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School laptop users beware!

scaredpoet

Quite a lot of school districts are experimenting with the idea of issuing laptops to their students to enhance learning initiatives.  On the face of it, this seems all fine and good: parents don’t have to buy hardware for their kids, and the schools all know that their students have the technology they need to do their homework.

There’s just one little problem: naturally, kids – and even adults – will do a little more on their computers than just academics and serious work.  It’s just a fact of life.

So, if you have a school or work-issued laptop, and haven’t figured this out already, let me warn you: you MIGHT be under surveillance.  And if your school or work-issued laptop has a webcam?  Consider investing in some electrical tape, and covering that bad boy up when you’re not actively using it.

The web is totally abuzz this weekend, after some kid in Pennsylvania recently found out the hard way that maybe the school-issued laptop program isn’t totally altruistic:

On November 11, an assistant principal at Harriton High School told the plaintiffs’ son that he was caught engaging in “improper behavior” in his home and it was captured in an image via the webcam.

According to the Robbinses’ complaint, neither they nor their son, Blake, were informed of the school’s ability to access the webcam remotely at any time. It is unclear what the boy was doing in his room when the webcam was activated or if any punishment was given out.

Now, let’s just let this sink in for a moment. It isn’t specified what kind of “improper behavior” the kid was engaging in, but it does leave one open to wonder.  There’s a LOT of things teens will do in their rooms thinking no one else is watching (though granted, in the age of MySpace and Youtube, sometimes they do things totally knowing that people are watching, but let’s set that aside for a minute).  In fact, if you really think about it, there’s lot of opportunities for very inappropriate things to be captured on a webcam that some creepy assistant principal in a high school is accessing without the kid’s knowledge.  Voyeuristic tendencies, anyone?

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Crazy for “The Crazies”

CrazedPenguin

Before anyone even says a word: no one ever claimed my writing skills happened to extend to clever titles. They don’t.

A while ago, a friend of mine mentioned a movie trailer for what looked like a great zombie movie that he thought was titled “The Creepies” or something like that. I didn’t think much of it, since zombie movies (like 28 Anythings Later) tend to take themselves seriously to the point where they end up crawling up their own asses. Resist the urge to bitch about how I’m wrong and that the 28 Anythings Later movies were artistic genius for now, if that’s possible.

The previews for “The Crazies”? They look promising. My initial reasoning to go see it? Well, that came from the fact that I’m not a movie buff and had no idea that there was the 1973 version of “The Crazies”. Damn you, Romero, wrecking my belief that this movie could be a spiritual successor to Romero’s (Place) of the Dead. That logic went down the toilet the second I found out Romero directed the original “Crazies”. Keeping this in mind, it’s now necessary to wonder if this version of “The Crazies” lives up to the standards set by the previous one (and, as I haven’t seen that one, those standards could be easy to meet).

For those of you who have been living under a rock, or just can’t be bothered with cable, the general plot of “The Crazies” is that there’s this nice town, Ogden Marsh, in Iowa (a mythical land in the United States that resists the passage of time). The people suddenly start going banana-rama crazy and killing the other people because of a virus that doesn’t make Christopher Eccleston put them on a leash in his backyard.

Maybe I have high hopes because I want a crazy people horror movie that’s good, so I can rinse away the foul taste left behind by 28 Weeks Later. Maybe I’m just hopeful because the previews are creepy as hell. Or maybe, just maybe, I hope this movie carelessly wanders into the busy street and is mowed down by the speeding truck that is my critic’s wrath (which will not be hauling my mighty cache of poorly conceived metaphors).

My tip to the folks who were involved with this movie? Delay its release in theaters, and add in footage of this man:

Perhaps a little too crazy.

“The Crazies” arrives in theaters February 26th.

And yet another thing…

CrazedPenguin

Throughout the course of history, there have been many great and profoundly meaningful events. Events that happen once-in-a-lifetime, events that only happen once, that kind of thing…You know what I mean.

