The result was that when I finally could stand up against her I stopped reading fiction completely (apart from what was necessary for school) and haven't read any fiction at all for over a decade.
For album distribution. So what? Unless Radiohead start pressing their own CDs and somehow gain access to the album distribution chain, at this point in time, they have *no other choice*.
I think the problem is that you believe applicants are only "bullshitting" you.
No, I think *all* applicants are there to sell themselves. Sometimes this involves flat out lying. More often than not, it involves sugarcoating things, and cherrypicking, so you only see the best information. And I guarantee you most people have a skewed image of themselves and their abilities (both to the positive and negative). Additional datapoints can help provide a more well-rounded picture.
Of course, if you've ever been involved in the interview process, you should already know these things, so I can only assume you haven't.
You assume that a professional reference couldn't also be a personal one.
Not at all, but nice strawman.
Also, the norm now seems to be that references will only answer "yes, they worked here." That's been the policy told to all employees in every company in which I've worked.
Which is why you don't ask for a reference from the person on behalf of the company. Many people are willing to give references, as a superior or co-worker, so long as it's clear the reference is not given as an officer of the company (thus freeing the company from liability).
Your argument seems to be that applicants lie, and so will references (because as you said, no smart applicant will give a bad reference to you). But you think that somehow combining the two yields something worth while?
No, as I said above, my argument is that applicants sell themselves. A proper set of questions to one or more references can help to identify those cases so you get a more well-rounded picture of the applicant. Well, unless there's an organized conspiracy between the applicant and their references, but I'm willing to believe that's normally not the case.
Hell, my Lenovo T61, hardly an underpowered machine, has the same damn problem, and I've disabled all things I *think* should be causing the drive to thrash (eg, prefetch, indexing).
Huh? Adblock doesn't change the contents of the HTML being delivered to the browser (unlike these products). It just causes the browser to render the page differently (ie, not downloading or displaying images, embedded objects, etc).
'course, these products could just re-compute and re-insert the checksum into the page...
When "The Man in the High Castle" was written, counter-factual SF was rare -- it's a book that was ground-breaking, but probably doesn't seem so fantastic in retrospect. (Also, very few Westerners had heard of the "I Ching" back then...).
Oh, I'm aware that, *conceptually*, The Man in the High Castle is interesting, at least for it's time. But as a story... frankly, it's dull, meandering, and it doesn't have an ending. It's like a bad Neil Stephenson novel.:)
This capability turns out to be a totally unnecessary fantastic element, and she ultimately turns out to be nothing but a red herring, which seems like a total waste.
I disagree. The fact that she's a red herring is the *whole point of her character*. It's supposed to leave the reader wondering what's real and what isn't, which is, of course, Dick's whole schtick.
IMHO, this isn't a problem with the story being "slapped together". The problem is that Dick found himself in a bit of quandary: he wanted to create what is essentially a trippy mystery, but because of hints early on (the exposition of coldpak when Runciter visits his wife), any reader paying attention would probably guess what was going on fairly quickly after the attack at the moon base. So he had to throw in some extra element in order to muddy the waters, and that element was Pat.
Does it work as a red herring? Absolutely. Lord knows I was confused as to what, precisely, was going on for quite some time. I agree, it's clumsy, and a waste of an interesting character. But I don't think it's evidence that the book was necessarily written in haste (though it probably was... he was a pulp sci-fi author living paycheque to paycheque... the vast major of the stuff he wrote was written fairly quickly. I just don't think the story suffers as a consequence, as you seem to.)
So, which would you prefer: believing only the applicant's bullshit, or at least getting a few extra data points?
Honestly, I don't know what you're arguing here. Yes, when you interview a reference, you're going to get their perspective, and it might be skewed. But if you ask the right questions, you'll get insight into an employee you otherwise wouldn't get. Meanwhile, professional references are far less likely to be prone to blind bias (they're professionals, after all), so you're likely to get useful experiential data from them.
