I only got two paragraphs into the thing, and stopped reading.
Apple's UNIX (who knows what it'll be called by then) will overtake commercial Linux in rate of revenue growth by the end of 2007.
From 1 to 10 is a 1,000% increase - who freaking cares?
By mid-2008, Apple's sales of systems with factory-installed Apple UNIX will exceed the total combined sales of x86 systems factory-shipped with commercial Linux.
Ummmmm...... who the hell buys computers with Linux already installed? Don't 99.9999999% of people install it themselves? Hell - it's probably easier to find a factory installed windows 200
I think the guy's talking out of his arse - I don't see anything here to support ANY claims whatsoever.
Remember, folks, racism is A-OK if it's trying to prevent terrorism or 419 scams.
It's not racism, it's idiocy
From FTA: Western Union routinely delays or blocks transfers between customers whose names even PARTIALLY MATCH names on the Treasury list. The money is usually released once suspects show identity documents that prove they are not on the list, the executive said.
Let's see how racist it's considered when somebody named "Bob" gets added to the terrorist list.
What freaking bloody idiot decided to to PARTIAL matches? geeze......
Actually, the law agrees with me, if you can call the police, the law.
No, actually, you can't call the police the law - by any stretch of the imagination.
KILL GORSHKOV!
Are you feeling threatened?
No, actually, I'm not.
And if I called the police on you, they wouldn't have you charged..... kinda like what happened, isn't it?
And if slashdot has a rule that said "Thou shalt not threaten your fellow geeks", CowBoyNeal would be on his way now to ban your ass
Oh wait - isn't THAT kinda what happened, too?
Well to be fair... The end of the world almost happened because a single bullet shot a man who started a war which lead to an even bigger war 20 years later and then which lead to atomic bombs which almost caused the end of the world a few times. (the last being in 1984.
Oh, my god..... you have GOT to be kidding, right? RIGHT? You ARE kidding, aren't you?
Why don't you just trace it all the way back to the REAL beginning and blame it on Adam and Eve? Or God for makeing them in the first place?
but now the destination of choice for all those who can't be paranoid enough about Area 51, little green men, or the conspiracy-de-jour bent on the overthrow of every legitimate government in the world.
They will grow and prosper because there are too many people out there who are totally, absolutly and utterly incapable of looking at a crack in a sidewalk without seeing a slippery slope leading straight to hell.
Yes. People are judged people based on what they have done, not what they might do in the future. Punishing someone because you think they might do something bad is the method of malicious tyrants like Stalin, Hitler and Mao. It is completely unjust.
Conspiracy laws are based on what people MIGHT do
Seatbelt/Helmet/DUI laws are based on what somebody MIGHT do (get in an accident, kill somebody)
Anti-Stalking laws are based on what somebody MIGHT do
You're wrong. Not only do we judge people on what they MIGHT do all the time, it's required as part of the basis for a civil society.
It is not, however, reasonable to react by suspending the kid - it did not remove the threat, quite on the contrary, it made whatever resentment there might be intensify. It would have been reasonable to, say, talk with the kid and determine if he's an actual threat.
RTFA. The kid was not suspended to "remove a threat". He was suspended for breaking a rule in the student handbook, which he did when he threatened the teacher.
Furthermore, he didn't threaten his teacher - he didn't say "I'll kill him", he said "I hate him", and not to his face either, but to his (the kids) friends
He said "Kill $name". In conjunction with the graphic, it was a very clear threat. I thought it was obvious, the judge thought it was obvious, the sheriff thought it was obvious, the school thought it was obvious, and the teacher thought it was obvious. And you don't have ot say something to somebody's face for a threat to be a threat.
The kid fucked up. Kids do that, that's why they are under their parents power. What excuse does the school, presumably lead by adults, have for their actions and lack of common sense ?
The school didn't need an "excuse" - the kid broke a rule in the student handbook, and was punished accordingly. You may think the school's actions were non-sensical.... but the school disagrees with you, the courts disagree with you, I disagree with you, and so do many of the posters here. I think you could argue whether or not the school over-reacted, but I *don't* think you can really argue about whether their actions were "common-sensical" or not.
After all, a little perspective and common sense would show that a 15-year old kid trash talking to his friends isn't bloody likely to be a threat, and even if he was, the schools reaction would make the threat worse, not lesser.
You've obviously missed not only the whole point of my posting, the whole point of the story, and the whole point of the court case.
The suspension has nothing to do with how credible the threat was - THAT DOESN"T MATTER.
The only thing that matters - the only reason why the kid was suspended, and the only reason the court upheld the suspension, was that MAKING THE THREAT IS/WAS PUNISHABLE. Credibility isn't a factor, either in law, or in the application of the rule in the student handbook that was broken.
