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Programming

Ted Dziuba Says, "I Don't Code In My Free Time" 619

theodp writes "When he gets some free time away from his gigs at startup Milo and The Register, you won't catch Ted Dziuba doing any recreational programming. And he wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't hire those who don't code in their spare time. 'You know what's more awesome than spending my Saturday afternoon learning Haskell by hacking away at a few Project Euler problems?' asks Dziuba. 'F***, ANYTHING.'"

Comment Re:Privacy is simple (Score 4, Insightful) 205

Facebook is incredibly popular and the start of your third paragraph shows that (aside from an inability to stop swearing) you can't comprehend what the general non-geeky public want from the internet. Social relationships are complicated - how you interact with your friends and what they know about you may not be the same for your family and for your work colleagues.

I'm not a big fan of facebook, but the people who use pejorative terms to dismiss it obviously don't understand it.

Comment Documentation (Score 5, Interesting) 569

'Can I see an example of your code or documentation?'

If they don't keep documentation or their code tends to be messy and undocumented then you're going to spend half your time trying to figure stuff out rather than doing productive (and thus interesting) work. If a company's business is in a complex field (finance for instance) and the code/system has built up over many years there is a fair chance that both will be pretty incomprehensible to start with and if they haven't got reasonably documentation the your job is going to be harder and there is a chance that you'll never feel you full have a grasp on *everything* that is going on.

Apart from that, it will show that you give a damn about documentation and are organised.

Patents

Groklaw Says Microsoft Patent Portfolio Now Worthless 219

twitter writes "P.J. concludes her look at the Bilski decision: 'you'll recall patent lawyer Gene Quinn immediately wrote that it was bad news for Microsoft, that "much of the Microsoft patent portfolio has gone up in smoke" because, as Quinn's partner John White pointed out to him, "Microsoft doesn't make machines." Not just Microsoft. His analysis was that many software patents that had issued prior to Bilski, depending on how they were drafted, "are almost certainly now worthless." ... He was not the only attorney to think about Microsoft in writing about Bilski.'"
Privacy

Verizon Employees Fired For Snooping Obama's Record 344

longhairedgnome writes "The curiosity in President-elect Barack Obama's phone records came with a high price tag for Verizon Wireless employees. According to CNN, the workers who snooped on Obama's phone records have been fired. 'This was some employees' idle curiosity,' a company source told CNN and added 'we now consider this matter closed.' Justice served? What about legal possibilities?" Can we expect anyone who followed a warrantless wiretap from the Bush administration to also be fired then? I mean, they violated our privacy as well.
Security

Reliable, Free Anti-Virus Software? 586

oahazmatt writes "Some time ago my wife was having severe issues on her laptop. (A Dell Inspiron, if that helps.) I eventually found the cause to be McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully. I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network. She's not thrilled about a wired connection as the router is on the other end of the house. We're looking for some good, open-source or free personal editions of anti-virus software. So, who on Slashdot trusts what?" When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV, and the machine seemed to do as well as most classmates'. What have you found that works?
Transportation

"Roadable Aircraft" Moving Towards Launch 186

We discussed Terrafugia's plans for what they don't like to call a "flying car" — rather a "roadable aircraft" — last spring. The Boston Globe has an update on Massachusetts-based Terrafugia and its fight to get airborne in these parlous times. "The last serious attempt to bring a car-airplane hybrid to market was the Aerocar, in 1949. According to Carl Dietrich, chief executive of Terrafugia, that company built six prototypes. It needed 500 orders in order to gear up for mass production, but it never got there... 'It can be hard to explain the value of this to non-pilots,' Dietrich says, 'but when you're a pilot, the problems of high costs, limited mobility on the ground, and weather sensitivity are in your face, all the time.' The company says more than 50 of the vehicles have been pre-ordered. The target price is $198,000."

Comment Re:I don't think most people care that it's locked (Score 1) 573

If I had mod points I'd mod you up.

If you ask a geek what he wants from a gadget they'll give you a list of specifications and a prerequisite that it doesn't come from the Evil Empire of the day (Apple at the moment, it was Microsoft, and will probably be Google one day).

Ask a member of the general population (who buy the major volume of gadgets) and they'll tell you what they want it to do and generally not worry about who makes it (although a name they recognise helps).

So geeks can complain about batteries they can't change, kill-switches, and the like and the general population to whom you probably couldn't even explain half of these reasons to won't give a damn.

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