I've bought my last few computers at endpcnoise.com, which specializes in silent computing. Very satisfied. The only way I hear my primary computer is if I hurl it down the stairs.

I've been at a "passionate programmer" e-commerce company for over 10 years. Their definition of "passionate" (of which apparently there are many) is a developer who doesn't simply convert a request into code, but who will also think intelligently about the larger (difficult) business problem and focus on it. When your client says "Build me a proprietary streaming video server," the ordinary programmer starts taking specs for it, whereas the passionate one asks to learn about the business problem being solved. Then you learn that the video server is for playing instructional/motivational videos for the salespeople. So the real business problem is an unmotivated sales force, and a "video server" is not necessarily the only solution. Now you can have a discussion about other solutions.

I'm sure some readers will immediately jump up with counterexamples and pessimism... how the other person won't want to hear about your alternatives because they're threatened, etc. but I have been living this life now for 10+ years at the same mid-sized company and it's real. And yes, I am paid well for it, and so are my direct reports. And no, I rarely need to work evenings or weekends, and neither do my direct reports. And we all get free food. And the company is consistently profitable.

From all the vitriol I've been reading here today, I get the impression my company is extremely rare. Guess I'll stay for another 10!

Them: "Mind if I yak on my cellphone in this enclosed space?"
You: "Mind if I fart?"

Tell those interviewers that you've intentionally decided not to be a "people manager," because you are an outstanding individual contributor, passionate about the technology.

On the flip side, leadership skills (as opposed to people-management skills) are indeed important to software developers. You have to know how and when to:

- Push back against questionable requirements from a client (tactfully)
- Advocate your point of view
- Not wilt in the face of authority
- Rally the other members of your dev team around an idea
- Speak your mind in the middle of a heated meeting

While NYC was at fault here, why sleep with a potential wake-up-machine next to you? Next time it won't be an Amber alert, but a drunk buddy who's lost track of the time. Why risk it?

Google Glass will be yet another form of distraction for drivers. By and large, people cannot attend to a close-up display and a far-off traffic situation at the same time. It's a limitation of human attention. The more Google Glass on the road, the more death.

In the late 1980s, I was the sysadmin of a large Unix server at a well-known university, when suddenly the server stopped accepting logins. It seems that the password file (/etc/password) had gotten corrupted. The reason? A well-meaning graduate student had suspected a security flaw and decided to "try it out" to confirm it and then report it. His heart was in the right place, but his judgment was total stupidity: he corrupted a running server used by dozens of scientists "to see if it would work." If he had just stopped by my office and ASKED (we knew each other well), we could have checked for the flaw safely.

So I have a little sympathy for Mr. Al-Khabaz, but he did exercise very poor judgment in running Acunetix.

The best motivation for a hacker is the respect of more experienced/legendary hackers in the company. When some IT God stops by my cube, looks at my work and says, "Holy sh*t, that's amazing: how did you do it?" that feeling beats 1000 "cake days."

We've lost the basic ability to store and process email. Back when we all used terminals connected to one big computer (Unix, etc.), it was clear where your mail lived: in specific files. You could access it from anywhere (via modem), and you could process it with tools (grep, sed, etc.), use "tar" to back it up, encrypt it with PGP, or basically do whatever you wanted with it, effortlessly. It was YOURS.

Nowadays, half your email lives on a remote IMAP server: accessible from anywhere, but inaccessible to your local tools, and if your mail provider ever gets shut down, you could lose it all. The other half lives in local mailboxes on your desktop or laptop, accessible only when you're physically next to the machine. Or worse, if you use two desktops (one at work, the other at home), you might have local mailboxes on each, making it impossible to do a full search of your email. Some people work around this by carrying a thumbdrive and putting all local mail folders on it... but then you have to back up the thumbdrive, etc.

This is why I download all email from my ISP to a Linux machine at home (via fetchmail), access it via OpenSSH, and read it in emacs, or run a local IMAP server. This provides all the benefits of the old "terminals" model. The downside is you have to be a computer wizard to set it up.

Anyone building a new house, who doesn't wire it with CAT-6 or similar while the walls are open, is nuts.

I wired my existing house (built in 1899) and have never regretted the expense. (When's the last time you ever heard, "Shit, the wired is down"?)

Google is your friend. You have the name of the scientist. Go check out the papers and read 'em!

As for your claim, "In real life, the majority of people WILL stop talking if they need to concentrate for a busy intersection / dangerous road and if there's an "OH SHIT!" situation, they won't keep holding the phone".... You've missed the point entirely. If you enter an "oh shit" situation while on the phone, you will NOTICE THIS MORE SLOWLY. That is what the research says: your reactions are delayed due to distraction. And then it's too late to drop your phone.

That's a fine opinion, but look at the research. The data don't agree with you. Driving while talking on a cell phone turns out worse than all the things you mention, when actually measured. There seems to be something special about the way the brain handles a phone conversation that impairs the ability to multitask more severely.

Don't take my word for it. Read the research.

Talking on a cell phone while driving increases your risk of an accident by 400%.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/lab/appliedcognition/

This isn't about some individual reckless drivers talking on the cell phone. It's a limitation of our brains.

No, but they're the only ones who can afford to buy congresspeople. :-)