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Ah, the good old days. I remember in middle school when I'd set up my first webpage. I got my first and only in-school-suspension for going to that site during

by ejk314 11y ago

Ah, the good old days. I remember in middle school when I'd set up my first webpage. I got my first and only in-school-suspension for going to that site during class. Just going to the website. I just wanted to see if it was up, since I had never accessed it from anywhere but home. My teacher's explanation was "It could have been anything! You can't go to websites I don't approve of!" Now, this would normally have been something trivial I would have just shrugged off. But my computer partner also got in trouble for "not stopping me". What was he going to do, knock me out of my chair before I pressed enter? This kid was the stereotypical teacher's pet who always did his homework and was quiet in class, so I felt particularly bad for getting him in trouble. I even offered to serve two days of ISS instead of him getting in trouble - of course that request was denied. To this day, I still cannot understand that woman's reasoning. How is "you could have done something bad," grounds for punishment? What kind of person feels the need to punish a child who's showing enthusiasm for a subject they're teaching?

jimmaswell 11y ago
The kind of person who got that job simply to be able to enforce arbitrary rules on victims who can't fight back, to feel more powerful.
wyager 11y ago
>How is "you could have done something bad," grounds for punishment? Unfortunately, this kind of thing pops up in the real world a lot as well too. "You're riding a bicycle after drinking a few beers? You could have crashed into someone! DUI felony charge for you!"
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Driving under the influence is categorically different. You are a real danger to others and can maim or kill them. How is that even remotely comparable to navigating to a personal website in class?
  - lmartel 11y ago
    No matter how drunk you are, it's hard to maim someone else with a bicycle. You might knock someone over, but you're really only a danger to yourself.
    - jamespo 11y ago
      Or any other vehicle that swerves out of the way to avoid you and anything they hit
    - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
      As a pedestrian I disagree. I've actually seen cyclists knock someone down (it was a pure accident, no drinking involved as far as I know) and they were pretty badly injured (ambulance, etc). Last thing we need is cyclists drunk, they're dangerous enough when sober.
      - shopkins 11y ago
        I only have anecdotal evidence, but offer the heuristic that most "drunk enough to be dangerous" bicyclists can't ride fast enough to maim anyone -- and if they're riding down a hill, they're much more likely to be maimed. There's an inherent barrier to entry that makes drunk biking difficult enough to limit those who can actually do it. Like how often do you see someone drunk on a road bike with clips? How many drunk people bike on busy roads where they're more likely to get killed than the guy in an air conditioned hunk of metal on wheels? A reasonable person's analysis might conclude that it's better to say, "hey, let's bike to the bar" that's 4 miles away rather than "let's drive," because statistically you're as/more likely to fall down and injure yourself as if you'd walked, and will harm society much less than if you'd decided to pilot a machine that requires a fraction of the bodily coordination to get from A to B.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - Zancarius 11y ago
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  if you sit in a parked car with the engine on.. to lets say keep warm, its "intent to drive" even if you have no intent to do so. http://illinoiscaselaw.com/dui-sleeping-in-car-illinois/ http://illinoiscaselaw.com/dui-sleeping-in-car-illinois/ but you can find more. Whats unfortunate is people are TRYING to be responsible and still get in trouble.
loup-vaillant 11y ago
Looks like the unreasoned fear of the technically inept. And I do mean visceral fear, like a sense of imminent danger. I remember once in "technology" class where we were asked to compose a small document with Corel WordPerfect, with a clip art. Well, I mistook "graph" for clip art, and got a weird square where I should have had a pretty icon. And I didn't know how to remove the square (couldn't select it with the mouse, and I didn't think of trying backspace or undo at that time). So I asked for help. The instant the teacher saw my document, she said "Ahh, he crashed my computer!", then promptly closed the document without saving it. (15 minutes of work, dammit!) Simply put, she didn't have the slightest idea about what went wrong, and assumed the worst. I flipped the bozo bit at that point, and never trusted her again.
- deanCommie 11y ago
  A good story, I think a lot of us have at least one story like that of interactions with the technologically-inept. But I wanted to ask you about your use of the term "flipping the bozo bit". I've seen others use that as a derisive way towards people they think less of, but curiously the source of this expression is prescribing precisely NOT doing this behaviour: > McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Well, retrospectively, I'm not sure I should have flipped that bozo bit. I just remember that I did, at least as far as computers were concerned. (My bozo bits tend to have 2 entries: a person and a subject matter.) More generally, though, it was one of those unmistakable proofs that authority isn't always legitimate. This happened often enough that I now decide for myself who has authority over me.
userbinator 11y ago
How is "you could have done something bad," grounds for punishment? Well, most of society seems perfectly fine with owning and using restricted "jailed" devices, whose existence is justified by the same reasoning...