The only thing I can figure is that you're arguing that reference checks are useless due to bias. But that is, frankly, silly. You'll *never* find out the real truth about an employee prior to hiring them. But the more data you can add to the mix ahead of time, the more likely you are to uncover issues with the prospective applicant that might otherwise go undiscovered until after you've already hired them.
Again, this is why you do a proper interview with the reference, to dredge up any biases. And, of course, you don't rely on a single reference... at least two or three reference checks, a manager, a peer, and possibly a character reference, should be the minimum.
The OS is supposed to handle things like IO and memory, while the real functionality comes from userland applications (often third party) interacting with the OS.
Not quite. What you're talking about is the kernel. But in both the Windows and Unix worlds, the referring to the "operating system" has *always* meant the combination of kernel and the userland necessary to drive the system. On the Unix side, this means scripts, a shell, login, etc, etc. In Windows, you get a GUI, the Explorer shell, etc.
That said, I agree that there is another class of optional applications (eg, koffice/openoffice) that aren't traditionally implied when referring to the "operating system". And anyone who's installed a barebones Unix system (eg, Solaris) understands how equally useless that is, as compared to a barebones Windows install.
Yeah, I really don't understand why Red Delicious are even sold anymore. I know of no one who likes them. They don't taste that good. The flesh is gritty and mealy. The skin is thick and bitter. They look funny. And when you bake 'em, they fall apart. There's just *nothing* good about them.
Ugh, compared to Edmonton, and it's incredible river valley park system, Calgary is an ugly blight. Urban sprawl like you wouldn't believe, horrible traffic and massive freeways everywhere. And don't get me started on the people...
Buh? I've lived in Edmonton and Ottawa, spent time in Vancouver, Toronto, and Saskatchewan, and visited Montreal... and this is the more ignorant statement I've read by a fellow Canadian in a long time.
Frankly, I've met assholes everywhere. "Center of the universe" Torontonians. Albertans who believe the world is out to get them. Vancouverites who's smugness is detectable miles away. And... nah, I don't think I've met an unfriendly person from Saskatchewan, but that's probably because you're basically forced to have a sense of humour if you live there.:)
And for the record, I know plenty of people who hate Tim Horton's coffee, and will espouse that view quite passionately.
A previous employer's reference is pretty worthless
Bullshit! A reference is the *only* way to get real insight into an employee, aside from the image they try to portray of themselves. A CV is inevitably stacked, and interviews are only somewhat useful.
The problem is that employers don't seem willing to truly grill references. A reference check shouldn't be a five minute call. It should be a thirty minute interview, minimum, where they are asked in-depth questions about the employee's performance.
Meanwhile, if the provided reference is a bad one, it's the applicant's fault for selecting them. No idiot would ask someone to act as a reference if they weren't going to give a positive review. And even if the applicant is that dumb (or unlucky), a proper line of questioning should highlight obvious bias.
If you actually read Ubik, you'll find that it's an exceedingly minor Philip K. Dick novel
Funny, because I've read a few of his works (mainly his more notable stuff), and 1) I thought it was quite good (as good as Do Androids Dream..., definitely better than The Man in the High Castle), and 2) so do most other critics and readers of his stuff.
But, hey, it's obviously more cool to buck the trend and look like some sort of high-brow outsider...
I can't imagine how it could be dumbed down into an action movie.
Really? That's easy! Start off with super-awesome anti-psychic task force rolling into to stop evil psychic industrial espionage types. Next scene, task force is ambushed, all hell breaks loose and the bomb goes off. From then on, tension and mystery builds as reality starts breaking apart and people start mysteriously dying. Eventually the "saviour" shows up to explain what's going on, main character saves themselves, and then fade out with imagery hinting that there is something deeper going on.
Honestly, it practically writes itself. Trust me... they *can* screw this up. I don't know if they will, but I can say my hopes aren't terribly high.
The one Dick book that I'm surprised hasn't been filmed is The Man in the High Castle, which has a much more conventional plot (by comparison) and would be more accessible to a mass audience.
