Just because you have a patent in your name doesn't mean you're "brilliant." While I have no doubt Google is looking for smart and intelligent folk to work for them, being a PhD hardly seems like a sufficient requisite.
Though compared to most computer related jobs I'm sure google does a proper job of sieving out the non-hackers. just because you can script monkey C# doesn't mean you understand computer science, which is basically what google is after anyways.
Tom
Re:I had an interview with Google a few weeks ago
on
Want To Work At Google?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
first question: Find the density of the marble, then calculuate the... oh what do I know.
Second question: Radix sort on disk.
Third question: Binary weighted tree in memory.
BTW I hate job interviews like this. I did one for RIM (in like 2002 ish) and at one point after answering like 5 different "puzzles" I turned around and asked the interview "here are two 1024-bit numbers, multiply them quickly." To which he replied "I'm asking the questions." I just got up and left. I don't want to work somewhere where I have to sit pretty and beg all the time just to get paid. I'm sure had I taken the job with RIM I'd be one of those "middle name" people (mass murderer) types eventually. Sure I have to please my boss by finishing my work, but I certainly don't kiss ass.
Next time you have an interview like that, just stump the interviewer, see how they like pressure.:-)
In all honesty, if you don't have prior job experience and/or a portfolio of projects, they can't really tell what you're capable of anyways. High pressure interview questions do not reflect the job scenario in the slightest.
Maybe I'm not explaining this well enough, oh how can I do better....
He was JAILED for writing software in a country where it's legal that violates what should be a CIVIL LAW in the USA. Upon arrival in the USA he was arrested at the behest of Adobe for circumventing their DRM scheme... in Russia.
Ok, how about this, I'll strip you of your freedom for 4 months at a time because, um, you watched a DVD in Linux. See how that works out for you. The DMCA is just an example of how the government is bending over for the benefit of big corporations. Don't mind the fact that the law is wholly unconstitutional. No, never you mind. Those amendments are just suggestions.
Next you'll tell me that states like Detroit have lax car size tax laws for no apparent reason. Fo rizzle? In reality, 99% of car drivers need nothing larger than a V4, yet per capita V8/V6 represent basically the entirety of cars on the road, even when they're empty and have a single occupant. Yeah, you're right. The government is out to help you out. Never mind that most large cities have a layer of unbreathable smog that tints the blue sky dark orange. That's for *your* benefit. We shouldn't as a society pressure people to be more responsible. Never.
Right up there with that corn syrup used in, let me count, EVERYTHING, as opposed to sugar. No lobbying there.
And of course, Diebold kept their promise about winning an election for the home team after securing contracts to run various states voting machines.
yadada.
Point is, he was jailed. Not served papers. Jailed. He had liberty denied, and nobody in the end got "justice." As a society we shouldn't tolerate the random imprisonment of people at the behest of our commercial overlords just because you think "in the end it'll figure itself out."
You can exchange certs in more meaningful fashions than having verisign hand you a cert.
But again, so what? What does that mean? So you know you're talking to company.com, should you trust them?
Think of it from the business point of view. I google for "evil dead figurines" and find some store [making it up] called badashstore.com. It has a valid certificate and all that jazz. Should I buy from them?
While it certainly seems like a "Free spirit" sort of place to work it's still a large megacorp (tm) which brings a lot of the downsides with it I imagine. Though the free meals/snacks does sound like a genius idea.
Though after having worked for one megacorp (tm), I can honestly say I'd rather be working where I am for a smaller company. Sure I don't get free meals, but at the end of the day I'm not a drunk anymore:-) [ok I wasn't really a drunk back then either, but I did drink way too often for my comfort...]
They shouldn't be issued by private corporations but instead by the man who issues the business licenses. Otherwise, it's meaningless. So I setup p4ypal.com, buy a cert and trick people to go there. Whoopy.
What do certs really mean anyways? Just because company.com has a legit cert from verisign doesn't mean they're a good company. It means that I'm talking with company.com. Big deal.
