Remember two months ago, when we told you how every school-supplied iBook in Henrico County, Virginia was being confiscated by school officials to undergo a thorough de-funning process? See, it seems that the high school students had been using their iBooks for such "distracting" extracurricular activities as illegally swapping music and movies, instant messaging and playing games during class, hacking into the teachers' files, and, of course, downloading enough porn to make Larry Flynt blush and consider going into another line of work. The county apparently decided that they could prevent the students from using their iBooks for, ahem, "unsanctioned tasks" by rigidly controlling access via specific login accounts-- a strategy which we figured was doomed to fail.

Well, as we fully expected, it was a simple matter of "when," not "if." At the time, we chose February 23rd in the pool-- way too early, but it turns out we failed to account for how long it might take before the students actually got their iBooks back and had a chance to take a shot at circumventing those new security measures. Now we know; faithful viewer Kent Love pointed out a Richmond Times-Dispatch article which states that the students only just had their Macs returned to them "during the past month"; in the short time since then, some sixty or so students had found a way around the new restricted logins, were once again up to their old tricks, and have even been caught and suspended. All that in just a few short weeks? My, those student are industrious. Who says the work ethic is dead?

Interestingly enough, blame is flying all over the place. Despite the fact that all students had to sign agreements signifying that they understood the penalties involved for misusing the equipment, some of the parents are calling the potential ten-day suspensions "too harsh." Says one parent, "It's almost as if the situation has been set up to tempt [students]. It's the forbidden fruit. There it is, but don't touch it." Says another, whose child faces possible expulsion for what we can only assume was a particularly egregious infraction, "You don't tell [a person] they can't use the car and then leave it in the driveway and give them the keys." Ah, of course-- it's all the so clear now: the entire iBook program in Henrico County was actually an elaborate plan to entrap as many kids as possible into getting suspended or expelled. Why didn't we see it before?

Meanwhile, the county is pointing fingers at Cupertino. Brookland District Supervisor Richard W. Glover insists that it's up to Apple to provide iBooks that can't be used for playing games or downloading nudie pics. "If there are still indications that this is uncontrollable, Apple... has the responsibility to make this a safe environment for our children to learn." So there you have it, folks-- it's not the students' responsibility to choose not to break the rules, nor is it the parents' responsibility to raise kids that understand the consequences of their actions. It's not even up to the schools to introduce technology programs with the teensiest amount of consideration of the social challenges they might present. Instead, it's all about Apple inventing a porn-proof computer. Note to Steve: make sure you get right on that.