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Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

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Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#31

Post by nkassis »

mahmud wrote: post #28
eogas wrote: post #27

Why oh why couldn't I have been brought up in a white, suburban, upper-middle class family with my own computer and a highspeed internet connection. Stories like this always make me bitter, but good on the kid for making the most of his upbringing.

WTH? MOD consisted mainly of poor Brooklyn kids; in fact, some of them were members of street gangs, and taught themselves to hack on school computers. From nowhere to the cover of magazines .. The wikipedia article sucks, but the lore is out there and well known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception

Thanks! Now I get what the hell Hackers (the crappy 1995 movie) was trying to portray albeit really badly.

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#33

Post by WozRocks »

tptacek wrote: post #12
WozRocks wrote: post #9

I'm sorry, but I can't help but see this and think of all the kids around this age who are prevented from earning money by child labor laws, and the idea that this kid is a "Slave" because he's "too young to make decisions for himself. It may sound like this is a ridiculous thing to say, but just yesterday someone was making this claim in another forum. I was busy writing a game at that age with the intent to sell it…

Did I miss the part of the article where they took his $3,000 check away?

No, but most people from both political parties support the laws that prevent people from hiring kids his age. I think he was only able to get the $3,000 because it was a bounty or a "Contest", and not a "job" or "employment".

I think bug bounties shouldn't be the only way this kid is allowed to earn money. He's proven himself to have discipline and some responsibility. He should be allowed to go work for a startup, if he wants (at least during the summers when he's off from school, anyway.)

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#34

Post by xentronium »

nkassis wrote: post #31
mahmud wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTH? MOD consisted mainly of poor Brooklyn kids; in fact, some of them were members of street gangs, and taught themselves to hack on school computers. From nowhere to the cover of magazines .. The wikipedia article sucks, but the lore is out there and well known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception

Thanks! Now I get what the hell Hackers (the crappy 1995 movie) was trying to portray albeit really badly.

OT: Funny how perceptions differs. I liked the movie for its entertainment value, even though it was naive and used cliches about hackers.

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#36

Post by code_duck »

dekz wrote: post #24
jawee wrote: post #14

Looks like a fairly default Ubuntu install in the picture. I remember playing with Linux at that age.. fun times. He probably had a better time of it than me struggling with Redhat 6.3 from my local bookstore though...

local bookstore? I had to find a news agent that sold it far from where I lived, the download size would've taken weeks to finish.

Look sonny, when I was 12 I was installing AmigaDOS from floppy disks...

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#37

Post by [deleted] »

xentronium wrote: post #34
nkassis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Now I get what the hell Hackers (the crappy 1995 movie) was trying to portray albeit really badly.

OT: Funny how perceptions differs. I liked the movie for its entertainment value, even though it was naive and used cliches about hackers.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#38

Post by eru »

petercooper wrote: post #15

It's amazing what the Internet has done for child geeks. Now they can find out about, interact with, and do useful things rather than hack alone in a vacuum. My biggest child tech achievement was finding the word C--T in a data file for a text adventure when I was 10 (I was trying to cheat at the game). I casually asked my parents what it meant and my parents wrote in and complained and we got a free copy of the then…

No dictionary at home?

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#39

Post by sp4rki »

jawee wrote: post #14

Looks like a fairly default Ubuntu install in the picture. I remember playing with Linux at that age.. fun times. He probably had a better time of it than me struggling with Redhat 6.3 from my local bookstore though...

Oh I remember at his age I was playing with the latest versions of Slackware, and I could never get the damn thing online, since I had some crappy Packard Bell hardware. I then switch to Mandrake, went back to Slackware in the early 2000's and never looked back... Until Arch off course. Screw this Ubuntu fad.

Re: Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

#40

Post by sp4rki »

WozRocks wrote: post #9

I'm sorry, but I can't help but see this and think of all the kids around this age who are prevented from earning money by child labor laws, and the idea that this kid is a "Slave" because he's "too young to make decisions for himself. It may sound like this is a ridiculous thing to say, but just yesterday someone was making this claim in another forum. I was busy writing a game at that age with the intent to sell it…

Child labor laws are made to avoid having 6 year olds asking for money on the streets and 10 year olds swinging crates at the dock when they should be in school. If a kid want's to work, social/child services approve the motion after interviewing the parents, and does well in school for a trial period, he should be let to do so. Hell kid actors do it all the time!
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