Sometimes, quitting a job is a no-brainer. When your boss is an evil misanthrope who thinks you are little better than pond scum, it's time to move on (hi Scott! Neener neener, I'm well respected now!).
Other times, an opportunity will come along when you know that the potential for growth, either yours personally or the company's, far outweighs your current situation. That's a good time to jump ship.
Beyond the obvious stuff like refrigerators, cars, clocks, and so on, the little Franklin dictionary my dad got me as a present in 1994 or so still treats me very well when a mysterious word pops up in my dictionary.
You mention Greg Egan without Quarantine?Philistine! His other books pale in comparison to the sheer brilliance and readability of Quarantine. I've found the rest of Egan's stuff less than satisfying.
One the best techniques I've used (or had used upon me) is to pose a general problem, maybe even one you've encountered before on this project, and see how the candidate addresses it.
The trick I've found with these sorts of questions is to pose it very broadly at first ("This piece of the application goes slow. What do you do to make it go faster?") Then see what kind of questions they ask you. ("How is this piece configured? Have timing measurements been taken?") What they ask you can reveal much more about their thinking processes than any puzzle-type questions you ask them.
Beyond that, identify the three or four key skills that will be needed for the position, then come up with two sets of questions for each: a normal set and a mean set. The normal set should contain questions that any programmer with a reasonable amount of experience should be able to answer. (For example, a Java question might be "Why would I decide to use an inner class?") Then you can ask mean questions to see how far their depth goes ("You can't use the keyword synchronized on a static method. Why?")
Always always always get them to talk about a past project. Drill into their knowledge and find out exactly what they did.
I read the bill. It seems there are quite a few problems. First off, DoS attacks seem to be prohibitied, because according to the bill the "remedy" the copyright holder is seeking must not harm any other part of the network. DoS attacks certainly cost ISPs thousands of dollars.
Secondly, the attacked "file trader" (to use the bill's terms) has recourse with the Attorney General, which the AG must respond to within 120 days! Can you imagine the backlog if any of the major groups went after individual traders? You could then file suit with the AG claiming you were wronged and seek damages. Seems like some enterprising individuals might even honeypot the copyright holders by putting out information that looks and awful lot like copyrighted material but turns out to be the audio from my last birthday party.
Thirdly, no modifications are supposed to be made to any of my files or data. Does that rule out buffer overflow attacks to disable my P2P program? Wouldn't that by necessity cause a change on my harddrive?
All in all, this seems like non-thought out policy bunk. I would be shocked if something like this passes Congressional muster. It'll probably cause quite a flap through Congress as it does, though.
My favorite browser "feature"
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I worked a wicked long time ago on the HotJava browser, and we were forever running into strange behaviors in the ways IE and Netscape handled what looked like normal HTML tags.
My favorite was a bug we saw with a three column table. The table's three cells were specified like this:
Being a good little HTML-compliant browser, HotJava displayed them with those pixel widths. But lo and behold! When displayed in Netscape, the table filled the screen.
We bashed our heads against the wall to figure this out until we realized that the numbers added up to almost, but not quite, 100. Netscape was treating them as percentages rather than pixel widths, even though they lacked percent signs. The cutoff turned out to be somewhere around 104 to 96. Anywhere in there and the browser would assume percentages.
I bought one very high ticket item on EBay once (admittedly this was a while ago), an expensive Sony video camera. Before I mailed off my $1900 cashier's check, I got the other person's phone number and actually spoke to them. In this way, I felt I had at least some recourse in case something went wrong. Fortunately nothing did, and I have happily used my TRV 900 for years now.
The point is that the more information you have about your seller, the easier it will be to go after them in case something goes wrong. People can hide via email, but by phone it's much harder.
In a fit of mostly desparation but a little inspiration, I decided to go as Death... after he lost his.com job (from death.com, of course). Basically it consists of all black clothes and a little face-paint, plus Death's resume (50,000+ years of death-related experience, 2 years as VP of Death Affiars at death.com).
Geeks in the Valley seem fairly appreciative, but they keep telling me that my resume will be put "on file" and that they'll "get back to me" and I shouldn't call them.
I think most people agree that the reason California schools have gone from some where high in the nation to one of the lowest in terms of per capita spending is the tax revolt of Prop. 13. For those of you unfamiliar, what happened (in grossly simplified terms) is that the people of California voted in a law that said their property would not be reassessed in value until it changed hands. By doing so, they condemned their educational system to the backwater of spending in the nation.
Teachers make a ridiculously small amount of pay for the importance of their job. We, as a society, need to get over the fact that we can't have our cake and eat it too and pay for what we want: more qualified people in the teaching profession. If teachers made what I can make writing software, I would teach in a minute. Hands down. But the sad fact is that someone in the teaching profession for thirty years will not make as much money as I made my second year working as a software developer. That's just plain wrong.
