I just don't think PHP makes you a "software developer" anymore than shell scripting makes you one. It's a tool. It's a thing you can use to get things done. In this case, specifically oriented to website design. And that's cool. I think PHP is pretty good when it comes to web-stuff. Me, I'm a perl guy. My entire engine is written in perl and it has been doing pretty fucking amazingly for the better part of a decade as it has grown (and no, I"m not a software developer either).
My unqualified (but not inexperienced) opinion is that a software developer may use PHP as a tool, just like they may use shell scripting as a tool. But there is a world of difference between writing PHP and Perl - and actually knowing how to program. Knowing pointers and memory management, for example. I don't think it is possible to only code in PHP and/or Perl and be considered a developer/programmer. There is significantly more involved in those fields of knowledge than reading an O'Reilly book and getting something neat to happen on your system.
Frankly, I just don't think that languages like Perl and PHP - while programming languages, certainly - make you a programmer or a software developer anymore than writing a story and sticking it in PDF makes you an author and a publisher.
And no, I'm not a snob. If I were a snob, I'd be saying "PHP is stupid - nobody who knows just PHP can call themselves a developer!.... But I'm a developer who uses Perl so I know what I'm talking about!".
But seriously - while I'm not normally one to argue about compiled versus scripted languages, PHP seems like the least "programmer" language there is. You can make things with it sort of the same way you can make stuff with legos, but still not be an architect, you know? And I'm not badmouthing PHP in any way. I think it's great at serving a particular purpose. A tool. If I dig up an old mac and a copy of Hypercard, does that make me a "software developer"? Or pop in that old LoadRunner C64 disk?
I know a lot of people like that. I know people who like a "busy" house. Posters, paintings, sculptures, collections of all sorts of crazy things. Some of them get to the point where they dont' even have any free space left.
I've made a point of not collecting anything. Aside from just not being interesting enough to find anything interesting to "collect", I just don't want to take up the space.
I guess I'm just the opposite of most of the population. I feel more comfortable when the place I work and live is sterile and bland and empty of anything that isn't utilitarian (facilities is constantly going by my office when I'm gone and asking my coworkers if that is an empty office that they can put someone in). Other people like the cozy, lived-in, full of stuff thing. It's a weird comfort thing, I guess.
Personally, I have as much fun throwing things away and reducing my "posessions" as I do buying them in the first place.
Of course, I'll probably be single for the rest of my life, because no woman is going to want a guy who is this much of a freak.:)
But honestly - if I could have the Intel guys come over and turn my apartment into a giant clean-room, I would so totally live in it for the rest of my life.
But who are you going to play all your cool multiplayer games with when everyone has moved to the next generation console? It's the same reason people buy Madden 2006 - because while they're happy with 2005, all the other people are going to be on 2006 too and they don't want to be left sitting on the couch playing with themselves.
If you're going to force-feed me a story and everything I do along the way is going to be just a pre-placed and pre-scripted series of events (fight this, go through this puzzle, level these two characters, go to this place) - why not just tell me the story? I'm not going to work my ass off on a bunch of meaningless mini-games and activities that will in no way affect anything. The only thing playing them seems to do is "earn you your next cutscene".
Well, screw that! I don't want to "earn" my movie!
I've never really played console RPGs, so I hope they're not all like this (Fable didn't look like it was, but I've never actually played it).
The cutscenes in FF8 were pretty cool. I just could have done without all the meaningless stuff I had to do in between them.
Oh - and now that I think of it, I played some Final Fantasy game on the PS2 a couple years ago that involved some big huge dude with an eye patch and a red coat and a massive sword. And you could play some sort of ball game in a hovering 3D bubble with a team of other players. And you were on a ship for part of the game. It was okay, but it had pretty much the same feel as FF8 that I'd played.
1) Better graphics. 2) Consoles are a different color now! 3) More network gaming via consoles. 4) Madden 2007 and Halo 3? 5) More media-centric rather than just a game-playing device.
