What would you recommend as my next course of action?

Nothing. Seriously. You tried, they didn't listen. Typical. Now find something more deserving of your attention to spend your time on. :)

Pick an open source project that you find interesting and get involved in it. It will give you experience in coding, working with people, and look good to the type of employers you would probably want to get hired by.

I plan on getting a Geek Desk: http://www.geekdesk.com/ It won't allow me to walk, but its better than sitting all the time.

I have to say I agree totally. I read it honestly interested in what it might have to say and came away thinking, why even bother writing that!

How about the next poll asks who is interested in video on Slashdot. I don't care if its there, but I doubt I will ever watch them.

I'd recommend that you start learning Python. I moved away from PHP to Python in late 2008 and have NEVER, even once, looked back. Its just a better engineered language and the community is more deliberate and professional. SQLAlchemy is the best database library/ORM ever! And there are plenty of web frameworks to choose from (start with Flask or Pyramid).

Here are some thoughts from 2008 that got me moving away from PHP towards python. The python web community has grown a lot over the last few years, so my comments about Python being hard to get started in can be considered somewhat deprecated:

http://old.nabble.com/Creole-is-Dead,-long-live-Python!-p20488959.html
http://propel.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1093&dsMessageId=88191

Finally, Python is much more general purpose than PHP, so the Python skills you learn while doing web development can be put to use in other programming areas (I do a lot of scripting and data manipulation with Python).

I know there might be negative ramifications, but I'm glad to see this day arrive. The sooner old IEs die, the better.

+1

How about when you want to share folders w/ other people? And, you want them to be able to modify the content? And, it needs to work on Windows, Linux, or Mac? And, it needs to work for technically challenged individuals? And... Yes, encryption has its place, but also has its problems.

Seriously, you are going to compare Dropbox to "a basic website with webspace", and this gets modded Insightful? I have lots of websites, there is a reason I use Dropbox, its a great product. I'm just concerned the terms are overly broad.

Agreed, I have concerns about that sentence as well.

You are incorrect on both accounts. My goal was to make the TOS terms known to a wider audience in the hope of getting DB to change their TOS to something less permissive. The following is from box.net TOS, as noted by another commenter above:

By registering to use the Services, you understand and acknowledge that Box.net and its contractors retain an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, copy, and publicly display such content *for the sole purpose of providing to you the Services for which you have registered*.

I realize they need some copyright assignment to provide the service, I just think its unnecessarily broad.

mod parent up!