Slashdot Mirror
Online Fame Distracts 9th-Grader Who Built That Clock Mistaken For A Bomb (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: This week the Washington Post ran a long profile of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old boy whose home-made clock got him arrested after school officials and the local police mistook it for a bomb last summer. The Justice Department is currently investigating the incident -- while the school district is suing the Texas attorney general, and the boy's family is suing the school district. But Ahmed has just returned back to Texas, and spoke to the press -- including a local Fox news affiliate which later broadcast a commentary saying his family was obsessed with fame and plotted the arrest.
Over the last year Ahmed's read everything that appeared online about him, but never responds because he doesn't want to give in to anger. The Post writes that while some kids at school called him ISIS Boy, "Sympathetic crowdfunders raised $18,000 for his education. He visited the White House, the Google Science Fair and the president of his home country of Sudan (a wanted war criminal, but Mohamed said it would be rude not to accept the invitation)." Though he'd like to return to the U.S. someday for college, he's been living in Qatar, where a government organization paid for private schooling for him and his sister. But the Post says he still sometimes imagines what his life might've been like if the incident had never happened. "By now he could have invented something new -- not just a clock that only took him a few minutes to put together from parts in his family's garage, which was full of '90s-era electronics from when his uncle ran a chain called Beeper Warehouse."
Over the last year Ahmed's read everything that appeared online about him, but never responds because he doesn't want to give in to anger. The Post writes that while some kids at school called him ISIS Boy, "Sympathetic crowdfunders raised $18,000 for his education. He visited the White House, the Google Science Fair and the president of his home country of Sudan (a wanted war criminal, but Mohamed said it would be rude not to accept the invitation)." Though he'd like to return to the U.S. someday for college, he's been living in Qatar, where a government organization paid for private schooling for him and his sister. But the Post says he still sometimes imagines what his life might've been like if the incident had never happened. "By now he could have invented something new -- not just a clock that only took him a few minutes to put together from parts in his family's garage, which was full of '90s-era electronics from when his uncle ran a chain called Beeper Warehouse."
He took a click out of its casing and took it to school at the suggestion of his father, hoping to start a racial incident. They succeeded.
everywhere
You're a smart kid Ahmed. You'll figure it.
(c) What's with all the (TM) (R)?? (U) (K)
He could have invented something new by now. But he hasn't. Because he's not an inventor.
By now he could have invented something new
Probably not.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
and he sculpted it into a top hat and gave me a quick nod before disappearing into the dust.
inventor now? Sad to see the Republicans lower the bar. No thinking person thought this moron was legitimate.
Republicans were stupid enough to believe he did something.
Clear case of self-SWATing, set up in an already ready made 'you ain't from around here, is you boy?' environment. No different than walking into school with a bagie of oregano or baby powder and being surprised when that gets a kid in trouble.
Amazing that he scammed so many with the 'he built' including /. Wapo I forgive not understanding. But not /. editors who didn't even write TFA title with quotes like "built." So much for news for *nerds.* Does that mean my kid can take the old motherboard out of my 10 year old pc and claim he "built" a computer?
Including the entire family for the stunt they pulled. Any electronics hobbyist knows that pile of shit he claims to have built was a gutted clock.
I would have cured cancer if not for useless stories like this one. The guy below would have invented a flying car, but thanks to Mohamed's marketing bullshit he didn't.
Why is this garbage article on Slashdot. This is something I would expect from CNN.
Yes, he took apart an alarm clock, made it look like a Hollywood bomb, and claimed he "invented" it. He is a liar, a swindler, and a piece of shit human. He tried to play the media with his pity party. Then he left the country. Good riddance! But someone left the door open and the vermin got back in again.
I'll bet you're a liberal.
Am I right?
Yeah ... that republican president that invited him to the Whitehouse and use taxpayer money to pay for the trip.
How evil of them.
The kid probably is a genius compaired to most repulatards.
While repackaging a digital clock may not appear to take much in the way of technical skill to the minds of most of the highly technologically literate folks here at slashdot, truthfully even that is still something that most people would not necessarily think of ever trying to build, or at least not without following some instructions. However small the creative spark might seem here, I'd say that the term invention is still apt.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Republicans are so stupid.
I hate Republicans.
Republicans are so stupid.
I can not believe you are all still perpetuating this ridiculous story. He didn't invent anything. He took apart a digital clock from Radio Shack and stuck it into a box. At best he took a normal alarm clock and turned it into a count down timer. You can give him credit for wanting to learn how digital timing circuits work, or how to hack a R/S clock for "other purposes", but you can not say he invented anything. Get real here, did I invent a Computer because I took some hardware and Linux and made a desktop system? Please stop trying to spin this story you are embarrassing yourselves. (I guess it's a slow news day)
Honestly, This is how bad it has become in the USA? This is considered invented?
That means the kids that actually learn Arduino programming and make sumo bots are Fucking Alien Technomancer Magicians!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Congratulations on your levelheaded approach to this situation, kid. You're showing a lot more maturity than a lot of people.