Really, what do you expect from a new console?
This GameCube is stupid! It's just N64 with better graphics! This N64 is stupid! It's just SNES with better graphics! This SNES is stupid! It's just NES with better graphics! This Sega Saturn is stupid! it's just Sega 16-bit with better graphics! This Sega 16-bit is stupid! It's just Sega with better graphics! This PS2 is stupid! It's just PS1 with better graphics!
The entire reason people buy new consoles and always have is that the next generation looks and sounds better and, as much as gameplay matters, sweet explosions and smooth rendering still gets most people excited.
Plus, for people like me who have never cared about nor owned a console, it's exciting, because we're finally going to move into the systems with the 2005/2006 generation.
My only point is that PHP is the "PHP Hypertext Pre-Processor". That inherently means you do webby sort of stuff with it. That makes you a website developer - not a software developer.
I'm not a software developer, so I don't have anything to be snobby about. I just cringe every time I see someone call themselves a "coder" or a "software developer" when they're nothing of the sort.
I guess you could nitpick and say "well, the guys who write Drupal are clearly software developers". You'd maybe have a point. I don't know. I do, however, think that most people who go around writing PHP and calling themselves "software developers" are not developing actual software in the manner of a Drupal or a PHPNuke.
And I have a beef with nature, thank you very much. Every time I litter, I feel better about myself, knowing that nature will be able to hurt one less human. I like Wendy's food. And I like making mother nature my bitch.
Anyway, I don't know what fast food places you've been to, but where I've always lived, they tend to have street cleaners run through their parking lots a couple times each week (along with all the other stores and dining places along the street).
Anyway, the two biggest bodies of water near where I've lived my entire life are Johnson Creek and the Willamette River. It's not so much the spare french fries and straw wrappers as it is the overflow of human fecal matter that flows into those bodies of water every heavy rain that one should be worried about.
I don't think it's very likely that a dude is going to have much sentimental attachment to a piece of furniture (unless it's a lazy-boy). I could be wrong, but that's been my experience.
People just collect too much crap. If you get rid of the crap you don't need (I have a huge DVD collection that I'm getting rid of, because it makes no sense to take up a whole wall to store them when I have already watched them and will probably never watch them again!). Keep a few of yoru most favorite DVDs (say, your Monty Python's Flying Circus collection and your Black Adder collection and your copy of Equilibrium and Brazil) but get rid of the crap. Are you seriously going to watch Red Dawn again? Or Romeo Must Die?!
And for furniture.. well... don't be sentimental and don't be concerned with having to have what you are told everyone has to have by a certain age. Just because they tell you everyone should have a house, a picket fence, a dog, a sofa, a loveseat, a dining table, four chairs, a bed, two end tables, lamps, nightstand, armoire, phone stand, entertainment stand, hallway table, throw-rug, paintings on the walls and a rocking chair doesn't mean you need them or that you even want them. Get rid of the crap that makes people think you're "all grown up now" and keep the crap that you ENJOY and **USE**.
Everything should be disposable in your mind, so that you can dispose of it when it has served it's purpose. Otherwise you're going to just let material goods run your life. You can't throw something away, because you might need it later. You might watch that DVD again in the next ten years even though you haven't in the last five. You might need that weird AC/DC adapter even though you have 14 of them in a plastic bag in an old cardboard box and you don't know what any of them go to. You might need that old $10 phone from Target that is taking up a bunch of space in a drawer. You just never know! Better keep it all!
Then again, I'm not one of those people who like the "cozy" and "cramped" feeling. My home is very stark. Nothing on the walls. No paintings, posters, pictures. Nothing. No throw rugs on the floor. No decorative anything. I have a plain shower curtain. I have plain desks with my computers on them. I have a plain lamp for light. And a treadmill and a cat-tree thing. And then my big TV. That's it. You could roll around on the floor all day and not feel the need for more space.
