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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

#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 is a far more extreme case.

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

#23
I just been reading about this morning and all I can say is what the hell is going on in Dallas? I mean when I was a kid I brought to school a model rocket with some solid rocket engines and all that happened to me was the rocket and engines were held by the principal until my parents could pick them up. But a kid making a clock gets arrested? Seriously, wtf is going over there in Dallas?

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

#24
post #7

Cross-posting from [1] Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let's assume that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American citizens) [1] https://news.…

makes you hate cops for the rest of your life at the very least

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

#25
post #4

Say what you will but I would be slightly concerned if Ahmed Mohamed brought this to school http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dall...

Downvoted for xenophobia and ignorance. It looks like every other circuit board. There is no reason to be afraid of an unsheathed circuit board.

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

#26
post #7

Cross-posting from [1] Is there any study to ascertain how these kind of incidents affect children psychologically, the effects of which manifest only years later? (Let's assume that this boy is a gifted engineer, and this incident leaves deep psychological scars not expressed in the next few years, but eventually leads him to take up activities later in life which are harmful for American citizens) [1] https://news.…

Honestly, I had a very similar thing happen to me at an even younger age. Almost got expelled for hacking when I was just making stupid shit with batch programming. Similarly, I made a crappy little audio amp a couple years later at the same school, and again, almost got expelled for "making a weapon and bringing it to school" (they thought it was a stungun)

All it did was make me anti-establishment at a slightly younger age. The kid in this story knows that what he's going through is bullshit, and he's likely to have something pretty good come out of this due to all the media attention. If anything, I'd suspect it would drive him to create more, because if there's something kids like to do it's sticking it to the man.

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

#27

Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you'll find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics. Everybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up... Racial profiling…

As well as a diversified student body, in my experience. And yet, no bombs.

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

#28

Go into any Electrical Engineering department at any university and you'll find plenty of students with boxes filled with circuit boards and electronics. Everybody who's played with electronics knows that stuff is brittle and needs to be protected carefully. One wire coming loose renders your entire work obsolete and unlike software, there's no debugger to tell you where you potentially screwed up... Racial profiling…

To be fair it's a middle school, and most people don't really know what a circuit board is for. I don't think it's outrageous that they asked.

It should have never, however, escalated as far as it did. You're going to handcuff a kid who is cooperating and trying to explain what this thing he built is? Give me a break.

But worse still they're still not backing down. It's suspension of all logic and reasoning. They should have shown the clock to his engineering teacher and resolved the issue in minutes.

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

#30
Things are so different now. When I was in high school, all of the following were common:

- Boys carrying pocket knives/hunting knives.

- Boys with firearms in their cars/trucks so they could go hunting after school.

- Access to a wide variety of chemicals in chemistry class.

- Access to a wide variety of electrical and electronic components in physics class.

- Access to a wide variety of power and machine tools in industrial arts/vocational classes.

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