90%+ or whatever of the programmers out there are working on in-house code for in-house projects used by in-house people. Stuff that will never ship. So it does not matter how much stuff is logged.
It still matters, if the data being manipulated is about customers. And it almost always is.
Blacks were bred to work in the fields and some of them learned to enjoy it. That doesn't mean it's right.
There's nothing wrong with working in the fields, and lots of people (of all colors) who work farms do enjoy it. Forcing someone to work against their will and without pay, that's not right. But there's nothing at all wrong with farming.
They have a combustion chamber at the rear. You open it up, spray hairspray into it, close it, then twist (or whatever) the sparker to ignite it. The potato chunk which was inserted into the muzzle flies a great distance. Laugh. Repeat.
From the fate of other 'search' companies (some of which were very good), I'd say the board at FAST were correct - and that you're the idiot.
So, you are saying, two competing companies doing about the same thing. One quits the business, the other goes on to be HUGELY successful, and I'm the idiot for calling the quitting company's manegement idiots?
No, he's saying that there were lots of competing companies doing about the same thing. You say one of them (who I'd never even heard of) walked away. Fine. Several others didn't walk away, and instead got trounced. Perhaps FAST could have competed and perhaps not. Apparently they didn't think they could.
You may have missed what I wrote: "Google sells ads, nothing else even comes close on their books."
Not yet. Non-ad revenue has been climbing steadily, growing significantly faster than ad revenue, with the result that advertising's share of Google's revenues -- while still dominant -- is decreasing every year. It's still 90%, but that's down from 94% just two years ago. I expect it to drop to 80% within a couple of years and to be less than 50% in a decade or so, perhaps less. Nearly all of the company's big growth initiatives are in non-advertising businesses. Not that Google doesn't keep pushing the ad revenue numbers upward, and not that they aren't mind-boggling.
someone shows up with a Lit degree but still knows how to code and program
Now you're adding additional qualifications. I've known some excellent programmers who had degrees that weren't in CS or a related field. In that case though their degree is irrelevant. Why not hire people who have on HS diplomas? I've know some excellent people like that too.
I know a couple of Google employees without bachelor's degrees. One has an associate's degree and the other didn't even complete high school. Both are brilliant people and outstanding engineers. Google doesn't really pay attention to credentials in the interview and hiring process. Bock's point wasn't that the CS graduate was more likely to get hired because of what would be written on the diploma, but because the more challenging coursework would be a better preparation.
This presumes, of course, that the CS degree program really is more challenging and requires more critical thinking ability than the English program. I'd generally expect that to be true, but there are counterexamples. My university, for example, had such a weak CS program that the English degree probably was harder.
I should point out, though, that most Google engineers do have BS or MS degrees, along with a substantial leavening of PhDs, and most of them are in CS, math or other engineering fields, but far from all.
What are the chances of pulling four-of-a-kind from a deck of cards in five tries?
It depends on what you mean by "five tries".
Do I shuffle and pull four cards, check to see if they are all the same number, and if not, repeat up to 4 more times? Or, do you mean "what are the chances that you have four-of-a-kind when dealt 5 cards?"
That would be a perfect first response, BTW. Many good interview questions are intentionally vague, precisely to see if the candidate will recognize the ambiguity and ask appropriate questions to clarify it, because that's a critically important skill/habit for the real world.
My brother owned a draft horse and there was nothing he liked better than pulling. If pulling teams are animal cruelty, then so is playing fetch with your retriever.
Just another anecdote, a friend of mine has sled dogs (~30 dogs, two sleds; he's fairly serious about it) and those dogs clearly love to pull. All you have to do is jingle a harness, or start loading equipment into the trailer used to haul dogs + gear and they go nuts with excitement, crowding over and trying to be first into the traces/trailer. You lay the traces out on the ground and they immediately run to their positions, with some squabbling over who gets to be where, and wait anxiously to be hooked up. The toughest part of getting going in the morning is making them wait until you're ready to go, and then they'll happily run all day long (as long as they get suitable breaks, with food and water). Those who are hurt or otherwise getting a day off are clearly dejected by not getting a chance to get into the traces.
