Thank you for clearly responding to the content of my post instead of just the comment subject... The point of the comment is how can a ToS be legally binding if the person agreeing to it is still a minor. They cannot legally sign a contract without their legal guardian's signature also on the contract. So can a minor legally agree to a ToS?

Company vs. enthusiast (hacker) arguments often seem to go back to the Terms of Service that are associated with the company’s product (Sony vs. geohot). Are these Terms of Service legal contracts between the company and the user? The ones that I have read never state that you must be a legal adult to agree to the Terms of Service. I remember clicking “I Agree” on hundreds of installations before I was over the age of 18. My guess is that these contracts would not be legally binding since I was not a legal adult. It seems like I would get around the Terms of Service by having my 2 year old daughter click the “I Agree” button, or maybe I would just be illegally using their product.

FDA requires non-clinical trials (animals) before moving onto clinical trials (humans).

If they can't keep up the cost of the server, then they should stop supporting it (Halo 2 anybody).

It is about service and support. However, it's also about security and best practices. If some non-IT person is expecting to throw stuff on the network, then it has to be evaluated by the proper people. The only power and control we want is to be able to keep our network safe. It's our butts on the line when someone manages to hack into the network and get to medical data that has privacy laws associated with it. You wouldn't want us throwing medical equipment at you haven't had the chance to evaluate.

If you don't want IT to have access to your server, then don't come crying when something "doesn't work".

as long as we still have unlimited data plans that are affordable. Oh wait!

It may be only 36% meat, but it is 100% delicious.

At least it wasn't a Target bag.

The article is not about programmers with experience not keeping up with new technology. It's about college grads with little to no experience getting premium salaries because they are familar with a technology. The key point is that they are usually only marginally familar with a technology. A good programmer would be able to get to their level in less than a month on their own. Your rant is completely out of place for the article. I do agree that there are a good number of IT folks that don't keep up with the time, but that's a discussion for another time.

Personally, I would never pay a college grad the same salary or higher than my existing senior staff. It's ludicrous to pay someone a premium who doesn't have the experience that would prove he deserves that salary. I can see paying a "new hire premium", where that person would get paid a higher salary than other ground-level guys coming in, but never more than a senior level expert. If you need to fill a technology hole that badly, hire a contractor. You will be paying a premium to get the work done, but you can at least get rid of them once you are comfortable with your team's knowledge level. That way your staff doesn't get angry at you for paying the new guy a premium.

I forgot to give my last horror story on this...

After working at a company for 1 month, they decided to re-create their enterprise system from scratch. This led to mandatory 60+ hours a week, and we were expected to work more than that. The pinnacle of the treatment came the week of my wedding. I worked 60 hours by Thursday night. I had to take Friday off to help set up for the wedding. They required me to use a vacatoin day even though I had already put in 60 hours.

You need to remind him that if you work your ass off, you see no benefit if the company sells a few extra units.

My experience is that people who are truly financially vested in their own small company often have a hard time understanding that their employees can find jobs elsewhere if the company goes under. They cannot see beyond their own situation.

If you truly like working there and want to keep working there, then you'll probably need to roll up your sleeves and do what you can to make sure the company stays afloat. If it's just a job to you, remind him that there have been class action lawsuits recently over expected un-paid overtime where the employees have "won" (EA ring a bell). If he wants you to work extra hours, then he needs to pony up with either paid over time or additional vacation. It may take some numbers on your end to make him see your side. Let's say you have a salary of $52,000 ($25 an hour). If he expects you to work an additional 10 hours for free, your rate just dropped to $20 an hour. That's a 25% reduction.

Personally, I have left the companies where this has happened to me. They kept looking for ways to get "free labor" out of us, and I wouldn't take it.

I don't want my handheld to be a smaller version of a console. I want it to offer me games that I can play on a small screen and are still fun to play. A higher poly count on a small screen isn't worth ponying up $200+ for.

A friend of mine was recently (summer of this year) a juror in Michigan where one of the charges was accessing someone else's e-mail. She was found guilty of this charge despite the fact that she was given the password previously. I would love to put the links in for the exact law and the court case, but I'm lazy.

The thing that got me about the law is that it is perfectly legal to draw funds from someone's bank account via a debit card if you know the PIN. Just by knowing the PIN, the law considers it consent to access the funds (obviously assuming you were given the PIN and didn't get it through nefarious means). I would think the same goes for e-mail, but it doesn't.

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach".

I hold a BS and MS in CS. The problem is that everyone I met during my college years had no desire to teach. CS isn't a field where you get a degree in so that you can teach (at least not at the HS level).

I had a mixed experience in HS. The first two classes taught qBasic and then Visual Basic (5.0 I think). These gave me a very good foundation for beginner concepts. The higher level class was updating the website for the HS using Front Page. The problem was that the teacher's knowledge was based on reading a teacher's book instead of real world experiences. To him, it was much harder to get the web pages to look good then it was to write an IF-THEN-ELSE statement, so he made that class the higher level class.

To me, the real key to getting people into CS is to show them that it's not rocket science. If you tell the computer to do something, the computer does it. Start with decision graphs and flow charts, then teach them how to implement those in a language.

It also helped get people into the classes in my HS by telling them there was no homework since all work had to be done at the few licensed machines we had.