screw the smart ones, I almost got suspended for installing Firefox on 3 computers, all had banner adds, useless tools bar etc. on IE. They claimed that the school dept. couldn’t track the students website habits, however I ripped them a new one because they didn’t bother fixing the infected computers.
BTW- our school was the only one with every P2P program out there on the net installed on all the computers. F*ck we had the worst computers. - Tom_Riddle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You know what. Firefox is by far a faster,safer, more efficient browser than IE. We all know it. And i agree that most School "techs" are completely moronic. In fact they r so stupid, that i used to be the go-to guy when there was problems in the computer lab. I was like 13 at the time. so let me say this. DIE STUPID MICROSOFT DRIVEN MORONIC SCUM
- superpixel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0well how about this... you pay nearly $40,000 for an education to go to a place without wireless. With a shared T1 line. To top it off, even web track students aren't allowed to install anything but IE. No FF, nothing but Office./MS all the way. Just switched to XP this year. HIGHER EDUCATION. I want what they're smoking.
- kubedawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0too much feedback to read on my lunchtime. but i have my own input. i think a lot of schools get their WINXP and other WIN os's at cheaper prices then normal, therfore respecting the company giving them these discounts. otherwise, most school computers have had microsoft products for some time, and are able to trust IE more than other broswers because firefox is fairly new, and I bet that they'd have to find ways of incorporating their WEBSENSE and other website blocker programs to match what IE is able to do. Or they are just lazy, or just plain mean.
- Nothlit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"They're our computers. We paid for the school to have them. We learn with them, we use them, we BOUGHT THEM, It is our right to run what we'd like on them." -- digitalunit
Hmm, they may have been bought with taxpayer funds, but that doesn't mean any taxpayer can just walk into the school and install anything they want on them. Besides, if you're still in high school, chances are you're not paying the property taxes that go to fund your school anyway. Your parents are. Sales and income taxes aren't common methods for funding schools, from what I've read. In a lot of school districts, the funds come from donations like the Bill Gates foundation, etc. I'm not trying to be argumentative, just pointing out the fact that even though lots of high school kids are very knowledgeable when it comes to technology, computers, software, etc. it doesn't mean that they have the right to completely disregard any rules set in place by the school administration. It's similar to the free speech thing...even though it's guaranteed in the Constitution, courts have ruled that you do not in fact have free speech rights in a public school because the people who are listening to you are forced to be there and can't leave of their own free will. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
I haven't been out of high school very long myself (3 years) and I was written up and sent to the principal once (in 6th grade, haha) for supposed "hacking" simply because the teacher didn't understand what I was doing on the computer. I learned then that it's stupid to try to do things your way when the people who can make your life miserable don't understand what you're up to.
If you can have a reasonable, level-headed conversation explaining the benefits of Firefox to your school's system admin, then by all means do so. But if they say no, then going against them and doing it anyway is just asking for trouble and shows a level of immaturity. - CoolSilver, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It frustrated me greatly to see my local technical college to run nothing but Internet Explorer. It made me sick to think that no one would dare install a good program on the machines at the fair price of free.
Instead I used my usb flash drive and loaded portable firefox. No way am I going to bother to touch IE. I am sure a few machines are spyware filled and hijacked to the foobar.
I think the school's IT department is poor anyway, it shows. - Smarterdanu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Snowknight.....this isn't really, the site for you. ;)
- ph3rny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lol
our school tried to pull this on us...
they realized we were using portable firefox
before they had all the nice little dns settings all configured nicely and they were feeding us through a proxy
bam!
then they spend a whole week turning off the dns settings (they told us "oh the dns was slowing down the connection") when really they were doing it so "oh were forcing you to go through our set up proxy so we can monitor all of your actions
lol
took me a week to figure out that either the proxy was required to get to the Internet or the dns was needed to be enabled
i got both the proxy ip and the dns numbers n everyone was happy (except the tech person)
lol - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wish we could bring laptops to school and usethem in class.
- xdigitalkill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0we had firefox on my schools computers and nobody really ever used it. It was even the default browser. Though it was like .9.3 or something.
I'm not in hs yet, but all schools I've been in use macs and only macs. - pbojovic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Total Freakin' BS. Just wait until you go college - you will have free reign there.
- Snowknight26, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Why use FF anyway? IE does everything you need it to do. Only idiots get spyware/viruses/whatever. I've never gotten viruses/spyware/whatever by using IE, and I can say that for experienced computer users, too. Downloading FF wastes more space on your computer. Just use IE.. it comes with Windows so there is no need to download any more stuff.
- xN8x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I work for my school's tech departmen and we install firefox on all our new computers. Our old ones are way to slow to do it, but the new ones all get it. But, that just happened this year. Last year I didn't work for them and I had Firefox disguised as IE on the computer I used.
- functioncode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I got called into the principles office and got suspended for 2 days for uninstalling ie and installing firefox on 6 computers. They kept calling firefox illegal. i asked why but no one told me.... so now i boot ff from a usb thumbdrive... wtf kind of tech calls ff illegal¿
- tealclock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0you stupid dumbass
firefox sucks ass
oprea>>>firefox>ie -
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