Get a clue please. He was locked up for writing software that breaks copyright protection schemes [DRM] to enable people to use screen readers. He was jailed in the US after giving a talk.
I have little problem with people who genuinely need to run Windows. My problem is they're a minority of Windows users. And because of this, we [those who decide to live in a world of open standards] have to make due interfacing with the Wintards who use shit like.doc,.ppt, MSIE's version of HTML/CSS, MSVC's version of C and C++, etc, etc, etc.
I guess I'm saying I'd have a lot less problems if MSFT actually followed a standard, just once, for a change, instead of assuming they know better.
A comment I got from my boss [who is obviously older than I am] about when DOS started becoming popular. "What? No network stack?" At the time he was using one of the UNIX distros which had a full multi-user environment, with a proper kernel, full network stack, etc. He couldn't get why DOS [or Win95 for that matter] would be so popular since it was technically inferior to existing OSes.
MSFT went their route, cut out of a lot from the OS to make it "simpler" and remove choices. As a result, MSFT customers do as they're told. Don't like this incompatible C, network, or threading API? TOO FUCKING BAD! Don't like that your office tools are using proprietary formats for which you have to pay money to access, and MSFT dictates what you can do with them? TOO FUCKING BAD!, etc, etc, etc.
People aren't wholly this stupid though. I mean if you showed the average person from 1908 a win XP box, they'd probably have little clue about how to use it. Maybe not much has changed but I'd like to think society is quite capable of having a little learning time from time to time. Not like installing Ubuntu is really that hard [put CD in, click OK, wait 15 mins, done].
Point is, people making due with a more expensive, and lesser capable system just because it's easier doesn't say much about society. And having to put up with their shit is fucking annoying too.
Yeah except they're not limited to running OLPC software. It's a Linux kernel with a glibc standard C library [along with the X windows and other stuff]. It's in no way limited in the software it can run other than by the storage space.
First, my UID is lower than yours. Therefore, I'm better than you.:-) [fully expecting a 3 digit UID to show me up...]
That you said "Linux monoculture" means you're trolling. There is no such thing. I write an application on Fedora Core, it works in Gentoo, the same software will most certainly compile in a BSD, etc, etc, etc. Try that with Windows.
If I'm not mistaken Allegro treats images as BITMAP objects [much like linearly addressable screens]. There are LoadBMP functions which take a filename (or a packed archive as Allegro supports it's own archive format) which would load a bitmap and store it in the BITMAP object. Then a blit later it's on the screen.
The entire analog of "hello world" with a bitmap in Allegro was like 5 or 6 lines of code. Init allegro, init the screen, load bitmap, blit, wait for key, exit.
I'll agree that Allegro sucked at 3D work, but you didn't have to use it's GFX capabilities. You could easily use GLUT/GL and then use Allegro for the rest [e.g. timers, keyboard, mice, joystick, etc].
Well when Windows offers anything useful for me as a developer I may consider it. I mean by your logic I'm also a MS-DOS bigot because I don't choose to run it. Wait, do you run MS-DOS? Are you a DOS bigot?
I mean give me a fucking break here, I can play games in Linux. Get over it, there are games for Linux. I can play my media, I can use my PVR card. Most importantly though when I sit down to work, I have all the tools I need, that are standard and cross-platform. What would Windows give me that a good Linux distro can't?
If I want to play a game that isn't in Linux I'll find the console version and play that. Or simply do without. My spending habits don't revolve around my gaming habits. I buy the computer I need for work, if I can get it to do other things all the better.
There is a strong junior/minor/whatever hockey league following in Canada, but it's not a school thing usually. It's an afterhours affair. My point is they're usually not "stars" in the school society just because they're good on the ice.
Whereas in the US if you're the captain of the football team you're an instant star, etc.
