I'd hire someone with an education like this in an instant. When I interview someone, there's two aspects I look at: technical ability and communication/leadership ability. Both are reasonably easy to find in a person. It's the people with a good combination of the two that are hard to find. It looks like this will foster that.
As well, the kind of hand-on learning that they talk about here is what you need in a good R&D engineer. I want people who can mock up a prototype with duct tape and zap straps to do proof of concept before they sit down to design it in Solid Works.
I watched the videos, and I can't imagine this thing hauling logs around and keeping balanced. What would this actually be used for in a logging operation?
Brant
Re:Why do interviewers use "riddles"?
on
Tech-Interview Riddles
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You've got to use the right questions. As someone else has pointed out, there's a great web site called techinterview.org that has similar questions. They talk about something called the "aha factor". If something has a high aha factor, then you'll only get it if you've heard the question before. These aren't very useful as interview questions.
If something has a low aha factor, then it's a useful question even if they've heard it before. The idea is to watch the interviewee's reasoning process, not to make sure they get the right answer. When I interview people, I ask these types of questions. I find it an invaluable probe of their ability to reason and think logically.
One of my favourites is this: "How many trailing zeroes are there on 100! (100! = 100x99x98x97x...x3x2x1)."
Try it. It's reasonably straightforward to get, but you have to show an understanding of factoring and multiplication to get it. The answer is on techinterview.org if you want to check yours.
I find it annoying when my Palm beeps at me to tell me to go to a meeting I'm already at. I'd love to see a Bluetooth (or something) solution that let the Palm know that I was in the meeting room already, so there's no need to beep at me.
Anyone know if legislation exists in Canada that would give you access to the right pieces of the phone network? I'm working on building a co-housing community and this may be an option for us.
I remember reading a short story a long time ago where the protagonist had found a way to axactly predict the time of anyone's death. He was sued by the (life) insurance industry for ruining their business model. They came across, of course, as ridiculous. Maybe it's time to dust that story off and send it out to some TV execs. Anyone remember what it was?
What gets me is the "free sample" part at the end of the spiel. I have this picture in my mind of receiving a sample of someone's excess fat in the mail. Yech.
The answer is simple. Have a bunch of your friends get cards with aliases too. Swap cards with your friends regularly. That way, there's no real correlation between you and the card you're using.
How many of us would be around if it weren't for modern technology/medicine? Personally, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, have plastic teeth as my real ones never came in and I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. If we were still under the evolutionary pressures that were normal for most of our specie's history, I'd be toast.
Look around sometime and notice how many people are wearing glasses or contacts. I'd bet that as little as 200 years ago the numbers were less than 10% of what we have now. I always picture this as the distribution of eyesight in the population widening as the evolutionary pressure to keep eyesight good is taken away. I.e., you don't die any more if you need glasses.
Whether this means we've stopped evolving or not is a bit of a semantic game. Even the word "devolving" is a loaded term, as it implies that there is some upward path that evolution is following. Sharks have been stable for millions of years and haven't really evolved in that time. However, this doesn't mean that evolution has stopped for them. They've just reached a "local minimum" in the evolutionary fitness phase space. You can bet that if something drastic changed they would start changing again right away.
I'll stop rambling after one more thought. As Richard Dawkins has said so well and so often, evolution is a subtle process and it's very easy to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing it into something with a goal. It seems to me that that's what the authors of this article have done.
They dug up my old office at TRIUMF to put ISAC in. I guess I'll stop pouting now that they've done something cool with it:) Actually, it wasn't a great loss; smelly old trailer from the 70s with a bunch of old DECs in it.
Well, I guess the game I'm most into right now is "Space Tripper". It's released on Linux, Mac and Windows. Check out the demo if you're looking for an old fashioned style shooter.
Wow. That makes me want to head out to the library and grab "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson for another re-read. Great, epic, hard SF story of the colonization of Mars. Those pics re-vamped my whole visualization for the book. I always pictured it as much smoother/less craggy, especially where they first landed.
Are there any other good hard-SF Mars books for me to dig into? I think I may have to go on a Mars reading binge.
