You know where else I have heard about using patents "defensively"? At Microsoft, circa 2001-2002 when I worked there. It was all about using them "defensively" back then. Then Microsoft had found itself struggling in a number of markets and started suing people left and right to extract royalties. Google will do the exact same thing a few years down the road, for the same reason.

Makes you think what he would have thought if back in the day a Korean company released a near-copy of Apple II in a nearly identical case and with nearly identical UI.

I wasn't ironic at all. I know a ton of people who do benefit handsomely from their computer science degrees. Heck, I'm one of them. I know of only a handful of guys who got lucky and got anywhere in this business without a degree. There are exceptions to any rule, but this particular one seems to put the probability mass on the side of getting a degree if you want to work in software. :-)

I'd rather regret the things I've done than the things I didn't do. Nothing ventured—nothing gained. But since you're in doubt and have a stable job, you might as well use that and get them to pay you more. What's a few tens of thousands of dollars between friends, right?

>> "I don't have a computer science degree"

Found this sentence and did not read the article. The guy lucked out by being in the right place at the right time, and now he's spouting his confirmation bias to anyone who would listen. I'm also pretty sure he doesn't know what "confirmation bias" is. :-)

>> I'm looking for a computer that will teach him basic computer literacy

Computer can't do that. Only a human can.

I graduated at the top of the class. I was the one giving people "math wedgies". :-) I didn't work quite as hard as my son does, though, so I suppose that's why.

Music he does on his own. His dad plays electric guitar at a pretty advanced level, so he's kid of attracted to that. :-)

No, he seems to be pretty good at it. Much better than I was, anyway.

I might be a hardass, but my kid does math homework even in the summer. An hour in the morning, an hour in the evening as a prerequisite to doing all the "fun" stuff, like computer games, watching cartoons and so on. He doesn't seem to mind too much. That's in addition to private math teacher that he goes to twice a week year round.

When police start riding these, we're all in trouble. Imagine a police car which at any given moment knows the exact speeds of the cars around it, and can read license plates of those ahead. Heck, just drive on the highway in an unmarked car, and have it automatically issue speeding tickets to everyone. Neat.

This money would be better spent bribing Congresscritters. They have a much greater impact on not putting soldiers in the harm's way in the first place, and they're relatively cheap to buy. In fact, tens of thousands of soldiers (and hundreds of thousands of civilians) could have been saved by simply not invading Iraq or Afghanistan.

Russia can "want" anything, but over the past 20 years they've pissed away all of their scientific and technological prowess. Their space launches fail _several times a year_ these days. Their latest passenger jet (Sukhoi Superjet) has been a failure. Their army is mostly equipped with gear made 20-25 years ago. You can only pay pittance to your scientists and engineers for so long.

The crooks and thieves who run that country don't actually need any science or technology. They just need to be in the close proximity to government spending and/or oil and gas cash flow to saw off their share while nobody is looking.

US military is completely moot against any nation capable of delivering nuclear warheads to US soil. China is one of those nations. One bomb dropped on Chinese soil will result in a globally catastrophic retaliation.

It's difficult, both for you and for the person on the phone. Personally, in my current job I flat out refuse to do phone interviews, even though we use a web UI and I can see what the person is writing. I just don't feel I have enough signal to judge a candidate on the phone.

The best thing you can do in any interview (phone or not), is project calm confidence right from the start. I know it's difficult to do, particularly on the phone, but really, the decision about whether to hire you is made based on the first five minutes (or some even say 30 seconds), and then you can sway it either way with how well you do in the rest of the interview. So my advice is be calm and don't rush it. Haste makes waste. If you want some quiet time, just calmly and diplomatically say so. The guy (or gal) on the other end has almost certainly been in your situation, they'll understand you.