Firefox detention story was a hoax
A SCHOOL, where it was claimed that a boy was given a detention for using Firefox, has issued a statement denying the story.
A school detention notice, which recounts the story of a kid who was in hot water for using Firefox instead of Internet Exploder, was posted on the World Wide Wibble
High School Principal John Scudder said the uploaded letter was an altered version of a detention letter sent to a student.
He said unfortunately, privacy concerns prevented the School District from giving a full explanation of the nature and source of the letter’s alteration.
However reports that a Big Spring student was assigned detention for using the Firefox internet browser instead of Internet Explorer were untrue and based on the fake letter.
Scudder said that you only get detention if a person has had appropriate warnings and if students continue to engage in non-academic activities or fail to follow a teacher’s directive during class time.
In other words it looks like a kid was being a tyke, was warned but continued to misbehave and got a detention. The faked the detention note appeared as some sort of revenge.
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.. are all those "duuuh look at that moron teacher being unworthy cause he's doesn't praise the holy foxxy" comments now.

"oops a fake ... um .. i didn't flame anything there. nope. just browsing by now."

- martin

Must be a slow news day since when does the inq focus on such small stories, like who gives a toss if some kid got a detention...
it is true that the Detention slip was edited but not for bad reasoning and it was uploaded by another person other than the student being served the detention. All he did was use Firefox, for reasons unknown, and he was warned about his actions but seriously, what actions were there to be warned about!

Maybe you've been sleeping all day long yesterday, Luke, but this was big news, getting 9000 diggs and everything.
Or.... it is actually true and the school does not want to look bad so they try to de-characterize the kid and claim the letter as a hoax.

It's a good example of corporate thinking because why? Over a million readers come to the INQ everyday. They don't wanna look stupid for bumping off a kid for using firefox because they want parent's money invested into the school.

Go figure. :P :P :P

~The Dude

PS: In truth, we will never actually know, because none of us were there. It's all speculation from here.
How people who use products in the minority (I.E Firefox, Apple, Linux, et al) quickly jump on their soap boxes and bash the majority leaders ranting about the evils of these companies and products. Even if the story HAD been true it had nothing to do with any company or product; instead it would have been about the TEACHER and the SCHOOL. Last time I checked I didn't see any MS employee filling out detention slips.

I guess these minority products are so efficient that their users have nothing better to do than to post rants. Of course I doubt they have the time to post their own rant retractions. They probably feel justified even though the story was a fake.
Back in my day, if the teacher told you to say the sky was green, you said the sky was green... and WE LIKED IT THAT WAY!

I like FF, only thing I use at home, but if the teacher told him to shut it down, that is what he should do. Same as I would get suspended for installing it at my job. It's not about what's better or not, it's about what is allowed.
A year or two ago I installed Opera and a few other nifty little programs to my allotted network storage.

Used it, everything was fine and dandy, completely complied with the fair use policy that my school mandated...yet one day I got flagged and was told to remove it.

I refused, saying that it did not violate any rules...IT didn't care, off it went. Lunch detention for refusing to comply (woe is me).

Needless to say, I survived.

But it does go to show that the policy handbooks are worth about as much as G.W.'s election promises.

(Also, why are the CAPTCHA non-words? C'mon, Inq! They're a pain to type! Or let us make accounts and bypass them!)
The kid from Big Spring High School has his detention on December 19 2007. I know because i know the kid. The kid is not denying about not cooperating with the teacher when he should and agrees to serve the detention because of his actions. 

It is true that the detention slip was altered but the only thing altered on the slip was that the teacher wrote "foxfire" instead of "firefox." So for some reason I do not know, the kid fixed it from saying "foxfire" and changed it to "firefox." He did not upload the slip onto anything, but instead somehow it got on his ftp server and someone downloaded it and uploaded it to a blog. I am going to ask the kid some questions that still puzzle me tomorrow.
Everyone! Listen! That kid that got detention is my friend. I want you all to know that he got into trouble because of all of the phone calls and emails sent to the school...so i hope you are happy you bunch of asses! Thanks.
-Will
whose sister is dating a football player whose cousin goes to the same school as this kid. Well her bestfriend's cousin takes a class with a guy who sits next to this kid in this particular class and this is what really happened...

pppfffttt 

Sorry just had to make fun of some of these posts lol
Schools, colleges and even workplaces in general do not like you using any program which is not officially "installed" due to over-paranoid authoritarian IT drones. It is quite sad how close-minded they are to the possibilities of the technology. An non-programmable computer is worthless.
Now the kid is being suspended for all of the hate mail being sent to the teacher and the school. Supposedly someone sent a virus and crashed the schools mainframe and they had to hire a special IT team to fix it. I guess they don't have a good enough IT team already(or no team at all). I probably could have fixed the problem (i mean c'mon) and, anyway, the kid didn't do anything after the initial punishment so this is unjust and wrong!