The article on space.com says "The resolution of the dataset was roughly 600mx600m." Except for the last two pictures, these images look like they're around 10m resolution minimum. Is my sense of scale all wrong here, or is there some heavy interpolation going on?
Can someone explain to me why tinfoil sparks in a microwave? I've thought about this a bit, and had a few bull sessions with fellow physicists about it, but I've never heard a convincing answer. The first thing everyone says is photo-electric effect, but that can't be right because the work function for most metals is ~1 eV, and that's in the visible or near-infrared.
My only other guess is induced eddy currents. Anyone have a good answer?
I've actually done this with a first year physics class I taught. They thought I was a bit loony, but it worked.
Take a bunch of mini-marshmallows and spread them out evenly on a plastic tray, covering the whole tray with a single layer. Put this inside a microwave, making sure that the tray doesn't rotate. Turn the microwave on for ~30 seconds on low.
Now, take the tray out of the microwave. You'll see a repeating pattern in the marshmallows, going from puffy to flat and back to puffy again in an array. What you're seeing is the standing wave of the microwaves reflecting off of the sides of the microwave.
Now, measure the average distance between peaks in the standing wave. This is the wavelength of the microwaves. Now, here's the cheating part. Look on the back of the microwave for the frequency of the microwaves. It's usually around 2540 MHz. Calculate the speed of light from
c = frequency x wavelength
Heh. Now that I've written that all out, I've found a link. Here's another, very similar method on : bowle's physics.
Interestingly enough, one of the worst culprits for spam for me has been the Linux Journal. I'm talking about real paper, snail-mail spam here. I have been consistently getting 2-3 pieces of mail a month that are obviously linked to my magazine subscription. In my opinion, snail-mail spam is much worse than e-mail spam. It wastes paper and I actually have to walk somewhere to put it in the recycling bin. Has anyone else been getting this from LJ?
Reading this article reminds me of the Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen. One of the theses of the book is that new technologies may often be worse than the current ones, but the new technologies are improving more rapidly. To take an example from the article, the early versions of the carbon mike were worse than the current ribbon mikes. Unfortunately, the author forgot to mention that the later versions of the carbon mikes were better than the ribbon mikes.
Also forgotten in the article is the fact that technologies compete on many fronts. This has been mentioned before, but phonographs are more durable and easier to make than wax cylinders. These aren't trivial benefits that should take a back seat to quality. The fact is that higher fidelity is something often perceived only by audiophiles, while everyone benefits by the fact that they can play their record more than a few times before it begins to fade (as a wax cylinder does).
A lot of people have been posting comments to the effect that if you never read the EULA, you don't agree to it. One way to do this is to avoid using the installer. This implies, of course, that you have to install the app by hand. I'm wondering if there's any info out there on doing this. I'd be interested in installing apps by hand if there were some HOWTOs. At the very least it'd be interesting. Heck, I'd even write a HOWTO or two myself.
You've gotta wonder how the lawyers would deal with this. Does figuring out how to install a program count as reverse engineering, or could you use an existing install to figure it out?
For an intriguing alternative view of how transparency (or lack of cryptography) could affect society, and of the dangers of encryption, check out "The Transparent Society" by David Brin. Some of his theories have been discussed on Slashdot previously .
I've seen a few ads for devices that allow you to spy on the baby-sitter while you are out. They're usually disguised as innocuous objects such as lamps and smoke detectors. I think I recall one being advertised on TV. Wouldn't these be illegal as well?
I also recall hearing an interview on CBC radio(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) with the owner of a shop in Toronto that sold items specifically to spy on employees. She stated that it was perfectly legal to do this in Canada, as long as you do it on company premises.
Does anyone know if Canadian law is different on this? If not, I'm guessing that the FBI hasn't cracked down on these devices as they're marketed towards what are seen as "legitimate uses" by most people (especially the baby-sitter one).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd hire someone with an education like this in an instant. When I interview someone, there's two aspects I look at: technical ability and communication/leadership ability. Both are reasonably easy to find in a person. It's the people with a good combination of the two that are hard to find. It looks like this will foster that.
As well, the kind of hand-on learning that they talk about here is what you need in a good R&D engineer. I want people who can mock up a prototype with duct tape and zap straps to do proof of concept before they sit down to design it in Solid Works.
