Simply by asking them to pay different, specific amounts. That amount clears? Check off the company who was "charged" that much.

Thankfully, today's economy should result in fewer trust-fund-hipster-douche-bags.

I went to an event called StartupWeekend back on '08. I had a great time working with like-minded people building something over the course of a weekend. I've been back to two additional events since then and left after the opening night both times. The shift at these events has been away from the hacker culture and towards the entrepreneur; hours of pitches by people who "have retail experience and know the space, but just need a programmer". It's disheartening. The idea is some of the work, and most times (but not necessarily) comes first. Sometimes, you work on something cool and it turns out other people want it. That's great too. But never has the world clamored or shouted for joy for some guy's concept of a real estate site. People love redfin and zillow, but until you can touch it, it's nothing. It's not even worth talking about. Learn to build a prototype. It should be a requirement for filing a patent.

This is about developers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zEQhhaJsU4

A lot of people have made the obvious comments about not being a know-it-all and about having good hygiene, but this all leads from the golden rule of "Don't be a dick." Accept help where you can get it, give help where you can get it, and in general, do your job well.

One of the classic games of my childhood, teams of robotic baseball players face off against eachother. When there's a close call at the bases, they battle to the death! Throughout the season, you earn cash based on your wins and losses, and can upgrade the weapons/defenses of your team. As awesome as it was back in the 90's, it was basically baseball + 2D fighter. We've come a long way in both, and I'd love to see a reboot! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Wars

I have AT&T DSL, (which sucks for more reasons than there are tiles on the floor of a wal mart) and they definitely filter outbound port 25. What was really interesting is that they had a form on their web site that allowed you to opt out, should you so choose. It took me a while to find, but from the moment I realized that I was being filtered to the moment I was sending viagra ads was only a timespan of about 2 hours. And it took me 1:56 to find that stupid page.....