Plug for my own company... Rivio offers HR applications over the web through partners like BofA, Fleet Bank and so on. It's completely web based so it doesn't matter if your clients are running Linux, OS/2, BeOS, or any other wacky OS. As long as it's get a vaguely up-to-date web browser, you're set.
Although I can't say it's the greatest system I've ever used, PVCS offers a moderately simple web interface that should work across all OSes. Our non-developers use it to store their documents without too much trouble.
Someone else mentioned salsa dancing... I would recommend swing over salsa for one reason: it's a lot easier. Especially for the coordination-impared like me, because swing involves almost no hip motion in the beginning. If you want to try swing dancing, sign up for an East Coast swing lesson first. There are also Lindy Hop and West Coast versions of swing; definitely try East Coast first if you're not confident about your dancing ability.
Shameless plug: If you're in the SF Bay Area, Paul and Sharon give excellent classes with a relatively young crowd (mid 20's to mid 40's). However, they only do Lindy. You can also try the Metronome, they give a variety of classes.
This is a relatively new idea that came out of the JCC in Los Angeles. Pay a small amount of money ($20), and go to an evening where you are placed in a group of 10 people, near your age, of your desirable gender. Have 10 minutes of conversation with each of them. Write their names down on a little form, and mark "Yes" or "No". Turn in your phone. If both you and someone else mark "Yes," you get each other's phone numbers from the organizer.
I just did my first one of these yesterday, and it went fairly well. Although I didn't meet someone that I thought, "Wow, this is the one!", it was still meeting people. It's low pressure because you're only committed for 10 minutes, and there's no mixed signals ("Yes" or "No" is pretty unambiguous). And no, I don't know how I fared; keep your fingers crossed for me Slashdot!
Another note: my conversations tended towards chit-chat ("what did you do this weekend?"). If I were to do it again (which I probably will, unless something magically comes of this), I would steer the conversation towards slightly more weighty topics. I never asked anyone "What is important to you?" I would probably ask that of each of the next 10 people I date for 10 minutes.
UC Santa Cruz has a surprisingly strong bioinformatics program, lead by David Haussleur. Lots of cool little startups have been spawned out by David's students (one of my friend's companies was just bought by Affymetrix), as well as some smart PhD-types. The engineering department at UCSC is expanding, so don't let the hippie-reputation of UCSC cancel it out as an option.
And, by the way, the UCSC campus is about the most beautiful you will ever have the opportunity to go to. And it's only three miles from the Pacific Ocean and some of the world's most popular surfing. Visit and check it out.
The first idea that popped into my head was that a planet is anything that's hard for me to jump off of. If I leap into the "air" and come straight back down, I'm on a planet. Unless, of course, it's in orbit around a different planet, in which case it's a moon.
Do any moons have moons? Or does the physics of planets and moons prevent that sort of thing? Any astronomers or phsyicists wanna jump in on that one?
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone care to wager on how long it takes the modding community to work out how to hack the XBox 360? I'd put $20 on under three months.
Sometimes, quitting a job is a no-brainer. When your boss is an evil misanthrope who thinks you are little better than pond scum, it's time to move on (hi Scott! Neener neener, I'm well respected now!).
Other times, an opportunity will come along when you know that the potential for growth, either yours personally or the company's, far outweighs your current situation. That's a good time to jump ship.
1. Settlers of Catan (already mentioned)
2. Carcassone
3. Acquire
All of these games have the four attributes which make good adult board games:
- They are fun to play
- The more you play, the more strategy you develop
- They take around an hour
- No one gets eliminated
Beyond the obvious stuff like refrigerators, cars, clocks, and so on, the little Franklin dictionary my dad got me as a present in 1994 or so still treats me very well when a mysterious word pops up in my dictionary.
You mention Greg Egan without Quarantine?Philistine! His other books pale in comparison to the sheer brilliance and readability of Quarantine. I've found the rest of Egan's stuff less than satisfying.
One the best techniques I've used (or had used upon me) is to pose a general problem, maybe even one you've encountered before on this project, and see how the candidate addresses it.
The trick I've found with these sorts of questions is to pose it very broadly at first ("This piece of the application goes slow. What do you do to make it go faster?") Then see what kind of questions they ask you. ("How is this piece configured? Have timing measurements been taken?") What they ask you can reveal much more about their thinking processes than any puzzle-type questions you ask them.
Beyond that, identify the three or four key skills that will be needed for the position, then come up with two sets of questions for each: a normal set and a mean set. The normal set should contain questions that any programmer with a reasonable amount of experience should be able to answer. (For example, a Java question might be "Why would I decide to use an inner class?") Then you can ask mean questions to see how far their depth goes ("You can't use the keyword synchronized on a static method. Why?")
Always always always get them to talk about a past project. Drill into their knowledge and find out exactly what they did.
