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Court To Prisoner: No Xbox 360 For You
jonklinger writes "An Israeli Court rejected the appeal of a prisoner who requested to have an Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 because there is no possibility to remove the internet connectivity apparatus from the device without harming its functionality. Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
... for the $25 Raspberry pi.
Who says that...? "I'll have an Playstation 3, please!" Doesn't anyone take English classes anymore?
Bite my shiny metal ass!
Old xbox360 - glue in ethernet port. People do still play these things entirely offline at home don't they?
Can they get a pc with no networking?
Is jonklinger stupid or has a really bad sense of humor...
"Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence."
That is just bad.....
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He should get a Wii. Not only is the internet functionality not required, it's more or less useless when it is on.
You can always get it banned from PSN or Xbox-live too ... then that's that!
You can simply fry the console's wifi or get a banned console, et voila! no online gaming
Besides... WHY would they give videogames to prisoners?? it's a jail for FSM's sake, not disneyland! it's not suppossed to be funny or anything.
If prisoners get to sit around playing games, the punishment of prison could easily be less than their punishment outside of prison?
Prisoners should be making big rocks into little rocks.
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Why not allow them the cheaper PS2s? I'm hoping this is on their own money, rather than being paid for by the Israeli and American taxpayer.
[rant]
The ps3 can definitely be disabled from having internet connectivity. Strip out the wifi card, and short the RJ45 port.
Thada you have a PS3 that doesn't connect to the internet. You would still be able to play games.
[/rant]
But about the actual article PS3 in prison ?!?!? wtf...
Some people don't even have enough money to get it in their homes.
Therefore, prisoners cannot engage in gaming and will have to result to other kinds of violence.
It would be nice if the slashdot editors would resort to other kinds of editing.
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The old adage of 'they need to get it out of their system' - this is a falsehood: prisoners do not have to "result to other kinds of violence" in the absence of a substitute. If you are prone to violent acts, with all other variables being equal, you'll commit violent acts even after having already committed violent acts. Even with a violence simulator, you're still going to perform the other violence outside it that you were supposed to be suppressing.
Mike Tyson was a good example; all day long he's sparring with partners, hitting punching bags, shadowboxing. Then he beats and rapes a woman, and later looses his temper and bites an opponent's ear. Despite having 'worked it out of his system' hundreds of times more than a normal person, he's still violent.
People don't have violence meters that you can fill up. Stop perpetuating this invalid belief like it was common sense.
The court has an issue with the fact that they have WiFi built into them. I don't know why they can't simply let him disable the WiFi since it should be pretty easy to do so (on the original PS3 60GB "Fat" models, you can remove the wifi/bluetooth board/card and that would disable it. The only downside is that you need to connect your controllers via USB cable as they used the bluetooth connection for their signals).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I would settle for harmed functionality over none.
And most of them pay for it with the high priced Commissary.
Who went "huh he requested an xbox in an Israeli prison..." somehow, being from the netherlands where even some of the worst offenders get max 8 years plus mental support, I was surprised he even got the chance to request it. So much for being jaded.
I doubt there's an open Wifi network in the prison... So why does the presence of a Wifi chipset or ethernet port even matter? There's nothing to connect it to.
If they don't want this to be online, just don't hook it up to the network. It can still play games. What's the problem?
Or, give him a jailbroken console (no pun intended) that has been banned. Heck, I can sell mine for a good price!
why not increase the punishment, so as to act as a deterrent? We can keep it completely harmless. How about Waterboarding?
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Everyone arguing about whether the ethernet port can be removed from an Xbox 360 or not.
The real question is why even consider giving an Xbox 360 to a prisoner.
!@#$% NO!!!!!
I have barely had time to even touch my Xbox 360 in the past year. I'm too busy working and commuting to work so I can keep my mortgage paid, heat running and food on the table for my family.
I don't see anyone out there leaping up to provide me with an Xbox 360 or PS3. I haven't had cable TV for the past 5 years. Can't afford it. Frankly, I'm tired of prisoners having it easier than law abiding citizens. I'm tired of prisoners receiving free cable, Xboxes, college degrees.
I'm tired of armed robbers being sentenced to 10 years and released in 9 months only to rob and shoot an innocent within days of release.
So sorry if I'm not very sympathetic. But you know, we outsource so much. Why not outsource our violent criminals to China. Oh human rights, work camps, whoop-de-doo. You should have thought about that before you robbed some poor sap on the stream and put a knife into him.
***********
People in America blame a lot of things for our high crime, guns, drugs, you name it. But I think it's the fact that our criminal system is so freakishly gentle to violent habitual lifestyle criminals.
Ironically, Joe-avg guy who's registration lapses or turn signal light went out finds himself fined and treated like a criminal. Go figure...
Ranting, yes, I know. But we're talking about toys for criminals. I want to see every friggin able bodied criminal have to work 8 hours a day, just like the rest of us. And if you don't, you don't eat. Plain and simple.
Prisoners should learn to debug code, and take on some of the real issues in this world.
and a copy of Superman 64.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
How may prison cells have Ethernet jacks in them?