Brant
Unfortunately, I don't grok LISP. Could someone please translate the code snippets into Perl or C so I can figure out what he's saying there?
Thanks,
Brant
I watched the videos, and I can't imagine this thing hauling logs around and keeping balanced. What would this actually be used for in a logging operation?
Brant
You've got to use the right questions. As someone else has pointed out, there's a great web site called techinterview.org that has similar questions. They talk about something called the "aha factor". If something has a high aha factor, then you'll only get it if you've heard the question before. These aren't very useful as interview questions.
If something has a low aha factor, then it's a useful question even if they've heard it before. The idea is to watch the interviewee's reasoning process, not to make sure they get the right answer. When I interview people, I ask these types of questions. I find it an invaluable probe of their ability to reason and think logically.
One of my favourites is this:
"How many trailing zeroes are there on 100! (100! = 100x99x98x97x...x3x2x1)."
Try it. It's reasonably straightforward to get, but you have to show an understanding of factoring and multiplication to get it. The answer is on techinterview.org if you want to check yours.
Scott
I find it annoying when my Palm beeps at me to tell me to go to a meeting I'm already at. I'd love to see a Bluetooth (or something) solution that let the Palm know that I was in the meeting room already, so there's no need to beep at me.
Brant
Anyone know if legislation exists in Canada that would give you access to the right pieces of the phone network? I'm working on building a co-housing community and this may be an option for us.
Brant
I remember reading a short story a long time ago where the protagonist had found a way to axactly predict the time of anyone's death. He was sued by the (life) insurance industry for ruining their business model. They came across, of course, as ridiculous. Maybe it's time to dust that story off and send it out to some TV execs. Anyone remember what it was?
Brant
What gets me is the "free sample" part at the end of the spiel. I have this picture in my mind of receiving a sample of someone's excess fat in the mail. Yech.
Brant
The answer is simple. Have a bunch of your friends get cards with aliases too. Swap cards with your friends regularly. That way, there's no real correlation between you and the card you're using.
Brant
How many of us would be around if it weren't for modern technology/medicine? Personally, I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, have plastic teeth as my real ones never came in and I was born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. If we were still under the evolutionary pressures that were normal for most of our specie's history, I'd be toast.
Look around sometime and notice how many people are wearing glasses or contacts. I'd bet that as little as 200 years ago the numbers were less than 10% of what we have now. I always picture this as the distribution of eyesight in the population widening as the evolutionary pressure to keep eyesight good is taken away. I.e., you don't die any more if you need glasses.
Whether this means we've stopped evolving or not is a bit of a semantic game. Even the word "devolving" is a loaded term, as it implies that there is some upward path that evolution is following. Sharks have been stable for millions of years and haven't really evolved in that time. However, this doesn't mean that evolution has stopped for them. They've just reached a "local minimum" in the evolutionary fitness phase space. You can bet that if something drastic changed they would start changing again right away.
I'll stop rambling after one more thought. As Richard Dawkins has said so well and so often, evolution is a subtle process and it's very easy to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing it into something with a goal. It seems to me that that's what the authors of this article have done.
Either that or they've just stated the obvious.
Brant
They dug up my old office at TRIUMF to put ISAC in. I guess I'll stop pouting now that they've done something cool with it :) Actually, it wasn't a great loss; smelly old trailer from the 70s with a bunch of old DECs in it.
Brant
Well, I guess the game I'm most into right now is "Space Tripper". It's released on Linux, Mac and Windows. Check out the demo if you're looking for an old fashioned style shooter.
Oh yeah, some rave reviews here , here and here
Brant
Wow. That makes me want to head out to the library and grab "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson for another re-read. Great, epic, hard SF story of the colonization of Mars. Those pics re-vamped my whole visualization for the book. I always pictured it as much smoother/less craggy, especially where they first landed.
Are there any other good hard-SF Mars books for me to dig into? I think I may have to go on a Mars reading binge.
Brant
The article on space.com says "The resolution of the dataset was roughly 600mx600m." Except for the last two pictures, these images look like they're around 10m resolution minimum. Is my sense of scale all wrong here, or is there some heavy interpolation going on?
