In my view it was actually quite strange of UNIX that it by default let arbitrary user code stay around unrestricted after logout.
Hell, I'm no guru but I know the answer for this - it's so you can run long tasks without having to tie up a limited terminal in the lab. Log in, start your task, log out and go for beer while someone else gets use.
Now, in this world of "everyone has their own computer and terminal", it's not as necessary a feature as it used to be. But that hardly seems a reason to arbitrarily flip the default.
No clue. But the threshold is a lot lower, because presumably it's sharing a lot of infrastructure with the existing solar panel. So as long as the incremental gain outweighs the incremental cost, this is a good thing.
It's a prototype, which means we're still at "hey, neat trick", not at "this will allow us to make our third-quarter projections".
They should just pull out and let the people's outcry (or lack of one) be heard.
That defeats the purpose for them. Keep in mind that Uber and Lyft are based in San Francisco. They don't operate in other cities. They just operate a web service, and leave it to the drivers to hold the bag when the authorities come calling. Right now they've got it great - they're getting their cut, and they've muddied the waters enough to make it politically unpalatable to go after the drivers for running illegal businesses. (Guess what - in most places your driver's license does *not* cover carrying passengers for hire. And neither does your regular car insurance.) So it's literally costing them *nothing* to be in as many cities as possible.
You know, thats what puzzles me the most about telemarketers. They get someone to answer, and that person calls them a cockbiting fucktard and hangs up, and then, instead of blacklisting that number (because obviously, your not selling them ANYTHING) they call back every day for two years, wasting their own time on calling a number that is guaranteed to not profit.
Because next time someone else might pick up. Or they'll be selling a different line. Or you might be in a different mood. Or the company just doesn't want to cross off a number.
Even legit telemarketers (like university fundraisers, where I did a stint 15-20 years ago) are *loath* to actually remove a name and number from the file. And with robocalls, it costs them effectively nothing to ring that phone again, so why would they remove it?
It should be even more trivial to develop a system where the callerid spoofed on my handset can be reported to the carrier, with the time of the call, and they can immediately determine where the call REALLY came from, and report that to me, to the police... to whomever.
Honestly, it should be trivial to require that the number displayed connects to the source number. I get that large organizations and such want everyone's CID to be the front desk and that's a legit use - but the fact that the phone company will merrily show CID for a number that it knows full well has nothing to do with the actual caller is just extending the money grab.
That said, you do have to respect the telecoms for playing arms dealer to both sides. They'll charge me for caller ID to see who the number is, and then charge you to not send the number, and then charge me again to block numbers that don't display it...
No reason they can't be doing both. If I was immoral enough to be doing telescam work, I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't track live numbers while also overdialing. It's not like the people you're calling know who to complain to, right?
Nonsense. I've subsidised their lifestyle choice and the market has accurately rewarded their work based on their experience and hours.
Women can choose not to take time off to have children. I know some that have made that choice. I have no issue with others that prefer a different life, as long as they accept that there are trade-offs involved.
A thought experiment - take a married couple, put them in the same job. If they wish to have kids, the woman will suffer at least some lost time. You can argue that the man should take some of the hit on parental leave, but that doesn't change the fact that regardless of both the man and woman choosing to have a kid, only the woman is guaranteed to take a penalty to her "hours" and "experience".
This may be a cultural difference, though - Canada provides paid parental leave, so the perception may be different here. Or maybe when men take leave (I took three and a half months the year my kid was born) it doesn't get counted as a gap in hours or experience. At least, there's never been an instance where it's come up.
The problem is that they're not. Women get paid on average the same as men, once you factor in experience, hours worked and contribution.
OK, I'll bite. Experience and hours worked I will accept with the caveat that you've given them a penalty for having kids. But exactly how does one measure "contribution" in a meaningful fashion?
That's because most AI researchers are quite happy to call anything involving a machine doing something "artificial intelligence" even if it's just the speaking clock.
That's because most researchers have to deal with undergraduates, so they've had to relax their definition of "intelligence".