Right, but I'm saying that I do not think that such an IM icon constitutes a threat
And I'm left wondering wtf does an IM icon have to do with it, and how it makes it NOT a threat. it's the MESSAGE that constitutes the threat, not the medium it's transmitted in.
The concept of the "reasonable man" goes all through British common law, which you inherited in the USA.
Basically, the idea is this... in the absence of black-letter law or precedent, when trying to interpret actions or motives of an individual, the judge would ask himself, "What would a reasonable man do?"
Look, my point is that the school and the teacher acted without actually investigating the situation. How difficult is it to request the kid be psychologically evaluated before considering him a threat. The "one size fits all" approach to handling situations like this probably creates more problems than they actually solve.
OK - now you have me confused.
Are you saying that only stable, or only UNstable kids can threaten teachers and be held accountable for it?
The kid threatned a teacher, he got suspended for it. He needs to suck it up and deal.
Freedom of speech SHOULD be absolute (along with the rest of the bill of rights).
That statement is preposterous on it's face.
Your right to swing your arm freely SHOULD end at the tip of my nose.
All rights have limists, and they should have, because they WILL conflict with rights of other people. The only question is where those limits should be - how the balance is achieved.
Let's not forget, people - with rights, comes responsibility. I wish the hell some of the people in here would try to remember that occasionally.
Your death camp teachers were mutants, and the stories were *obviously* fiction.
Now - if in those stories you had come up with weird and imaginative ways to off Mrs. Futzwanger, your music teacher....... do you still think your mother would have found things quite so amusing?
The law is meant to include a healthy portion of common sense. Instead of common sense, however, schools use "zero tolerance". Zero tolerance is a crap policy for chickenshit bureaucrats afraid of the slightest liability.
This is one of the most common-sence court decisions I've come across here.
Again - as I stated previously.... THe kid threated a teacher. School found out. School suspends the stupid little twerp. The court says the school isn't being unreasonable.
THE LITTLE TWERP F..KED UP, AND NOW HE'S WEARING IT. How is this a bad thing?
but from what I've heard there were plenty of warning signs about those guys.
There are *always* warning signs.... in retrospect.
Not speaking about Columbine specifically, but what hindsight gives you is the ability to re-interpret past events in the light of subsequent events.... so something that's relativly normal in the average teenager takes on a whole new significance, wether it deserves it or not.
I played D&D as a kid - listened to Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, etc - I was a loner, and kept to myself a lot - but it really wasn't a warning sign that I was ready to go postal on anybody's ass.
Saying "based on this individual kid's history, by talking to him as well as his parents and peers, and psychological evaluation by a professional (all reasonable steps taken when an adult does this), he should be suspended because the school board is convinced that he will definitely attempt to kill his teacher if he remains here" is far more acceptable.
So what you are saying is that everybody gets a free pass untill they've done something so that they HAVE a history.
It was *reasonable* for the teacher to have been worried about his safety, given what's been happening in schools the last few years.
It was *reasonable* for the school to be worried about the threat against a staff member.
And it was VERY reaonsable for the school to suspend him for a term to teach him that threatening his teachers is NOT acceptable.
I wish the hell everybody here would stop seeing every bloody court case in the world as part of some plot by some conspiracy to trample the rights of the population under the heel of (your favorite conspiracy group here).
Let's have some perspective, folks. The kid fucked up - BIG time. He threatened a teacher, and got turfed from school for it. Am I the only one here who thinks this is common sense?
If the text of the icon said something about the president instead of "Kill Mr. VanderMolen", I think the Secret Service would consider it a threat until it was investigated
It's a threat anyway - all the investigation will do is determine if it's serious or credible.
How about that it's an icon, as opposed to say a note, or graffiti, or some other type of message?
To paraphrase a well-known Canuck... "It ain't the medium, it's the message"
It doesnt' matter if it's an icon, sky writing, smoke signals, or carved into the belly of the teacher's pet cat. A threat is a threat is a threat - I agree with the judge that it being an icon is absolutly immaterial.
Slashdot Mirror
I only got two paragraphs into the thing, and stopped reading. Apple's UNIX (who knows what it'll be called by then) will overtake commercial Linux in rate of revenue growth by the end of 2007. From 1 to 10 is a 1,000% increase - who freaking cares? By mid-2008, Apple's sales of systems with factory-installed Apple UNIX will exceed the total combined sales of x86 systems factory-shipped with commercial Linux. Ummmmm ...... who the hell buys computers with Linux already installed? Don't 99.9999999% of people install it themselves? Hell - it's probably easier to find a factory installed windows 200
I think the guy's talking out of his arse - I don't see anything here to support ANY claims whatsoever.
