They note that noisy environments don't really help.

I was also a backer.

I think the most compelling example of how bad the controls are is to compare the 'pinball arcade' game they have to the PC or mac version.

On the PC or Mac the flippers work instantaneously and the game is quite fun.

On the Ouya it is unplayable, with half second latencies, it is almost impossible to pull back the plunger to start the ball, etc.

Also, on github you can still tag versions and it'll still put up tar balls you just can't upload some zip file or your own and get it in the same place as the tagged versions.

At a convention the people aren't usually sitting at their computers the whole time huddled over problems they are working on. A hackathon for me is a group setting of people working on code. A convention has them in breakout sessions talking about it, but not writing it.

I'm going to disagree with most of the replies I've seen here so far about just piling on constraints and limitations.

When I go to a hackathon, I am looking for an open forum with interesting people to talk to and people who have their own problems to solve. I get sucked into new problems for 2-3 days and I emerge on the other side with insights into areas I wouldn't have thought of working on before.

I'm not looking for structure from the organizer about what to work on. I and most of the people I know already have a ton of projects in the wings. I'm looking for a good collaborative space to talk to people, people who've brought interesting projects to help, and whiteboard/blackboard space to use for explaining things.

The Haskell hackathons (Hac-Phi and Hac-Boston in particular) have generally followed this format and I love them.

I've gone to other events where someone is trying to harness a hackathon to achieve some particular end and pass out prizes or something, and in general I've been bored out of my mind. If I want to go work with some fixed group of people on some fixed task I can do that. It is called a job.

I'm at a hackathon to generally improve the state of things that the people around me are passionate about and to be exposed to new things.

As a CIO, I viewed my job to be the opposite of everything in this article.

Of course it is good to listen. It is good to be able to interact with anyone on their level of technical expertise and understanding. This advice holds at every level of an organization.

It is also occasionally good to be capable of being demonstrably the most technically competent person in the room. Effective organizations do need the person who can actually ensure there exists an implementble strategy to accomplish the things the CEO is selling the world, and the things the client wants, and who can articulate to vendors exactly why their magic bullet isn't quite what you need. And in many ways as a CIO, your role is to be the one person at that level of management who really understands the ins and outs of how the technology works, how things can improve and how you can adapt to meet the challenges of the organization as a whole.

Sometimes that means being the voice of reason as the curmudgeonly technology guy, but more often it means trying to steer management towards implementable solutions and being able to suggest things that give the other CXO types options they didn't know existed.

Whether facing inward within the organization or outward to clientele or vendors, you need to be able to communicate effectively. One thing this article omits is that when facing outward, it is often good to know when to overload the vendor to get to someone who is more competent to address your concerns, and somewhat more judiciously to be able to out-tech a client's technical guys as well.

Sometimes it _does_ pay to be the smartest person in the room.

They could probably do even better by getting the phone to emit a loud clapping sound, approximating a dirac delta so they could measure the impulse response of the room. The fourier transform of that should have some nice distinctive shapes. On the other hand, that wouldn't be nearly as unobtrusive, and most smart phones have crappy speakers, so you wouldn't get much response.

I used CLEPs for 30 credits of a double B.S. including almost all of my general education requirements. The key with getting most universities to accept CLEPs -- which are mostly targeted at people coming out of highschool with some college level experience -- is to make sure that you haven't taken an official college level course in the department that you plan to CLEP in. I CLEP'd out of literature, american history, sociology, american government, composition, economics ... Basically everything I could. Take AP exams for everything you can as well. I still wound up having to take a couple of classes outside of math and computer science in order to fulfill art and cross-cultural coursework requirements -- the one that stuck out most was african american theatre -- but overall I can't say I'm any worse off for having given the other departments their pound of flesh.

I did have to study for the CLEPs I took to ensure I passed them all, but I was much happier studying sociology for a weekend than for a semester.

The last time after I found myself seriously entangled with a girl, she couldn't stand to be in the same state with me.

*ducks*