Meh, the problem with TMHC is the meandering subplots, with no real resolution at the end. TBH, of the stuff he's written, it's one of my least favorite books, only interesting because it's such an excellent example of an alternate history (his development of setting is quite extraordinary... it's just that nothing terribly interesting happens there).
On the whole it was openly hostile to the Europeans, and preaching the extinction or enslavement of Europeans by the natives, and using such visual metaphors as fattening a white pig representing the Europeans to slaughter it when the ancients return. But funnily enough, it also incorporated a lot of stuff which was mocking what the Europeans did. E.g., military parades, blessing water for their religious ceremonies, etc.
Just to go on about this a little, if you believe Wikipedia, many of these cults involved the belief that the cargo being received by the Europeans (or Americans or whomever) were gifts from the gods/ancestors/etc, and that the native tribes were in fact the rightful receivers of these gifts. So they began to mimic the behaviour of the Europeans (or Americans or whomever), believing that these actions were rituals that would bring these gifts to them, while meanwhile exhibiting outward hostility to the invaders who were taking the cargo that was rightfully theirs.
Actually, I got that wrong, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk don't support "ad hoc polymorphism"... somehow, I confused that with dynamic binding, which is a whole other topic (and one that Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk support).
No, there's static/dynamic typing, and there's strong/weak typing (at least, those are the standard terms in the industry).
Static/dynamic describes when the type checking is performed (runtime or compile time).
Strong/weak typing describes how strict the type system is. Weak typing typically allows automatic, runtime type conversions (Perl), ad-hoc polymorphism (Python, Ruby, Smalltalk), or both. Strong typing does not (Java, C#).
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The result was that when I finally could stand up against her I stopped reading fiction completely (apart from what was necessary for school) and haven't read any fiction at all for over a decade.
Have you tried reading non-fiction?
For album distribution. So what? Unless Radiohead start pressing their own CDs and somehow gain access to the album distribution chain, at this point in time, they have *no other choice*.
I think the problem is that you believe applicants are only "bullshitting" you.
No, I think *all* applicants are there to sell themselves. Sometimes this involves flat out lying. More often than not, it involves sugarcoating things, and cherrypicking, so you only see the best information. And I guarantee you most people have a skewed image of themselves and their abilities (both to the positive and negative). Additional datapoints can help provide a more well-rounded picture.
Of course, if you've ever been involved in the interview process, you should already know these things, so I can only assume you haven't.
You assume that a professional reference couldn't also be a personal one.
Not at all, but nice strawman.
Also, the norm now seems to be that references will only answer "yes, they worked here." That's been the policy told to all employees in every company in which I've worked.
Which is why you don't ask for a reference from the person on behalf of the company. Many people are willing to give references, as a superior or co-worker, so long as it's clear the reference is not given as an officer of the company (thus freeing the company from liability).
Your argument seems to be that applicants lie, and so will references (because as you said, no smart applicant will give a bad reference to you). But you think that somehow combining the two yields something worth while?
No, as I said above, my argument is that applicants sell themselves. A proper set of questions to one or more references can help to identify those cases so you get a more well-rounded picture of the applicant. Well, unless there's an organized conspiracy between the applicant and their references, but I'm willing to believe that's normally not the case.
Honestly, is this really that hard to understand?
Hell, my Lenovo T61, hardly an underpowered machine, has the same damn problem, and I've disabled all things I *think* should be causing the drive to thrash (eg, prefetch, indexing).
Thanks god for Ubuntu...
True, though then you need to get the public key in order to validate the signature. And that requires you to... download the public key.
:)
So, you recompute the digsig using your own private key, then intercept the public key request and replace it with your own.
No... this is not trivial.
Huh? Adblock doesn't change the contents of the HTML being delivered to the browser (unlike these products). It just causes the browser to render the page differently (ie, not downloading or displaying images, embedded objects, etc).
'course, these products could just re-compute and re-insert the checksum into the page...
Perfectly feasible if the users get enough annoying pop-ups that they just click OK on the "invalid certificate" warning
Which is why FF3 makes it so much more difficult to accept an invalid certificate.