As an aside, anyone see the TV series Sliders? I often use it when discussing the similarities/differences between Canada and the USA. Things on the surface look very similar, until you look into the details:-)
The problem is people like me fear that OLPC was bought off, and that the promise of a really open and accessible laptop for students has died.
You think it's hard to get proper tech support in the 1st world? Try it in a field school somewhere 500 miles away from the nearest large city. Running windows as opposed to the hardened linux they were developing is just inviting every random malware and virus to hop a ride through their laptops rendering them useless.
Also a lot of the innovative features like the grouping and shared sessions [as well as tailor made games/activities] probably won't be ported [or well] to Windows, leaving the kids with a really large lack of useful software.
One trick I used to survive the taunts [being an outsider and overweight != good] was to disempower their taunts. They'd say some crack about my weight and I'd just say "so?" To which they'd never have a reply. Eventually they just stopped and by time high school I think they were mature enough to see the folly in their ways. That's not to say I was popular in high school, or really friends with anyone. Fortunately, I lived beside the school, so at lunch I didn't have to see any of the putzs. I'd just go home. After school I'd be out of their like a bat out of hell.
Not giving in to the taunts is definitely a sound way to get through it. If the bully can't get a reaction out of you, they'll usually stop.
But as I said earlier, realizing that school is such a small part of the grand scheme of things helps a lot. Perspective:-)
Depends on how far up you want to go though. At AMD I was getting paid in the mid 80s, which for someone living in Toronto wasn't a bad salary (it was over four times my rent per month after taxes). I wasn't the most popular kid in the class [so to speak] mostly because I had a hard time keeping up on both the AMD chatter and IBM chatter (I was a liason stationed in the IBM labs). So when I went to AMD meetings I had to read a backlog of emails before I could do anything useful at the meetings which some folk found unprofessional. But it wasn't like being unpopular with a few of my colleagues (I'd say I got along with more than I didn't though) held me back.
Where I work now, the group is small enough that we can chat about more than just work and we occasionally hit the pub after hours. No need to sell out who I am or anything.
I agree and there are ways to do that outside and inside of school. Just that most kids find personal development to be a "uncool waste of time." In any class of say 30 students I was in, there were maybe 4 who took music lessons after school, for instance. Very few were in things like the Cadets, or other organizations. The problem is kids find organized anything to be unhip, and parents let their kids get away with it.
Media plays into it fairly well too. How many kids in 90210 or Saved by the bell or whatever kids watch today, spend time doing something of a developmental nature [creative writing, art, music, etc]. No, instead, you see them hang out at the beach/mall/cinema trying to get dates or whatever. Basically just loafing through their teen years and college as well.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for just chillaxing with my friends, but I couldn't imagine doing that full time. When I was a kid I was into cadets, music, and hacking the family PC. When I stopped working on OSS last year, I was just sitting on my thumbs [so to speak] for a while, I was terribly restless. I don't know how others do it. So I started up back in music.
It'd help I think if teens started developing more mature hobbies/traits as they progress through high school. Getting a part time job is but one of the ways to push that along. Joining a writing or art class another. Learning a vocation, etc, etc, etc.
First, karma. Take stock in what you have accomplished but don't gloat. Tables can turn quite quickly.
Second, if they're working in a factory, they're probably producing something society needs. Someone has to do those jobs (before we get our robot armies to do it for us).
I make fun of fast food workers because those jobs are useless. But a lot of "lower paying jobs" are quite useful and required, and for some it's not that they were forced into it. The high pace pressure of the work cubicle isn't for everyone.
And just because you make more money than someone doesn't mean you're "better" than them. I'm sure the higher quality escorts make quite a killing too. Are they better than you?
Point is, it's ok to mock the people who ended up [because they had no choice] in the McD's type jobs. They're useless and just contribute to obesity through selling shit bulk food. But not everyone working for minimum wage is a tool.
No, in Amerika instead you get locked up for pissing off the corporations. DMCA anyone? Who's that russian dude who got locked up? etc...
