I'm not aware when the plan to change things is, but you can still buy Windows XP from my local PC component shop. I saw a guy buy one on Sunday.
It was really funny actually, he bought the OEM version, which is $179 CAD. The clerk guy told him due to licensing restrictions, he could only sell the OEM version with a piece of internal hardware. The clerk suggested a SATA cable ($5). Deal done.
I think your probability calculation might be a bit off. The math doesn't go through.
I should say ahead of time, I don't know much about these 4-9s vs 5-9s. I interpret them as probability of not failing. IE, 4-9, means 99.99%, which means the probability of failure is.0001. If that's wrong, the rest of this doesn't work out.
Lets try different numbers. Choice A has a probability of 25% of failing, Choice B has a probability of 1% of failing.
How many A do we need such that the probability of them all failing is less than 1%?
If I have 2xA, what is the probability that they both fail (assuming they are independent)?
P(A1) and P(A2) =.25 *.25 =.0625 (6%)
What if we add a third:
.25 *.25 *.25 =.015625 (1.2%)
And a fourth
.0039 (.39%)
So, 4 of these 25% data centers is better than a single 1% data center.
The case is even stronger for the 4-9s vs 5-9s example.
4-9s (if I understand) means 99.99%. Or,.01% of failure (P=.0001).
5--9s means 99.999%, or.001% of failure (P=.00001).
2 x 4-9s is.0001 *.0001 = 0.00000001 , which is 0.000001%, which is 99.9999 (6-9s).
To me, it makes perfect sense to do the "google" thing. This is exactly the reason that they fill their data centers with low-cost commodity hardware instead of high cost servers.
It's not necessarily as hard as it sounds to evaluate people online. I took a course in computer networks from an online university in Canada. I had some programming projects and assignments to do, but they were not worth much (like a typical CS class). Those, yes, I could have faked easily with the help of others if I needed.
However, the final exam was worth about 75% of my final grade, and I had to take that exam under supervision at my university. I'm sure there are other testing facilities that could also be used. A proctor (an assistant professor in my case) supervised the 3 hour exam. Seems pretty secure to me.
Some related advice: just take the damn class at your university even if everyone complains how much it sucks. I took networks through correspondence because of a terrible prof that I was avoiding. My final exam was made up of randomly selected questions from 2 entire textbooks and was much harder than the networks course offered through my department.
Of course I didn't read TFA, but the summary is talking about basic research, not commercialization or product-specific R&D. Basic research is not about profit or solving existing business or strategic military problems. In my experience, the most capable basic research scientists detest IP protection, patents, etc. They dislike those mechanisms that stifle progress and restrict the flow of new ideas.
Some of the most important breakthroughs come from these scientists, that do this sort of blue skies research. These folks are often very motivated and they work tirelessly simply for their own curiosity on topics that may end up being worthless. They are not seeking riches, just a comfortable-enough salary that they can focus their time on their research without worrying where their next paycheque will come from.
We can argue whether it is appropriate to spend government and private money on supporting these scientists, but please don't parade out intellectual property protection and copyright violations in their name. They want others to know about and use their ideas: because they are driven by genuine interest in their topics, not by the whiff of profits from short term exploitation of their work.
Yeah, but if they're not hitting the 10% mark on the quiz set, then they're probably not going to hit the target 10% on the test set either, regardless of whether they're overfitting to the public data.
Yeah, there is a flaw in the evaluation mechanism, in my opinion. The good thing is that you don't need to hit 10% on the test set to win the money. Whatever team is qualified (10% on quiz) AND has the best test score wins. Even if they have terribly overfit the quiz set (the quiz set has been around for years now), and have terrible performance on test, one of the two qualified teams will win the money.
The flaw is that other teams that have not hit 10% on quiz might be doing better on test. If that's true, those people cannot win the money, even though they apparently have a stronger (less overfit) solution. Of course, all of these scores are ridiculously close to each other anyway, but it seems contrary to the nature of a competition if the winner is not the team with the best submitted solution.
I sincerely hope that no matter what happens, ALL of the test scores (for all teams) are revealed, so everyone can see what was really happening.