I'm no Linux expert myself (my hotrodding days are behind me; I just need stuff to *work*, please and thank-you), and I can't say I have particularly strong opinion of systemd yet, beyond wondering what the benefit is. And I mean that in the simple sense of - OK, we're breaking some of the old cardinal rules of *nix (multiple small programs that each do one thing well, use plain text because then everything can talk to everything else), so what are we getting in trade for it?
My problems with Linux boxes over the years have almost never been boot-related (OK, the one time when I didn't realize that *nix "are you sure" prompts are waay more serious than the Windows versions), so I likely will never have a particular problem with it. But in the same way I don't jump to buy the newest thing, I'm not sure why we're all jumping here. What does it get us that the old way didn't?
Well, unless you're "the government or a public body", then you'd be correct - you're not a subsidy.
But assuming that you are the gov'mint here, there isn't really a difference between you paying for $10K worth of cars from Don's Dealership, and you giving Don 10K upfront. You've still given Don 10K, and presumably I got a slightly cheaper car. (To answer what I expect to be the obvious rebuttal - that paying for part of the car reduces the price - you only need to look at private universities for examples where the cost mysteriously rises by roughly the amount of the subsidy. There's no guarantee either way, barring regulations, of making sure that the subsidy money isn't ending up in Don's pocket rather than indirectly going into ours. Even if you give me the money directly, if it's a known that buying a car gives me an $X subsidy, that's incentive for you to raise your prices to capture part of that 'free' money.
And realistically, Shodan is offering a more useful service for free - showing people that their webcam is broadcasting to the entire world.
The fact that the "solution" is "hey, block this one provider" and not "holy crap, unplug that thing NOW and get one that isn't broadcasting our cash register to anyone with half a brain.
I suspect this will get fixed when someone gets hurt or robbed, and decides to take it out on the manufacturer. (I'm guessing there's a (media) case to be made in "hey, the webcam you sold me isn't secure, so the crooks watched my register to pick the perfect time to rob us")
Every single one of us has at least two, many of us have far more than that.
While that's true, I don't know if "separate computer required" is a great bullet point on the feature list. Is there some sort of benefit to moving to binary logs by default?
He is pointing out that the paper is intentionally misleading in how it uses the term subsidy.
No, I think it has it right. A subsidy is "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive". Any time the government cuts them a break (whether by just handing them the money, or choosing not to tax them at the regular rate, or choosing not to apply regulations to them.. that's all subsidies.
And I'm not horribly opposed to the concept (the power grid is kind of necessary, after all). But those dollars should be accounted for and compared to their profits. In particular, if a companie's profits > their subsidies, some questions should be asked.
Why should you be paid retail for generation? That totally ignores the part the grid takes in handling your energy...
Because that's what the going rate for electricity is?
I can see the argument for it being cheaper than retail (to account for power grid and such), but at wholesale you're effectively just another generator for the electric company (who will pocket the margin for themselves for no additional work).
The upside is that I can see the power companies suddenly becoming *very* enthusiastic about private solar if it becomes "free" power that they can charge someone else mark-up on.
Here I am! Or at least, I have no idea what they're talking about.WoTC bought TSR and keep D&D alive basically as a pet project because they love the game. It certainly doesn't make enough money to keep their Hasbro masters happy, but they are allowed to have such pet projects as long as Magic does bring in the money.
While I would agree that Hasbro and WotC don't expect D&D to contribute much to the bottom line (although I suspect it does better than we might think), I imagine the current value in the property is the IP. The ability to have in your legal filing cabinet a bunch of prior art from the 70s goes a long way to keeping competitors out of your stuff.
According to Polifact, Trump's four bankruptcies were all chapter 11s (restructuring to prevent liquidation). What caught my eye is the manner in which the bankruptcies were cleared - in three of the four, his personal hit was simply loss of shares in that company (he had to sell a yacht and airline as part of the '91 Trump Taj Mahal deal).
To my mind, that's *awfully* close to walking away scott-free - giving up shares in a failing business isn't really losing money IMO. And in some of the deals he was still left in charge or received licensing fees for use of his name afterwards. So, I think Trump is right in that it was a smart move... for him. He starts up these businesses, and if it makes money he owns a majority and cashes in. The four times it bombed out, he seems to be largely able to walk away and let someone else clean up the mess.