I won't pretend that what's going on in China is "ok," but let's not pretend that we have a totally open society here. Well in the USA anyways. Canada still has some rights left:-)
And if the kid started talking in tungues? Or started hurting themself or ?
We view abnormal behaviour as something to look into precisely because it's abnormal. If it a kid has a normally balanced (which includes sad and happy tones) range of emotions, and all of a sudden starts writing overly sadistic or dark material, chances are either something is up, or the kid is just trying to be different. But it's worth looking into.
Is it worth banning or making illegal? Hells no. But there is a difference between worth looking into and making criminal.
So in this case I think the school went way overboard, and in the grand scheme of things probably violated his rights.
I agree that we spend a lot of time in classes which is probably why kids put so much weight into what people do/say there. But I think if kids were reminded more about life after school they probably would level out and the prima donna cool cliques would get a clue.
Or, you can remind the kids that the cool kids usually make the best burgers at McDonalds.:-) I've run into a few "cool" kids from my brothers stream [he's 2 years older] and they were working the drive-through window at a Burger King. it was nice knowing how far being a jerk in high school got them. Go Karma!
Be prepared to not think about HS the second they had you your diploma.:-)
To be honest my reaction was, holy shit, I'm in the real world now, ok, time to start college. The awe of being out of a system I was in for the first 14 years of my life didn't really last long.
Of course when I grad'ed from college I was equally taken aback. Was a nice feeling to know I finished both HS and college. Fortunately, only took me 3 months before I landed myself a developers job [crypto related] and then I sunk back into the "routine" life.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you have a patent in your name doesn't mean you're "brilliant." While I have no doubt Google is looking for smart and intelligent folk to work for them, being a PhD hardly seems like a sufficient requisite.
Though compared to most computer related jobs I'm sure google does a proper job of sieving out the non-hackers. just because you can script monkey C# doesn't mean you understand computer science, which is basically what google is after anyways.
Tom
first question: Find the density of the marble, then calculuate the ... oh what do I know.
:-)
Second question: Radix sort on disk.
Third question: Binary weighted tree in memory.
BTW I hate job interviews like this. I did one for RIM (in like 2002 ish) and at one point after answering like 5 different "puzzles" I turned around and asked the interview "here are two 1024-bit numbers, multiply them quickly." To which he replied "I'm asking the questions." I just got up and left. I don't want to work somewhere where I have to sit pretty and beg all the time just to get paid. I'm sure had I taken the job with RIM I'd be one of those "middle name" people (mass murderer) types eventually. Sure I have to please my boss by finishing my work, but I certainly don't kiss ass.
Next time you have an interview like that, just stump the interviewer, see how they like pressure.
In all honesty, if you don't have prior job experience and/or a portfolio of projects, they can't really tell what you're capable of anyways. High pressure interview questions do not reflect the job scenario in the slightest.
Tom
Maybe I'm not explaining this well enough, oh how can I do better....
... in Russia.
He was JAILED for writing software in a country where it's legal that violates what should be a CIVIL LAW in the USA. Upon arrival in the USA he was arrested at the behest of Adobe for circumventing their DRM scheme
Ok, how about this, I'll strip you of your freedom for 4 months at a time because, um, you watched a DVD in Linux. See how that works out for you. The DMCA is just an example of how the government is bending over for the benefit of big corporations. Don't mind the fact that the law is wholly unconstitutional. No, never you mind. Those amendments are just suggestions.
Next you'll tell me that states like Detroit have lax car size tax laws for no apparent reason. Fo rizzle? In reality, 99% of car drivers need nothing larger than a V4, yet per capita V8/V6 represent basically the entirety of cars on the road, even when they're empty and have a single occupant. Yeah, you're right. The government is out to help you out. Never mind that most large cities have a layer of unbreathable smog that tints the blue sky dark orange. That's for *your* benefit. We shouldn't as a society pressure people to be more responsible. Never.