And have it not lose your place in the page.
When "The Man in the High Castle" was written, counter-factual SF was rare -- it's a book that was ground-breaking, but probably doesn't seem so fantastic in retrospect. (Also, very few Westerners had heard of the "I Ching" back then...).
:)
Oh, I'm aware that, *conceptually*, The Man in the High Castle is interesting, at least for it's time. But as a story... frankly, it's dull, meandering, and it doesn't have an ending. It's like a bad Neil Stephenson novel.
This capability turns out to be a totally unnecessary fantastic element, and she ultimately turns out to be nothing but a red herring, which seems like a total waste.
I disagree. The fact that she's a red herring is the *whole point of her character*. It's supposed to leave the reader wondering what's real and what isn't, which is, of course, Dick's whole schtick.
IMHO, this isn't a problem with the story being "slapped together". The problem is that Dick found himself in a bit of quandary: he wanted to create what is essentially a trippy mystery, but because of hints early on (the exposition of coldpak when Runciter visits his wife), any reader paying attention would probably guess what was going on fairly quickly after the attack at the moon base. So he had to throw in some extra element in order to muddy the waters, and that element was Pat.
Does it work as a red herring? Absolutely. Lord knows I was confused as to what, precisely, was going on for quite some time. I agree, it's clumsy, and a waste of an interesting character. But I don't think it's evidence that the book was necessarily written in haste (though it probably was... he was a pulp sci-fi author living paycheque to paycheque... the vast major of the stuff he wrote was written fairly quickly. I just don't think the story suffers as a consequence, as you seem to.)
So, which would you prefer: believing only the applicant's bullshit, or at least getting a few extra data points?
Honestly, I don't know what you're arguing here. Yes, when you interview a reference, you're going to get their perspective, and it might be skewed. But if you ask the right questions, you'll get insight into an employee you otherwise wouldn't get. Meanwhile, professional references are far less likely to be prone to blind bias (they're professionals, after all), so you're likely to get useful experiential data from them.
The only thing I can figure is that you're arguing that reference checks are useless due to bias. But that is, frankly, silly. You'll *never* find out the real truth about an employee prior to hiring them. But the more data you can add to the mix ahead of time, the more likely you are to uncover issues with the prospective applicant that might otherwise go undiscovered until after you've already hired them.
but they will change their mind if they find something that makes them think that they are wrong.
Like votes?
Again, this is why you do a proper interview with the reference, to dredge up any biases. And, of course, you don't rely on a single reference... at least two or three reference checks, a manager, a peer, and possibly a character reference, should be the minimum.
The OS is supposed to handle things like IO and memory, while the real functionality comes from userland applications (often third party) interacting with the OS.
Not quite. What you're talking about is the kernel. But in both the Windows and Unix worlds, the referring to the "operating system" has *always* meant the combination of kernel and the userland necessary to drive the system. On the Unix side, this means scripts, a shell, login, etc, etc. In Windows, you get a GUI, the Explorer shell, etc.
That said, I agree that there is another class of optional applications (eg, koffice/openoffice) that aren't traditionally implied when referring to the "operating system". And anyone who's installed a barebones Unix system (eg, Solaris) understands how equally useless that is, as compared to a barebones Windows install.
Yeah, I really don't understand why Red Delicious are even sold anymore. I know of no one who likes them. They don't taste that good. The flesh is gritty and mealy. The skin is thick and bitter. They look funny. And when you bake 'em, they fall apart. There's just *nothing* good about them.
Ugh, compared to Edmonton, and it's incredible river valley park system, Calgary is an ugly blight. Urban sprawl like you wouldn't believe, horrible traffic and massive freeways everywhere. And don't get me started on the people...
step 5 chase annoying urban cowboys off of lawn.
People are nicer the more east you go,
:)
Buh? I've lived in Edmonton and Ottawa, spent time in Vancouver, Toronto, and Saskatchewan, and visited Montreal... and this is the more ignorant statement I've read by a fellow Canadian in a long time.
