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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

#511

Post by xaver »

OliverJones wrote: post #286
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…

C'mon, this is prejudice. If the kid's name were Jack or Sean or even Claudio, nothing would have happened except his teacher would have said "cool!"

...meanwhile in reality: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/us/ohio-boy-suspended-fing...

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

#512

Post by nowarninglabel »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #319
DanBC wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running seti / etc on the school computers does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity. He was number one on SETI for years, running the client without approval on 5,000 machines. It's not surprising that people get fired for increasing costs by that much without getting approval first. See also http://www.securityfocus.com/news/300

Thousands can be wasted on dumb stuff like bad office-supply purchasing decisions. Those folks don't get fired. Sounds overblown - folks afraid of anything they don't understand.

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 overreacted, sure, in my case I just got reprimanded and told to uninstall it off all the computers. But firing for costing the district significant amounts of money isn't some testament to the ignorance of the South, unlike the "bomb" clock.

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

#513

Post by rebootthesystem »

cschneid wrote: post #289
dopamean wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always find the "more funding" idea to be somewhat dubious. Don't we already spend a ton of money on education? Perhaps even more per pupil than other developed countries?

At the teacher level, they are underpaid. My girlfriend is a high school teacher w/ 4 years experience, a masters degree in her topic, and works 12+ hours a day (not kidding, seriously all day). She makes $35k / year. If she wasn't lucky enough to have an engineer paycheck behind her life, she simply wouldn't be able to do the job. It's likely that funding gets allocated in stupid ways, but the whole process is inher…

If your girlfriend feels she is a better teacher and deserves more she needs to help start a movement to de-unionize schools. We should not have incompetent dinosaurs teaching our kids. We want brilliant, dedicated, hard working, up-to-date teachers who are worth every penny they earn in front of our classrooms. And, yes, they should make $150K per year or more. And, no, it's not free money. They have to be that good. Everyone else needs to be fired.

Imagine building a company where you cannot get rid of incompetent, mediocre and down-right caustic employees because some third party (a union) gets in the way. This company will never amount to anything and will never be able to compete with one where excellence is the goal and people are well paid because they are worth it.

For some reason we seem to be OK with the idea of supporting the unions and lose sight that our goal should be to ensure the kids come out of school with absolute genius level knowledge, experiences and enthusiasm across a range of topics from arts to engineering. Kids ought to leave school with a hunger to succeed and contribute to society resembling a massive buffalo stampede with a purpose. Today a huge swath of them leave school with a "thump" and no passion, direction or real knowledge to guide them forward.

The system is broken.

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

#514

Post by X-Istence »

baldfat wrote: post #254
chejazi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up" when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool. If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point. [1] h…

People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school. We under value in society 1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces) 2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs) I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Chart…

I know, I know, sample of 1 does not a study make, but I am single, don't have kids and live alone. I wish more of my tax money went to education, if this meant I was taxed a little bit more, then so be it.

Education is so incredibly important, and honestly the education system here in the United States is abhorrent. Not due to the teachers mind you, but due to the requirements that are being made by legislators.

Testing requirements don't allow for a wide variety of curriculum anymore, students are all taught at the same baseline (lowest common denominator because otherwise it's discrimination) and students are no longer allowed to excel for fear of making their peers uncomfortable.

As a country the United States is not teaching students to think for themselves and challenge viewpoints, instead they are becoming complacent followers. Which is perfect if you want people that can easily be controlled.

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

#516

Post by [deleted] »

piqufoh wrote: post #271
austenallred wrote: post #143

This hits way too close to home. Not because I have brown skin, or because I've ever been arrested for making "a bomb" that is not a bomb, but because when you're that age you're constantly surrounded and disciplined by people who don't understand you. Or what you're doing. Or why it's cool. I'd be willing to bet part of the reasoning around his arrest is, "Why would a student need to make his own clock?" I wish I co…

Exactly. To quote the Police spokesman; "He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation" and "The concern was, what was this thing built for?" Why shouldn't he make his own clock?! Why does there need to be a 'broader explanation'? How can one develop an interest in anything if you must first provide an adequate explanation? sigh

[deleted]

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

#517

Post by ZachWick »

leesalminen wrote: post #502
ZachWick wrote: post #475

This hits close to home for me too, and I am as WASP-y as it gets. Just over a year ago I was flying to the middle of US with some prototypes for an agriculural automation system in my checked luggage. Going through DTW and O'Hare to my final destination was fine and went without incident. On my way back, again with a checked luggage bag of protypes and tools, this little airport in northwest IA got evacauted and I w…

At the age of 14, I had to fly solo from LGA to ORD for my uncle's funeral. I had a one-way ticket purchased 18 hours before the flight. We all assumed that because of my age and appearance it wouldn't be suspicious. Wrong! I was stopped and questioned for an hour before being allowed to board.

I can only imagine the effect of an interrogation like that on a 14yr old. I was 24 and was completly drained by mine.

I was questioned by each of the TSA, the local sheriff, and the plane's pilot and an airline rep. Three different interrogations all asking the same questions just to determine if I was going to be allowed to fly.

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

#518

Post by nerd_stuff »

digler999 wrote: post #416
Alupis wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, far from being definitive, but it looks like a regular pc will cost around $227.52 (350 watt psu, $18.96 per month) in electricity per year to run 24/7.[1] (calculated using $0.06 per kWh, which is rather low for most people in the US) So, 5,000 machines running 24/7/365 would cost around $1,137,600 annually (5,000 machines * $227.52 per year) in electricity usage alone. Of that 24 hours per day, we can assume…

> 350 watt psu, PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. That's the theoretical maximum you can draw from it. Sure, SETI was probably drawing a higher load than idle, vs off, but I highly doubt it was drawing 100%. Even more complicated is the heat. If they lived in a cool climate, at least some of the waste heat that was emitted would have been absorbed by the building, which they are (presu…

He lived in Arizona which is hot and a school full of space-heaters (humans) will probably run AC more often than heat.

What grandparent commenter showed was the school district's numbers are plausible. I doubt the district entered into a legal battle without first consulting an engineer or two about the electric costs.

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

#519

Post by criddell »

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...

Maybe there should be a fund to provide a workshop for the teachers, administrators, and police of Irving to attend and acquire some critical thinking skills.

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

#520

Post by eldude »

mikeash wrote: post #447
eldude wrote: post #120

> In short, Ahmed was arrested for making while brown. This sort of demagoguery masquerading as journalism has got to stop. Upvoting exploitative personal political propaganda like this contributes to an atmosphere of narrow-mindedness on HN that plays to the bigotry of its readers, with the majority of comments here responding in like. I'm certainly not defending it, but in reality this sort of (over) reaction, is p…

You're right that the reaction is explainable by pervasive CYA and the risk of not reacting and being wrong. However, you're missing that pervasive and institutional racism is a big part of that risk. Imagine a kid brings an actual bomb to school, the authorities don't react, and he detonates it. Then what? The kid's race is going to play a huge role in how that decision is analyzed afterwards. If the kid was white t…

I'm not ignoring institutional racism, merely not assuming it, which is consistent with the American justice system tenet of never presuming guilt, even when you really want to and everyone around says you should.

You're making a lot of wild assertions that really are tangential and not intellectually consistent with my original point that there are no facts specific to this case to support the author's narrative, merely the assumptions and presumptions you espouse.

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