Right up there with that corn syrup used in, let me count, EVERYTHING, as opposed to sugar. No lobbying there.
And of course, Diebold kept their promise about winning an election for the home team after securing contracts to run various states voting machines.
yadada.
Point is, he was jailed. Not served papers. Jailed. He had liberty denied, and nobody in the end got "justice." As a society we shouldn't tolerate the random imprisonment of people at the behest of our commercial overlords just because you think "in the end it'll figure itself out."
Tom
You can exchange certs in more meaningful fashions than having verisign hand you a cert.
But again, so what? What does that mean? So you know you're talking to company.com, should you trust them?
Think of it from the business point of view. I google for "evil dead figurines" and find some store [making it up] called badashstore.com. It has a valid certificate and all that jazz. Should I buy from them?
Tom
While it certainly seems like a "Free spirit" sort of place to work it's still a large megacorp (tm) which brings a lot of the downsides with it I imagine. Though the free meals/snacks does sound like a genius idea.
:-) [ok I wasn't really a drunk back then either, but I did drink way too often for my comfort...]
Though after having worked for one megacorp (tm), I can honestly say I'd rather be working where I am for a smaller company. Sure I don't get free meals, but at the end of the day I'm not a drunk anymore
Tom
They shouldn't be issued by private corporations but instead by the man who issues the business licenses. Otherwise, it's meaningless. So I setup p4ypal.com, buy a cert and trick people to go there. Whoopy.
What do certs really mean anyways? Just because company.com has a legit cert from verisign doesn't mean they're a good company. It means that I'm talking with company.com. Big deal.
Tom
Get a clue please. He was locked up for writing software that breaks copyright protection schemes [DRM] to enable people to use screen readers. He was jailed in the US after giving a talk.
CLUE ON!
I have little problem with people who genuinely need to run Windows. My problem is they're a minority of Windows users. And because of this, we [those who decide to live in a world of open standards] have to make due interfacing with the Wintards who use shit like .doc, .ppt, MSIE's version of HTML/CSS, MSVC's version of C and C++, etc, etc, etc.
I guess I'm saying I'd have a lot less problems if MSFT actually followed a standard, just once, for a change, instead of assuming they know better.
A comment I got from my boss [who is obviously older than I am] about when DOS started becoming popular. "What? No network stack?" At the time he was using one of the UNIX distros which had a full multi-user environment, with a proper kernel, full network stack, etc. He couldn't get why DOS [or Win95 for that matter] would be so popular since it was technically inferior to existing OSes.
MSFT went their route, cut out of a lot from the OS to make it "simpler" and remove choices. As a result, MSFT customers do as they're told. Don't like this incompatible C, network, or threading API? TOO FUCKING BAD! Don't like that your office tools are using proprietary formats for which you have to pay money to access, and MSFT dictates what you can do with them? TOO FUCKING BAD!, etc, etc, etc.
People aren't wholly this stupid though. I mean if you showed the average person from 1908 a win XP box, they'd probably have little clue about how to use it. Maybe not much has changed but I'd like to think society is quite capable of having a little learning time from time to time. Not like installing Ubuntu is really that hard [put CD in, click OK, wait 15 mins, done].
Point is, people making due with a more expensive, and lesser capable system just because it's easier doesn't say much about society. And having to put up with their shit is fucking annoying too.
Tom
Yeah except they're not limited to running OLPC software. It's a Linux kernel with a glibc standard C library [along with the X windows and other stuff]. It's in no way limited in the software it can run other than by the storage space.
Tom
First, my UID is lower than yours. Therefore, I'm better than you. :-) [fully expecting a 3 digit UID to show me up...]
That you said "Linux monoculture" means you're trolling. There is no such thing. I write an application on Fedora Core, it works in Gentoo, the same software will most certainly compile in a BSD, etc, etc, etc. Try that with Windows.
Nice troll though.