For background, answer these two questions with yes or no:
Q1: Can you think of an example of a poisonous snake?
Q2: Can you think of an example of a venomous snake?
Reading these two lines, many people have sudden insight that the words have different meanings. They 'kinda knew, but hadn't realized it yet. They may have read "poisonous" and "venomous" many times and not made the connection, simply because the words are so close in meaning. We almost never bother to look up the definitions, preferring to get the meanings from context.
In the same way, "invent" and "build" have closely related meanings, and it's entirely reasonable for a 14 year-old kid to say he "invented" something when he just takes some parts and puts them together. It's not an "original" invention, but the kid came up with an idea and built it.
It's perfectly reasonable for him to say he "invented" it.
It's also perfectly reasonable for the teacher to tell him to put it away, and perfectly reasonable for him to disobey at age 14, in class because as we all know school classes are BORING.
I'm really not getting all the hatred aimed at the kid here. People are measuring him with the ruler of adulthood, requiring his idea to be original and useful to be termed "invented", to be conversant with what's right and reasonable as an adult, and when he doesn't measure up he's completely villified.
I seriously don't get the rationale here.
But then, I'm not a liberal.
And I bet you are a moron.
You'd lose that bet.
Do you even know what a moron is?
Was not disappointed
So you mean the Internet has reacted in such a way that has blown his ordeal out of proportion and is now affecting his life far beyond what it should have because a bunch of assholes are over reacting ...
I'm pretty sure thats exactly what started this whole mess ...
Drop the damn subject and let the kid be, its over. It was a shitty mess and stupid on all those assholes at the school/police involved ... but within 6 months of being at a new school, without the Internet, his life would have been normal, even if that school was just on the other side of town. I'm not saying that it makes any of what happened to him OK ... but it would have been better for his life as a whole if thats what would have happened. 100% the publicity has done nothing actually useful for him other than turn him into a political puppet for the gain of someone else.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
wasn't it simpler in some aspects?
Can't get the genie back in the bottle, have to find some solemn place in the mountains - or something like that.
Will it work?
When I first saw the circuit board, I was very impressed. The soldering job was quite good for an adult. It would be amazing for a mere 14 year old to pull off a soldering job of that caliber....
The circuit board coming from a commercial clock is much more realistic. A person smart enough to come up with a circuit for a board that big would be more intelligent than to call it merely an 'invention'.
So what if he did or did not invent anything. So what if what he made was not inventive at all. So what if his parents pushed him to create the confrontation.
The fact is the kid brought a clock to school and was arrested for it. I've seen pictures of the "device". I literally have no background in tinkering with electronics and I can tell it isn't a bomb.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Online Fame Distracts 9th-Grader Who Built That Clock Mistaken For A Bomb
For a second there, I misread "A Bomb" as "A-Bomb".
It was just the other day, I took Velveta and white bread and mayonaise and a plastic baggie. And what did I get for all that? Nothing! No glory, no trips to anywhere.
Of course, I started with a cheese sandwich and disassembled it and then re-assembled it into an entirely different cheese sandwich. But the point is...
I probably won't even get credit for it.
The kid invented nothing, but was useful to the Obama administration as a prop to make the point that Americans are islamophobes and/or racists, and that muslims and muslim immigration are good. THAT is why the kid was invited to NASA and the White House having done nothing more than a huge number of other kids could have easily done and may have indeed actually done in total obscurity. This kid's sister had previously taken the role of "victim" and his father apparently had ties to muslim Brotherhood groups and a would-be Muslim African leader guilty of numerous human rights violations against non-Muslims.
This is not that different from the Khan family scam.
Captain Khan apparently served his nation with honor and died in service, but we have no idea how many views he shared with his parents. For all we know, the late Captain Khan was indeed a moderate Muslim who loved this country and its Constitution, his dad however appears to be very different. The elder Khan took to the stage at the DNC convention as an apparently mourning father of a Muslim hero and delved into partisan politics at the highest level blasting Trump, waving a pocket Constitution as though he believed in it. This was of great benefit to team Clinton, but there are problems: Mr Khan does not himself believe in the Constitution; he has written extensively about Sharia law, which he holds is superior to all man-made laws (that includes the Constitution). Mr Khan has been employed as a lawyer working for Mrs Clinton's lawyers, and has more-recently been earning his living helping Muslims immigrate into the US (something Mr Trump's proposed temporary halt would severely impact). Mr Khan and the Clinton campaign team then assert that any questioning of Mr and Mrs Khan is some very vile form of racism/islamophobia, as though this pair are uniquely unquestionable in all of American politics and culture. We are told that the Khans are free to go on every news channel attacking people, and nobody is allowed to challenge them or even defend against them as though they are innocent victims who did not ask to be in the arena.
