Oh man I just love the outrage and stupidity on this page.
(1) To me its a wrongfully convicted person. These things
happen in all countries probably even every day. There are
plenty of stupid defense attorneys and judges around and
they will inevitably make huge mistakes.
There is an appeals system in the USA system and I assume
it is meant to rectify the problem of wrongful convictions - the
system may yet work even with morons all around. Since I'm
dutch though I don't know the details of the USA appeals
system except from TV...
(2) Most people ( IMHO ) are not computer savvy to know that
your last resort is to pull out the VGA cable. Hitting the power
button often will not turn off your computer definitively. Many
of the computers/laptops here are setup to disregard the power off button
because the admins hate it when students shut down the computers making remote admin possibilities impossible. Even
if the power off button was working, there are also many
computers setup to reboot at which point a nasty virus could
indeed show the popups again and again and again.
I don't doubt that any one of us could have stopped the machine
but the reality is that most people won't know what to do
if their computer gets out of control.
It was a stupid conviction but it can be appealed (probably) and
even the frequently cited "40" years is bullshit in the sense that
it has not happened yet - the meeting when the sentencing will
be decided has not occurred yet.
And this doesn't even touch the IMMENSE stupidity of many
Dutch, UK, etc. existing laws. i.e. Foo: "Shit, you can get arrested for ANYTHING in the UK right now. "
+JuggerNaut+ wrote:
yeah, but it happened on several occasions. if the teacher saw it once, she should have either turned it off and got a hold of the school's IT dept.
it's a harsh sentence no doubt, but could have been avoided if the teacher had used part of that peanut in her cranial turret.