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For something like this, "I never imagined the authorities could possibly be this stupid" ought to be an affirmative defense.
They have certain obligations by law and you would certainly pay a fine for wasting their time. A judge would not have much sympathy for a clown.
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Great list. How about teacher Julie Amero, whose browser was apparently hijacked, possibly while students used it while she was out of the room resulting in students seeing nudity briefly and uninentionally [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_v._Amero
Wikipedia says she pled guilty to disorderly conduct and handed in her teaching license because the school board wouldn't pay for IT support that would have kept the naked ladies off her computer. Incredible.
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…
Actually, I agree with this. I remember when this got big and suddenly every IT department, school, etc had these things installed, clearly without permission. If you tried talking about wasted electricity, added pollution, and the social cost of running power hungry processors 24/7 for "alien points" on their forums (or any forums) you'd be shouted down.
The reality is that sysadmin and helpdesk staff shouldn't have this kind of power. If they want to run these types of things on their employers hardware they need to get permission.
You occasionally hear about this nowadays with Litecoin and Bitcoin mining, but it seems we've learned our lesson here. Power doesn't grow on trees. There are real costs and environmental effects here to seriously consider. This attitude of "fuck you, I understand computers and you don't" really needs to go the way the way of the dodo. Real professionals don't act this way. Also, comparing this guy to a 14 year old who was pulled out of his class and handcuffed for making a clock is fairly weak sauce.
This story is at 1 and 2 on both reddit and Hacker News. Why is this so interesting?
Because it's a person making something, authority denying him that for stupid reasons, etc. It has all the elements of something that appeals to hackers (in the "maker" sense). But seriously, if you have to ask you will never know. This is more of a "you get it or not" thing, related to how HN's targeted demographic feels on such issues.
This really needs to end in a civil lawsuit.
In fairness it was probably staged by the father to end in civil lawsuit. "His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, came from Sudan and is famous for arguing against anti-Islamic policies"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/muslim-at-koran-trial-s...
I have kids at school and I'm actually for the responses from the teachers, yes it's overacting and could be dealt with _much_ better, but being overly alert on this is better than ignorant. and it's better to show it at his house instead of at school for things like this I feel.
It's no surprise that our school systems are such shit when people actually feel there are two sides to a kid wanting to show his teacher something interesting and academic that he made.
I'm basing this on 3 facts:
1. In 2015 it's highly unlikely that you could build a home-made clock that would be of the size and shape resembling a bomb - that is, unless it was made to look like a bomb.
2. Ahmed, his father, and anyone else with a phone camera (that is on Ahmed's side) would have posted a picture of the clock, or given a full description of it (size, shape, etc), in defense of Ahmed - that is, if it made sense, otherwise they would not. And I have not been able to find an image, nor a good description.
3. The initial teacher told him not to show it to anyone. You can break this down into that teacher having one of two opinions: A) It really did look like a bomb or B) its all about racism / hate / being anti-Muslim / anti-brown in that school (check the school's panel http://www.irvingisd.net/domain/2031 - that school is half brown and black).