Frankly, I've met assholes everywhere. "Center of the universe" Torontonians. Albertans who believe the world is out to get them. Vancouverites who's smugness is detectable miles away. And... nah, I don't think I've met an unfriendly person from Saskatchewan, but that's probably because you're basically forced to have a sense of humour if you live there.
And for the record, I know plenty of people who hate Tim Horton's coffee, and will espouse that view quite passionately.
A previous employer's reference is pretty worthless
Bullshit! A reference is the *only* way to get real insight into an employee, aside from the image they try to portray of themselves. A CV is inevitably stacked, and interviews are only somewhat useful.
The problem is that employers don't seem willing to truly grill references. A reference check shouldn't be a five minute call. It should be a thirty minute interview, minimum, where they are asked in-depth questions about the employee's performance.
Meanwhile, if the provided reference is a bad one, it's the applicant's fault for selecting them. No idiot would ask someone to act as a reference if they weren't going to give a positive review. And even if the applicant is that dumb (or unlucky), a proper line of questioning should highlight obvious bias.
Oh bullshit. Profits are just a proxy metric for number of units sold. And you don't need profits to determine how many units you're moving.
That's not to say profits are evil. But they certainly aren't *necessary*.
If you actually read Ubik, you'll find that it's an exceedingly minor Philip K. Dick novel
Funny, because I've read a few of his works (mainly his more notable stuff), and 1) I thought it was quite good (as good as Do Androids Dream..., definitely better than The Man in the High Castle), and 2) so do most other critics and readers of his stuff.
But, hey, it's obviously more cool to buck the trend and look like some sort of high-brow outsider...
I can't imagine how it could be dumbed down into an action movie.
Really? That's easy! Start off with super-awesome anti-psychic task force rolling into to stop evil psychic industrial espionage types. Next scene, task force is ambushed, all hell breaks loose and the bomb goes off. From then on, tension and mystery builds as reality starts breaking apart and people start mysteriously dying. Eventually the "saviour" shows up to explain what's going on, main character saves themselves, and then fade out with imagery hinting that there is something deeper going on.
Honestly, it practically writes itself. Trust me... they *can* screw this up. I don't know if they will, but I can say my hopes aren't terribly high.
The one Dick book that I'm surprised hasn't been filmed is The Man in the High Castle, which has a much more conventional plot (by comparison) and would be more accessible to a mass audience.
Meh, the problem with TMHC is the meandering subplots, with no real resolution at the end. TBH, of the stuff he's written, it's one of my least favorite books, only interesting because it's such an excellent example of an alternate history (his development of setting is quite extraordinary... it's just that nothing terribly interesting happens there).
On the whole it was openly hostile to the Europeans, and preaching the extinction or enslavement of Europeans by the natives, and using such visual metaphors as fattening a white pig representing the Europeans to slaughter it when the ancients return. But funnily enough, it also incorporated a lot of stuff which was mocking what the Europeans did. E.g., military parades, blessing water for their religious ceremonies, etc.
Just to go on about this a little, if you believe Wikipedia, many of these cults involved the belief that the cargo being received by the Europeans (or Americans or whomever) were gifts from the gods/ancestors/etc, and that the native tribes were in fact the rightful receivers of these gifts. So they began to mimic the behaviour of the Europeans (or Americans or whomever), believing that these actions were rituals that would bring these gifts to them, while meanwhile exhibiting outward hostility to the invaders who were taking the cargo that was rightfully theirs.
Actually, I got that wrong, Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk don't support "ad hoc polymorphism"... somehow, I confused that with dynamic binding, which is a whole other topic (and one that Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk support).
No, there's static/dynamic typing, and there's strong/weak typing (at least, those are the standard terms in the industry).
Static/dynamic describes when the type checking is performed (runtime or compile time).
Strong/weak typing describes how strict the type system is. Weak typing typically allows automatic, runtime type conversions (Perl), ad-hoc polymorphism (Python, Ruby, Smalltalk), or both. Strong typing does not (Java, C#).