Brant
There's a reasonably good explanation of why grapes do this here.
I'd attempt a synopsis, but the picture on this site makes it much easier to explain.
Brant
Can someone explain to me why tinfoil sparks in a microwave? I've thought about this a bit, and had a few bull sessions with fellow physicists about it, but I've never heard a convincing answer. The first thing everyone says is photo-electric effect, but that can't be right because the work function for most metals is ~1 eV, and that's in the visible or near-infrared.
My only other guess is induced eddy currents. Anyone have a good answer?
Thanks,
Brant
Take a bunch of mini-marshmallows and spread them out evenly on a plastic tray, covering the whole tray with a single layer. Put this inside a microwave, making sure that the tray doesn't rotate. Turn the microwave on for ~30 seconds on low.
Now, take the tray out of the microwave. You'll see a repeating pattern in the marshmallows, going from puffy to flat and back to puffy again in an array. What you're seeing is the standing wave of the microwaves reflecting off of the sides of the microwave.
Now, measure the average distance between peaks in the standing wave. This is the wavelength of the microwaves. Now, here's the cheating part. Look on the back of the microwave for the frequency of the microwaves. It's usually around 2540 MHz. Calculate the speed of light from
c = frequency x wavelength
Heh. Now that I've written that all out, I've found a link. Here's another, very similar method on : bowle's physics.
Brant
Interestingly enough, one of the worst culprits for spam for me has been the Linux Journal. I'm talking about real paper, snail-mail spam here. I have been consistently getting 2-3 pieces of mail a month that are obviously linked to my magazine subscription. In my opinion, snail-mail spam is much worse than e-mail spam. It wastes paper and I actually have to walk somewhere to put it in the recycling bin. Has anyone else been getting this from LJ?
Brant
Heh. I wonder if it's intentional that the link to "people who take this idea seriously" (http://www.dbeat.com/28/serious.htm) leads to an empty page?
Brant
Reading this article reminds me of the Innovator's Dilemma, by Clayton M. Christensen. One of the theses of the book is that new technologies may often be worse than the current ones, but the new technologies are improving more rapidly. To take an example from the article, the early versions of the carbon mike were worse than the current ribbon mikes. Unfortunately, the author forgot to mention that the later versions of the carbon mikes were better than the ribbon mikes.
Also forgotten in the article is the fact that technologies compete on many fronts. This has been mentioned before, but phonographs are more durable and easier to make than wax cylinders. These aren't trivial benefits that should take a back seat to quality. The fact is that higher fidelity is something often perceived only by audiophiles, while everyone benefits by the fact that they can play their record more than a few times before it begins to fade (as a wax cylinder does).
Brant
A lot of people have been posting comments to the effect that if you never read the EULA, you don't agree to it. One way to do this is to avoid using the installer. This implies, of course, that you have to install the app by hand. I'm wondering if there's any info out there on doing this. I'd be interested in installing apps by hand if there were some HOWTOs. At the very least it'd be interesting. Heck, I'd even write a HOWTO or two myself.
You've gotta wonder how the lawyers would deal with this. Does figuring out how to install a program count as reverse engineering, or could you use an existing install to figure it out?
Brant
OK, I've gotta ask. What does this do to your microwave? Anyone killed one this way?
Brant
For an intriguing alternative view of how transparency (or lack of cryptography) could affect society, and of the dangers of encryption, check out "The Transparent Society" by David Brin. Some of his theories have been discussed on Slashdot previously .
I've seen a few ads for devices that allow you to spy on the baby-sitter while you are out. They're usually disguised as innocuous objects such as lamps and smoke detectors. I think I recall one being advertised on TV. Wouldn't these be illegal as well?
I also recall hearing an interview on CBC radio(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) with the owner of a shop in Toronto that sold items specifically to spy on employees. She stated that it was perfectly legal to do this in Canada, as long as you do it on company premises.
Does anyone know if Canadian law is different on this? If not, I'm guessing that the FBI hasn't cracked down on these devices as they're marketed towards what are seen as "legitimate uses" by most people (especially the baby-sitter one).
Scott Patten
Nice site. Anyone know if there's something like this for Canada? I did a quick Google search but couldn't find anything.
Brant