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The Risks of Entering Programming Contests
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister warns developers of the hidden risks of entering programming competitions, which are on the rise since NetFlix awarded $1 million to BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos in 2009. 'Web and software companies offer prizes for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is simply to raise awareness, interest, and participation in a given software platform or service,' McAllister writes. But the practice of offering and entering software prizes is not without concerns. Privacy implications, class-action lawsuits — many of the prizes leave participants vulnerable to prosecution. Worse is the possibility of handing hard work over to a company without reward. 'Contests like the Netflix Prize are sponsored by commercial entities that stand to profit from the innovations produced by the entrants. Those who participate invest valuable time toward winning the prize, but if they fail to meet the deadline (or to produce the leading results) their efforts could go completely unrewarded. Depending on the terms of the contest, however, the sponsor might still be able to make use of the runners-up's innovations — which, of course, would be a whole lot cheaper than hiring developers.'"
Once, in a Microsoft interview, I was asked to write a memory allocator. I always assumed that after I left, the conversation went like:
"Great, copy this down. Tell the next guy to write us a sound driver."
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
You might think that, but let's face it, memory management in Windows hasn't visibly improved in decades*. Any number of interview candidate submissions could have helped, and yet it hasn't.
Their problem is they weren't sure which one was best; so they used them all, and set up a round-robin system to select which manager to use for which process instance.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
No, this is Fark. The 'risks' they mentioned are obvious and belong to almost all contests.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Joke spoiler alert! The "protection racket" link was an insinuation that Rivalz is not someone they would want working for them and that they would go to extreme lengths to prevent him working for them...