I also work closely with school IT in Canada. This is a common thing.
When I read the summary I was thinking "Really?". This is the school's network. Politics is very much a big part of this. People want to bring their own devices, but all the soccer moms out there want "OMG PRON" blocked 100%. To a degree I agree with this - there's a time and place for everything. School ain't the time for that sort of thing, and IT can get in some real legal hot water if they don't do something about it.

Case in point, when google implemented SSL, we found that google's image search would hand out porn happily when asked. We had no choice but to implement something that will filter these things. Moreover, as previously mentioned it's also used to dole out wireless access seamlessly.

Really, in my opinion this boils down to respect. This is an institution's network. A bit like visiting someone's house. You know the rules, and this is not YOUR network. They're letting you USE it in order to (in this case) learn. Not to look at porn (or whatever). Bring your own device? Then it's subject to the same rules.

There's nothing nefarious here.

That site makes my freaking head hurt so much

This.
People seem to be able to reconcile their religion with scientific fact.
In my opinion it's intellectually dishonest since you basically have to ignore some critical things on one or the other side of the fence to make it work.
What usually happens is people cherry pick from whatever holy text they subscribe to. Which is a big difference between science and religion.
Science/scientists can admit when they're wrong (most of the time) and adapt and move on. Religion on the other hand..

.. then I saw screenshots and was all "So.. it's basically a skinned version of Inkscape?"

I'll admit all I read was those two lines :) The only exception I take - popularizing code like this - is we get a flood of useless coders out there, who don't know how a compiler/linker etc etc work. Not to say we don't already have that.. just worse.

On the other hand, sparking that interest is fairly key. Shrug, if it works, it works.

WAAAAAIIIT wait wait wait ...

"Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code."
and
"There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place."

So.. you're teaching people to code by not teaching people to code?

I can agree surveillance has it's place, but there is a line. I think that line is somewhere in Utah right now.

I for one am half with you, yet not.
I'm getting sick of seeing "down with beta" etc. Versus the discussion I like seeing.
At the same time this 'handful of crotchety people' seems to have made quite a loud noise, and seem to make up quite a few people.... and they have a point. Beta is not ready. To say that they(slashdot) were going to make beta mandatory in the near future, in a similar state it's in now. THAT is a joke.

We might be sick of seeing it, but I think it's a necessary evil. Now if we could get this kind of response to truly important matters *cough*NSA*cough* then we might have some hope for humanity.

You know, I can't help but feel this boycott will be alot like Randy Marsh and SouthPark's Walmart boycott.

Randy: "Hey... Gerald, what are you doing?! We said we weren't going to shop at the Wall*Mart anymore!"

Mr. Garrison "Well what are you doing here, Randy?"

Randy: "I came because I wanted to make sure nobody was shopping here.

Stan: "Dad!"

Randy: "Oh all right, em maybe I was gonna buy a glass. One glass! ... And some chips... And butter. And some new pliers."

Alright, I'll feed a little. Too bad.

How about that vulnerability where they package crap with the install? I had to clear a few spyware incursions on my father's machine resulting from the crap they stowed in the install including the ask toolbar. I don't care how many actual bugs there are. If you try to slide this shit by regular users like this, I just have zero respect for companies who do that.

Not only explained with pictures, but with MOVING pictures. Much obliged, makes sense now.

I'm not exactly a crypto-guru.. but if exchanging a key with your friend to ESTABLISH secure chat.. wouldn't you first have to send that key through unencrypted channels? - assuming you are far enough away that face-to-face isn't an option (and in that case, why even use this?)

I suppose Origin isn't terrible. Personally, it's a conflict of ideals. When sneaky Pete defended origin with how many subscribers they have - my blood boiled. Because origin is REQUIRED even when you install a game through Steam. More importantly, EA. Fuck EA.

I for one disagree with this. Steam is an excellent example. Steam is a gaming platform. Of course it wouldn't be good for TV or Music because.. that's not what it was designed for. (Okay, it's getting into TV.. but so far so good from what I'm seeing). What the previous poster was getting at (I believe) is that the way Steam does DRM in it's own arena is very well done. As for offline mode and connection problems, I think everyone's milage varies. I've been in offline mode for days without issue (I just moved, no services yet) and I've never had connection issues that can be blamed on Steam.