281–290 of 405 posts
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I had the same thought process in the 90s, and it is the reason why I still don't have a smartphone :)
Isn't it difficult to exist in modern society without one?
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My kid's school now just confiscates until the end of the day. Even that might not be strictly legal, but it's unlikely to get challenged.
I don't see how it wouldn't be legal. The school has a variety of responsibilities surrounding its students, going back hundreds of years. They aren't a 'guardian', but the school is entrusted with a child's safety, and has responsibility. For example, a school may tell a child to "be quiet" and "sit down" and "sit in this seat" and "why are you not in class", even forcing you to go to school. The school is allowed t…
Look up the relevant legislation in your jurisdiction; dig deep enough and you will find either explicit legislation or case-law confirming that it is legal, usually with the phrase `in loco parentis`.
Any on the spot decision that needs to be made with regard to the child, the school can make it with no requirement for input or consent from the parents.
Trust me, you don't want it a different way, else one day you are going to be asking the school either a question along the lines of "Why did you wait for a parent callback before you took action?" or a question along the lines of "Why are you requiring my response to these questions every single day?"
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> confiscated and held until the end of the school year. How things like that were even remotely legal?
In most cases they are not, but you need to have a good relationship with your parents and they need to care enough to bother the school about it. Otherwise, they won’t listen to you, a child.
It's more nuanced than that: there's shades of grey in there, not just black and white.
I had a good relationship with my parents, they cared a great deal about anything related to education and would keep involved with everything academic (even though my parents both never finished school at all, not even primary school). Most kids I was in school with had parents with the same outlook.
Telling my parents that I had broken a school rule would definitely get them involved immediately, but "playing with toys when you are supposed to be learning" is unlikely to win sympathy.[1]
The reason that the schools could hold things until the end of the year (mostly they held them for a week, at worst) was because if you complained to your parent that you were playing with a toy during a time when you were supposed to be learning, the parent with likely confiscate the toy permanently.
At least when the school confiscated it, you eventually got it back.
I imagine, even today, with most parents who care about their kids academic outcomes (surprisingly, quite a few don't), the conversation is likely to go like this:
K: The school confiscated my $TOY today. They aren't giving it back until year-end.
P: Why? Was it switched on/used/making/noise during class?
K: Errr ...
At that point, the kid is now in trouble with both school and parents. Only if the kid is reasonably certain that:
a) The parent doesn't care if they were not attending to the lesson at hand, and
b) The parent will call the school to get the $TOY back,
would the child complain to the parent.
[1] Of course, when I was in school you could take anything to school; you just couldn't play with it until a break in classes. I expect that the outrage now is due to confiscation happening not due to usage, but for simply possession of the toy.
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Sorry, not buying it. There's no way 20% of convictions are wrong. Even 1% is honestly pushing it, especially these days. Extrapolation from convictions overturned via the DNA evidence also results in about 0.5-1%. I volunteered as an unpaid IT support at a non-profit working with ex-cons who were trying to get back to normal life. So I got to speak with lots of people who were actively trying to get away from the pr…
You can keep believing this and being confidently wrong. Seems like my point about plea deals blew past you. Repeat: Innocent people often plead guilty to lesser charges because they fear wrongful convictions for something more serious. The system is set up around this. When wrongfully convicted, it's also very common to get denied parole because you don't admit to doing something wrong. From what I've heard it's ver…
Plea deals don't change anything, the vast majority of takers are guilty. It's just a method of cutting down on the cost of the trial.
Wrongful convictions certainly exist, but they are not even close to the main reason for the prison population.
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Sorry, not buying it. There's no way 20% of convictions are wrong. Even 1% is honestly pushing it, especially these days. Extrapolation from convictions overturned via the DNA evidence also results in about 0.5-1%. I volunteered as an unpaid IT support at a non-profit working with ex-cons who were trying to get back to normal life. So I got to speak with lots of people who were actively trying to get away from the pr…
> (that's also why the death penalty is useless, btw). I’d argue that if a criminal is dead, they can’t commit future crimes, therefore the death penalty is quite useful. Why waste space and resources on prisons when there is a more efficient option?
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I resisted having a phone at all until 2013. People were amazed even then. I ended up getting one for development. It proved useful enough that I used it myself, but I've managed to limit usage to WhatsApp (and SMS), web reading (like HN now) and not much else. Lots of Web stuff (especially financial stuff) requires 2FA so SMS is now more-or-less required. People have learnt though that my phone is always on silent,…
Mines usually on silent too because certain individuals abuse it and I don't like hearing it ping and boop and beep every 30 seconds. None of this is urgent stuff.
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Sorry, not buying it. There's no way 20% of convictions are wrong. Even 1% is honestly pushing it, especially these days. Extrapolation from convictions overturned via the DNA evidence also results in about 0.5-1%. I volunteered as an unpaid IT support at a non-profit working with ex-cons who were trying to get back to normal life. So I got to speak with lots of people who were actively trying to get away from the pr…
> (that's also why the death penalty is useless, btw). I’d argue that if a criminal is dead, they can’t commit future crimes, therefore the death penalty is quite useful. Why waste space and resources on prisons when there is a more efficient option?
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I don't know what it is in US culture and society that makes it so hostile towards anyone and anything even vaguely suspected of a crime, but this sort of thing is shockingly common, even when dealing with children. Here's another case I encountered a few weeks ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Brown_case – there are so many things wrong with the entire thing, starting with charging an 11-year old as an adult…
Because it shows no remorse. The reason for reduced sentences for juvenile offenders is the idea that they ‘didn’t know any better’. That they can learn and grow and NOT be a menace to society soon. If they still refuse to take any ownership or show any contrition even after being clearly shown something was a major problem (hence the court case), then why reduce the penalty? Who would it be helping, exactly?
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Pretty sure they're talking a few years earlier than mid-90s. Think brick-like phones, not phones that fit in your pockets.
Maybe, it's not out of the question that some would do that but I've never had the feeling it was common or desirable even then. GP referenced the '90s hence my guess. A late '80s Micro TAC, especially with the fat battery, still easily qualified for my previous description. You'd have to go to the early '80s brick phones to get just 1h of talk time from a charge but then again realistically very few people actually…
It wasn't many years that this made sense, but during the early 90s (and I think some of the 80s but not so sure) it was quite common to pair beeper for incoming with phone for outgoing. (At least in the UK, but I don't see why it would've been different somewhere like USA either.)