Makes him a smart businessman, but that's not exactly a skillset I'd like to see in a political leader.
"for some reason" - oh, to have a mod point for you.:)
I'd say calling a Canadian (which I am one) an American is about on par with going down to Texas and calling them Yankees. You might not get your ass kicked, but you certainly aren't making any friends.
"The license plate's identifiers are ignored most of the time by law enforcement."
Well, except when you automatically photograph them and store in a big ol' database till you need it.
If the US wants to force it's citizens to take an Internet Driving Test, fill their boots. But I wonder how they think they have jurisdiction to force the rest of the world.
Rents in those areas are hilariously high, and they don't need space for more than the 4 S anyway (sleep, shit, shave, and shower). So you can get the space you need, save money on rent without having to spend the money on commutes. The social side is just basic condo perks.
Now, here's hoping they don't skimp on the soundproofing...
Because way too many of those teachers and schools weren't doing their jobs.
(snip)
Why were illiterate students graduating from high school?
Easy - because we started keeping score.
Used to be, the kid passed or failed on his own ability and merit. Then we got it into our head that there were "better" schools and "bad" schools and "good" and "bad" teachers. (Which I will conceded only in the sense that some kids and teachers are bad matchups for each other, just like employees and bosses).
Anyway, how do we find these folks? We start scoring, treating the kids like completely interchangable parts, and assuming that a teacher who passes less kids must somehow be "worse", which teachers with higher marks and pass rate must be "great". Fail too many kids? That's your fault, so maybe you won't get a raise or promotion or maybe we'll just find another teacher.
Go figure they start pushing kids along. (We haven't even tackled the classic problem of parents lobbying)
Of course, punting Bobby up a grade doesn't help Bobby, and now the new teacher gets handed a kid who's even *less* likely to pass the next year's material - which means the new teacher either has to take the performance hit or punt the kid himself. And that's why Bobby can't read.
So, we put in standardized testing to "prove" that kids all know the material, and tie it even more firmly to teacher's reviews. If I tell you your job is to do things A through Z, but I'm going to test you on only items A, E, I, O, and U - and the results of that test will directly determine if you have a job next year... how much time do you think you're going to spend on the other items in comparison?
Oh yeah, and meanwhile we're going to make you feel like a dirty union worker, make sure we penny-pinch any resource you might need (other than whatever the Government Flavor Of The Week is - seriously, my daughter's classroom looks like a tech wonderland, but there's a hard limit on how many photocopies the teacher can make), and then lambast them for not rejoicing in the glories of educating the nation's youth with sufficient exuberance.
So let me revise my earlier statement. I've never met a "bad" teacher in a classroom. Teachers who don't want to teach end up in other fields (I know a few in human resources, one was a project manager; and a few just get promoted to management) . I've met a few burned-out teachers in classrooms, though - burned out because they're spending their own wages to buy basic supplies (fun fact: all those helpful posters in your kid's classroom? Paid for by the teacher), burned out because the joy of teaching has been replaced by hours of standardized testing and reviews and a culture that now treats teachers as a cost centre to be minimized.
I'd have to double-check, but iTunes does have most of the seasons online - my issue was with the Season Pass (i.e. "watch the show as it airs"), because I was not getting the show anytime remotely near when it aired.
Barring that, the local library has a good back catalog to borrow from.
Of course, this didn't stop the school and police from releasing statements.
Also, if the kid had *actually* called in a "bomb", they would have pressed charges. And I'm up here in Canada - you would still absolutely evacuate the school. Even if you absolutely 100% positively *know* it's fake, you evacuate the school until the cops tell you it's fine. This was true a quarter-century ago, when a random kid at my school didn't want to take a test, so shoved some wires into a clock and labeled it "bomb". The school knew it wasn't a bomb, the cops knew it wasn't a bomb. But they still evacuated the school and treated it as a *possible* bomb, because (a) you never know, and more importantly (b) there's no harm in running the drill (both for the school and the police). It's only gotten more strict, too - my daughter's school will lock down if there's a domestic disturbance nearby, *just in case*.
