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Sophomore Uses List Context; Cops Interrogate
from the context-is-everything dept.
These two 15-year-old friends are well-spoken; self-described geeks, they choose their words deliberately, with a minimum of "um." I'm using their initials instead of names because they don't want more trouble than they're already in. Their school has rules against disparaging its reputation, and they have learned their lesson from last week -- so you won't learn from me who they are, or which school it is they go to.
Let's get the code out of the way here, as a public service to students everywhere thinking about putting up a website of their own. Every perl expression has a context: scalar or list. (And for the rabid purists among you, who will flame me if I don't mention these, the other possible contexts are boolean, void, and interpolative.)
Many operators behave differently depending on context: in this case, the backtick. The statement:
my($f) = `fortune`;
...puts the backtick operator in list context, so it returns a list, where each element is one line from the program's output.
S. wants to be a developer when he graduates; he certainly has the most important thing down, which is to always be exploring and learning new things. In the process of converting his website from PHP to perl for no especially good reason, he wrote the above line.
If he had written the code correctly:
my $f = `fortune`;
...the backtick operator would have been in scalar context,
assigned its complete result to $f for printing, and you
wouldn't be reading this sad story.
Last week, the administrators at his school just happened to take a
look at his webpage when fortune pulled up this quote:
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
Because only the first line about the shotgun was stored in
$f and shown on the webpage, it wasn't immediately
obvious that this was a quote.
Visions of kids with shotguns in Adidas bags must have gone through someone's head. The school went into a sort of a crisis mode. Later they would mention that this wouldn't have been an issue if there hadn't been school shootings elsewhere in the country just a week prior.
The sophomores were called down to the office separately for
questioning, one at a time, each of them without being told the other
had been there. Each of them separately explained that
fortune is a unix program that returns random quotations,
and each of them told me that the administrators scoffed. "You're
saying all these big companies that use unix, like Sun, have this
fortune program?"
I assume the staff knew better and was just trying to find holes in
the kids' stories, because apparently they had reloaded the page
dozens of times and, of course, had gotten a new quote each time.
After being released, G. got in touch with their Advanced Placement
Computer Science teacher, who is, it sounds like, one of the few
authority figures working for the Light Side of the Force. Her
explanation of fortune was, finally, believed.
But the police had been called anyway, just to be on the safe side.
The suspension portion of the kids' punishment, carried out last Thursday and Friday, was actually over a separate website, one whose domain name contained the school's name and the Fword. This is a word, by the way, which G. obviously typed in to register the domain but which he was too polite to use over the phone. By the time we hung up, he had me embarrassed for saying it.
The site was very private, all things considered. He and S. had only told a few friends. And they'd done their homework, going over the referer logs to see who knew about it, and making sure the search engines didn't index it. They even banned the school's proxy by IP. As G.'s father later said, "it was the analogue of students in middle school passing a note back and forth. It was never meant to be in the public eye."
But it was disparaging of the school and it was, after all, a publicly available website. That's against the rules. The two shared joint responsibility, so they were both suspended.
Personally, I think a school's job is to teach not just the three R's, but also participation as a citizen in our Republic. That may be more important. For a school to teach freedom as a dry document while crushing student dissent is a waste.
It's legal, of course. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private schools. They can make whatever rules they want. Rules like theirs are great for raising robots. But anyone who's going to make a difference in this world is going to have to be comfortable with laughing at authority.
Unfortunately, the message the administration is sending gets heard. When I asked G. what he thought about being suspended for venting about his school, he told me he just didn't want to fight it. He said he might have felt differently a year ago, but now, "I don't know if it's from brainwashing or just not wanting to get expelled, but ... I just want it to be over." I can't blame him.
And S. said he understood the school's point of view. "People who were thinking about attending [his school] might see the site and think that they might not want to attend. ... I guess they do have reason for concern, because what if it shows up on a search engine."
S.'s family moved from Russia to the United States when he was four. His father painted for me an interesting picture of the interrogation by the police officers who were called to the school. Keep in mind that S. had already been told by his school that he fit the profile of a potential killer.
The police questioned them for a couple of hours. The "killer" profile was brought up again. Questions were raised about S.'s psychological state, whether he had made threats before, and whether the family had guns in the house.
His father repeated to me twice, as if he couldn't quite believe the whole thing had actually happened, that the police gave him a case number and are keeping the report on file. "I grew up in an environment," he told me, "where they are labeling people and where there is a witch hunt." He brought up McCarthyism. Eleven years in the States had led him to believe that this kind of thing doesn't happen here, or at least not anymore. I wish he were right.