Remember, folks, racism is A-OK if it's trying to prevent terrorism or 419 scams.
It's not racism, it's idiocy
From FTA:
Western Union routinely delays or blocks transfers between customers whose names even PARTIALLY MATCH names on the Treasury list. The money is usually released once suspects show identity documents that prove they are not on the list, the executive said.
Let's see how racist it's considered when somebody named "Bob" gets added to the terrorist list.
What freaking bloody idiot decided to to PARTIAL matches? geeze......
Actually, the law agrees with me, if you can call the police, the law.
..... kinda like what happened, isn't it?
No, actually, you can't call the police the law - by any stretch of the imagination.
KILL GORSHKOV! Are you feeling threatened?
No, actually, I'm not. And if I called the police on you, they wouldn't have you charged
And if slashdot has a rule that said "Thou shalt not threaten your fellow geeks", CowBoyNeal would be on his way now to ban your ass
Oh wait - isn't THAT kinda what happened, too?
Are you feeling silly?
You tell your version, and I'll tell mine. geeze, people - get a life.
Never trust any creature that bleeds once a month and refuses to die .......
Well to be fair... The end of the world almost happened because a single bullet shot a man who started a war which lead to an even bigger war 20 years later and then which lead to atomic bombs which almost caused the end of the world a few times. (the last being in 1984. Oh, my god ..... you have GOT to be kidding, right? RIGHT? You ARE kidding, aren't you?
Why don't you just trace it all the way back to the REAL beginning and blame it on Adam and Eve? Or God for makeing them in the first place?
Geeze
D'oh!
In Soviet Russia, the car drives you
but now the destination of choice for all those who can't be paranoid enough about Area 51, little green men, or the conspiracy-de-jour bent on the overthrow of every legitimate government in the world. They will grow and prosper because there are too many people out there who are totally, absolutly and utterly incapable of looking at a crack in a sidewalk without seeing a slippery slope leading straight to hell.
Yes. People are judged people based on what they have done, not what they might do in the future. Punishing someone because you think they might do something bad is the method of malicious tyrants like Stalin, Hitler and Mao. It is completely unjust.
.... but the school disagrees with you, the courts disagree with you, I disagree with you, and so do many of the posters here. I think you could argue whether or not the school over-reacted, but I *don't* think you can really argue about whether their actions were "common-sensical" or not.
Conspiracy laws are based on what people MIGHT do
Seatbelt/Helmet/DUI laws are based on what somebody MIGHT do (get in an accident, kill somebody)
Anti-Stalking laws are based on what somebody MIGHT do
You're wrong. Not only do we judge people on what they MIGHT do all the time, it's required as part of the basis for a civil society.
It is not, however, reasonable to react by suspending the kid - it did not remove the threat, quite on the contrary, it made whatever resentment there might be intensify. It would have been reasonable to, say, talk with the kid and determine if he's an actual threat.
RTFA. The kid was not suspended to "remove a threat". He was suspended for breaking a rule in the student handbook, which he did when he threatened the teacher.
Furthermore, he didn't threaten his teacher - he didn't say "I'll kill him", he said "I hate him", and not to his face either, but to his (the kids) friends
He said "Kill $name". In conjunction with the graphic, it was a very clear threat. I thought it was obvious, the judge thought it was obvious, the sheriff thought it was obvious, the school thought it was obvious, and the teacher thought it was obvious. And you don't have ot say something to somebody's face for a threat to be a threat.
The kid fucked up. Kids do that, that's why they are under their parents power. What excuse does the school, presumably lead by adults, have for their actions and lack of common sense ?
The school didn't need an "excuse" - the kid broke a rule in the student handbook, and was punished accordingly. You may think the school's actions were non-sensical
After all, a little perspective and common sense would show that a 15-year old kid trash talking to his friends isn't bloody likely to be a threat, and even if he was, the schools reaction would make the threat worse, not lesser.
You've obviously missed not only the whole point of my posting, the whole point of the story, and the whole point of the court case.
The suspension has nothing to do with how credible the threat was - THAT DOESN"T MATTER.
The only thing that matters - the only reason why the kid was suspended, and the only reason the court upheld the suspension, was that MAKING THE THREAT IS/WAS PUNISHABLE. Credibility isn't a factor, either in law, or in the application of the rule in the student handbook that was broken.
Well, the law AND the judge disagree with you. So do I.
Right, but I'm saying that I do not think that such an IM icon constitutes a threat
And I'm left wondering wtf does an IM icon have to do with it, and how it makes it NOT a threat. it's the MESSAGE that constitutes the threat, not the medium it's transmitted in.
The concept of the "reasonable man" goes all through British common law, which you inherited in the USA.