Even now, I'd rather have less stuff. Lighter stuff. Ideally, you'd have things in such a way that if you had to pick up and leave and never come back, you could do it all in one day - from packing to cleaning to shipping to physically leaving.
Okay... think logically here.. What do you need a 6x6 table for?
I specifically avoided having a table or a sofa in my (1,100 square foot) apartment. Those two items would take up the whole damn place. Instead, I have a treadmill, widescreen projector HDTV and a huge cheap desk with rows of computers.
I can't figure what you'd use a table for that you couldn't use something else (that takes up less space) for...?
The problem I had with FF8 is that it felt like I was playing a movie. And not in a good way. In a "here's some mini-games for you to play during intermission and between cut-scenes" way. It felt, much like with Diablo2, that nothing I did mattered. I was destined to play the same characters, hook up with the same people, fight the same monsters, make the same choices no matter what. They could have just done away with the "game" and made it a passive movie that you could watch.
The fact that it's such a hit with girls and people who like to dress up and go to conventions strikes me as curious and, I think, says something about the lack of depth the games seem to have. But again, I'm only basing that on FF8. I definitely couldn't see myself payign $60 if they rolled out a new FF game for a console in the next year or two.
This is going to get modded as flamebait, but I mean it wholeheartedly:
I had to laugh at the article blurb. Since when do the words "software developer" belong in the same sentence as "PHP"? That's like the kid who pumps your gas at the station an "oil tycoon".
The same could be said of a lot of other languages, I suppose, but what other languages are purely made for WEB design rather than writing programs?
The only one I've ver played was FF 8 on the PC. It sucked. I've never bothered to play any older or newer Final Fantasies. Completely unimpressed. It seemed like an RPG for those who didn't actually want to do any RPGing. Who had a pre-determined set path along which to play and no way to deviate from it. And the monster killing and leveling was sort of silly and superficial.
Of course, I'm judging based on one game out of what.. ten? twenty? Oh well.
sixteen is really quite old enough to understand that what you're doing is both wrong and illegal.
I might agree with you if we didn't have set precedent for lower expectations, responsibilities and judgement from adults under 21 and children under 18.
Maybe I'll accept such penalties for children committing non-violent "hacking" crimes when we treat drunk drivers and wife-beaters and child-abusers and rapists with the same ferocity. I'm more worried about all the drunks that are allowed to drive around after the first, second, tenth DUI than I am about some kid breaking into my NGAGE from his bedroom.
Support contract (someone to blame). Recognized company (so management can't get blamed for going with a smaller guy).
Also, you have to remember that there are a lot of people out there operating with nothing more than an MCSE that don't know anything outside of the Microsoft world. Not everyone is trying to convince management to switch to Linux. A lot of shops want to stick with microsoft because that's what the tech guys making the recommendations are familiar with and they want to keep their jobs.
I don't really deal with Microsoft, but I've dealt with guys who clearly are solely Microsoft network/IT administrators who, when having to handle sending me a core file from one of their solaris boxes, didn't have a clue how to use FTP.
So... for a lot of people, the Microsoft Way and A GUI For Everything method is a means to remaining employed.
Does a drunk driver get to keep his license because the bus doesn't come right to his house?
No, but someone with a suspended license can often still drive as long as it is for work (a company car, for example). They give such exemptions all the time to people.
So, what kind of punishment did T-Mobile get? They are clearly negligent if a 16 year old kid can crack their systems and compromise hundreds of thousands of customers' information. And what kind of punishment are the people who provided him with access to computers getting?
If your kid took your gun to commit a crime, you'd be in trouble for leaving it laying around and not providing security and supervision for it. If a computer is (apparently, according to politicians and CEOs) just as dangerous, shouldn't adults be held liable for leaving their computers laying about? And certainly a company can be penalized for not securing the information or property of their own customers.