The moral of the story is to be careful when passing notes to your friends. And believe the Camel when it says -- third edition, page 69 -- "You will be miserable until you learn the difference between scalar and list context."
Lawyer: the historical context (Score:3)
As near as I can tell, our federal government is the only one in world history for which distrust of government is a central founding principle (though the state governments of some of the western and midwestern states may qualify as well). By design, individuals are left to their own affairs (though this has weakened to a distressing degree), and government is hamstrong at every possible turn. People decry "gridlock" from our two-chambered legislature and executive veto, but this is a feature, not a bug. It was *designed* to work that way.
The government has massive resources; the individual little. So that the individual has a fighting chance when faced with the aweseome power of the state, the playing field is tipped in his favor.
Private interactions are another matter. To *not* allow the school to require its enrollees to abide by these policies would be a *limitation* of the freedom of individuals to contract, and is thus repugnant to the principles of our system (which we got from you, and stem in turn from the tribes the romans were never able to quite control).
See, it's really all about our protecting "The Rights of Englishmen", which is all we wre really after in the 18th century, anyway
hawk, esq.
Re:Private school (Score:3)
Vouchers do offer choices for education, but only to a subset of the population. Nearly every implementation of vouchers that I read about would give, no questions asked, about $2500/yr per student. Most private schools, however, are asking for at least $5000/yr, if not up to $10,000/yr for tuition. Those that can afford this will do so, but for struggling families not-necessary-poverty-but-only-just-above-it, that's very much out of the question, and they're stuck with the public school allocated to them by districting lines. Thus, they have no choice. Vouchers only give choices to the rich. That $2500/yr is better spent on a whole improving all public schools particularly those in inner cities, and paying better salaries for teachers, than to allow a few more select few students the choice of an education.
Re:Private school (Score:3)
So is your complaint that vouchers don't give enough?
I don't think "only the rich" would find this useful. When I was growing up we middle class, and my parents sent my sister to a private school (possably as a result of seeing how screwed up the public school I went to was). My patents managed to do this pretty much by not buying a new car from 1979 through the early 1990s (and only two or three used ones, all under about $1000).
I expect even if vouchers are "half off" it will at least help the middle class, and maybe the upper lower class. Not just the rich.
Vouchers don't do squat for the rich. The rich are, after all, rich. If they want to send thsir kids to private school, they allready do. If they want to give their kids cars that cost more then my whole family made in a year, they do. Vouchers help the middle class, the not-rich, yet not-poor.
Re:When will people learn? (Score:3)
Private entities are gennerally less dangerous because you have choices. If these folks can pay for one privte school, they can probbably pay for a diffrent one. If they are sending their children to a public school they are probbably screwed if they need to send them elsewhere.
Ok, just remember you are part of the private sector. If I'm given the right to make a contract with the school to not mock them, and then mock them anyway, I'll have the right to break contracts with you. Perhapse I'll agree to buy your car, and then once I get it forget about the part where I actually have to pay you.
We allready have tons of laws for the private sector. Maybe too many, maybe too few. Mostly too many. Look at all the slashdot headlines, far more complain about bad stupid unjust laws then the lack of good just needed ones.
When will people learn? (Score:3)
It is time for the americans to extend their much beloved constitution to the private sector!!!!
--
Re:Confused from the UK (Score:3)
The constitution is a document that explains the powers of the State in relation to the people, and the bill of rights explicitly spells out some of the rights that the people reserve from the State.
The constitution only limits what the government may do
Of course, we amended the constitution so that now it DOES apply to the individual states, but it does not apply to private companies or individuals. The reason most folks get confused is because frequently private groups that accept federal funding (for example schools that offer government education loans) suddenly are considered to be under the authority of the constitution, because using tax dollars makes them quasi-governmental. So you DO hear all the time about schools especially that get into trouble with citizen's rights, but its because they have CHOSEN to accept that responsibility in exchange for being able to offer government programs.
Many private schools (particularly religious or very conservative schools) refuse federal funding for exactly this reason. It sounds like this school doesn't accept government money, and thus has no responsibility to respect the students' freedom of speech.
---------------------------------------------
Why this doesn't make sense (Score:3)
- Randall did what an awfull lot of us did (I certainly did). He circumvented a client's security (while still working for them) in order to hand them proof that they needed to fix the problem.
- Beyond the financial burdon that this has placed on him (which, I understand to be astronomical), this case as resulted in a great deal of lost work and the requirement that he tell any prospective employer about the incident.