And we're not even in metal detector territory up here yet. So when you tell me that they didn't evacuate the school, that tells me a *lot* about the level of threat they're perceiving. Namely, *zero*. If "suspicious device" percolated through the building for any length of time, there would have been a "fire drill" and the school would be emptied until someone qualified looked at it.
You're right that we don't have all the facts. The problem is that there's not an arrangement of facts that I can see that makes a lot of sense. And sadly, the closest is that this school and the cops screwed up. If they thought it might *possibly* be a bomb, they would have evacuated. If they thought the kid actually made a threat, they wouldn't have dropped the charges. Instead, we're in this weird world where the kid has a bomb that we know isn't a bomb, except we don't act like there's a bomb but we still punish the kid for pretending to have a bomb except that we're not saying the kid pretended anything so we arrested him because it was so serious except we dropped them right after.
Ahmed didn't just not invent anything, he disobeyed a science teacher who saw the clock and told him not to show it to anyone else in the school. Ahmed plugged in the clock and set an alarm to go off during his English class. The mess of unsecured components and wires was dangerous when plugged into 110V AC, if not scary for what it might be. The English teacher quite understandably freaked out.
Whoa - now we're saying the English teacher is an electronics expert and can recognize "unsecured components"? I don't know about you, but teachers that are electronics geeks teach science and computing and shop class, not English. (In the same way that your science teacher may not know a participle if it hit them in the adjective.)
But let's roll with this - English teacher has the know-how to know what this is (and more importantly, what it's *not*). Where do the police come into this? Why would this knowledgeable teacher not simply unplug it from the wall, give the kid five hundred words on "why plugging random shit into the outlet is a bad idea" and move on with the day? Where does this mystery bomb threat come from, if the kid says it's a clock, the teacher knows it's a clock (at least according to you, and that's not what the police were saying, btw), what magically made this a not-bomb threat?
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In my view it was actually quite strange of UNIX that it by default let arbitrary user code stay around unrestricted after logout.
Hell, I'm no guru but I know the answer for this - it's so you can run long tasks without having to tie up a limited terminal in the lab. Log in, start your task, log out and go for beer while someone else gets use.
Now, in this world of "everyone has their own computer and terminal", it's not as necessary a feature as it used to be. But that hardly seems a reason to arbitrarily flip the default.
How much energy?
No clue. But the threshold is a lot lower, because presumably it's sharing a lot of infrastructure with the existing solar panel. So as long as the incremental gain outweighs the incremental cost, this is a good thing.
It's a prototype, which means we're still at "hey, neat trick", not at "this will allow us to make our third-quarter projections".
They should just pull out and let the people's outcry (or lack of one) be heard.
That defeats the purpose for them. Keep in mind that Uber and Lyft are based in San Francisco. They don't operate in other cities. They just operate a web service, and leave it to the drivers to hold the bag when the authorities come calling. Right now they've got it great - they're getting their cut, and they've muddied the waters enough to make it politically unpalatable to go after the drivers for running illegal businesses. (Guess what - in most places your driver's license does *not* cover carrying passengers for hire. And neither does your regular car insurance.) So it's literally costing them *nothing* to be in as many cities as possible.
You know, thats what puzzles me the most about telemarketers. They get someone to answer, and that person calls them a cockbiting fucktard and hangs up, and then, instead of blacklisting that number (because obviously, your not selling them ANYTHING) they call back every day for two years, wasting their own time on calling a number that is guaranteed to not profit.
Because next time someone else might pick up. Or they'll be selling a different line. Or you might be in a different mood. Or the company just doesn't want to cross off a number.
Even legit telemarketers (like university fundraisers, where I did a stint 15-20 years ago) are *loath* to actually remove a name and number from the file. And with robocalls, it costs them effectively nothing to ring that phone again, so why would they remove it?
It should be even more trivial to develop a system where the callerid spoofed on my handset can be reported to the carrier, with the time of the call, and they can immediately determine where the call REALLY came from, and report that to me, to the police... to whomever.