What I’m referring to is me being wrong, of course. Take a second. Calm down. The world isn’t ending, I promise. Not too long ago (read as “the last time my lazy-ass wrote a meaningful post here), I wrote a rather angry post concerning “And Another Thing”, the latest addition to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. I went on about how Eoin Colfer was so very wrong to have written this book, and how it would obviously be a piece of garbage, and so on.

That is why I feel it is appropriate that I write this and correct myself. For the record: “And Another Thing” is a passable, and welcome, addition to the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” series, and I would go so far as to say that Eoin Colfer did a hell of a job continuing where Douglas Adams left off.

No, it is not quite Douglas Adams’ brilliant writing but it comes close enough that it fits with the rest of the series. When I started reading, I hated the book on principle. I still had that “Grr, how dare you?” mentality. Only a little into the book, I felt myself fighting off a chuckle here and a knowing grin there. The further I got into the book, the more I lost the battle and found myself laughing out loud.

And so, I must concede that “And Another Thing…” may not be the best book ever written, and I still say Douglas Adams is the only person who is truly fit to write books under the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” title…but Eoin Colfer did a hell of a job, and “And Another Thing…” has proved itself worthy of its place in this truly epic trilogy.

The terrorists might not win, but we’ve still lost.

scaredpoet


It’s over folks.  The age of civilian air travel is coming to an abrupt end.  It’s time to mothball our jets, shut the airlines, and go back to trains and ocean liners as our primary means of long distance travel.  The United States as a country simply cannot fly anymore.

Why? Because of terrorism you ask?  No, not because of terrorism.  It’s because we’ve become a nation of panicky pussies.  That’s why.

To be sure, on Christmas day 2009, a terrorist did try – we think – to blow up a plane.  Hiding a syringe with chemicals and incendiary devices in his underwear, he ignited his payload as the flight he was one prepared to land in Detroit.  The only immediate casualties, fortunately, were his crotch and – we hope – his ability to procreate. In this case, Darwin may have prevailed.

Shortly thereafter though, I realized that one other casualty resulted from this incident: our common sense.  It started right away with Republicans and politicians in Washington.  Rather than actually caring about the safety of the public and working towards learning from this experience to see how we can adapt reasonably and safely to this threat, if it IS a threat, they chose to pounce on this as a media stunt and politcal scare tactic.  That’s right, because some silly Nigerian chose to roast his crotch on a flight, to them this clearly meant that Obama failed us.

So, while Washington was busy wrestling with that idea and preferring to focus on the potential political fallout of whether “the system” was working or not, the people who are allegedly tasked with protecting the public good and safety basically stopped focusing on protecting the public’s good and safety.  Inevitably, this means “the system” that everyone was so busy arguing about has pretty much begun to break down all on its own anyway. That left the general public with the impression that they must now pretty much fend for themselves on the matter.

The result?  Now we must get molested before we board an airplane, even though it probably won’t help the situation anyway.  We now also have to deal with air travel being more erratic and unpredictable than before, ranging from the cut off of internet access and other in-flight amenities, to denying passengers the use of bathroom facilities.  Because we all know that terrorists won’t possibly consider blowing up the plane if they will be denied those last couple minutes of facebook-time, or are unable to take a leak before the big moment, right?

Of course, none of these measures really add to the security of the flights.  The hope, everyone agrees, is that maybe it’ll just help people feel a little safer, even though we’ve already told them, through the powers of twitter, cable TV news and the iReport, that these measures are fruitless and ineffective.

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Scared Poet wishes you a Merry Christmas

scaredpoet

And what good is a Christmas wish from scaredpoet.com without our traditional dose of awkward Christmas moments?

Right up our alley: sketchysantas.com.  Really folks, not EVERY Santa is entirely golden, and this site certainly points that out.  This is dedicated to all of those people out there who’ve had an awkward Santa moment.

And whatever holiday you celebrate around this time of year, we hope it was awesome, and that an awesome new year awaits you.