Even without Ethernet jacks would there actually be anything to connect to WiFi with? I'm pretty sure you could permanently disable WiFi without killing the system, mostly by attacking it from the antenna angle, maybe even the radio (I really don't know these things on the board level).
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You can definitely nerf a ps3, wii or xbox360, but the principle problem that I think the prison is trying to solve is preventing communications. For the Xbox360, acquire the non-S version, get some pliers and rip out the ethernet port's pins. Or superglue something into the port so it's physically impossible to use. The xbox 360 S would need to be opened to remove the Wifi card, but the same can be done. Any updates to the console have to be on disk/usb.
The PS3 can be nerfed in the same way, find a pre-WiFi model, superglue the port or pull the ethernet port's pins out.
The Wii doesn't come with an ethernet port, so it's just a matter of preventing WiFi. This is probably more difficult to do because of the wireless controllers probably use the same antennas. In theory you could remove the wireless networking board, but this might functionally break it.
Really the solution to breaking WiFi in these models is to just overpower the wireless network so that it's completely useless, setup a network outside the network on all channels at maximum power, or just jam the entire spectrum. Of course this costs money. better to just modify an Xbox and tell them tough noogies, no online for you.
At least prisoners are otherwise able to get game consoles. Otherwise prison would be downright inhumane....almost like PUNISHMENT.
-Styopa
In some prisons they have to pay for it and or work for right to have a TV. Prisoners have to buy the TV as well.
Other prisons pay for it with the money made at the prison commissary.
Other prisons have the guards living with them.
NO Xbox or other stuff in most cells prison can buy stuff like decks of cards.
for tv Prisons are billed like hotels pay per room / drop.
Why not start with a basic firewall on the prison's network?
They DO have a firewall, right? For the legitimate Internet traffic of the guards and the administrators, right? Right?
Or, just don't run an Ethernet connection to the cell. I mean, having an Ethernet cable would be an issue anyway! Why even provide a data jack for them to use?
Why the hell is it now considered "cruel and unusual punishment" if an inmate doesn't have access to a TV, or video games. 3 hot meals a day, access to healthcare, even jobs. This reminds me of the case in the US where a death row inmate appealed for a stay of execution because he said he had gained so much weight that the sedatives in the lethal injection mix would not work. He had gained anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds. The fact that ANY prisoner could gain weight while in prison is ridiculous. Prison has ceased being about punishment. Now it is nothing more than removal. And people wonder why the recidivism rate is so high. A culture where a prison sentence is seen as enhancing one's status, plus conditions in prisons that, in many cases, are just as good, if not better than the conditions they would be facing outside of prison. Prison needs to return to its original purpose. There shouldn't be anything that could be considered "easy time". People need to be afraid to go to prison.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
How many are being punished for things that shouldn't have been crimes in the first place?
But we're supposed to be a civilized society that don't send people to prison for "punishment", but instead to avoid further harm to others.
Oh shit!, sorry, wrong planet!
Finland is ridiculously accommodating of habitual offenders. In fact you'll have to kill about three times before they take it seriously. There's no criminal-law mechanism to give a murderer an actual life sentence, so most are released at 12 years. Furthermore, the court system rejects a lot of cases based on "lack of evidence" and considers many premeditated killings "manslaughters", which means that the sentence is formally 9 years and in practice it is only half of that. If mental incapacity is found, then the sentence is even shorter. So, we have cases like the drive-in lane shooter who have already killed several people and are still roaming free on the streets and shooting people at random. Consequently, the only legal way to actually keep a dangerous killer in jail is involuntary commitment. Since funding for psychiatry is short, this method is rarely used. There was even one case where a psychotic neckbearded guy killed a random teenage girl on the street just to get committed to a psychiatric hospital; he had been previously made an outpatient to save funds.
They have the right to see a doctor and you have to feed prisons but the food sucks and a lot of prisons buy food at commissary.
Okay, so you don't think prisoners should be 'given' video games.
I can understand the logic, however, on second thought I can see reasonings TO do so:
1. It's something to do other than scheme escape, shanking a fellow prisoner or guard, etc...
2. Privilage is one of the ways you can control prisoners - by giving them access to luxuries for good behavior, you encourage it. The old 'nothing to lose' maxim applies
3. Integration back into society. You make prison too harsh, too alien, and they're actually less likely to reform.
In many prison systems, the prisoner would have to buy the $499 system with their own money - earned at $.50/hour.
I don't read AC A human right
It's been mentioned elsewhere, but one cannot generally read only educational material for entertainment. Heck, many prisoners are functionally illiterate. Thus, reading, even learning to read, is work for them.
The games are to rewind, something other than lifting weights, playing basketball, or such.
Plus, it's an incentive - act like a civilized human being, get some of the benefits of being one. Don't act like a civilized being, and your game station is taken away(along with everything else in your cell), or you don't get one in the first place.
I don't read AC A human right
Have someone mod it and just wait for the Xbox Live ban hammer
Ok, it appears the zombies on Halloween did eat a lot of brains.
The summary alone shows the idiocity in its own conclusion. No, prisoners can game if they want. They just have to use something else. The problem wasn't the gaming, it was the Internet connectivity.