It's also true that the winner is not the person who gets the highest score on the leaderboard. Most people seem to miss this.
The leaderboard gives score on the QUIZ dataset, which is half of the answers that the team submits. The WINNER of the million dollars is the person who does best on the TEST dataset, the other half of the answers they submit. Nobody knows how good these guys are doing on the TEST set, either team could be overfitting the quiz set.
Easy solution. Legalize non-competes, but require the company to pay the employee while bound by the non-compete.
Sounds good, but it sets up the following far too easily: 1) Get hired by a company that has juicy IP 2) Sign a non-compete with "keep getting paid" clause 3) Quit 4) ???? (here the ??? means do whatever you want) 4) PROFIT!
PS: I don't support non-competes. I just always wanted an excuse to post a.... PROFIT! post on/.
"Moreover, companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get results as quickly as their programs can scale, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours."
Is that a given? Is it that simple? I think that statement assumes too much...
As an example, it assumes all servers are operating on the same grid, in the same environment. Last time I checked, the cloud was the epitome of vagary.
Nonsense! I'm starting to get tired of all this "last time I checked" bullshit. You NEVER checked. My aggression is not leveled at you necessarily, but at all of the Slashdot posters who bring up the same arguments every time there is a cloud computing story.
The truth is, Amazon's offering (for EXAMPLE), lets you start up multiple virtual machine instances, and you pay per minute per instance. Lots of (NOT ALL) academic and industrial research relies on running many independent experiments. Let's try algorithm X with parameter set [1...100]. If each parameter set takes an hour, then you can either invest 100 hours on 1 machine, or 1 hour on a 100 machines. Aside from a tiny bit of overhead to create scripts to start the virtual instances and upload the jobs, this works exactly as advertised. It is great for some of us, and it's that simple.
I hate to be pedantic but it's not really a virus. You have to deliberately execute it and give it your root password. It doesn't break into your machine, it sneaks in, on software illegally downloaded from the intertron.
It's worth mentioning that if you zoom in on Google maps and compare the two pictures, it seems that the parked cars and traffic from outside of the immediate smiley area are exactly the same. It appears as if the smiley was photoshopped in or out of one of the pictures.
Don't thank them yet. Yes, he is competent, etc. But fighting such an action still takes up his time, which leaves him less time to do the things that we appreciate. Their strategy is sound: they have an infinite number of lawyers that they can use to tie him up with this sort of BS, meanwhile he can't keep doing what he's been doing.
Or, offer a reasonable price and make some easy money. Why would they pursue a court case when they can get it from you for a reasonable price?
I sold a domain name in a similar situation, made, $2000, easy peasy. (Zaam.com)
The only difference is they made me an anonymous offer through afternic.com, so I didn't know that my obscure domain name matched the Zurich Association of Asset Management (or some such). I should have gambled and asked for more money.
I think you're missing the implication of the article. The implication that I got was that people who already knew who the VP candidate would be were tasked with updating the article so that when the masses looked up her page, the information would be more accurate (or more appealing to potential voters).
This strategy makes very good sense for the candidates, and so monitoring those pages seems like a quite natural predictor a few hours before an announcement is made.
My friend tried to get special permission to publish a figure that had a Google Map screenshot in his Ph.D thesis. If you read the T&C on maps you're not technically allowed to publish such things.
Anyways, the result that he found was that Google doesn't *have* a phone number. Their buildings and offices do, their sales people do, but I can almost guarantee that there is no "getting to a person" for any query you might have from a technical or legal standpoint.
I guess.. on that note, have you tried posting in the relevant Google groups?
Job interview != IQ test. Your post sounds like sour grapes because you know you're a smart person so you don't think you should have to be demonstrably "good" at anything (except thinking) in order to get a job.
As someone who has been in CS grad school for 5 years, and is about to graduate with a Ph.D, I can tell you that most of these "PhD in X" that you put on such a pedestal are not good programmers, and further they have no desire to be.
If you need to hire someone who is mad smart and will be a great programmer, you should check that they already have a passion (or at least an interest) in programming. If they've treated it like a chore so far, then they probably always will. These are exactly the people will not perform well on your "concrete question in a specific language" question.
