Timeline for Should I let my child's school have access to my kid's personal laptop?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 5, 2018 at 21:59 | comment | added | Aaron | My +1 was for the part about the cameras. I recall a school spying on a girl in her own home years back. Different situation, but the concern would be the same. The computer belonged to the school, the girl was allowed to take it home, and they spied on her in her bedroom. | |
| Sep 4, 2018 at 13:48 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні | @Blerg: well, if you want you can do a more permanent job. My wife works in a facility that does sensitive government work, and on her company-supplied iPhone the camera lens has had black-dyed epoxy poured into it. The disadvantage is that it's useless as a camera. The advantage is that she can have it inside the facility. But it's a company phone, so no worries for us. | |
| Sep 4, 2018 at 1:37 | comment | added | Blerg | @BobJarvis That implies that the child using the laptop has the sense/desire to constantly cover up the camera. With the new fangled video chat systems that social media sites have, they may not always remember to cover it back up after using them. | |
| Sep 3, 2018 at 18:44 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні | A one-inch square of electricians tape applied appropriately does wonders for the "remote camera activation" thing. | |
| Sep 1, 2018 at 6:18 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @Luc Illegal? Sorry, but I don't trust the government anymore than I trust MS. They're both giant bureaucracies that are only interested in themselves. You'd probably get something that banned giving discounts to nonprofits or something equally horrible. I'll wait a couple generation for people to figure out that free office software is readily available, thanks; then no one will want to pay for it and the software will die. It could also be that the free stuff legitimately needs some improvements to live up to whatever Office can do; I'll let people decide that for themselves. | |
| Aug 30, 2018 at 18:01 | comment | added | code_dredd | @Luc You're probably right. I guess to avoid getting locked-in into MS you actually need parents to do the "marketing" themselves, i.e. I don't think school admins are necessarily aware of the fact that there are good alternatives that do a better job at following standards and respecting the freedom of their users. | |
| Aug 30, 2018 at 17:26 | comment | added | Luc | @code_dredd Microsoft gifts licenses to schools, or at least gives huge discounts. So unfortunately, they're not really "paying for licenses [the money for which could be used differently]." I do not understand how this is any different from a bribe. If someone emailed the school and went "could you train your kids in using our software and in exchange I'll give you tens of thousands of dollars worth of licenses", how should parents hope the school responds? Apparently the software is so prohibitively expensive that people need to be given licenses to get them started... It should be illegal | |
| Aug 30, 2018 at 3:43 | comment | added | code_dredd | @barbecue I know, hence "educated" being in quotes. The really dumb part is schools paying for licenses when they could've saved the resources for other things. | |
| Aug 30, 2018 at 3:36 | comment | added | barbecue | @code_dredd because that's how Microsoft ensures the next generation of customers. | |
| Aug 29, 2018 at 20:25 | comment | added | code_dredd | Parents should give GNU+Linux laptops to their children with encrypted LVM in place. Should a shady IT dept choose to take the laptop anyway, that will be a great way to say "screw you". Using LibreOffice over MS Office should be suggested to schools... why are kids being "educated" into getting locked-in with a the product of a specific company? | |
| Aug 29, 2018 at 7:00 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 29, 2018 at 7:57 | |||||
| Aug 29, 2018 at 6:58 | history | answered | Blerg | CC BY-SA 4.0 |