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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

#121

Post by nadams »

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 (that I can't find right now) where the administration said they would have been ok with cancer research folding@home rather than searching for aliens with seti@home. This combined with the backpedaling of "oh actually he was a bad employee, stole things, and cost the school millions in extra in electricity costs!" makes me believe that they just wanted to use it as an excuse to fire him and make the position open for a friend/relative. [2].

- Or an honor roll student suspended for buying candy from another student [3]. His statuses were only restored after it caught media attention.

I would go into my rant about the education system but you should just watch this video [4]

[1] http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our...

[2] https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=5169

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20080313141623/http://edition.cn...

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

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

#123

Post by code_sterling »

vidarh wrote: post #107
god_bless_texas wrote: post #56

You can't legislate intelligence. Yesterday I went to my daughter's school's open house. When I entered, I was cornered by an administrator and told I had to sign some paperwork before I left. It was the computer policy. After I signed it, the admin said my daughter had to sign it too. She's 4.

The intent is not to legally bind her, which it obviously wouldn't. Usually the idea of having a child sign too is the idea having a child explicitly agree makes them more likely to be invested in complying. Whether or not there's any evidence that works, I don't know, but it's not quite as stupid as it might seem at first glance.

No, it's as stupid as it sounds and your trying to rationalize stupid. She's 4.

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

#124

Post by chopin »

mikeash wrote: post #87
jessaustin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to tie them in knots, get a bunch of small "Amazon"-type (empty) cardboard boxes, and write "BOMB" in bold letters with a magic marker on the sides. Distribute the boxes in slightly-hidden spots, like Easter eggs. Fun times! EDIT: Thanks Mike, that's a great improvement!

Make three boxes. Label them BOMB 1, BOMB 2, and BOMB 4. Put them in various places around the school. Grab some popcorn and a comfy chair.

Wow, what an evil plot.

You shouldn't be caught sitting in your comfy chair eating popcorn though...

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

#125

Post by dovereconomics »

Honestly, more and more, I challenge the idea of ever having a child: bright and smart kids have never been so intimidated.

Many of the hacks I did as a child could have gotten me in jail today. Something 'silly' or 'funny' becomes dangerous/offensive/harassment; creativity, ingenuity and imagination are turned into dullness, self-hatred and nihilism.

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

#126

Post by mbreese »

sp332 wrote: post #110
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.

Offer support: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ws7e8WyQvrsLfhSFvdGot3n9NWK... Sign up to be notified when some plans are made: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zCtwhsEh_zB4PkuwlgAVZRTFV4I...

This needs to be at the top of this thread.

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

#127

Post by protomyth »

Navarr wrote: post #67
bkor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really mean suspending him is not so terrible because it was only 3 days? I hope I'm misunderstanding you. The child learns to not trust anyone and that his best intentions are twisted into punishment. I'm pretty appalled by this.

To explain myself, in a Texas Highschool I was sentenced to In School Suspension INDEFINITELY with my laptop confiscated for having shortcuts to directories on the network that I "shouldn't have had access to." After about a week of that I'd had enough, asked for OSS - got it, which I thought was enough but apparently wasn't. They ended up wanting to reassign me to an "alternative school" (the type with a dress code,…

Neither is acceptable

I swear, if I was rich, I would have a PAC specifically for school board elections and go after these idiots and their supporters on the school board.

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

#128

Post by mtgx »

userbinator wrote: post #21

Apparently the authorities have determined that the best way to stop terrorism is to discourage any manifestation of personal intelligence, so that the population turns into mindless sheep. "If you don't know how to make a clock, you won't know how to make a time bomb" is their reasoning. It is seriously disturbing. I am reminded of stories of kids opening a command prompt and being accussed of "hacking", only this i…

This is why it's often said that not just censorship but also mass surveillance are the killers of creativity and progress in a society. When you always have to look over your shoulder because the "state" might believe you're doing something wrong and punish you, that tends to make you not even want to try something anymore.

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

#130

Post by mtgx »

ryanlol wrote: post #55

What the hell is a fake bomb? How does a schoolteacher know what a "bomb" looks like? Are we talking about an IED here? That could be literally any fucking thing. I really doubt that this clock looked even remotely like any of the industrially made ready-to-use explosives. Sometimes I can't help feeling like some people should be forcibly removed from the gene pool.

Aren't lots of bombs in cartoons represented as clocks? Maybe that's how.
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