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14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

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Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#731

Post by ajross »

exodust wrote: post #636
mikeash wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad that showing off something you made can be seen as "asking for trouble."

It wasn't just "something", it was a case with a timer inside and wires and circuits. His "invention" was not anything useful. The only useful function I can think of for such a device, is actually a hoax bomb for drama class. What good is a clock inside a case? I'm getting down-voted to all hell, but that's what one gets for backing one's argument in a den of trigger-happy bigot-hunters. He showed it to his engineer…

> bringing cases packed with electronics [...] adds up to trouble

Yeah, seriously. Gotta watch those non-ROHS solder compounds hobbyists like to use. Also, through-hole pins can be sharp and scratchy.

This is part of the ridiculous ignorance that has a lot of us upset. At what point did a printed circuit board outside an enclosure become a "weapon"? Are the decision makers in our society (and exodust here) really so divorced from the techical world that they're informing their opinions based on the blinking gadgets in cartoons?

It's a circuit board!

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#732

Post by CydeWeys »

digler999 wrote: post #416
Alupis wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, far from being definitive, but it looks like a regular pc will cost around $227.52 (350 watt psu, $18.96 per month) in electricity per year to run 24/7.[1] (calculated using $0.06 per kWh, which is rather low for most people in the US) So, 5,000 machines running 24/7/365 would cost around $1,137,600 annually (5,000 machines * $227.52 per year) in electricity usage alone. Of that 24 hours per day, we can assume…

> 350 watt psu, PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. That's the theoretical maximum you can draw from it. Sure, SETI was probably drawing a higher load than idle, vs off, but I highly doubt it was drawing 100%. Even more complicated is the heat. If they lived in a cool climate, at least some of the waste heat that was emitted would have been absorbed by the building, which they are (presu…

> PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts.

Yes, it will draw even more than 350 Watts at full load. 350 is the output power, whereas incandescent lightbulbs are measured in input power. So a 350 watt power supply, depending on efficiency of the PSU anyway, is probably using around 400-500 Watts at the wall at full load.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#733

Post by xbryanx »

sixothree wrote: post #401
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands can be wasted on dumb stuff like bad office-supply purchasing decisions. Those folks don't get fired. Sounds overblown - folks afraid of anything they don't understand.

Having lived in the deep south most of my life I think I understand what's going on here. It's not that they're afraid of things they don't understand. It's that there is a certain type of person they generally don't like. In this case it might have been a man that had some sort of intellectual curiosity, maybe a bit eccentric. And they will use their ignorance as a weapon against those people. The police department…

Irving, Texas is not typical of what most consider the deep south. It's part of the DFW metroplex which is in the nation's fourth largest population center[1], and it's in a county that went 57% for Obama in the 2012 election[2]. So let's just be careful about painting wide swaths of the country with an singular view.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...

[2] - http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#734

Post by Glyptodon »

greggman wrote: post #706
cschneid wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the teacher level, they are underpaid. My girlfriend is a high school teacher w/ 4 years experience, a masters degree in her topic, and works 12+ hours a day (not kidding, seriously all day). She makes $35k / year. If she wasn't lucky enough to have an engineer paycheck behind her life, she simply wouldn't be able to do the job. It's likely that funding gets allocated in stupid ways, but the whole process is inher…

Maybe you have more info but... Somehow, if I understand correctly. The USA spends more per student than any other country. Yet, somehow, other countries have better outcomes. Is my info bad or does that suggest that more money isn't the problem. Is the problem how the current money is being spent or is it that we need more money. Are those articles making stuff up? https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 htt…

I've actually thought about becoming a teacher because developer salaries are so uncompetitive in my area.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#735

Post by mindcrime »

mbreese wrote: post #95

The real question here is: how can we help this kid? I'm not talking about from the legal perspective, but rather what can we (me, you, the larger tech world) do to make it so that this kid and others like him keep tinkering. He needs to know that what he built wasn't wrong, it was awesome.