I'm sure with a prison population as gigantic as the US has, there'll soon be a prison-friendly (i.e. no internet) version of either console. You'd not want to pass up those sweet sales, would you?
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Criminals aren't some resource gatherer in a RTS, they aren't stuck doing only one thing during their sentence. Not even professional students spend all of their time learning. Thus my 'rewind' comment(though I should of said 'unwind').
I'm not suggesting letting them play on one for 12 hours a day. But even 1 hour a day can be a useful incentive...
I don't read AC A human right
Prison is what Courts use to subject the people to circumstances in which they can't protect theirselves. Predominantly this means the Courts will cause Prisoners to be unable to pay their debts to society. In the common law, a prison is unlawful as it is an agency of Admiralty on Land. Foremost, a Prison is cruel and unusual punnishment in the sense that prior to it's existance it was necessary for mediation if the dispute or damage is reasonably outside the venue of war where there is no prisoner but dead corpse from a duel.
Seriously, USA is the biggest peice of shit collection of incompetent countries where the Courts make money by leasing prisoners into maintenance of prison life. Worse than that is the misrepresentation of Fact in which if I cause harm to another or their property that I truely mean it as an act of war yet the Courts arrive in all coercion to collect people like coins or force the people to vote (aka rebel against existing law and authority).
it's fucking prison? they are there to be punished so why let them have games consoles and such?
This will require him to play a Wii
A USB wireless modem would be a forum of 3G or WiMAX - and wouldn't there be other ways to block the signal?
Seriously, because something has WiFi is a pretty lame excuse.
As for Internet access, they should have access on a prison network. Heavily sandboxed access with things like read only Wikipedia, but enough that if any of them gets the idea that it may be time to grow somehow, they've got another way to.
An Israeli Court rejected the appeal of a prisoner who requested to have an Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 stating, "there is no possibility to remove the internet connectivity apparatus from the device because we are too fucking stupid to do so"
send it to a guy that repairs PS3s and i'll bet you they can harvest all the networking components just fine.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When my father was in prison a few years ago (here in Australia) the most sophisticated console he was permitted to was a PSone. Because you could play DVDs on a Play Station 2, and that was a no no.
If Leeroy is playing games he's not rim rodding and slim jamming little jimmy's brown spout and throat pounding his toothless meat shaft recepticle after elbow face smashing him in to a shanked corpse coma. On the other hand, maybe games are just foreplay?
Squat :P In fact.... HAve the prisoner do it as part of electronics education... ;)
I have a 360, in fact... Modded hard-core... I removed the network adapter interface from the motherboard to PREVENT ANY ATTEMPT AT UPDATE.... I do not know who doesn't think they cannot crack open a ps3 and take out the wifi card... IDK about the network adapter... I love my ps3 and would never mod it
Quite. One common figure google throws up is $280k a year for 17 prisons and 5 'community corrections centers'(jails?) in Oklahoma. Research shows there's around 25k prisoners(do we let the guards have cable?). $11.20 per prisoner, per year, paid, per the articles, by the prisoners through the use of the canteen.
That's ~$13k a facility. Minumum wage: $7.25. Cost for a minimum worker, 40 hours a week: $16k before benefits. More likely cost for a prison guard? $43k. If it removes the need for a 'couple guards', that's a 6:1 return, even if you spend a grand on a new TV each year.
BTW, the hate in reader comments was extreme. Assuming that the TVs get *any* educational programing, they probably get more education from it than what other forms would cost - $11.20 would pay for, maybe, 2 books per prisoner, or maybe half an hour of instruction.
I don't read AC A human right
Unplug the cable? Unless it's a new one, but all the emtal in prisons means he probably won't find an open wifi net anyway
Couldn't they just buy an older Xbox 360 Pro, one without a wireless adapter included internally?
There are PS3 models available without wifi, why not use one of these?
Twinstiq, game news
The suckage is vast, and yes you want prisoners to have something to do besides life weights, do drugs, and brew hooch. Being stuck in your mom's basement is vastly different from a 6x12 cell with a barred door. And yes, I deserved my time, and I did it.
The lout should have had a plan.
Start small ... build to better.
He should have asked for condoms.
He could 'ave rightfully argued and won that masterbation in a 3 by 3 by 3 jail cell makes a hell of a mess. Ergo, condoms needed.
Later after getting the condoms he could have built the case further by arguing that hygene in a 3 by 3 by 3 jail cell is a challange.
Keep at 'em boy .. we 're behind you 100% all the way mat'e.
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Have you ever looked inside of an xbox 360 slim? The Wi-Fi "internet apparatus" is just connected via an internal USB port NOT built into the motherboard or anything. I've taken mine out on occasion, and the 360 works just fine without it. The Xbox 360 is rendered incapable of using Internet without plugging into a wired ethernet connection, which I doubt they would give prisoners access to and could easily be gummed up with epoxy anyway. With no Wi-Fi or ethernet, how the hell can it access the Internet? If it can't access the Internet, then he should be able to play the video game console, just like the pre-Internet consoles other inmates have enjoyed. Then again, the link is to a Google translated document. To summarize: 1) Take apart the slim 2) Remove the usb card 3)
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