That's a fantastic way to encourage kids to go into science and technology fields: make them think it's criminal activity and then send them to counseling. I love the irony that this happened at a science and technology magnet school where one might, by some off-chance, presume the teachers are better informed. Way to go, educational system overlords.

Imagine if Jobs and Wozniak had lived today during this sort of thing. They'd be sitting in Gitmo.

Sadly accurate. And unfortunately the tone here has been getting nastier. There was a thread a few days ago where I found myself thinking "I feel like I'm on reddit."

Nastiness is a problem intrinsic to forums. But I'm optimistic that it's solvable. So few things have been tried so far. Plus I think a lot of users here would be happy to try out (or at least put up with) design changes intended to increase civility, because that's why a lot of them came here in the first place. So this is going to be my main focus for improving HN in 2010.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this entire story is made up.

I have a simple guideline for real life interactions with others that carries over quite well on-line, "Deal with issues; ignore details."

It's amazing how well this works in person, especially when trying to get something done. My number one question to another is probably, "Is that an issue or a detail?" We can almost always decide together which it is. Then, if it's an issue, we deal with it, and if it's a detail, we move on to the next issue.

This has also saved me countless hours and aggravation on-line. If I post something and someone disagrees, I quickly decide whether or not it's really an issue and only engage the other if it is. I realize that this is just a judgment call, but I'd estimate about 90% of on-line disagreements are just details. In these cases, I think it's best to simply move on.

Adobe is ridiculous. Flash on OS X is a joke. It makes sense why Apple is so hesitant to allow it on the iPhone.

When I was in British middle school I got into trouble for bringing a small tape recorder to school. A teacher saw it, it was confiscated and I was in deep trouble. When I tried to explain to the deputy head that it was a tape recorder and not a radio (which was specifically forbidden by school rules) I was told to "shut up" and that I didn't have the "right to speak" because I had broken a rule.

In the end my parents went to the headmaster and gave him an earful.

The good news is that the school's behaviour had a lasting impression on me: people in authority act like assholes because they are in authority.

That level of lying would be too painful for me, even given the success that might come from it. As an engineer whose job it is to make reliable systems, I have strong feelings about the truth. I don't want to behave like that, and I don't want to be around people who do.

Men need to be arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks to get women's attention. Women don't need that to get men's attention.

IMO the cleverest part is that "for privacy reasons" he couldn't show any of his work. It reminds me of the woman who conned the Ivy League saying that she changed her name due to domestic abuse. Maybe somewhere there's a guy calling himself the greatest programmer in the world, but he can't answer any interview questions because it's all classified.

It seems pretty shocking to me that the boy's home was searched. Was there any reasonable suspicion of anything?

To be honest, it's a pity we don't know the name of the student so we can start sending him presents consisting of subscriptions to Make, electronics books, chemistry sets etc.