But nah - let's just blame the kid and forget about the whole fact that our network and security was clearly worth shit since some highschool kid was able to get around it. If we keep all the focus on what an evil little snotty shit he is, nobody will turn an eye toward us.
Well, as much as I agree, I think having the felony on his record will do him more damage than a couple years without a computer. Even in this day and age.
If he were an adult, I'd agree with you. But if he's 17 now and was about 16 when he began all this, he's not an adult. I don't think it's helpful or appropriate to sentence a child to prison (even juvie) for non-violent crimes.
Put him on probation, sure. Restrict him from technology, sure. Make him do an ass-load of community service, sure. But stick him in juvie with kids who are there for stabbing people, burning down houses and rape? Fuck that.
If he were a big corporation that compromised the data of ten times as many Americans (accidentally or even intentionally for money), I doubt anyone would do prison time. The company as a whole would get a fine (slap on the wrist) and promise to "investigate and improve our data handling methods and securities".
But because he's a kid and an individual, he's spooky and evil and has to be locked up. Because I'm sure the one thing he'll learn locked up with a bunch of VIOLENT people for a year is how to be responsible and helpful and contribute to society and improve his life.
Dude, new game consoles are a big deal. I don't even own one, but it has been a long time since we've had a major console release. People are excited about the Xbox this year and the PS3 next year. Can you blame them? They've been playing games on 1999/2000 hardware for the last five years. They're ready for something new and better to get out. Plus, this is the first major console rollout since gaming really has hit it big time (meaning, it's own television station, award shows and every hollywood slut carrying a PSP around). The world is very different from when the last system came out.
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't think PHP makes you a "software developer" anymore than shell scripting makes you one. It's a tool. It's a thing you can use to get things done. In this case, specifically oriented to website design. And that's cool. I think PHP is pretty good when it comes to web-stuff. Me, I'm a perl guy. My entire engine is written in perl and it has been doing pretty fucking amazingly for the better part of a decade as it has grown (and no, I"m not a software developer either).
My unqualified (but not inexperienced) opinion is that a software developer may use PHP as a tool, just like they may use shell scripting as a tool. But there is a world of difference between writing PHP and Perl - and actually knowing how to program. Knowing pointers and memory management, for example. I don't think it is possible to only code in PHP and/or Perl and be considered a developer/programmer. There is significantly more involved in those fields of knowledge than reading an O'Reilly book and getting something neat to happen on your system.
Frankly, I just don't think that languages like Perl and PHP - while programming languages, certainly - make you a programmer or a software developer anymore than writing a story and sticking it in PDF makes you an author and a publisher.
And no, I'm not a snob. If I were a snob, I'd be saying "PHP is stupid - nobody who knows just PHP can call themselves a developer!.... But I'm a developer who uses Perl so I know what I'm talking about!".
But seriously - while I'm not normally one to argue about compiled versus scripted languages, PHP seems like the least "programmer" language there is. You can make things with it sort of the same way you can make stuff with legos, but still not be an architect, you know? And I'm not badmouthing PHP in any way. I think it's great at serving a particular purpose. A tool. If I dig up an old mac and a copy of Hypercard, does that make me a "software developer"? Or pop in that old LoadRunner C64 disk?
I know a lot of people like that. I know people who like a "busy" house. Posters, paintings, sculptures, collections of all sorts of crazy things. Some of them get to the point where they dont' even have any free space left.
:)
I've made a point of not collecting anything. Aside from just not being interesting enough to find anything interesting to "collect", I just don't want to take up the space.
I guess I'm just the opposite of most of the population. I feel more comfortable when the place I work and live is sterile and bland and empty of anything that isn't utilitarian (facilities is constantly going by my office when I'm gone and asking my coworkers if that is an empty office that they can put someone in). Other people like the cozy, lived-in, full of stuff thing. It's a weird comfort thing, I guess.