If I'm not mistaken Allegro treats images as BITMAP objects [much like linearly addressable screens]. There are LoadBMP functions which take a filename (or a packed archive as Allegro supports it's own archive format) which would load a bitmap and store it in the BITMAP object. Then a blit later it's on the screen.
The entire analog of "hello world" with a bitmap in Allegro was like 5 or 6 lines of code. Init allegro, init the screen, load bitmap, blit, wait for key, exit.
I'll agree that Allegro sucked at 3D work, but you didn't have to use it's GFX capabilities. You could easily use GLUT/GL and then use Allegro for the rest [e.g. timers, keyboard, mice, joystick, etc].
Tom
Well when Windows offers anything useful for me as a developer I may consider it. I mean by your logic I'm also a MS-DOS bigot because I don't choose to run it. Wait, do you run MS-DOS? Are you a DOS bigot?
I mean give me a fucking break here, I can play games in Linux. Get over it, there are games for Linux. I can play my media, I can use my PVR card. Most importantly though when I sit down to work, I have all the tools I need, that are standard and cross-platform. What would Windows give me that a good Linux distro can't?
If I want to play a game that isn't in Linux I'll find the console version and play that. Or simply do without. My spending habits don't revolve around my gaming habits. I buy the computer I need for work, if I can get it to do other things all the better.
Tom
Um you realize that otherwise it's a fairly standard PC setup right? They could just reflash the bios with a PC compatible bios.
Tom
There is a strong junior/minor/whatever hockey league following in Canada, but it's not a school thing usually. It's an afterhours affair. My point is they're usually not "stars" in the school society just because they're good on the ice.
:-)
Whereas in the US if you're the captain of the football team you're an instant star, etc.
As an aside, anyone see the TV series Sliders? I often use it when discussing the similarities/differences between Canada and the USA. Things on the surface look very similar, until you look into the details
Tom
Linux can run on Atmel AVR32 processors. I really doubt Windows has been ported there :-)
They're also ridiculously low powered processors. Albeit not the fastest things ever, probably give the Geode a run for it's money though.
Tom
The problem is people like me fear that OLPC was bought off, and that the promise of a really open and accessible laptop for students has died.
You think it's hard to get proper tech support in the 1st world? Try it in a field school somewhere 500 miles away from the nearest large city. Running windows as opposed to the hardened linux they were developing is just inviting every random malware and virus to hop a ride through their laptops rendering them useless.
Also a lot of the innovative features like the grouping and shared sessions [as well as tailor made games/activities] probably won't be ported [or well] to Windows, leaving the kids with a really large lack of useful software.
Tom
One trick I used to survive the taunts [being an outsider and overweight != good] was to disempower their taunts. They'd say some crack about my weight and I'd just say "so?" To which they'd never have a reply. Eventually they just stopped and by time high school I think they were mature enough to see the folly in their ways. That's not to say I was popular in high school, or really friends with anyone. Fortunately, I lived beside the school, so at lunch I didn't have to see any of the putzs. I'd just go home. After school I'd be out of their like a bat out of hell.
:-)
Not giving in to the taunts is definitely a sound way to get through it. If the bully can't get a reaction out of you, they'll usually stop.
But as I said earlier, realizing that school is such a small part of the grand scheme of things helps a lot. Perspective
Not if you don't work in a MegaCorp (tm).
Depends on how far up you want to go though. At AMD I was getting paid in the mid 80s, which for someone living in Toronto wasn't a bad salary (it was over four times my rent per month after taxes). I wasn't the most popular kid in the class [so to speak] mostly because I had a hard time keeping up on both the AMD chatter and IBM chatter (I was a liason stationed in the IBM labs). So when I went to AMD meetings I had to read a backlog of emails before I could do anything useful at the meetings which some folk found unprofessional. But it wasn't like being unpopular with a few of my colleagues (I'd say I got along with more than I didn't though) held me back.