On the other hand, someone who likes to program and spends some of his/her free time reading books on design patterns and software project management strategies, etc will likely be savvy enough to brush up on the language before the interview and do just fine.
I don't really see the appeal to Google.
It has nothing to do with appeal to Google...
6000 of Google's employees choose Mac (over Windows) at the office
Developers tend to spend their 20% paid free time working on projects related to their OS of choice
There is no 3.
At Google, people get paid to work on whatever they want (some of the time), and those developers (not Google as an entity) choose to create open source Mac software.
instantly knowing of the aggravation of your relative's problem will be of no help I might want to see them before they are gone forever, especially if they've been ill for months and suddenly take a "turn for the worse". This happens all the time.
I know are responsible and avoid becoming "unavailable" when they are on call: they don't travel too far, they will not drink, they will not go anywhere they can't be reached. Right. Being on call restricts their options: an accepted part of the job. But, now we're going to that list of taboo places: movies, restaurants, coffee shops, seminars, or any place that *you* don't want to be aggravated by irresponsible people.
Like I said in another post... I'm not defending audible ringing or actually answering the phone in these situations. Anyone with a sense of consideration should turn the sound off and screen via sender, step outside to answer, or let it hit voicemail and then excuse yourself to check it, whatever.
I just think it's too drastic to render my device unable to receive data because you think some other ass is going to interrupt your movie.
If I go to the theater and I'm on call, then I answer the call AFTER I've climbed out of my seat and left the theater. That's my point actually. With the shielding solution, you get "no service", so you can't know if you're being called, so you can't even go into the theatre. The requirement that you are available precludes you from stepping into the building.
Phones are nice, but not necessary for life. Sorry if I skated around my point. I'm not suggesting that phones are necessary for a fulfilling, productive life. I'm saying *certain* careers and circumstances make it *absolutely required* to be always reachable, in our *current* society.
I agree, as you suggest, doctors can get cell service outside if every building in the world is shielded. But it also means that a doctor on call *cannot* enter any building that is shielded, even if he is the most responsible cell user in the world. It also means that I cannot go into those building if I have a relative in the hospital, for fear that I might miss an important call to their deathbed, for example. People that, by virtue of career or circumstance, are required to be reachable could be forced to live some muted version of their life in this scenario. I thought our fancy tools were supposed to free us, not limit us?
Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that it would be a damn shame if the convenience of personal communication is ruined for the responsible people in order to solve the problem created by irresponsible people. But I guess in general that's the way our society tends to go.
There is a perfectly good solution to this. Make it known that doctors shouldn't be in that theatre when they're on call. Don't forget other places where we don't enjoy being bothered by cell phones or loud phone conversations. Like restaurants, coffee shops, classrooms, the library, etc. Without much imagination, we could create a society that makes life impossible for people who must be available to receive important calls while they are not at their desks.
Unfortunately, it's probably the doctors and 24 hour plumbers that *are* responsible ones: they put their phones on vibrate. It seems weird to say that responsible Dr. Joe can't go to a fancy restaurant when he is on call, because YOU don't want to be bothered by some other irresponsible Mr. Dickhead.
I can't even understand why science is taught to ALL children, along with higher level maths, when the kids today can barely count, let alone read or speak properly. I had a 20-something in my town use a calculator at a checkout line 2 weeks ago when I gave her $21.01 for a $6.06 charge. Unbelievable. Actually quite believable. I have a Masters in Computer Science (about a year away from a Ph. D) and I'm not good at math with real numbers in my head either. I'd use a calculator for the same thing, especially if it was right in front of me.
As an author of several scientific papers that have been presented at and published through international venues, I believe its vary valuable to teach all people about things like science and world issues, even if they can't do elementary school math their head.
Great. So those of us who are able to drive and talk safely should suffer with the rest of you? I'm not choosing a side here, because I talk on my phone while driving. However, I believe there are studies that show that the activity of talking on the phone (even hands free) is distracting, and possibly moreso than talking to a passenger.
If those things are true, will "I drive better on the phone than most people drive not on the phone" soon be treated like "I drive better drunk than most people do sober."?
