I did some negotiation with Rumblefish and Paul about 5 years ago when I ran a digital music company and I have to say that in the sea of bloodsucking fucktards that exist in music licensing Paul and Rumblefish were a breath of fresh air. They were the only company I dealt with that actually gave a flying fuck about their artists and were always very supportive of up-and-coming bands. Hell, their entire business model is around putting unknown artists on soundtracks, or in commercials, and henceforth are actually supporting the artists in a way that previously only the major labels would do.

All of that being said, it is obvious Rumblefish fucked up this time. Who knows exactly why, but they did. I think it is important that before crucifying them you understand that the service they provide is extremely valuable to artists not on a major label.... so at least give them that.

And before the venomous masses can call me a shill or whatever: we actually never did business together, nor did I remain contact with Paul, and so I have no reason to defend them other than what I stated above. People and companies fuck up some times. I have a feeling Rumblefish will learn from this mistake.

You are clever! Some people would just use their fingers to count (or straws if you aren't just drinking beer), but you, my fine sir, have found a way to count while buttraping the person on the other side of the bar! Brilliant! I can only imagine that you are the most popular patron at every establishment you frequent.

It really depends on what you are trying to do with Facebook. The newish Graph API is an absolute DREAM compared to the cobbled together mess that was the old API. Nearly everything you could ever care to pull from/post to Facebook is available via a fairly well thought out RESTful-ish interface. The only thing you need to pass into them is an access token which you can get with another simple call to the Graph API. The Graph API also has a push notification service so you can subscribe to events and Facebook will ping you when there are changes. I cannot believe I just posted something defending Facebook, but their API is FAR from the worst API out there.

I spent about a year doing some work for the Seattle school district but quit shortly after I found out there were multiple teachers in the district that they had to hire "translators" for because the teacher could not effectively communicate.

This is why Slashdot needs a "Like" or "+1" button.

Washington state is downright hostile to small business. The DOR is evil and will treat you like a mega corporation even if you only have a single employee. I have had several corporations and LLCs registered in Washington (and stupidly just set up a new one here) but next time I will pay for an empty office space in Las Vegas and do it that way.

I had the same thing happen with my son when he was maybe 3. I began screaming at the agents and came VERY close to being arrested. I actually crossed back through the screener and grabbed my son since he had thrown himself on the floor and threw a fit. You don't fuck with a parent when their child is in distress. :-)

People who had learned on their own. Since the bulk of what I did at the time was not exactly rocket science it didn't matter if the candidate had a deep compsci background. What was important was having been around the block a few times.

Agreed that the guy is an idiot but only because he publicly admitted what he did. All people in hiring positions have preferences. I used to have a thing against CompSci grads... all based on a unfortunate stream of incompetents that came to me. I got over it, but it took a few years and a couple of rockstars that were CompSci grads.

What I look for is breadth and depth of knowledge. If a candidate has the vast majority of their experience with a singular platform that may set off red flags for me. But I also understand that people have to work for a living and just because they use a platform at work that I don't care for doesn't necessarily mean I won't hire them. The type of work they have done IS very important though. In my business someone who has written custom CRMs for large corporate clients probably doesn't have the skillset I need, whereas someone who doesn't even blink when I say that we use Scala/Lift, with some Python glue and a ton of bash scripts IS someone I would want to talk to.

You should change it to hunter2. Just don't use ******* as that is my password.

Where possible my "deadlines" are actually milestones based on how long I think it would take ME to perform the task. I keep my skills pretty up to date and 9 times out of 10 am a contributing member of the team so I know the code pretty well. I wouldn't fire someone for missing a deadline... I would consider it if they missed it without giving a heads up or some explanation.

As a startup founder, director, and CTO (not all at the same time, mind you) I would frequently send developers home if they weren't being productive... even if they were only there for 4 or 5 hours. Sometimes you hit a wall and no amount of staring at that screen is going to help. Why would I want to pay you to sit there and do nothing when I could send you home and you come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to tackle the problem? I rarely let anyone work more than 10 or 11 hours because my experience taught me that the quality of what is produced is *drastically* reduced during those death marches. Again... sure a team may roll out a dozen new features over an 18 hour day but how many bugs will that produce? More importantly, how demotivated will they be the next day on 3 hours of sleep? It's a vicious cycle that I never allow my teams to enter. It's all about the bottom line and to me inching a race forward is no good unless you meet the finish line. That being said, a developer who has to be sent home after 5 or 6 hours every day is completely worthless to me. You are either on-board or you are not. I don't care how or when you work as long as you produce product that is exceptional. A rule that I had at my first CTO gig was as follows: "I don't care if I ever see you in the office. If you miss a deadline without giving me sufficient advance warning I will fire you. You were hired because you are smart and a quality coder. I shouldn't have to babysit you." Works well if you have a driven team.