Personally, I have as much fun throwing things away and reducing my "posessions" as I do buying them in the first place.
Of course, I'll probably be single for the rest of my life, because no woman is going to want a guy who is this much of a freak.
But honestly - if I could have the Intel guys come over and turn my apartment into a giant clean-room, I would so totally live in it for the rest of my life.
But who are you going to play all your cool multiplayer games with when everyone has moved to the next generation console? It's the same reason people buy Madden 2006 - because while they're happy with 2005, all the other people are going to be on 2006 too and they don't want to be left sitting on the couch playing with themselves.
But see, that's entirely too much work.
If you're going to force-feed me a story and everything I do along the way is going to be just a pre-placed and pre-scripted series of events (fight this, go through this puzzle, level these two characters, go to this place) - why not just tell me the story? I'm not going to work my ass off on a bunch of meaningless mini-games and activities that will in no way affect anything. The only thing playing them seems to do is "earn you your next cutscene".
Well, screw that! I don't want to "earn" my movie!
I've never really played console RPGs, so I hope they're not all like this (Fable didn't look like it was, but I've never actually played it).
The cutscenes in FF8 were pretty cool. I just could have done without all the meaningless stuff I had to do in between them.
Oh - and now that I think of it, I played some Final Fantasy game on the PS2 a couple years ago that involved some big huge dude with an eye patch and a red coat and a massive sword. And you could play some sort of ball game in a hovering 3D bubble with a team of other players. And you were on a ship for part of the game. It was okay, but it had pretty much the same feel as FF8 that I'd played.
Well, like I've said before in a similar thread on Slashdot recently - every woman who visits wants to decorate my apartment.
1) Better graphics.
2) Consoles are a different color now!
3) More network gaming via consoles.
4) Madden 2007 and Halo 3?
5) More media-centric rather than just a game-playing device.
Really, what do you expect from a new console?
This GameCube is stupid! It's just N64 with better graphics!
This N64 is stupid! It's just SNES with better graphics!
This SNES is stupid! It's just NES with better graphics!
This Sega Saturn is stupid! it's just Sega 16-bit with better graphics!
This Sega 16-bit is stupid! It's just Sega with better graphics!
This PS2 is stupid! It's just PS1 with better graphics!
The entire reason people buy new consoles and always have is that the next generation looks and sounds better and, as much as gameplay matters, sweet explosions and smooth rendering still gets most people excited.
Plus, for people like me who have never cared about nor owned a console, it's exciting, because we're finally going to move into the systems with the 2005/2006 generation.
My only point is that PHP is the "PHP Hypertext Pre-Processor". That inherently means you do webby sort of stuff with it. That makes you a website developer - not a software developer.
I'm not a software developer, so I don't have anything to be snobby about. I just cringe every time I see someone call themselves a "coder" or a "software developer" when they're nothing of the sort.
I guess you could nitpick and say "well, the guys who write Drupal are clearly software developers". You'd maybe have a point. I don't know. I do, however, think that most people who go around writing PHP and calling themselves "software developers" are not developing actual software in the manner of a Drupal or a PHPNuke.
All that matters is whoever was responsible for this be imprisoned for 11 months in Juvenile Detention.
by ShamusYoung (528944)
:D
You spelled your name wrong.
Who are you - my mom?
And I have a beef with nature, thank you very much. Every time I litter, I feel better about myself, knowing that nature will be able to hurt one less human. I like Wendy's food. And I like making mother nature my bitch.
Anyway, I don't know what fast food places you've been to, but where I've always lived, they tend to have street cleaners run through their parking lots a couple times each week (along with all the other stores and dining places along the street).
Anyway, the two biggest bodies of water near where I've lived my entire life are Johnson Creek and the Willamette River. It's not so much the spare french fries and straw wrappers as it is the overflow of human fecal matter that flows into those bodies of water every heavy rain that one should be worried about.