I totally agree with Bruce here, I don't quite understand what so many people don't seem to get (unless maybe I don't get it). The phrase "Open Source" was originally introduced to mean something specific, lets call it meaning A. Now, people use the phrase "open source" a alot, and their personal interpretation of the words can be different than meaning A. The problem now is, that if I want to know if your project corresponds to meaning A, there is no longer a word for that.
People seem to be quick on here to whip out some new definition of open source, many have said (paraphrasing) "If the source is available for viewing, I call that open source. OSI is dumb for saying open source should stand for meaning A".
Well guess what, here's a scenario: I'm an asshat, and I think that my products will sell better if they are called "open source". Since there is not official definition that is enforced, *I* think open source means "some (however small) part of the work is in some way (however smaller) derived from a project that has been labeled by the contributors as open source". Now, I've created a new commercial product that reuses some very freely licensed code library. Lets say that license doesn't require me to release my source. So, I don't release the source for viewing, modification, or anything. Is my project "open source"? You will probably say no (otherwise why bother having the words?). So, I will march along, never showing anyone the source, but claim my project is "open source", without explictly explaining to everyone what my definition of open source is. Maybe you ever buy my product and *assume* that if you asked for the source I'd show it to you. I won't. Yay for me. I get to look like a good guy without every having to be one.
C'mon. They have the Google.org charity which has been planned from the start and is apparently described in their IPO. It was big news about a year ago...
Among its goals, the online search giant will fund for-profit start-ups that also aim for social good, such as a program promoting entrepreneurship in western Africa. Overall, Google executives said Tuesday, its philanthropy will target three areas worldwide: poverty, the environment and energy.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not aware when the plan to change things is, but you can still buy Windows XP from my local PC component shop. I saw a guy buy one on Sunday.
It was really funny actually, he bought the OEM version, which is $179 CAD. The clerk guy told him due to licensing restrictions, he could only sell the OEM version with a piece of internal hardware. The clerk suggested a SATA cable ($5). Deal done.
I think your probability calculation might be a bit off. The math doesn't go through.
.0001. If that's wrong, the rest of this doesn't work out.
.25 * .25 = .0625 (6%)
.25 * .25 = .015625 (1.2%)
.01% of failure (P=.0001).
5--9s means 99.999%, or .001% of failure (P=.00001).
.0001 * .0001 = 0.00000001 , which is 0.000001%, which is 99.9999 (6-9s).
I should say ahead of time, I don't know much about these 4-9s vs 5-9s. I interpret them as probability of not failing. IE, 4-9, means 99.99%, which means the probability of failure is
Lets try different numbers. Choice A has a probability of 25% of failing, Choice B has a probability of 1% of failing.
How many A do we need such that the probability of them all failing is less than 1%?
If I have 2xA, what is the probability that they both fail (assuming they are independent)?
P(A1) and P(A2) =
What if we add a third:
.25 *
And a fourth
.0039 (.39%)
So, 4 of these 25% data centers is better than a single 1% data center.
The case is even stronger for the 4-9s vs 5-9s example.
4-9s (if I understand) means 99.99%. Or,
2 x 4-9s is
To me, it makes perfect sense to do the "google" thing. This is exactly the reason that they fill their data centers with low-cost commodity hardware instead of high cost servers.
It's not necessarily as hard as it sounds to evaluate people online. I took a course in computer networks from an online university in Canada. I had some programming projects and assignments to do, but they were not worth much (like a typical CS class). Those, yes, I could have faked easily with the help of others if I needed.
However, the final exam was worth about 75% of my final grade, and I had to take that exam under supervision at my university. I'm sure there are other testing facilities that could also be used. A proctor (an assistant professor in my case) supervised the 3 hour exam. Seems pretty secure to me.
Some related advice: just take the damn class at your university even if everyone complains how much it sucks. I took networks through correspondence because of a terrible prof that I was avoiding. My final exam was made up of randomly selected questions from 2 entire textbooks and was much harder than the networks course offered through my department.
Of course I didn't read TFA, but the summary is talking about basic research, not commercialization or product-specific R&D. Basic research is not about profit or solving existing business or strategic military problems. In my experience, the most capable basic research scientists detest IP protection, patents, etc. They dislike those mechanisms that stifle progress and restrict the flow of new ideas.