... in the absence of black-letter law or precedent, when trying to interpret actions or motives of an individual, the judge would ask himself, "What would a reasonable man do?"
Basically, the idea is this
He did not threaten the teacher.
The judge and all parties agreed that there was, in fact, a threat made.
You can say "I'm going to kill Mr Slippery!" if the circumstances do not induce a reasonable person to believe you're going to try;
Ok - again, maybe it's just me, isn't that basically what the judge said - that it WAS reasonable for the teacher to consider it a valid threat?
Look, my point is that the school and the teacher acted without actually investigating the situation. How difficult is it to request the kid be psychologically evaluated before considering him a threat. The "one size fits all" approach to handling situations like this probably creates more problems than they actually solve.
OK - now you have me confused.
Are you saying that only stable, or only UNstable kids can threaten teachers and be held accountable for it?
The kid threatned a teacher, he got suspended for it. He needs to suck it up and deal.
Freedom of speech SHOULD be absolute (along with the rest of the bill of rights).
That statement is preposterous on it's face.
Your right to swing your arm freely SHOULD end at the tip of my nose.
All rights have limists, and they should have, because they WILL conflict with rights of other people. The only question is where those limits should be - how the balance is achieved.
Let's not forget, people - with rights, comes responsibility. I wish the hell some of the people in here would try to remember that occasionally.
you miss one very important point.
....... do you still think your mother would have found things quite so amusing?
Your death camp teachers were mutants, and the stories were *obviously* fiction.
Now - if in those stories you had come up with weird and imaginative ways to off Mrs. Futzwanger, your music teacher
The law is meant to include a healthy portion of common sense. Instead of common sense, however, schools use "zero tolerance". Zero tolerance is a crap policy for chickenshit bureaucrats afraid of the slightest liability.
.... THe kid threated a teacher. School found out. School suspends the stupid little twerp. The court says the school isn't being unreasonable.
This is one of the most common-sence court decisions I've come across here.
Again - as I stated previously
THE LITTLE TWERP F..KED UP, AND NOW HE'S WEARING IT. How is this a bad thing?
geeze
This is not typically a characteristic of "clear" messages
There was no disagreement about the clarity of the message, or if it was a threat or not. The disagreement was about the SERIOUSNESS of the threat.
The police didn't think it was serious enough to warrant prosecution - so they didn't.
The school DID think it was serious enough a violation of their code of conduct that they thought it WAS worth disiplining - so they did.
All the court did was say that the school was reasonable in what it did, and had reasonable grounds for coming to that conclusion.
but from what I've heard there were plenty of warning signs about those guys.
.... in retrospect.
.... so something that's relativly normal in the average teenager takes on a whole new significance, wether it deserves it or not.
There are *always* warning signs
Not speaking about Columbine specifically, but what hindsight gives you is the ability to re-interpret past events in the light of subsequent events
I played D&D as a kid - listened to Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, etc - I was a loner, and kept to myself a lot - but it really wasn't a warning sign that I was ready to go postal on anybody's ass.
If we criminalize planning to commit a crime, the next step will be thinking about a crime
I've got news for you. It is, and has been, for a very, VERY long time, illegal to plan on committing a crime. It's called conspiracy.
Saying "based on this individual kid's history, by talking to him as well as his parents and peers, and psychological evaluation by a professional (all reasonable steps taken when an adult does this), he should be suspended because the school board is convinced that he will definitely attempt to kill his teacher if he remains here" is far more acceptable.
So what you are saying is that everybody gets a free pass untill they've done something so that they HAVE a history.
It was *reasonable* for the teacher to have been worried about his safety, given what's been happening in schools the last few years.
It was *reasonable* for the school to be worried about the threat against a staff member.
And it was VERY reaonsable for the school to suspend him for a term to teach him that threatening his teachers is NOT acceptable.
I wish the hell everybody here would stop seeing every bloody court case in the world as part of some plot by some conspiracy to trample the rights of the population under the heel of (your favorite conspiracy group here).
Let's have some perspective, folks. The kid fucked up - BIG time. He threatened a teacher, and got turfed from school for it. Am I the only one here who thinks this is common sense?
If the text of the icon said something about the president instead of "Kill Mr. VanderMolen", I think the Secret Service would consider it a threat until it was investigated
It's a threat anyway - all the investigation will do is determine if it's serious or credible.
How about that it's an icon, as opposed to say a note, or graffiti, or some other type of message? To paraphrase a well-known Canuck ... "It ain't the medium, it's the message"
It doesnt' matter if it's an icon, sky writing, smoke signals, or carved into the belly of the teacher's pet cat. A threat is a threat is a threat - I agree with the judge that it being an icon is absolutly immaterial.