by ejk314 11y ago

jimmaswell 11y ago

The kind of person who got that job simply to be able to enforce arbitrary rules on victims who can't fight back, to feel more powerful.

wyager 11y ago

>How is "you could have done something bad," grounds for punishment? Unfortunately, this kind of thing pops up in the real world a lot as well too. "You're riding a bicycle after drinking a few beers? You could have crashed into someone! DUI felony charge for you!"

enraged_camel 11y ago
Driving under the influence is categorically different. You are a real danger to others and can maim or kill them. How is that even remotely comparable to navigating to a personal website in class?
- lmartel 11y ago
  No matter how drunk you are, it's hard to maim someone else with a bicycle. You might knock someone over, but you're really only a danger to yourself.
  - jamespo 11y ago
    Or any other vehicle that swerves out of the way to avoid you and anything they hit
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    As a pedestrian I disagree. I've actually seen cyclists knock someone down (it was a pure accident, no drinking involved as far as I know) and they were pretty badly injured (ambulance, etc). Last thing we need is cyclists drunk, they're dangerous enough when sober.
    - shopkins 11y ago
      I only have anecdotal evidence, but offer the heuristic that most "drunk enough to be dangerous" bicyclists can't ride fast enough to maim anyone -- and if they're riding down a hill, they're much more likely to be maimed. There's an inherent barrier to entry that makes drunk biking difficult enough to limit those who can actually do it. Like how often do you see someone drunk on a road bike with clips? How many drunk people bike on busy roads where they're more likely to get killed than the guy in an air conditioned hunk of metal on wheels? A reasonable person's analysis might conclude that it's better to say, "hey, let's bike to the bar" that's 4 miles away rather than "let's drive," because statistically you're as/more likely to fall down and injure yourself as if you'd walked, and will harm society much less than if you'd decided to pilot a machine that requires a fraction of the bodily coordination to get from A to B.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - Zancarius 11y ago
zer00eyz 11y ago
if you sit in a parked car with the engine on.. to lets say keep warm, its "intent to drive" even if you have no intent to do so. http://illinoiscaselaw.com/dui-sleeping-in-car-illinois/ http://illinoiscaselaw.com/dui-sleeping-in-car-illinois/ but you can find more. Whats unfortunate is people are TRYING to be responsible and still get in trouble.

loup-vaillant 11y ago

Looks like the unreasoned fear of the technically inept. And I do mean visceral fear, like a sense of imminent danger. I remember once in "technology" class where we were asked to compose a small document with Corel WordPerfect, with a clip art. Well, I mistook "graph" for clip art, and got a weird square where I should have had a pretty icon. And I didn't know how to remove the square (couldn't select it with the mouse, and I didn't think of trying backspace or undo at that time). So I asked for help. The instant the teacher saw my document, she said "Ahh, he crashed my computer!", then promptly closed the document without saving it. (15 minutes of work, dammit!) Simply put, she didn't have the slightest idea about what went wrong, and assumed the worst. I flipped the bozo bit at that point, and never trusted her again.

deanCommie 11y ago
A good story, I think a lot of us have at least one story like that of interactions with the technologically-inept. But I wanted to ask you about your use of the term "flipping the bozo bit". I've seen others use that as a derisive way towards people they think less of, but curiously the source of this expression is prescribing precisely NOT doing this behaviour: > McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_bit
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Well, retrospectively, I'm not sure I should have flipped that bozo bit. I just remember that I did, at least as far as computers were concerned. (My bozo bits tend to have 2 entries: a person and a subject matter.) More generally, though, it was one of those unmistakable proofs that authority isn't always legitimate. This happened often enough that I now decide for myself who has authority over me.

userbinator 11y ago

How is "you could have done something bad," grounds for punishment? Well, most of society seems perfectly fine with owning and using restricted "jailed" devices, whose existence is justified by the same reasoning...