I've known many horses who were almost as excited about their jobs... though I've also known a few who were quite lazy and didn't like to work.
The hipsters should arm themselves. Michigan's gun laws aren't too restrictive, and with the money saved on housing they should be able to afford to arm and train themselves well. Your average hoodlum barely knows how to operate his gun, which is often a piece of junk, so the bar isn't too high.
Top two cities with the highest density of engineers are Huntsville Alabama and Palm Bay/Melbourne Florida for what should be obvious reasons.
I'm sure that's true if you're counting traditional engineering fields, meaning not including software engineers. I'm not sure it would still be true if you included software. Of course many would argue that software engineering isn't yet mature enough to be a real engineering discipline, but it definitely is a big part of "tech", which is the subject of discussion.
I've spent about half of my life in Texas. I've lived in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. I've also lived in Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Southern California.
Every conversation about living in Texas I've had with a West Coaster:
"How can you stand living in Texas. Everyone is so bigoted and prejudicial?"
"Oh really, have you ever been there?"
"No."
"..."
And, of course, they completely miss the irony in their own statements.
Why not a security compiler? Seems some clever, creative hackers could work up something which would take raw code, subject it to some scrutiny and give output/feedback. Perhaps even a security switch to the standard compilers or even a security test suite. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
Shouldn't be too hard... in the sense that solving the Halting Problem shouldn't be too difficult. I conjecture that with an appropriate set of assumptions it's possible to use Rice's Theorem to prove that security analysis is equivalent to the Halting Problem.
Of course, static analysis can catch some vulnerabilities, and can highlight potential vulnerabilities. That's what Coverity does. But I don't think any mechanical process can defeat a creative attacker.
This analysis is based on an erroneous assumption which is derived from an inductive fallacy. Specifically, the author assumes that because one researcher who found one bug believes he could have found a second for roughly the same level of effort means that the researcher believes this process could be repeated indefinitely. I'm certain that if Kohno were asked he would deny the validity of this assumption. I'm sure he would say that his team could find a handful of similar bugs for similar level of effort, but once the pool of low-hanging fruit bugs was exhausted, the cost and difficulty would rise.
The desk I have is motorized. Push a button, takes about five seconds. Another option is to get a desk that is always positioned at standing level and a tall chair. That seems cheaper and more convenient but there are some downsides. One is that you have far fewer options in chairs than if you're getting normal-height chairs. Another is that changing the level of the desk is difficult, which is particularly problematic if the seating gets rearranged regularly.
I'd recommend a standing desk to anyone with the willpower to make it through the transition.
And I'd recommend a sit-stand desk to anyone at all. Even if you don't stand all the time (I don't), being able to spend part of your day standing will make you feel better without discomfort, in fact being able to switch back and forth is more comfortable than sitting.
Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.
Unless your insider view involved board meetings making top-level executive decisions, I'm not impressed.
Obviously not, but you may not realize how open the company is internally. Larry Page stands up in front of the entire company every week, for example, and takes -- and answers -- live questions. There are no negative consequences for asking hard questions, and hard questions do get asked. Sometimes the executives duck or dance around them, but not very often, and questions that aren't really answered continue getting asked until they do get answered.
In addition to that, other than things like acquisitions there are very few "top-level executive decisions" at Google. Most decisionmaking is driven from the bottom up.
You're probably still not impressed. Whatever. I'm just giving you my perspective and opinion. I would think that an intelligent insider's viewpoint would be of use to you; you're certainly free to dismiss it, whether or not that makes any sense. Time will tell, and I'm quite confident that the future will bear out my statements.
YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model.
YouTube managed to grow to epic proportions before Google had to "save" them, as you imply. They also good have slapped ads onto their service at any time without Google buying them out.
Not according to YouTube employees who made the transition.