- Intel was quite happy with Randall's work, and he NEVER did ANYTHING to harm the company or that resulted in a loss of money.
So, do I think Intel should have swatted him? Yes. Do I think that they should have fired him (terminated his contract)? Maybe. I wouldn't, but I'm a nice guy.But, final analysis, was it worth nearly ruining the man's life over? What, exactly are whe exacting punishment FOR? A stupid mistake?
No, this is clearly a case where there were an awful lot of people who wanted to "set an example", and while this is not as extreme a case as some others, Randall was wronged by the system.
Re:Not the first bad Perl usage to bring the cops (Score:3)
In the old days, the word "crime" was reserved for actions such as murder, armed robbery, high treason, etc. Nowadays, putting an extra pair of parenthesis around a variable apparently qualifies too...
Private vs. public (Score:3)
I tend to agree with you. I was enrolled in a private school from kindergarten to 4th grade, and the culture shock when I went to public school in 5th grade was insane. In private school, at least back in my day, if you misbehaved you went to the principal's office and got the paddle. Imagine that: between swats, the kid's yelling "I promise I'll *ow* never forget the *ow* difference between list and *OW* scalar again!"
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
Re:Private school (Score:3)
I beg to differ. Just because upper-crust schools now charge $10,000/yr for tuition does not mean that a quality education needs to cost that much. The current schools are charging what the current (elite) market will bear. Vouchers will change that.
Re:Confused from the UK (Score:3)
Yes. The constitution only applies to the government.
For example, suppose your constitution has a clause which says that the government can't establish a state religion. That means that a government or government-funded organisation (e.g. a public school) can't say that members of some religion are allowed to be on staff. However this doesn't apply to non-government organisations (e.g. a church may impose a rule that you must be a member of this church to be an office holder).
Now of course it may not prohibit the government from passing laws prohibiting this kind of "discrimination" in other organisations, but there might be other problems there. Imagine the fuss that the Roman Catholic Church would kick up if a court decided that they had to allow women to be priests due to anti-discrimination laws...
There is a good reason for this. Democratic government is meant to be by and for "the people". Government has a monopoly on some things, so they need the restraint. On the other hand, you have a choice as to which private school you send your kids to (if you choose a private school), so they don't need the restraint so much.
IMO, it's both good and bad. The bad part is that when private organisations overstep the mark there's often no legal recourse. (You can't legislate professionalism.) The good part is that negative publicity can be a much more powerful tool than the legal system, especially in a non-monopoly environment where people can and do vote with their money. Unfortunately, where the guilty party is a school, this can backfire, as lots of parents side with the school, thinking they're doing a good job with "discipline", when they're actually abusing their powers.
You know, teenagers are rebellious enough without giving them something actually legitimate to rebel against. You'd think the school would know that.
Re:Confused from the UK (Score:3)
"Shut the fuck up or get the hell out of my house."
This is a restriction on your speach, but it is not regulated by the US constitution since it is a transaction between private individuals and we are free to conduct our affairs in pretty much anyway that we choose. This is very different from having a federal judge say:
"You may speak no more of these matters or we will have you deported."
Also bear in mind that though you are free to say pretty much anything you want in the United States others may still hold you accountable for what you say. If you speak too frequently about hot grits in your pants, I'm free to tell you to piss off and ignore you. If you tell lies about me that damage my reputation or career, I'm free to sue you. If you say things that are threatening in nature, I'm free to have you held criminaly accountable for them.
The thing to remember is that just because your speach is free doesn't mean that it is consequence free.
These kids kind of forgot about that. Pretty much, it's never a good idea to say bad things about your boss (school administration in this case) in a public place. The internet is a public place. Therefore you shouldn't say bad things on the net about people who are in a position to make your real life miserable. It's too bad that these kids had to learn that lesson in a really hard way, but it's one that we all have to learn sooner or later.
_____________
Re:Confused from the UK (Score:3)
How exactly can an individual censor you? If your friend does not want you to say something to a third party, you can always say it and suffer the consequences to your frienship, possibly including it's termination. You can also choose to terminate the friendship yourself.
The same applies to a company -- if you disagree with your boss you can shoot your mouth off and suffer the consequences, or you can quit and say what you want. Now, with the legal resources available to the company, this relationship can be subject to abuse. UCITA, DMCA and the DeCSS case come to mind, where the Government is using force on behalf of the company, so yes I think these are violations of the First Amendment.