I don't think it's very likely that a dude is going to have much sentimental attachment to a piece of furniture (unless it's a lazy-boy). I could be wrong, but that's been my experience.
People just collect too much crap. If you get rid of the crap you don't need (I have a huge DVD collection that I'm getting rid of, because it makes no sense to take up a whole wall to store them when I have already watched them and will probably never watch them again!). Keep a few of yoru most favorite DVDs (say, your Monty Python's Flying Circus collection and your Black Adder collection and your copy of Equilibrium and Brazil) but get rid of the crap. Are you seriously going to watch Red Dawn again? Or Romeo Must Die?!
And for furniture.. well... don't be sentimental and don't be concerned with having to have what you are told everyone has to have by a certain age. Just because they tell you everyone should have a house, a picket fence, a dog, a sofa, a loveseat, a dining table, four chairs, a bed, two end tables, lamps, nightstand, armoire, phone stand, entertainment stand, hallway table, throw-rug, paintings on the walls and a rocking chair doesn't mean you need them or that you even want them. Get rid of the crap that makes people think you're "all grown up now" and keep the crap that you ENJOY and **USE**.
Everything should be disposable in your mind, so that you can dispose of it when it has served it's purpose. Otherwise you're going to just let material goods run your life. You can't throw something away, because you might need it later. You might watch that DVD again in the next ten years even though you haven't in the last five. You might need that weird AC/DC adapter even though you have 14 of them in a plastic bag in an old cardboard box and you don't know what any of them go to. You might need that old $10 phone from Target that is taking up a bunch of space in a drawer. You just never know! Better keep it all!
Then again, I'm not one of those people who like the "cozy" and "cramped" feeling. My home is very stark. Nothing on the walls. No paintings, posters, pictures. Nothing. No throw rugs on the floor. No decorative anything. I have a plain shower curtain. I have plain desks with my computers on them. I have a plain lamp for light. And a treadmill and a cat-tree thing. And then my big TV. That's it. You could roll around on the floor all day and not feel the need for more space.
Even now, I'd rather have less stuff. Lighter stuff. Ideally, you'd have things in such a way that if you had to pick up and leave and never come back, you could do it all in one day - from packing to cleaning to shipping to physically leaving.
Okay... think logically here.. What do you need a 6x6 table for?
I specifically avoided having a table or a sofa in my (1,100 square foot) apartment. Those two items would take up the whole damn place. Instead, I have a treadmill, widescreen projector HDTV and a huge cheap desk with rows of computers.
I can't figure what you'd use a table for that you couldn't use something else (that takes up less space) for...?
The problem I had with FF8 is that it felt like I was playing a movie. And not in a good way. In a "here's some mini-games for you to play during intermission and between cut-scenes" way. It felt, much like with Diablo2, that nothing I did mattered. I was destined to play the same characters, hook up with the same people, fight the same monsters, make the same choices no matter what. They could have just done away with the "game" and made it a passive movie that you could watch.
The fact that it's such a hit with girls and people who like to dress up and go to conventions strikes me as curious and, I think, says something about the lack of depth the games seem to have. But again, I'm only basing that on FF8. I definitely couldn't see myself payign $60 if they rolled out a new FF game for a console in the next year or two.
Or the NRA "Varmint Hunter" type games?
This is going to get modded as flamebait, but I mean it wholeheartedly:
I had to laugh at the article blurb. Since when do the words "software developer" belong in the same sentence as "PHP"? That's like the kid who pumps your gas at the station an "oil tycoon".
The same could be said of a lot of other languages, I suppose, but what other languages are purely made for WEB design rather than writing programs?
The only one I've ver played was FF 8 on the PC. It sucked. I've never bothered to play any older or newer Final Fantasies. Completely unimpressed. It seemed like an RPG for those who didn't actually want to do any RPGing. Who had a pre-determined set path along which to play and no way to deviate from it. And the monster killing and leveling was sort of silly and superficial.
