Work computers and school computers cannot be thought of on the same legal level.

Primarily because work computers contain gobs of intellectual property. That's to say nothing of all the sensitive security, passwords, and customer/client data that exists on corporate/company laptops. Whereas school computers (at least up through high school) do not have any of these risks.

The difference here is that corporations lock down computers to protect the corporate IP and sensitive data, whereas this article is talking about locking down computers to prevent it's user from using it immorally. This is a problem because the school can't implement moral restrictions with which all parents can agree, and that could become a legal quagmire.

In the real world employers don't and or legally can't force you to censor your personal PC's at home, where they are not paying for the Internet Service.

Too bad you posted AC, that's worth some mod points.

Reality is, the school has no jurisdiction over what the student does off school grounds. Including what they do on their computer.

IANAL, but if you want to control what they can and can't do with the computers, you have to keep the computers on school property. Otherwise, I suspect you would be running into legal issues.

The above post is also right in recognizing that no matter what you do to try to prevent the students from doing certain things on the computer ... if they want to do it, they'll do it. Live CD's anyone? How about a dual boot?

I think it (at least on the surface) was supposed to be just as ridiculous as her argument was.

He was soliciting a, "that's preposterous" reaction from her. The genius of his reply is that his reply has at least some foundation in truth whereas hers was downright ignorant.

It was a parody of her ridiculous argument in which he employed her reasoning in a field she could understand. Because, obviously she doesn't understand squat about Linux.