Some of the most important breakthroughs come from these scientists, that do this sort of blue skies research. These folks are often very motivated and they work tirelessly simply for their own curiosity on topics that may end up being worthless. They are not seeking riches, just a comfortable-enough salary that they can focus their time on their research without worrying where their next paycheque will come from.
We can argue whether it is appropriate to spend government and private money on supporting these scientists, but please don't parade out intellectual property protection and copyright violations in their name. They want others to know about and use their ideas: because they are driven by genuine interest in their topics, not by the whiff of profits from short term exploitation of their work.
Yeah, there is a flaw in the evaluation mechanism, in my opinion. The good thing is that you don't need to hit 10% on the test set to win the money. Whatever team is qualified (10% on quiz) AND has the best test score wins. Even if they have terribly overfit the quiz set (the quiz set has been around for years now), and have terrible performance on test, one of the two qualified teams will win the money.
The flaw is that other teams that have not hit 10% on quiz might be doing better on test. If that's true, those people cannot win the money, even though they apparently have a stronger (less overfit) solution. Of course, all of these scores are ridiculously close to each other anyway, but it seems contrary to the nature of a competition if the winner is not the team with the best submitted solution.
I sincerely hope that no matter what happens, ALL of the test scores (for all teams) are revealed, so everyone can see what was really happening.
It's also true that the winner is not the person who gets the highest score on the leaderboard. Most people seem to miss this.
The leaderboard gives score on the QUIZ dataset, which is half of the answers that the team submits. The WINNER of the million dollars is the person who does best on the TEST dataset, the other half of the answers they submit. Nobody knows how good these guys are doing on the TEST set, either team could be overfitting the quiz set.
Sounds good, but it sets up the following far too easily:
1) Get hired by a company that has juicy IP
2) Sign a non-compete with "keep getting paid" clause
3) Quit
4) ???? (here the ??? means do whatever you want)
4) PROFIT!
PS: I don't support non-competes. I just always wanted an excuse to post a .... PROFIT! post on /.
Nonsense! I'm starting to get tired of all this "last time I checked" bullshit. You NEVER checked. My aggression is not leveled at you necessarily, but at all of the Slashdot posters who bring up the same arguments every time there is a cloud computing story.
The truth is, Amazon's offering (for EXAMPLE), lets you start up multiple virtual machine instances, and you pay per minute per instance. Lots of (NOT ALL) academic and industrial research relies on running many independent experiments. Let's try algorithm X with parameter set [1...100]. If each parameter set takes an hour, then you can either invest 100 hours on 1 machine, or 1 hour on a 100 machines. Aside from a tiny bit of overhead to create scripts to start the virtual instances and upload the jobs, this works exactly as advertised. It is great for some of us, and it's that simple.
I hate to be pedantic but it's not really a virus. You have to deliberately execute it and give it your root password. It doesn't break into your machine, it sneaks in, on software illegally downloaded from the intertron.
It's worth mentioning that if you zoom in on Google maps and compare the two pictures, it seems that the parked cars and traffic from outside of the immediate smiley area are exactly the same. It appears as if the smiley was photoshopped in or out of one of the pictures.
Hmmm.
Don't thank them yet. Yes, he is competent, etc. But fighting such an action still takes up his time, which leaves him less time to do the things that we appreciate. Their strategy is sound: they have an infinite number of lawyers that they can use to tie him up with this sort of BS, meanwhile he can't keep doing what he's been doing.
Or, offer a reasonable price and make some easy money. Why would they pursue a court case when they can get it from you for a reasonable price?
I sold a domain name in a similar situation, made, $2000, easy peasy. (Zaam.com)
The only difference is they made me an anonymous offer through afternic.com, so I didn't know that my obscure domain name matched the Zurich Association of Asset Management (or some such). I should have gambled and asked for more money.
I think you're missing the implication of the article. The implication that I got was that people who already knew who the VP candidate would be were tasked with updating the article so that when the masses looked up her page, the information would be more accurate (or more appealing to potential voters).