Honestly, it should be trivial to require that the number displayed connects to the source number. I get that large organizations and such want everyone's CID to be the front desk and that's a legit use - but the fact that the phone company will merrily show CID for a number that it knows full well has nothing to do with the actual caller is just extending the money grab.
That said, you do have to respect the telecoms for playing arms dealer to both sides. They'll charge me for caller ID to see who the number is, and then charge you to not send the number, and then charge me again to block numbers that don't display it...
No reason they can't be doing both. If I was immoral enough to be doing telescam work, I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't track live numbers while also overdialing. It's not like the people you're calling know who to complain to, right?
you've given them a penalty for having kids
Nonsense. I've subsidised their lifestyle choice and the market has accurately rewarded their work based on their experience and hours.
Women can choose not to take time off to have children. I know some that have made that choice. I have no issue with others that prefer a different life, as long as they accept that there are trade-offs involved.
A thought experiment - take a married couple, put them in the same job. If they wish to have kids, the woman will suffer at least some lost time. You can argue that the man should take some of the hit on parental leave, but that doesn't change the fact that regardless of both the man and woman choosing to have a kid, only the woman is guaranteed to take a penalty to her "hours" and "experience".
This may be a cultural difference, though - Canada provides paid parental leave, so the perception may be different here. Or maybe when men take leave (I took three and a half months the year my kid was born) it doesn't get counted as a gap in hours or experience. At least, there's never been an instance where it's come up.
The problem is that they're not. Women get paid on average the same as men, once you factor in experience, hours worked and contribution.
OK, I'll bite. Experience and hours worked I will accept with the caveat that you've given them a penalty for having kids. But exactly how does one measure "contribution" in a meaningful fashion?
That's because most AI researchers are quite happy to call anything involving a machine doing something "artificial intelligence" even if it's just the speaking clock.
That's because most researchers have to deal with undergraduates, so they've had to relax their definition of "intelligence".
I'm no Linux expert myself (my hotrodding days are behind me; I just need stuff to *work*, please and thank-you), and I can't say I have particularly strong opinion of systemd yet, beyond wondering what the benefit is. And I mean that in the simple sense of - OK, we're breaking some of the old cardinal rules of *nix (multiple small programs that each do one thing well, use plain text because then everything can talk to everything else), so what are we getting in trade for it?
My problems with Linux boxes over the years have almost never been boot-related (OK, the one time when I didn't realize that *nix "are you sure" prompts are waay more serious than the Windows versions), so I likely will never have a particular problem with it. But in the same way I don't jump to buy the newest thing, I'm not sure why we're all jumping here. What does it get us that the old way didn't?
Well, unless you're "the government or a public body", then you'd be correct - you're not a subsidy.
But assuming that you are the gov'mint here, there isn't really a difference between you paying for $10K worth of cars from Don's Dealership, and you giving Don 10K upfront. You've still given Don 10K, and presumably I got a slightly cheaper car. (To answer what I expect to be the obvious rebuttal - that paying for part of the car reduces the price - you only need to look at private universities for examples where the cost mysteriously rises by roughly the amount of the subsidy. There's no guarantee either way, barring regulations, of making sure that the subsidy money isn't ending up in Don's pocket rather than indirectly going into ours. Even if you give me the money directly, if it's a known that buying a car gives me an $X subsidy, that's incentive for you to raise your prices to capture part of that 'free' money.
And realistically, Shodan is offering a more useful service for free - showing people that their webcam is broadcasting to the entire world.
The fact that the "solution" is "hey, block this one provider" and not "holy crap, unplug that thing NOW and get one that isn't broadcasting our cash register to anyone with half a brain.
I suspect this will get fixed when someone gets hurt or robbed, and decides to take it out on the manufacturer. (I'm guessing there's a (media) case to be made in "hey, the webcam you sold me isn't secure, so the crooks watched my register to pick the perfect time to rob us")
Every single one of us has at least two, many of us have far more than that.
While that's true, I don't know if "separate computer required" is a great bullet point on the feature list. Is there some sort of benefit to moving to binary logs by default?
He is pointing out that the paper is intentionally misleading in how it uses the term subsidy.