Where I work now, the group is small enough that we can chat about more than just work and we occasionally hit the pub after hours. No need to sell out who I am or anything.
Tom
I agree and there are ways to do that outside and inside of school. Just that most kids find personal development to be a "uncool waste of time." In any class of say 30 students I was in, there were maybe 4 who took music lessons after school, for instance. Very few were in things like the Cadets, or other organizations. The problem is kids find organized anything to be unhip, and parents let their kids get away with it.
Media plays into it fairly well too. How many kids in 90210 or Saved by the bell or whatever kids watch today, spend time doing something of a developmental nature [creative writing, art, music, etc]. No, instead, you see them hang out at the beach/mall/cinema trying to get dates or whatever. Basically just loafing through their teen years and college as well.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for just chillaxing with my friends, but I couldn't imagine doing that full time. When I was a kid I was into cadets, music, and hacking the family PC. When I stopped working on OSS last year, I was just sitting on my thumbs [so to speak] for a while, I was terribly restless. I don't know how others do it. So I started up back in music.
It'd help I think if teens started developing more mature hobbies/traits as they progress through high school. Getting a part time job is but one of the ways to push that along. Joining a writing or art class another. Learning a vocation, etc, etc, etc.
Tom
First, karma. Take stock in what you have accomplished but don't gloat. Tables can turn quite quickly.
Second, if they're working in a factory, they're probably producing something society needs. Someone has to do those jobs (before we get our robot armies to do it for us).
I make fun of fast food workers because those jobs are useless. But a lot of "lower paying jobs" are quite useful and required, and for some it's not that they were forced into it. The high pace pressure of the work cubicle isn't for everyone.
And just because you make more money than someone doesn't mean you're "better" than them. I'm sure the higher quality escorts make quite a killing too. Are they better than you?
Point is, it's ok to mock the people who ended up [because they had no choice] in the McD's type jobs. They're useless and just contribute to obesity through selling shit bulk food. But not everyone working for minimum wage is a tool.
Tom
You know what's next ... the XO's in the real field [e.g. 3rd world nations] will start shipping with Windows instead of their OSS tools.
Yeah, MSFT won again!
I wonder how much it cost MSFT to buy them off....
Tom
No, in Amerika instead you get locked up for pissing off the corporations. DMCA anyone? Who's that russian dude who got locked up? etc...
:-)
I won't pretend that what's going on in China is "ok," but let's not pretend that we have a totally open society here. Well in the USA anyways. Canada still has some rights left
Tom
And if the kid started talking in tungues? Or started hurting themself or ?
We view abnormal behaviour as something to look into precisely because it's abnormal. If it a kid has a normally balanced (which includes sad and happy tones) range of emotions, and all of a sudden starts writing overly sadistic or dark material, chances are either something is up, or the kid is just trying to be different. But it's worth looking into.
Is it worth banning or making illegal? Hells no. But there is a difference between worth looking into and making criminal.
So in this case I think the school went way overboard, and in the grand scheme of things probably violated his rights.
Tom
I agree that we spend a lot of time in classes which is probably why kids put so much weight into what people do/say there. But I think if kids were reminded more about life after school they probably would level out and the prima donna cool cliques would get a clue.
:-) I've run into a few "cool" kids from my brothers stream [he's 2 years older] and they were working the drive-through window at a Burger King. it was nice knowing how far being a jerk in high school got them. Go Karma!
Or, you can remind the kids that the cool kids usually make the best burgers at McDonalds.
Tom
Be prepared to not think about HS the second they had you your diploma. :-)
To be honest my reaction was, holy shit, I'm in the real world now, ok, time to start college. The awe of being out of a system I was in for the first 14 years of my life didn't really last long.
Of course when I grad'ed from college I was equally taken aback. Was a nice feeling to know I finished both HS and college. Fortunately, only took me 3 months before I landed myself a developers job [crypto related] and then I sunk back into the "routine" life.
Tom