This strategy makes very good sense for the candidates, and so monitoring those pages seems like a quite natural predictor a few hours before an announcement is made.
My friend tried to get special permission to publish a figure that had a Google Map screenshot in his Ph.D thesis. If you read the T&C on maps you're not technically allowed to publish such things.
Anyways, the result that he found was that Google doesn't *have* a phone number. Their buildings and offices do, their sales people do, but I can almost guarantee that there is no "getting to a person" for any query you might have from a technical or legal standpoint.
I guess.. on that note, have you tried posting in the relevant Google groups?
Job interview != IQ test. Your post sounds like sour grapes because you know you're a smart person so you don't think you should have to be demonstrably "good" at anything (except thinking) in order to get a job. As someone who has been in CS grad school for 5 years, and is about to graduate with a Ph.D, I can tell you that most of these "PhD in X" that you put on such a pedestal are not good programmers, and further they have no desire to be.
If you need to hire someone who is mad smart and will be a great programmer, you should check that they already have a passion (or at least an interest) in programming. If they've treated it like a chore so far, then they probably always will. These are exactly the people will not perform well on your "concrete question in a specific language" question.
On the other hand, someone who likes to program and spends some of his/her free time reading books on design patterns and software project management strategies, etc will likely be savvy enough to brush up on the language before the interview and do just fine.
It has nothing to do with appeal to Google...
At Google, people get paid to work on whatever they want (some of the time), and those developers (not Google as an entity) choose to create open source Mac software.
Like I said in another post... I'm not defending audible ringing or actually answering the phone in these situations. Anyone with a sense of consideration should turn the sound off and screen via sender, step outside to answer, or let it hit voicemail and then excuse yourself to check it, whatever.
I just think it's too drastic to render my device unable to receive data because you think some other ass is going to interrupt your movie.
I agree, as you suggest, doctors can get cell service outside if every building in the world is shielded. But it also means that a doctor on call *cannot* enter any building that is shielded, even if he is the most responsible cell user in the world. It also means that I cannot go into those building if I have a relative in the hospital, for fear that I might miss an important call to their deathbed, for example. People that, by virtue of career or circumstance, are required to be reachable could be forced to live some muted version of their life in this scenario. I thought our fancy tools were supposed to free us, not limit us?
Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that it would be a damn shame if the convenience of personal communication is ruined for the responsible people in order to solve the problem created by irresponsible people. But I guess in general that's the way our society tends to go.
As an author of several scientific papers that have been presented at and published through international venues, I believe its vary valuable to teach all people about things like science and world issues, even if they can't do elementary school math their head.
If those things are true, will "I drive better on the phone than most people drive not on the phone" soon be treated like "I drive better drunk than most people do sober."?
I totally agree with Bruce here, I don't quite understand what so many people don't seem to get (unless maybe I don't get it). The phrase "Open Source" was originally introduced to mean something specific, lets call it meaning A. Now, people use the phrase "open source" a alot, and their personal interpretation of the words can be different than meaning A. The problem now is, that if I want to know if your project corresponds to meaning A, there is no longer a word for that.
People seem to be quick on here to whip out some new definition of open source, many have said (paraphrasing) "If the source is available for viewing, I call that open source. OSI is dumb for saying open source should stand for meaning A".
Well guess what, here's a scenario: I'm an asshat, and I think that my products will sell better if they are called "open source". Since there is not official definition that is enforced, *I* think open source means "some (however small) part of the work is in some way (however smaller) derived from a project that has been labeled by the contributors as open source". Now, I've created a new commercial product that reuses some very freely licensed code library. Lets say that license doesn't require me to release my source. So, I don't release the source for viewing, modification, or anything. Is my project "open source"? You will probably say no (otherwise why bother having the words?). So, I will march along, never showing anyone the source, but claim my project is "open source", without explictly explaining to everyone what my definition of open source is. Maybe you ever buy my product and *assume* that if you asked for the source I'd show it to you. I won't. Yay for me. I get to look like a good guy without every having to be one.
You know Shelley The Republican (STR) is a satire right, like Colbert? At least, some people think so.
There is a story about it here: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-10-12-goog
From the article: