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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

#891

Post by nmrm2 »

msandford wrote: post #423
baldfat wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story. Allow it to go where there is little to no public over sight, no public school board or checks and balances, under performing scores, teachers paid $20,000 less with no pension, and CEOs making millions. Charter Schools are a part of the problem with American education. Sure some Charter Schools are g…

Public schools also do plenty of dumb things. It's not as though charter schools have a lock on this. A lot of people want "vouchers" so that private schools are more affordable. And plenty of private schools have a good track record, while having similar per-pupil costs as public schools. If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really…

> Why not let parents choose the school?

As long as private schools are required to take any comer can cannot charge tuition beyond the per pupil amount.

Somehow I doubt any private school advocate wants actual school choice.

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

#892

Post by callum85 »

wcummings wrote: post #799
logfromblammo wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for me. I propose a hypothetical test. In this test, the subject to be tested is socializing with his or her normal social circle. During this activity, a potential romantic interest interrupts, and proposes that they go out on a date with the subject, immediately. Responses are classified as follows. A: the subject leaves the gathering for the date. B: the subject declines the date. C: the subject counter-offers…

If this is really how you see the world, I pity you. Grow up, this is puerile identity politics at its best.

I thought the above comment was funny and harmless. Why so harsh?

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

#893

Post by cheald »

_ls7m wrote: post #885

For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you won't see this photo shown much, here is the homemade clock that Ahmed brought to school. [1] http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AP_250782557... Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if you see them at a school with a device like this and it's beeping, I think it's reasonable to call the police. Allow them to come and have so…

> if you see them at a school with a device like this and it's beeping, I think it's reasonable to call the police.

Or...you know, ask them about it. A bomber wouldn't carry a Hollywood-looking bomb in a Hollywood-looking secret agent suitcase. They'd conceal it in their backpack, which is just like the other thousands of backpacks in the school.

Calling the police is not an appropriate first response to this.

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

#894

Post by raarts »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #613
nadams wrote: post #121

If anyone is actually surprised by the administrations intelligence - I should remind you of 3 events: - A teacher confiscates Linux CDs claiming that the student was essentially distributing illegal copyrighted software - because no software is free [1] - A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers. There is a lot of controversy about this case - but I read one news article…

President Obama has invited Ahmed to bring his "cool clock" to the White House: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656

This is all over the news here in The Netherlands, so probably in other countries as well.

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

#895

Post by sixothree »

andrepd wrote: post #763
sixothree wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That, or they just didn't like that someone illegally installed money-wasting software on school property without so much as an approval request. PS: Money wasting from their point of view, not making any judgement about SETI here

Right. I really should have separated the two incidents from my single point.

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

#896

Post by NhanH »

_ls7m wrote: post #885

For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you won't see this photo shown much, here is the homemade clock that Ahmed brought to school. [1] http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AP_250782557... Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if you see them at a school with a device like this and it's beeping, I think it's reasonable to call the police. Allow them to come and have so…

For the purpose of being fully informed, and because you might forgot you have seen this photo, this is what happened when the police arrived: https://twitter.com/OfficalPrajwol/status/644011809351962625...

Regardless of what someone looks like or what their name is, if they did not do anything wrong and is 14 years old, I think it's reasonable to expect them not being handcuffed and parade out of school in front of their peers. It's hard to take in good faith that the police have done their job well - with diligence, compassion, professionalism, and without animosity or bias.

Police were called, kid were arrested, detained massively erroneously, interrogated without the present of an attorney [0], and potentially having his life turned upside down, or side way (for better or worse). It's a tragedy that we see people without understanding of Bayesian statistics (or frequentist, for that matter) - but we do see them, and far too often. These are the times we live in. So how should this have been handled?

Hopefully some will learn that reasonable and probable cause needs to have some basis in certain priori, and that opportunity cost and the boy who cries wolf are really and very harmful issue. I think if people handle the situation with rational thought rather than instigation, and understand that P(massacre | kids = 14 years old in the US) is some number that probably is smaller than IEEE floating point error, then everyone will be better off for that.

[0]: http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-...

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

#897

Post by acqq »

nadams wrote: post #778
nowarninglabel wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how this point is debatable. I did this when I worked as a network administrator for a new school campus. It was folding@home vs. SETI but same concept. Once the administration realized all the computers were running folding@home they compared the bills after turning it off and it was tens of thousands of dollars difference (granted this was 2001 and full-size desktops). Now, one could say they overreacte…

> tens of thousands of dollars difference I still don't believe that - unless this was 10k computers+. I'll bet that if you used watts up on an idle computer, then used it on a computer running seti@home I'll bet the difference would only be 100 watt difference at the max (probably more like 50 depending on what is running on the computer).

See my other post here for details, 5000 desktop computers using 100% CPU all the time can cost some 18000 USD per month (1) more versus keeping them idle.

1) if 1 KWh costs 10 cents, which is reasonable to expect, and the load increases just 50 W.

And for this guy here it's even much more:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=54609&pos...

His single computer uses 490 Watts when turned on and calculating Seti, and he's keeping it on for 18 hour more per day just for Seti. Only 500 of such computers and such usage patterns make 14000 dollars more per month.

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

#898

Post by Shorel »

VonGuard wrote: post #494
jameshart wrote: post #371

A story. So, this thirteen year old kid with a Syrian father once got flagged up by Hewlett Packard because he was ordering electronic components. I'm sure you can imagine what happened next... Yeah, Bill Hewlett offered him a summer job, he got hooked on making stuff, wound up founding a company out of his garage with his buddy Steve Wozniak, and created the biggest electronics company in the world. Thank goodness h…

Honestly, I don't know that Jobs could have made a clock. Woz could have made one that calculated primes and rendered vector graphics, though.

He was a nerd as well.

It's just that the Woz vastly outnerded most people of his generation and they managed to meet.

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

#900

Post by hdctambien »

phonon wrote: post #887
hdctambien wrote: post #865

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's talk about the teacher's work day. Your link says it's 6 hours and 55 minutes, including lunch. So 6 hours and 25 minutes is a work day. Plus there's 150 minutes a week (2 and a half hours, or 30 minutes per day) for training, professional development, teacher collaboration, parent engagement and other professional activities. 150 minutes for all of that is a joke, and if any teacher was actually following that…

That's for nurses, etc. It's 6 hours and 20 minutes for regular teachers (including lunch). Actual instruction hours per day are quite a bit less of course. Even for someone without more advanced degrees (fyi you do not need a PhD to cap out.) you cap out at $93k. Agreed that teachers (particularly beginner teachers) put in a lot of hours outside school. 10 hours a week? More? So a 40-50 hour workweek during the scho…

I've worked for a big insurance company, a medium sized company that went public, and a couple startups, and two school districts.

I made waaaaay more money working in industry and never worked anywhere near as hard or long as I do being a teacher.

Sure, lesson planning gets easier. And you can reuse old lesson plans (although, the standards get changed fairly regularly and in my district you need to use "data-driven metrics" to improve your lesson plans year after year, so if you're just reusing lesson plans you get put on the "bad teacher list" in a state with no unions which means no tenure).

Without the PdD, you don't cap out at that 6 digit number. But $93k isn't bad. That's about the entry level salary of a Software Enigneer, right? And you only need to be a teacher for 20 years to earn that. What a deal!

That's probably all a teacher deserves though. As a society we really need incentivise our best and brightest to use their skills to build new ways to share photos.

All I'm saying is that you get what you pay for. If you pay teachers $40k, then you're going to get $40k value.

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