I've heard a lot of flack towards the facebook/google white boards 'n' algorithms interview process. Is there a process you think is better? What would the ideal be?

I would like "Look at someones github, talk with them for an hour and say yes/no" I think that covers most of what you want to do and would scale for maybe 10-100 applicants... it may not scale when you get google/facebook level applicants though, it seems like it'd involve looking at a lot of similar githubs.