No, I think it has it right. A subsidy is "a sum of money granted by the government or a public body to assist an industry or business so that the price of a commodity or service may remain low or competitive". Any time the government cuts them a break (whether by just handing them the money, or choosing not to tax them at the regular rate, or choosing not to apply regulations to them.. that's all subsidies.
And I'm not horribly opposed to the concept (the power grid is kind of necessary, after all). But those dollars should be accounted for and compared to their profits. In particular, if a companie's profits > their subsidies, some questions should be asked.
Why should you be paid retail for generation? That totally ignores the part the grid takes in handling your energy...
Because that's what the going rate for electricity is?
I can see the argument for it being cheaper than retail (to account for power grid and such), but at wholesale you're effectively just another generator for the electric company (who will pocket the margin for themselves for no additional work).
The upside is that I can see the power companies suddenly becoming *very* enthusiastic about private solar if it becomes "free" power that they can charge someone else mark-up on.
Here I am! Or at least, I have no idea what they're talking about.WoTC bought TSR and keep D&D alive basically as a pet project because they love the game. It certainly doesn't make enough money to keep their Hasbro masters happy, but they are allowed to have such pet projects as long as Magic does bring in the money.
While I would agree that Hasbro and WotC don't expect D&D to contribute much to the bottom line (although I suspect it does better than we might think), I imagine the current value in the property is the IP. The ability to have in your legal filing cabinet a bunch of prior art from the 70s goes a long way to keeping competitors out of your stuff.
According to Polifact, Trump's four bankruptcies were all chapter 11s (restructuring to prevent liquidation). What caught my eye is the manner in which the bankruptcies were cleared - in three of the four, his personal hit was simply loss of shares in that company (he had to sell a yacht and airline as part of the '91 Trump Taj Mahal deal).
To my mind, that's *awfully* close to walking away scott-free - giving up shares in a failing business isn't really losing money IMO. And in some of the deals he was still left in charge or received licensing fees for use of his name afterwards. So, I think Trump is right in that it was a smart move... for him. He starts up these businesses, and if it makes money he owns a majority and cashes in. The four times it bombed out, he seems to be largely able to walk away and let someone else clean up the mess.
Makes him a smart businessman, but that's not exactly a skillset I'd like to see in a political leader.
"for some reason" - oh, to have a mod point for you. :)
I'd say calling a Canadian (which I am one) an American is about on par with going down to Texas and calling them Yankees. You might not get your ass kicked, but you certainly aren't making any friends.
"The license plate's identifiers are ignored most of the time by law enforcement."
Well, except when you automatically photograph them and store in a big ol' database till you need it.
If the US wants to force it's citizens to take an Internet Driving Test, fill their boots. But I wonder how they think they have jurisdiction to force the rest of the world.
And while 3x3m is lovely, that means that my house has several "addresses", and there doesn't seem to be a shared word between them.
Rents in those areas are hilariously high, and they don't need space for more than the 4 S anyway (sleep, shit, shave, and shower). So you can get the space you need, save money on rent without having to spend the money on commutes. The social side is just basic condo perks.
Now, here's hoping they don't skimp on the soundproofing...
Because way too many of those teachers and schools weren't doing their jobs.
(snip)
Why were illiterate students graduating from high school?
Easy - because we started keeping score.
Used to be, the kid passed or failed on his own ability and merit. Then we got it into our head that there were "better" schools and "bad" schools and "good" and "bad" teachers. (Which I will conceded only in the sense that some kids and teachers are bad matchups for each other, just like employees and bosses).
Anyway, how do we find these folks? We start scoring, treating the kids like completely interchangable parts, and assuming that a teacher who passes less kids must somehow be "worse", which teachers with higher marks and pass rate must be "great". Fail too many kids? That's your fault, so maybe you won't get a raise or promotion or maybe we'll just find another teacher.
Go figure they start pushing kids along. (We haven't even tackled the classic problem of parents lobbying)
Of course, punting Bobby up a grade doesn't help Bobby, and now the new teacher gets handed a kid who's even *less* likely to pass the next year's material - which means the new teacher either has to take the performance hit or punt the kid himself. And that's why Bobby can't read.
