I don't really know anything about software modems, so I won't comment on that, but the release of documentation by AMD was hugely useful to the open source radeon driver.

Except that all of the major desktop video players now -- except nvidia -- have either open sourced their drivers or provided full (as far as we know) specifications for their hardware. Nvidia is the last holdout, and hasn't sued Intel or AMD for infringing on any of their patents.

So, maybe they are indeed violating someone else's patents, but considering that you yourself claim that "everyone" in the industry violates the others' patents, there's obviously an opportunity for cross-licensing, just like lots of other competing companies do.

If it's still true that nvidia is violating someone else's patents, I have little sympathy for them. In that case, they're essentially breaking the law, and hiding that fact.

If the majority of people in government are incompetent, then the government is incompetent.

Yes, because if someone was harassing me in real life to the point that I had to get a restraining order, the absolute first thing I'd think of is my Facebook account.

Somehow I think not.

The bottom line is that someone was ordered not to engage in any form of contact, but, instead of following that order, decided to do so anyway, knowing full well what they were doing. The medium of contact is irrelevant. Intent is king when considering protective order violations. While the defendant is expected to avoid contact with the restrained (e.g., don't go to their place of work to instigate contact), they're not required to go out of their way to make it difficult for the restrained to contact them.

Nowadays there's a privacy setting to determine who's allowed to poke you, but it probably still defaults to "Everyone" unless you explicitly change it.

In addition to what the other reply said, it also isn't certain that the stats post-doc was always making decisions based on the statistics. Just like anyone else, his decisions were undoubtedly influenced to some degree by emotions, sometimes not so much, sometimes strongly.

And even if you *are* going by the stats, there's always the human element, and the fact that you're playing against other people who have their own different strengths and faults. Unless everyone around the table is a computer, you can't expect to always play well based solely on the math.

Well, he still has Score:1 (30% underrated) so his message has been deemed at least as useful as a non-AC comment that hasn't received any moderation at all. Regardless, aside from the questionable nature of his assertion that you can "just do a $1MM project with a few minutes of explanation," I agree for the most part with the rest of what he says. You can think that's sad... and I can think you're wrong. Whatever, no skin off my back.

Of course they do. But that's why you ask them to describe some of the things they've done, in detail, and ask probing questions about why they did it, how they did certain things, and problems they had. If they can't, then maybe they're lying. If they can, then either they're telling the truth, or they're exceptional liars.

If their spare-time coding also includes contributions to open source, take notes: it should be pretty easy to check up on after the interview since those kinds of things are usually pretty public.

If that were the case, experience wouldn't mean squat during a software engineering interview. I've done a few interviews as the interviewer, and I wouldn't even consider an applicant who codes poorly, especially when there are so many people who are already more than competent. If they are just lacking experience, that's fine, if the position isn't too advanced. But if they're actually bad coders... no, sorry, but they're just going to be a burden. It's pretty tough to judge a person's ability to improve in a 45-60 minute interview.

While that's certainly applicable for some jobs, many employers may not find that so useful. I wouldn't say I've interviewed for tons of coding jobs, but I've never had anything approaching a "basic coding aptitude test." The interview questions were usually coding-related, and yes, I've written code on whiteboards during interviews, but most of them are more about critical thinking and problem solving than basic coding ability.

Yes, and people with children seem to always believe they know better, too.

Hey, it's your choice to have kids and spend all your free time interacting with them. If that works for you, more power to you.

But maybe that doesn't work for everyone? And maybe that's ok too?

Yes, because clearly, as a European, you're an expert on the daily life of most Americans...

That may be the case, but he also comes off as looking down on those of us who do have a personal coding hobby outside of work.

Why do so many people seem to think they've found The One True Way and feel the need to put down people who prefer a different path?

Your outlier hardly proves that you're more likely, or even equally likely, to find great programmers who don't code outside of work.

Way to put words in the guy's mouth.

Not sure why you're so pissed; it sounds like you wouldn't be eliminated from consideration based on a hiring filter that culls people who don't do their craft as a hobby too. No one's saying that you have to do it 24/7 or at the exclusion of all other hobbies.

Yes, unfortunately that is one of the dangers of turning a personal hobby into a profession, but some people do manage to do it and are happier for it long term. Don't want to work for someone who prefers people for whom their profession is a hobby? Fine; clearly they don't want to hire you anyway. Everybody's happy in the end.

Why? Seems like a straightforward thing to bring up during an interview.

Well, that's the thing. Some people, despite coding professionally, still find coding something they enjoy, and something they feel is worthy of an allocation of personal time. It's all about priorities. You can certainly maintain a career, have a spouse, and take care of your kids with a coding habit. If spending your remaining free time fishing (or whatever) is more important to you than a coding hobby, then that's a choice you've made based on your priorities. But some people actually *do* still like to code after their other obligations are taken care of. I'm not saying you're any less of a coder for that *not* being the case, but I think coding for fun can be a reasonable filter that an employer might use. It may have a higher-than-normal false positive rate (catching good coders such as yourself in its net), but it likely also has a very low false negative rate (not allowing bad coders past the filter).

Sure, that's fine. No one's saying it isn't. It's your choice that your work doesn't overlap with your hobbies.

But for some people, they do overlap. While it might be limiting to say, "I won't hire someone who doesn't code in their spare time," it does act as a reasonable filter. I think it's safe to assume that the set of people who do code in their spare time has very few bad programmers in it. The set of people who don't code in their spare time, however, likely has a much larger proportion of bad programmers. (You could also say that the average quality in the codes-for-fun group is likely higher.)

If you have a limited amount of time and energy to deal with hiring, and your applicant pool is large enough, using a "must code for fun" filter saves you some effort by removing a large population of bad (or even just average, probably) programmers. Does that also remove some great programmers from consideration too? Almost certainly... but it's a trade off. It's a filter with a decent number of false positives, but likely very few false negatives.

It is true that we're pretty fond of paying with CCs, but I think in your case the ice cream vendor was just surprised you didn't have smaller change. Many small vendors (or anyone who sells items of very low value) will not accept bills over $50, or even $20, simply because they don't carry that much change on hand, or are afraid of getting passed counterfeit bills.

Personally I rarely carry around more than $100 in cash on a regular basis, but even if I did, I'd find carrying a $100 bill around to be a nuisance.