Thank you -- that got me to do it. :D

I think the idea is that some of us suspect that people who "leave" the NSA to work at Google, etc., have not exactly cut all ties to their "previous" employer. You don't need a backdoor if one of your people walked in the front door with a suitably-edited resume and got hired. Those of us who object to illegal techniques like parallel construction see people who are willing to violate the rights of their fellow citizens as undesirable hires. Knowing who used to work for agencies where unethical practices are commonplace is a useful filter. I know I wouldn't hire James Clapper, at least ... (rubs face with hand) ... not wittingly.

Well, I think this guy qualifies as a "legitimate climate skeptic" -- at least, he used to. Then he dug into the data and learned that the AGW assertions match the data. When his understanding of the facts changed, he adjusted his opinion.

Richard Muller: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07...

So, if you looked at the right time, you'd have seen one. I imagine there is a lesson in that, somewhere.

I share your frustration -- there was a stretch of nearly two years with only absurdly-large Android phones on the market. I'm pleased with the size of my Razr M, in case you want to consider a move back. (Terrible naming, tho -- that's "Razr M", not "Razr", nor "Razr Maxx", both of which are roughly the size of ping-pong paddles.)

I am not particularly worried about the "malicious operator" scenario. Trick someone else's car into a fatal accident, and that's probably premeditated murder to a jury (or one of the heavier manslaughters, at least). Prosecutors will likely take it a bit more seriously than that time someone's computer got hacked to send out spam. Yes, it's possible to do, if you are also willing to do the prison time.

Graphing in Excel is by no means "done". Maybe the latest release finally actually gives us WYSIWYG (Office 2007 at work, 2010 at home), but it's been broken since at least 1995. I've long wished for MS to buy up the folks that make Grapher (www.goldensoftware.com) and give us graphs that can be used in technical situations. (I'm also a Grapher customer, and like their product, but if their graphing capabilities were integrated into Office, my life would be easier. My clients own Excel, they don't own Grapher.)

Trivial examples indicating to me that Excel has not been "done" since 1995:
1) Make a graph with X and Y axes at the same scale, NOT at "eyeball it to isotropic on-screen, print, check, revise to anisotropic on-screen, print, check, repeat" scales,
2) add labels to points on a scatterplot from a 3rd data column (Why would I need to post X or Y values? Aren't those, y'know, graphically depicted by the graph? I need to post Z labels!)

As long-lived and as enthusiastic a love affair I've had with Excel since the 1990s, the graphing has always been weaker than it ought to be.

The brown m&m story is actually a brilliant quality control hack: http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp

Short version: if there are brown m&ms backstage, then the technical aspects of the show are likely to be inadequate (electrical power, load-bearing specs), because no one read the tech specs which had the brown m&m bit buried among them.

Are there ways in which the Slashdot crowd could be useful to you? E.g. are there massive data sets that you just don't have the resources or know-how to handle, but that folks around here might be able to help get you to the right resources and techniques? I'm a hydrogeologist and therefore probably not very useful, unless we can identify a laminar flow or a calibration/optimization problem that can be solved with gradient-based techniques. But maybe there's an interesting problem hiding in a bunch of protein fragments or bone chips that would be suited to someone else's skills?

In other words: I want to attend your "Are there any questions?" talk where you debut the chickosaurus SO BAD. How do we make it happen sooner?

I'm on the verge of getting an iPhone, because it's the only remaining smartphone that appears to be designed to fit in a pocket. I went to see about upgrading my Motorola Droid to a Droid Razr, thinking I would get something a little thinner, a little lighter, a little more battery, than what I have now. The Razr is the size of a ping-pong paddle. It's stupid. I walked out angry and still have my old phone.

I don't understand what the Motorola and other engineers are thinking. Congratulations on how thin the Razr is. Too bad it's comically large in X and Y. I held my Droid against every other smartphone in two different stores, and not a single Android phone is smaller in X or Y (some are thinner). The Droid is already right at my upper limit for pocket comfort.

Maybe Apple sold most of the phones on Verizon because the iPhone is the only phone-sized product remaining on the market. (I am happy to hear suggestions for a phone-sized Android phone, perhaps I missed one in my search.)

My wife does this kind of work for a living, and based on observing her over the last few years, I think you're wrong

She'd agree that no process is perfect, but point out that there are ways to identify the needs of the team (both skills and personality), and train the engineers to interview in a way that addresses those needs.

I've watched repeatedly (from afar) as she's gone to a new team of engineers, helped them figure out what they really need (sometimes subtly different from what they think they need), and taught them to interview in a way that tells them if the candidate fills that need (and gives the candidate a job he/she is psyched about).

Software engineers are good at building software, hence the title. They're not "interview specialists", which is why in many cases, they interview for the wrong things. Being able to code a bubblesort and steering a team of ninja coders don't have much to do with each other. But not knowing how to interview can lead you to assume that knowing coding fundamentals is what's important, when instead it tells the candidate that you have no idea who you're trying to hire.

Anyway, her job is to teach the coders how to screen and interview effectively and efficiently. As best I can tell, her teams end up loving her for it, after an initial period of growth pains. She's used to major resistance at the beginning. If I remember right, her goal is that when she's done, 9 of 10 interviews turn into job offers, because the team screens out unsuitable candidates long before the physical interview stage.

Now, how to find a recruiter that can teach engineers to interview, I don't know. I hear that a lot of them just forward a bunch of resumes and see what sticks and claim their commission. Like anything else, you have to do your homework when hiring your recruiter. My wife has a small-but-solid number of people whose recruiting work she respects, so if you are a person frustrated by the hiring process, I can connect you (hopefully that comes across as intended -- relevant info to help solve a problem, not as a sales pitch).