So, we put in standardized testing to "prove" that kids all know the material, and tie it even more firmly to teacher's reviews. If I tell you your job is to do things A through Z, but I'm going to test you on only items A, E, I, O, and U - and the results of that test will directly determine if you have a job next year... how much time do you think you're going to spend on the other items in comparison?
Oh yeah, and meanwhile we're going to make you feel like a dirty union worker, make sure we penny-pinch any resource you might need (other than whatever the Government Flavor Of The Week is - seriously, my daughter's classroom looks like a tech wonderland, but there's a hard limit on how many photocopies the teacher can make), and then lambast them for not rejoicing in the glories of educating the nation's youth with sufficient exuberance.
So let me revise my earlier statement. I've never met a "bad" teacher in a classroom. Teachers who don't want to teach end up in other fields (I know a few in human resources, one was a project manager; and a few just get promoted to management) . I've met a few burned-out teachers in classrooms, though - burned out because they're spending their own wages to buy basic supplies (fun fact: all those helpful posters in your kid's classroom? Paid for by the teacher), burned out because the joy of teaching has been replaced by hours of standardized testing and reviews and a culture that now treats teachers as a cost centre to be minimized.
I'd have to double-check, but iTunes does have most of the seasons online - my issue was with the Season Pass (i.e. "watch the show as it airs"), because I was not getting the show anytime remotely near when it aired.
Barring that, the local library has a good back catalog to borrow from.
Of course, this didn't stop the school and police from releasing statements.
Also, if the kid had *actually* called in a "bomb", they would have pressed charges. And I'm up here in Canada - you would still absolutely evacuate the school. Even if you absolutely 100% positively *know* it's fake, you evacuate the school until the cops tell you it's fine. This was true a quarter-century ago, when a random kid at my school didn't want to take a test, so shoved some wires into a clock and labeled it "bomb". The school knew it wasn't a bomb, the cops knew it wasn't a bomb. But they still evacuated the school and treated it as a *possible* bomb, because (a) you never know, and more importantly (b) there's no harm in running the drill (both for the school and the police). It's only gotten more strict, too - my daughter's school will lock down if there's a domestic disturbance nearby, *just in case*.
And we're not even in metal detector territory up here yet. So when you tell me that they didn't evacuate the school, that tells me a *lot* about the level of threat they're perceiving. Namely, *zero*. If "suspicious device" percolated through the building for any length of time, there would have been a "fire drill" and the school would be emptied until someone qualified looked at it.
You're right that we don't have all the facts. The problem is that there's not an arrangement of facts that I can see that makes a lot of sense. And sadly, the closest is that this school and the cops screwed up. If they thought it might *possibly* be a bomb, they would have evacuated. If they thought the kid actually made a threat, they wouldn't have dropped the charges. Instead, we're in this weird world where the kid has a bomb that we know isn't a bomb, except we don't act like there's a bomb but we still punish the kid for pretending to have a bomb except that we're not saying the kid pretended anything so we arrested him because it was so serious except we dropped them right after.
Ahmed didn't just not invent anything, he disobeyed a science teacher who saw the clock and told him not to show it to anyone else in the school. Ahmed plugged in the clock and set an alarm to go off during his English class. The mess of unsecured components and wires was dangerous when plugged into 110V AC, if not scary for what it might be. The English teacher quite understandably freaked out.
Whoa - now we're saying the English teacher is an electronics expert and can recognize "unsecured components"? I don't know about you, but teachers that are electronics geeks teach science and computing and shop class, not English. (In the same way that your science teacher may not know a participle if it hit them in the adjective.)
But let's roll with this - English teacher has the know-how to know what this is (and more importantly, what it's *not*). Where do the police come into this? Why would this knowledgeable teacher not simply unplug it from the wall, give the kid five hundred words on "why plugging random shit into the outlet is a bad idea" and move on with the day? Where does this mystery bomb threat come from, if the kid says it's a clock, the teacher knows it's a clock (at least according to you, and that's not what the police were saying, btw), what magically made this a not-bomb threat?