Make have offered to send him and his school a carton of books:

https://twitter.com/make/status/644219347079143425

and also an offer from somebody at NASA to come see how they drive the Opportunity rover:

https://twitter.com/mikeseibert/status/644152049525899265

Stuff like this somewhat restores my faith in humanity. At least it shows we're not all complete assholes, all of the time.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#736

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

The real problem here is that everyone in positions of responsibility in the government -- the school and the police -- feel the need to justify their existence by doing... something. The default action of the school is to call the police, and then what? You have only 4 outcomes once the police are involved: 1) nothing, 2) citation, 3) arrest, 4) death. How many times do the police just walk away from something? That's right. So (1) isn't really an option at all. Citation? For what? They were trying, but you don't write tickets for making "hoax bombs." Killing a scrawny 14-year-old kid is extreme, even for the most jaded cop, so that leaves (3), arrest. Then the legal system has to justify IT'S existence, and, well, we know how this goes. Then the ACLU has to get all up in it, and probably CAIR, and the Justice Department. All because everyone has abandoned their common sense and replaced it with fear and deference to the State since 9/11. Thanks, Bush AND Obama.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#737

Post by raarts »

jevinskie wrote: post #403
raarts wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After living in the US as a European for 1.5 years, I've come to the conclusion that americans tend to be more afraid in general. For example I've never heard in Europe of recommendations like 'when selling stuff through craigslist always meet at a starbucks but never at home' either. Also being smart and/or nerdy actually is valued in Europe. It may also be a Southern thing though.

At least for your craigslist example, the fear is not unfounded. [0] That one example happened just last month in my town. The weapon in that case need not be a gun, a knife or baseball bat wielding friend hiding in the bushes would work well too. Perhaps better than Starbucks would be the police department parking lot. That is actually a preferred place for private gun sales - if the buyer is uneasy about conducting…

The fear is not unfounded of course, but I think there are two mechanisms at work here: 1. in the US the media blows these things up much more than in Europe. In fact there is a lot more attention for crime in general, while traffic accidents get much less attention. 2. Similar robberies do take place in Europe, but I think Europeans tend to shrug them off more, assuming there's only a very small chance it will happen to them.

Also, for some reason, whenever something bad happens, the US seems to respond with bigger countermeasures, more stringent laws and heftier punishments. Europeans are amazed when they read that children are sometimes threatened with tens of years of jailtime for relatively small incidents.

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#738

Post by twoodfin »

hdctambien wrote: post #652
twoodfin wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the teacher level, they are underpaid. My girlfriend is a high school teacher w/ 4 years experience, a masters degree in her topic, and works 12+ hours a day (not kidding, seriously all day). She makes $35k / year. How much do teachers in her school system who have 25 years experience make? The union-mandated tenure system, which prevents young, talented teachers from making even vaguely competitive salaries, but…

In my school district[0] teachers start at $43,500 and max out at $63,688 (after 30 years and a PhD) You can pick up some extra stipends if you coach or work in certian departments (STEM) but good luck getting into 6 digits as a Teacher. When I taught in Massachusetts (where we have a teacher union)[1] pay starts at $36,400 and maxes out at $74,000 (with a PhD) after 19 years. Turns out that public school salary info…

For the record, I didn't make the "6 digit salaries" claim. I'd be thrilled if world-class (or even top 5-10%) teachers could command those kinds of rates without having to teach in the richest school districts for decades.

I'd also note that those are salaries (and similar for others in this discussion) are for 187-day school calendars, or 37.4 weeks/year. Generously applying the same rate to a 46 week/year "full time" calendar puts the top end in Round Rock at over $78,000. The median household income in Round Rock is around $70,000[1], suggesting that it isn't outrageous for a couple of married teachers there to earn well above average, even without summer income.

Also, at least in MA, many teachers are not required to pay Social Security tax, but instead pay into a much more generous pension system. Other benefits are also competitive relative to the private sector.

Again, though, I'm all for teachers making more money so more talented people are encouraged to teach. But the tenure system is not the way to get that result.

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4863500.html

Re: 14-Year-Old Boy Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

#739

Post by 6stringmerc »

maratd wrote: post #307
baldfat wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school. We under value in society 1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces) 2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs) I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Chart…

> We need a change in priorities and not freak out about taxes for education. People don't freak out over paying taxes for education. Even if they don't have kids in the system. They freak out over throwing money at a broken system and the solution isn't to throw more money at it. Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story. Stop forcing children…

First, no, they do freak out for paying taxes for education, and it's pretty obvious that the hostility increases with age and as the elderly rely on social welfare programs. They get out and vote. Traditionally they vote down any education funding, as a cohort.

In my experience the people who claim the public schools are "broken" the loudest are the least qualified to make such an assessment. Also, public schools reflect the public, as in, you know, society at large. Saying that public schools are broken is essentially saying our basic local systems are broken, and that opens a whole new can of worms regarding inequality, poverty, and social priorities.

The significant problem with your "End of story" type solution is that there are schools which are tantamount to educational fraud based on their religious priorities, and there's no way public monies should enable that type of selectivity. Pay into the public system. If you can afford to keep your child ignorant through religious pursuits, or can afford the opportunity for a selective population experience by way of a private school, that's totally fine, always has been and always will be.

Stop forcing schools to listen to broken people.

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