http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2007/01/teacher_faces_40year_prison_se.html
40 years in prison for working with a computer that suddenly showed pornographic pop-ups in a class room :)
I mean, god damn, 40 years! It's hilarious. Now, I can't possibly believe that she will actually be sentenced to that, but the mind boggles...
40 years, a tad too much, but I do think that pron does not appear suddently out of nowhere. You need at least to mistype something, if not google for something, or anyways, try to enter a page called www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.com or whatever...
No?
Either way it's perfectly natural that any student (what age are we talking about?) used the computer, filled it with spyware and then bang! Makes much sense!
Poor Ameno...
Quote from: Nikolas on Fri 16/02/2007 17:23:53
No?
Not really.
/me remembered the time when you forgot to type the s in www.gamefaqs.com would lead you to a p0rn site.
I went to a website once, trying to find some midis of Bad Religion songs, and managed to infect it with all sorts of sh*t... not so much porn, but some... the main problem was that our computer started dialling a premium number and my mum got whacekd with a honking great phone bill.... need less to say i got accused of doenloading porn on the family computer, but i managed to prove it wasn't my fault.
That's exactly why my "Block graphics from ..." list doesn't fit on a screenshot.
this is what I read on another forum about this... the link they provided doesn't work anymore but here's the quote:
"This was a Windows 98 SE machine with IE 5 and an expired antivirus subscription. It hadn't been update since August, and there was no anti-spyware, no pop-up protection, no firewall and no content filters. Regardless of whatever happened, this machine was a machine that should not have been on the Internet."
I find it hard to believe this. First of all, you don't get 40 years from killing a student with a battle-axe. I don't know which country this was though, but 40 years is absurd. the most they could do to me here would be firing me and not letting me be a substitute teacher anymore. If this is true, in what ever country this was, I wouldn't even fart in the bus because of being afraid of a punishment.
Surely it happened in school, and I assume this was groundschool, so the children were between what, 7 and 10? But still, 40 years is ridiculous. I don't believe this story, AND, I don't believe that if the facts are as stated, that it was her fault in any way.
I myself opened a computer once in school, though then I was a student, not a teacher, my French teacher was right behind me, and someone had cunningly placed goatse as desktop image. Of course I told the teacher it wasn't me, but she knew that already. Anyway, the whole thing sounds ridiculous. And what's more, where could she find 20 pop-up windows to pop up on her desktop? why not just do it the usual way and opening pornotube.com...
...that didn't happen in the USA, did it? Because some people over there seem to be quite... conservative, when it comes to themes like porn, even more than they're towards violence. Remember GTA, anyone? The latest GTA game was legal in the US at the beginning, despite extreme violence and criminality, but nearly the moment as a mod was released that unlocked a ... well, a minigame of a "certain type" ;), all the big stores stopped selling it.
Anything is possible in America these days.
An interesting article, though, and I agree that the need to appear tough on exposing pornography to minors is what's driving this case.
Innocent until proven guilty seems to have no place in these situations anymore.
I do believe it's possible, especially since this is the country where frivolous lawsuits like some fat dumbass bitch burning her mouth on obviously hot coffee and suing McDonald's for a gazillion bucks happen every day (how can anyone be proud of our judicial system? ? ? ?)... but I seem to remember a story I read in my local newspaper, a computer column, about how the guy who wrote the column was doing a demonstration in a packed junior high auditorium when porn popups littered a huge display in front of the entire place... and he was laughing about how stupid it was in his column the next day.
[off-topic]At least, you get the funny cases. In Germany, we only get the "Okay, Mr. CEO of Siemens, we have to punish you for stealing several million euros over months - please pay us several thousand euros, and please keep the money you stole! Oh, and did I forget to mention it doesn't count as punishment so you won't even be saved in a criminal database?" cases :P
However, what makes the porn sites' owners think anyone would click on thousands of pop-ups? Are they mentally diseased or just dumb?[/off-topic]
At least he took it with humor, esper...
I read aboot this a while ago. It seemed that the judge had no grasp of the Internets. The prosecutor claimed, whether intentional or not, the resonsebility (for shattering the innosence of the young minds) lies with the teacher.
I bet they'll appeal untill everything works out.