The fact there are *consequences* of your speaking up does not mean you are being censored. If I call all my neighbors Assholes, the fact they won't speak to me or loan me stuff or babysit my kids doesn't mean I'm being censored. Because Government can drag you away or kill you, it requires special restrictions. Without getting into the whole "social contract" thing, freedom does not mean freedom from consequence.
Leaving aside that the two kids in the story are minors, they (via their parents) always have the option of going to a different (public or private) school. Government is the relationship you can never terminate, short of leaving for another part of the world (and assuming they'll let you leave).
Re:When will people learn? (Score:3)
When will people learn that the STATE is NOT the worse thing out there? Private entities are far more dangerous to people
Bzzzt! Wrong answer! Thank you for playing!
When private entities do you harm, you may appeal to a higher power, namely the state, in the form of judicial, legislative or regulatory actions. If the state has harmed you, there is no higher power to appeal to, at least in the secular sense :-). And the state is not nearly as concerned with things like financial hardship that can be devastating to companies and individuals. Further, the state is specifically exempt from many laws under which one could sue a private entity. And finally the big clincher, the state has lots of guns and many more completely legal reasons to shoot you than you have rights to shoot back. It is still illegal for corporations to shoot you. At least, so far it is, anyway.
In this particular case, the kids can just go to school elsewhere or even home school. If this is a very expensive private school, the parents may have enough money for private tutors. Kids in public funded schools often do not have so many options. So, no this is not worse than the state (public schools) doing the same thing. It still sucks, though.
Re:I have a question (Score:3)
Confused from the UK (Score:3)
It's legal, of course. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private schools. They can make whatever rules they want.
Does this mean that sections of your constitution don't apply to private schools? How so, I thought the constitution was all-powerful (or am I misunderstanding this?)
Re:Not the first bad Perl usage to bring the cops (Score:3)
Sure, it does document the legal case, but is there a way to actually find what you did ?
Cheers,
--fred
Re:To summarize.. (Score:3)
It seems easy enough to explain it to me:
Private school (Score:3)
This story is an example of why vouchers are a bad idea. Private schools can do whatever they heck they want, and are not bound by all of those things that public schools are. They don't have to give their students freedom of speech, they can force them to participate in prayer, and generally be bigoted jerks if they want. There is no recourse except to find another school. What a wonderful way to ostracize people from the community.
I think that even though this is a story in general about persecution in schools of "geeks", I think that the fact that it was a private school aggrivated this situation.
And yes, I can give an example
When I was in high school, years ago, the one of the junior librarians at the school allowed me to use their computers to snoop around the campus network to satiate my curiosity. See, what they had was an old school cataloguing system written in LISP (believe it or not) and if you went to load up a catalog (which were limited to filename lengths of 3 characters, you could load a different catalog. Anyways, you could imagine what happened if a person typed 'CON'. :) (DOS System) So when I found this, I asked if I could look around a little bit and see how the system worked... I did so for a few weeks during lunch and the ever ubiquitous 'snack' period, and it was pretty cool. Until one of the computer's power supplies died, and guess who they blamed. I have NO DOUBT that if I was at a private school, I would have been screwed. Why? The dean wanted me gone. She was convinced of my guilt and thought I was just a little shit. The only thing that saved me was her accountability to the law. She had no proof of wrongdoing, and because of that, it was later discovered by the administrators with more than one brain cell, that it was likely not my fault. Still, the younger librarian was probably chastized and I never really went in there very much anymore.
Believe it or not, the law and public schools are actually designed to protect people like us, when it comes down to the wire.
not a public website? (Score:3)
So what your saying... (Score:3)
Guilty by "e-sanity" (Score:3)
One of the toughest things to do right about now is mention words like "hurt, kill, weapon, etc.," in any school system in the United States and we all know why.
Regardless if the student was only posting information for a quote for his webpage it doesn't surprise me he was paid a visit by authorities, sure we can rant on about a scalar value of Perl or the right of free speech, but the authorities are only doing their job.
One thing I will note though is, authorities rarely take the time to dive deep into investigation when it comes to computer related crimes, as they often don't understand the full spectrum of it all (computing). Things are only going to get worse.
Trying to fight a computer based crime altogether is a nightmare in itself, as attempting to find a jury to prove your innocence while explaining what TCP/IP is, firewalls, etc., will confuse and bore the crap out of any jury sitting there, your 99% likely to lose, since as stated many won't understand whats going on, many will be bored, and many will fall for anything a DA tells them, especially if you have some circumstantial material against you.
Its a shame that things are this way, but thats the way the cookie crumbles, and theres only so much you can do to protect your rights online.