I read the bill. It seems there are quite a few problems. First off, DoS attacks seem to be prohibitied, because according to the bill the "remedy" the copyright holder is seeking must not harm any other part of the network. DoS attacks certainly cost ISPs thousands of dollars.
Secondly, the attacked "file trader" (to use the bill's terms) has recourse with the Attorney General, which the AG must respond to within 120 days! Can you imagine the backlog if any of the major groups went after individual traders? You could then file suit with the AG claiming you were wronged and seek damages. Seems like some enterprising individuals might even honeypot the copyright holders by putting out information that looks and awful lot like copyrighted material but turns out to be the audio from my last birthday party.
Thirdly, no modifications are supposed to be made to any of my files or data. Does that rule out buffer overflow attacks to disable my P2P program? Wouldn't that by necessity cause a change on my harddrive?
All in all, this seems like non-thought out policy bunk. I would be shocked if something like this passes Congressional muster. It'll probably cause quite a flap through Congress as it does, though.
I worked a wicked long time ago on the HotJava browser, and we were forever running into strange behaviors in the ways IE and Netscape handled what looked like normal HTML tags.
My favorite was a bug we saw with a three column table. The table's three cells were specified like this:
<td width="31"></td><td width="42></td><td width="29"></td>
Being a good little HTML-compliant browser, HotJava displayed them with those pixel widths. But lo and behold! When displayed in Netscape, the table filled the screen.
We bashed our heads against the wall to figure this out until we realized that the numbers added up to almost, but not quite, 100. Netscape was treating them as percentages rather than pixel widths, even though they lacked percent signs. The cutoff turned out to be somewhere around 104 to 96. Anywhere in there and the browser would assume percentages.
I bought one very high ticket item on EBay once (admittedly this was a while ago), an expensive Sony video camera. Before I mailed off my $1900 cashier's check, I got the other person's phone number and actually spoke to them. In this way, I felt I had at least some recourse in case something went wrong. Fortunately nothing did, and I have happily used my TRV 900 for years now.
The point is that the more information you have about your seller, the easier it will be to go after them in case something goes wrong. People can hide via email, but by phone it's much harder.
In a fit of mostly desparation but a little inspiration, I decided to go as Death... after he lost his .com job (from death.com, of course). Basically it consists of all black clothes and a little face-paint, plus Death's resume (50,000+ years of death-related experience, 2 years as VP of Death Affiars at death.com).
Geeks in the Valley seem fairly appreciative, but they keep telling me that my resume will be put "on file" and that they'll "get back to me" and I shouldn't call them.
I think most people agree that the reason California schools have gone from some where high in the nation to one of the lowest in terms of per capita spending is the tax revolt of Prop. 13. For those of you unfamiliar, what happened (in grossly simplified terms) is that the people of California voted in a law that said their property would not be reassessed in value until it changed hands. By doing so, they condemned their educational system to the backwater of spending in the nation.
Teachers make a ridiculously small amount of pay for the importance of their job. We, as a society, need to get over the fact that we can't have our cake and eat it too and pay for what we want: more qualified people in the teaching profession. If teachers made what I can make writing software, I would teach in a minute. Hands down. But the sad fact is that someone in the teaching profession for thirty years will not make as much money as I made my second year working as a software developer. That's just plain wrong.
Plug for my own company... Rivio offers HR applications over the web through partners like BofA, Fleet Bank and so on. It's completely web based so it doesn't matter if your clients are running Linux, OS/2, BeOS, or any other wacky OS. As long as it's get a vaguely up-to-date web browser, you're set.
Although I can't say it's the greatest system I've ever used, PVCS offers a moderately simple web interface that should work across all OSes. Our non-developers use it to store their documents without too much trouble.
Shameless plug: If you're in the SF Bay Area, Paul and Sharon give excellent classes with a relatively young crowd (mid 20's to mid 40's). However, they only do Lindy. You can also try the Metronome, they give a variety of classes.
I just did my first one of these yesterday, and it went fairly well. Although I didn't meet someone that I thought, "Wow, this is the one!", it was still meeting people. It's low pressure because you're only committed for 10 minutes, and there's no mixed signals ("Yes" or "No" is pretty unambiguous). And no, I don't know how I fared; keep your fingers crossed for me Slashdot!
Another note: my conversations tended towards chit-chat ("what did you do this weekend?"). If I were to do it again (which I probably will, unless something magically comes of this), I would steer the conversation towards slightly more weighty topics. I never asked anyone "What is important to you?" I would probably ask that of each of the next 10 people I date for 10 minutes.
And, by the way, the UCSC campus is about the most beautiful you will ever have the opportunity to go to. And it's only three miles from the Pacific Ocean and some of the world's most popular surfing. Visit and check it out.
Do any moons have moons? Or does the physics of planets and moons prevent that sort of thing? Any astronomers or phsyicists wanna jump in on that one?