Of course, I'm judging based on one game out of what.. ten? twenty? Oh well.
I'm almost 30 and I still use that justification when I leave my shit in a Wendy's parking lot after lunch.
You think it's going to be that big in a country where you're restricted to three hours of online play per day? I have my doubts.
sixteen is really quite old enough to understand that what you're doing is both wrong and illegal.
I might agree with you if we didn't have set precedent for lower expectations, responsibilities and judgement from adults under 21 and children under 18.
Maybe I'll accept such penalties for children committing non-violent "hacking" crimes when we treat drunk drivers and wife-beaters and child-abusers and rapists with the same ferocity. I'm more worried about all the drunks that are allowed to drive around after the first, second, tenth DUI than I am about some kid breaking into my NGAGE from his bedroom.
Support contract (someone to blame). Recognized company (so management can't get blamed for going with a smaller guy).
Also, you have to remember that there are a lot of people out there operating with nothing more than an MCSE that don't know anything outside of the Microsoft world. Not everyone is trying to convince management to switch to Linux. A lot of shops want to stick with microsoft because that's what the tech guys making the recommendations are familiar with and they want to keep their jobs.
I don't really deal with Microsoft, but I've dealt with guys who clearly are solely Microsoft network/IT administrators who, when having to handle sending me a core file from one of their solaris boxes, didn't have a clue how to use FTP.
So... for a lot of people, the Microsoft Way and A GUI For Everything method is a means to remaining employed.
Does a drunk driver get to keep his license because the bus doesn't come right to his house?
No, but someone with a suspended license can often still drive as long as it is for work (a company car, for example). They give such exemptions all the time to people.
So, what kind of punishment did T-Mobile get? They are clearly negligent if a 16 year old kid can crack their systems and compromise hundreds of thousands of customers' information. And what kind of punishment are the people who provided him with access to computers getting?
If your kid took your gun to commit a crime, you'd be in trouble for leaving it laying around and not providing security and supervision for it. If a computer is (apparently, according to politicians and CEOs) just as dangerous, shouldn't adults be held liable for leaving their computers laying about? And certainly a company can be penalized for not securing the information or property of their own customers.
But nah - let's just blame the kid and forget about the whole fact that our network and security was clearly worth shit since some highschool kid was able to get around it. If we keep all the focus on what an evil little snotty shit he is, nobody will turn an eye toward us.
Well, as much as I agree, I think having the felony on his record will do him more damage than a couple years without a computer. Even in this day and age.
If he were an adult, I'd agree with you. But if he's 17 now and was about 16 when he began all this, he's not an adult. I don't think it's helpful or appropriate to sentence a child to prison (even juvie) for non-violent crimes.
Put him on probation, sure. Restrict him from technology, sure. Make him do an ass-load of community service, sure. But stick him in juvie with kids who are there for stabbing people, burning down houses and rape? Fuck that.
If he were a big corporation that compromised the data of ten times as many Americans (accidentally or even intentionally for money), I doubt anyone would do prison time. The company as a whole would get a fine (slap on the wrist) and promise to "investigate and improve our data handling methods and securities".
But because he's a kid and an individual, he's spooky and evil and has to be locked up. Because I'm sure the one thing he'll learn locked up with a bunch of VIOLENT people for a year is how to be responsible and helpful and contribute to society and improve his life.
Dude, new game consoles are a big deal. I don't even own one, but it has been a long time since we've had a major console release. People are excited about the Xbox this year and the PS3 next year. Can you blame them? They've been playing games on 1999/2000 hardware for the last five years. They're ready for something new and better to get out. Plus, this is the first major console rollout since gaming really has hit it big time (meaning, it's own television station, award shows and every hollywood slut carrying a PSP around). The world is very different from when the last system came out.
No, he sounds like a future National Enquirer employee to me.
What he did is probably done hundreds of times per year, but never reported, within the paparazzi circles.