links for 2009-04-19

"Maybe it's foolish to begin interviewing a programmer without looking at their code first. At Vertigo, we require a code sample before we even proceed to the phone interview stage. And our on-site interview includes a small coding exercise. Nothing difficult, mind you, just a basic exercise to go through the motions of building a small application in an hour or so. Although there have been one or two notable flame-outs, for the most part, this strategy has worked well for us. It lets us focus on actual software engineering in the interview without resorting to tedious puzzle questions." That has to be one of the saddest things ever.

"Dreamweaver: Don’t look so fucking pleased with yourself Dreamweaver"

"IN a move that raised questions about how far newspapers would go to please advertisers, The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page ad on Thursday that resembled a news column." It's a pretty good chunk of the front page too.

"WHEN the Food and Drug Administration sent letters to 14 major pharmaceutical companies late last month, the warning was strong. The companies’ search advertisements — the short text ads that run beside Google results — had to start including risk information about each drug or else be rewritten or removed." I can see the point of wanting to provide the information up front as soon as possible, but on the first click to the site having the information right there seems a fair comprise.

DHCP info is collected which is kept for 3 days unless something suspicious in which case 30 days. However there isn't an official policy. It's not a horrible policy, but there needs to be an actual statement of what is going on.

"US President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law, a UN expert says."

"This is not to say we should fill the world with noise on every mundane aspect of our existence. But who decides what is mundane? Who decides what is interesting? Everything's interesting to someone, even if that someone is only you and a few other people in the world." Totally.

Were you on twitter before Oprah?

"Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters' questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said he sees no reason why Texas should do that." Way to pander.

Trick people into updating IE6 to something far better.

Ban Comic Sans.

"Washington has confirmed it will boycott a UN forum on racism in Geneva next week because of differences over Israel and the right to free speech. The state department said the proposed text of the conference's guiding document remained unacceptable despite having been amended significantly. The US and Israel quit a similar forum in Durban in 2001 when its draft document likened Zionism to racism."