Our IRC server is up [antioffline.com]
Yes, incredibly bad journalism (Score:4)
There are two independent incidents. One broke the contract with the school and the code of conduct, and resuted in suspension. The second was a webpage that put up a line about hiding a shotgun with no suggestion that it was a quotation from a book and--Horror of Horrors!--the police looked into it!
Just what are we supposed to do when we see something like that? Ignore it entirely unless they've shot someone already? The police looked into it, and found no crime. What more can you ask?
hawk
Re:not a public website? (Score:4)
The case above has many parallels, but alas, it's most likely a different jurisdiction, so if it was followed through legally , it would require just the same burdon of proof.
Re:Private school (Score:4)
Oh dear God, we would be allowed to find a school with policies we agree with! This dredful choice must be stomped out! Free us from the need to use our minds, oh I beg of you!
Why is choice in school bad while choice in OS, CPU, and car are all wonderful? Why is it a bad thing to be allowd to find a school that teaches the way you want?
Why? What makes you think your parents would have found a private school with a dean that crappy? Or that switching from one private school with a crappy dean to another would have been "screwed" rather then leaving one sucky place for a less sucky place?
They might have been designed to do it, but judging from the Hellmouth stories, they arn't doing such a hot job of it. Why not give something else a chance?
Parenting, life lessons, and voting with your feet (Score:4)
First, as this was a private school, the family apparently chose it. If there were serious problems with the environment, then they should have switched schools.
The article says,
Fine. Then find school that has similar values.Second, when my kids get old enough to publish a web site, I will be reviewing it. They certainly will not be allowed to do something foolish like put up a site at www.myschoolisfscked.net. Against the First Amendment, you say? Bzzt. Wrongo, Buffalo Bob. My household is a benevolent dictatorship, not a constitutional republic.
The article says,
And anyone who is going to be taken seriously needs to learn when and how to question authority appropriately and effectively. 10 years from now will this kid make a stupid mistake like calling his employer a fsckhead in a resignation letter? These parent need to teach some life lessons.Too Bad they won't identify themselves (Score:4)
In the last few months, all the really big victories by students over their schools have come from stuendts and families who were not afraid to identify themselves and fight for their individual freedoms.
Now, I respect these guys' privacies and understand that staying in this school is apparently more important than thier freedom of speech, but because there is no identification here, there can be no outcry. There can be no angry, pointed fingers at a school to permenantly (and rightly) damage their reputation as restricting their students' freedom of speech.
Maybe this kids' parents are rich enough that they have court cases going, but I would doubt it. Most likely this is a case of the school putting its needs before the students and the students and the parents going along with that because going to this school is the best way to get into a 'good' university.
C'mon guys. Identify yourselves. It's important to fight for your freedoms, if not for you, then for the guy next to you who *can't* afford to wage his own court battle.
Not the first bad Perl usage to bring the cops (Score:5)
Unfortunately, I had a much different outcome from this student. I'm still in the process of demonstrating that the law under which I was tried was constitutionally flawed, turning the activities of dozens of Oregonians every day into unwitting felonies.
Sensationalism (Score:5)
Second, the case about the students being suspended for Web content . . . the story is missing the critical point, which is the content. This is a private organization we're talking about here; libel laws do apply. Tell me what the page said about the school, and then I'll make judgement.
I guess I'm supposed to be outraged by this story, but I just have to assume the school was in the right until shown otherwise . . . they certainly were on the first point.
To summarize.. (Score:5)
- These kids put up a fuck_theirschool.org site.
- Because of a coding error, their page had the sentence "I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs" on it without making it clear that it's a quote from fortune, not part of their text.
- The police investigated.
- A lot of dumb grown-ups, whom we're going to laugh at aren't as up on Unix and Perl as Jamie. What morons!
- The records of the investigation are still in the police files. There don't seem to have been any charges filed, despite Jamie's insinuations.
I feel bad for these kids, but they just had some bad luck and things worked out the way they should have. Honestly, what is Jamie expecting? That the police will say, "Oh, a Perl error! We'll shred all the files and pretend this never happened?"Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
What did they expect ? (Score:5)
Nor should we be upset that they would enforce such a policy. Arbirary school rules are valid because they are private schools that students have elected to attend, and this very election constitutes tacit support of their policies. Private schools *try* to groom students in a very particular way (hence the uniforms, hence the common tradition of addressing students by last name, etc.) and this is precisely the reason parents send their children here. If the parents aren't happy with the school policies, they should not have sent them there. If you don't like the school's policies, don't send your kids there either.