Restrictive Environment From School

[dlavery]

This is the kind of thing that my team would not tolerate. It seems to me a total waste of $$ to buy each student laptops with such restrictions. If they lock you our of the bios and it is only configured to boot off the HD then pop out the HD and pop in into another computer and modify whatever you want. I would wipe it and install *nix or a fresh windows install. Or you could do dual boot if you need all the school stuff. You can buy a 40-44pin IDE adapter that will allow you to put a 2.5" laptop drive in a desktop computer. If you want to unlock the bios, many bioses have backdoor passwords. If yours doesn't laptops occasionally have a pins you can short or a jumper to clear the bios but not usually. If all else fails, build yourself an EEPROM programmer and find the appropriate image.

We had some similar probs in my computer science class. We went to the county IT dept and they said they had no problem making any changes. Well, time passed and no changes were ever made. We took matters into our own hands and "obtained" the Novel, and DeepFreeze passwords and made the appropriate changes.

Now depending on the level of incompetence in your county, this probably isn't the best approach.

They might not like it but if i were you, i would either buy my own hardrive and swap it out when needed or set up dual boot.

Wow. This is possibly one of the most inappropriate and ill-conceived pieces of advice I have seen on these forums in quite a while. Let's just check through what is being advocated here:
- The county has been generous enough to provide each student with a laptop computer. In response, it is suggested that you abuse the implicit trust that has been granted, and try to break their systems.
- The computers belong to the county, and are not the personal property of the students. The response? Recommend that the students remove the hard drives (not their property) and use them - illegally - in alternate computers.
- Against the obvious design and use requirements implemented by the computer owners, we find the recommendation to purge the operating system and install a new one that is in conflict with the installed configuration.
- Illegally obtain a backdoor password and use it to defeat the legitimately installed software system.
- If all else fails, permanently overwrite the original configuration, rendering it unable to be utilized as intended by the system owner. But that's OK, because now you can use a computer that is not yours for a purpose for which the owner has not granted permission, for an activity that is acknowledged to be something that "they might not like."

Normally, I might let something like this pass, or limit it to a background discussion. However, when such a blatant and irresponsible post is made, it cannot be left alone. What is being advocated here is a violation of trust, an abuse of privilege, a disreputable behavior, and a borderline criminal activity. It is just plain wrong. To let this go unchallenged - in a forum in which we all profess to support professional and responsible behaviors - would be wrong.

The original question asked for constructive suggestions for dealing with what were felt to be onerous limitations on the use of provided resources. It is reasonable for us to expect that a community like this could come up with a set of reasonable options for "working within the system" to get the situation corrected (e.g. the suggestions from Sanddrag and 527Point). If such solutions cannot be articulated, then it might be reasonable to identify alternate resources to achieve the real end goal (access to an appropriate programming environment for robot code development). It is likewise reasonable to expect that all of these responses can and should be made with full consideration of the property and ownership rights of the suppliers of the computer. To see a reponse to this query that is so contrary to the values and principles of this community is disturbing.

As an analogy, when a corporation provides funding and/or support for a team, it is incumbent upon the team to utilize those resources in a manner consistent with the constraints under which they were provided. If a sponsor provides several thousand dollars to fund a team, but states that the team can only use the funds to pay registration fees and procure materials, the team does NOT have the right to say "screw that, we are using this money to pay travel expenses so we can all go to the cool regional competition in Anchorage." If they did that, the sponsor would be entirely within their rights to demand a complete refund of all the provided funding, and urge that such an irresponsible team be terminated immediately.

What is being advocated above is no less egregious a violation of trust than the analogous example. If the provided advice is followed, the county would be perfectly justified in shutting down the team and punishing the perpetrators appropriately.

My purpose here is NOT to flame the author of this suggestion. Rather, I believe that this should be used as an example from which to learn. We all need to understand what professional behavior is all about. Occasionally, that also means that we have to understand when we have crossed over the line. This is just such an example. We need to expect better behavior from ourselves if this community is going to survive and thrive. And when we do cross over the line, we need to bring ourselves up short and correct the situation.

-dave