I remember in the days before pop-up blockers and accessing sites for serial no.s and cracks etc, being bombarded with pop-ups for porn, which kept coming and closing one would open up many more, even using alt-f4, didn't help. pressing the reset button was about the easiest way to stop it. (and it always seemed to happen just as your mum or sister was walking past)
If this case is real, that's ridiculous, kids of any age have seen porn on computers, especially at school, or thru spam emails, it's virtually unavoidable. but to get 40 years, that's a joke
Some one saying turn off the computer, in what way, try to shut down a computer when there are lots of pop-ups, not possible, you can hold down the on off button for 10 secs, press reset, or try ctrl-alt-del a few times (this is for win98) and she may have been told these are the last resorts for switching off a computer, and as it was not her computer she wanted to shut it down properly, not causing it to break. and knowing most teachers, she probably wasn't the most computer literate person, and didn't even know these methods.
Are the kids going to be that upset for seeing some naked people for a few seconds? is it going to ruin their lives? I don't think so, I'm sure they'll see plenty more in their lives.
With a bit of common sense, this type of thing wouldn't go to court, I guess it must have been a religious type school, and the flavour of the month for things to prosecute against, and make an example of, it hardly sounds like the act of a sick individual. Fucken idiots
As far as I know, it's very unlikely for her to get 40 years. That is the maximum penalty for "inflicting phycological or physical harm to a child" (or something like that..), but I think she could get as little as 1 year, or even a few months if she gets sentenced at all. It's really just the power of the media.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it goes on the 2nd when she's sentenced. A lot of judges don't understand computer cases very well as we've seen so many times in the past, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't come to much. Of course personally I think any jail time at all would be silly.
I remember a time when we had a tv-commercial where some kid goes and asks his older brother how many states there are in U.S. Older brother is playing guitar or something and then gets pissed off and shouts "ask the president of the United States" and slams the door shut. Kid then goes to his computer and types in www.whitehouse... I'm not sure if he actually put .com there, but it would be the first domain you could think of. Because back then everything was .com. And if you don't know whats funny read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehouse.com :)
Quote from: Akatosh on Fri 16/02/2007 18:14:13
Remember GTA, anyone? The latest GTA game was legal in the US at the beginning, despite extreme violence and criminality, but nearly the moment as a mod was released that unlocked a ... well, a minigame of a "certain type"Ã, ;)
Ssh, you'll incite the wrath of Jack Thompson (two references to Jack Thompson in one month, i'm on FIRE!) :D
I wish.
(only joking, I'll just pee on that fire so you don't burn) :=
Oooh, I mentioned "GTA". This gives them every right to sue the last cent out of me.
(by the way, that is the other thing I don't like about the Internet of today ;))
Oh Jeeze. 40 years?
I hate living in a country that places a natural act of sex above the gruesome deaths and murders of innocent people in video games (ala GTA). Hey, it's okay for a kid to see someone's head blown off with a 12 gauge... but God forbid they see a pair of breasts and a giant pokey thing going in a hairy hole! Oh noes! The natural gift of sex is forbidden!!
What if the pop-ups were off some dude raping a chick and killing her. Would that be okay then? Sure it's sex, but it's also death. and death is apparently okay to show kids. Right? Right?
Depends on the sex/violence ratio, I think.
Okay, no junk shots but DEFINITELY some breasts. And when he bashes her head in with a tire iron you can see pieces of her skull and brain fly into the camera lens. RAWK!
Quote from: [lgm] on Mon 19/02/2007 17:06:36
a giant pokey thing going in a hairy hole! The natural gift of sex
I love the way you state it :D
Actually I'm so sick of all the tv shows making beeps whenever there's a curseword, or the ballyhoo about a nipple in one shot of a movie.
Quote from: [lgm] on Mon 19/02/2007 17:09:12
Okay, no junk shots but DEFINITELY some breasts. And when he bashes her head in with a tire iron you can see pieces of her skull and brain fly into the camera lens. RAWK!
As long as you can't see her nipples, that'll be ok. Ages 6+.
Quote from: Tuomastv shows making beeps whenever there's a curseword
That can get quite funny when the people in talk shows get excited.
So did anyone play "I'm O.K." (the murder simulator inspired by Jack Thompson's modest proposal)?
Hehe, was that the one with Mario as the judge in the opening cutscene?
Quote from: Radiant on Tue 20/02/2007 13:11:52
So did anyone play "I'm O.K." (the murder simulator inspired by Jack Thompson's modest proposal)?
I think I've still got it on my old drive somewhere. It was a pretty cool game, not bad though.