If there was the slightest hint of a possibility of a chance that the kid did this on purpose, the school district and the police department would have been the first ones to go public with that information, so they wouldn't look as pathetically stupid as a right winger on Slashdot pushing a baseless conspiracy theory.
saying his family was obsessed with fame and plotted the arrest.
How dare you suggest that the President of the United States could be so ignorant and gullible and stupid and condescending to the law enforcement people who objected to something made to look like a bomb and built into a suitcase that he would actually invite a Muslim who did this into the White House?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Online Fame Distracts 9th-Grader Who Built Fake Bomb That Was Mistaken For A Clock
If "invented" means what he did with his original thing which was "stuffed some over the counter parts in a box". I "invented" lots of shit like that as a kid. Turns out tearing apart electronics is not only fun, but pretty easy. ...
However it is also not inventing and nothing this kid has done is worthy of news or praise.
Welcome to the internet. It's full of stuff that is intended to make you angry. Most kids don't learn this until they're much older.
Something like I can spend all my points to mod down a BS article like this one. If, I dunno, 3 others also go all in to mod down, the article is removed.
Tho moding down one like this would take away all the double fun arguing BOTH the 'not an invention' and the 'did it to get self-SWATed' sided.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/08/06/2033248/online-fame-distracts-9th-grader-who-built-that-clock-mistaken-for-a-bomb#comments
Here's what really happened:
http://www.allenbwest.com/michele/boo-hoo-homesick-clock-boy-makes-shocking-confession
And there are numerous other websites that reveal the truth about this evil, shitty little muslim. What's the Jew to do? Their 'cattle' have the ability to publish information (i.e. the TRUTH) faster than the Jews can.
Why didn't you bother spending five minutes finding out what actually happened?
http://universalfreepress.com/2015/9-facts-that-prove-clock-boy-ahmed-was-an-elaborate-hoax-created-by-obama-administration/
Enough BS about a kid with wires, and the crazy press and educational system!
Just. Stop.
Ahmed is a genuine nerd, just as I was at his age. When I assembled and installed alarm systems from salvaged alarm parts I stated clearly and honestly that I had "built" them. To an electronics beginner even taking something apart and re-presenting it in a novel way gives great satisfaction. There is nothing fake-ass about any of it. It saddens me to read all these arbitrarily constructed harsh judgements here, which NONE of you would ever apply to your OWN children. At that age you have to compare the desire to handle and understand electronics to the act of doing nothing at all, watching television, or tunelessly strumming a guitar imagining you're a few songs away from screaming fame.
The totality of the response by the school was a surprise to the boy... who may have been aware that his project might stir some suspicion but the boy also honestly believed he could 'diffuse' such concerns with the power of his own words, and the simple fact that the truth was on his side. It was a small thing, and (maybe) fun to give a little push back to any alarm. The fact that his science teacher had seen and approved of the project underscores this.
Ahmed's father was another story. There was certainly a gleam in his eye as he participated in the project, knowing of the unique social forces and ugly escalating institutional response that was possible. Ahmed needs to come to the firm conclusion that his own father is an asshole. Please do not judge the kid for his father being an asshole.
If his father has not apologized to him at least privately, his father is a flaming asshole.
And some of the responses in this thread indicate the presence of flaming assholes as well.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
...and then took more money from Islamic governments.
There was nothing stopping him from inventing while reaping benefits elsewhere.
Anyone that believes Clockboy invented something is an idiot. The ones that know better are the only hope for humanity.
Yes because as we all know, the defining feature of an explosive is.. the presence of wires? WTF, morons? I guess we're all fucked if ACTUAL bomb-makers start using PCBs (aka printed wiring boards).
The boy and his family have constantly implied, without outright stating, that the authorities mistook the device for a bomb, and it's extremely dishonest.
He was always in trouble only for having brought a device designed to look like a bomb, with the intent of provoking a panic. He was dealt with in a very reasonable manner. There was no overreaction. It's entirely appropriate to involve the police, to impress upon the teen the seriousness of such actions, especially after he refused to own up to his misbehavior, and kept responding to challenges like, "You made this to look like a bomb, didn't you?" with non-responses like, "It's a clock!" Yes, anyone could see it's a clock. No, that doesn't address that it was modified to look like a stereotypical movie bomb.
This family had him provoke a reasonable reaction, and had a whole media campaign prepared to distort what happened and make him out to be a victim.
"a clock that only took him a few minutes to put together from parts inside a Radio Shack Clock " Fixed That For You.
Right - so convinced were the teachers and school administrators and police that:
The teacher picked up the bomb and walked with it to the office,
The administrators stood around the bomb and never evacuated the building,
The police never sent the bomb squad to the school,
just like happens everytime a suspected bomb is found in a school building.
Ahmed was arrested because he refused to answer any questions about either his 'invention' or his intentions until the police took him in to custody.
BTW, it's kind of interesting to note we're what, a year out and STILL the Dept. of Justice is still 'investigating' this case... What's the hold-up? They are only investigating an event that transpired over the course of 4 or 6 hours - how long can it take?