...when the main problem isn't really sitting down, but being STILL in the same position hour after hour.
This is why it's not a "standing desk" but a "sit-stand desk". The idea is that you alternate between sitting and standing, changing position every hour or two.
My basis is the same as yours, except not from the inside, and not from just three years.
Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.
The tipping point came when they bought YouTube for an obscene amount of money (at the time). You don't spread your tendrils in such fashion throughout the industry just because you like technology.
YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model. YouTube also needed a better search engine, and Google was interested in finding ways to index and search non-textual content. It was an ideal match, technologically.
At least, won't everyone who's paid a middle to upper middle class wage, buys a house and saves for retirement eventually be a millionaire?
If you want to retire at 65 and have enough money to live a decent life for 30 years after that, you need pretty close to a million dollars plus a paid-off house. And, frankly, it's not that hard to accumulate a million dollars of net worth over a ~40-year career, assuming reasonable returns on your retirement account and modest appreciation on your home. I'm actually targeting net assets of two million for retirement, given that it's still 20 years away and I expect that inflation will roughly halve the value of the dollar between now and then.
Regardless of the number of exclamation points you use, Mountain View and SF housing do affect one another. I know several people who have lived in both areas and who have opted for one over the other based on questions of price and convenience. Said (insane, IMO) prefer to live in SF, but some choose MTV because SF is too expensive. Lowering the cost of housing in MTV further -- and making it more convenient to the Google campus -- would induce some more to leave SF.
Except that's bullshit, because if people really cared about using their guns to defend our freedoms, there would already be a gallows set up on Capitol Hill with half of congress swinging from it.
Utter nonsense.
There are problems -- lots of them -- but peaceful civilian control of our government has not yet failed. Things aren't bad enough to justify civil war, but that doesn't mean it will never get to that point.
And to pretend that the Founders never intended the Constitution to be amended is silly since we have an amendment process.
Of course they intended it to be amended. Which means that if people would like to ban civilian firearm possession, they should amend the constitution. Not that any such amendment would have a prayer of getting ratified.
Slashdot Mirror
90%+ or whatever of the programmers out there are working on in-house code for in-house projects used by in-house people. Stuff that will never ship. So it does not matter how much stuff is logged.
It still matters, if the data being manipulated is about customers. And it almost always is.
Blacks were bred to work in the fields and some of them learned to enjoy it. That doesn't mean it's right.
There's nothing wrong with working in the fields, and lots of people (of all colors) who work farms do enjoy it. Forcing someone to work against their will and without pay, that's not right. But there's nothing at all wrong with farming.
easily $50 per day for touristy east-coast resorts
Wow, that's cheap. Of course, east coast skiing sucks, so I suppose it's reasonable, but still... that's cheap.
Powering the potato gun.
They have a combustion chamber at the rear. You open it up, spray hairspray into it, close it, then twist (or whatever) the sparker to ignite it. The potato chunk which was inserted into the muzzle flies a great distance. Laugh. Repeat.
Cool - show me some code - show me an app you developed. Is it good?
FWIW, Google doesn't really pay attention to what you've done. They pay attention to what you do during the interview.
From the fate of other 'search' companies (some of which were very good), I'd say the board at FAST were correct - and that you're the idiot.
So, you are saying, two competing companies doing about the same thing. One quits the business, the other goes on to be HUGELY successful, and I'm the idiot for calling the quitting company's manegement idiots?
No, he's saying that there were lots of competing companies doing about the same thing. You say one of them (who I'd never even heard of) walked away. Fine. Several others didn't walk away, and instead got trounced. Perhaps FAST could have competed and perhaps not. Apparently they didn't think they could.
You may have missed what I wrote: "Google sells ads, nothing else even comes close on their books."
Not yet. Non-ad revenue has been climbing steadily, growing significantly faster than ad revenue, with the result that advertising's share of Google's revenues -- while still dominant -- is decreasing every year. It's still 90%, but that's down from 94% just two years ago. I expect it to drop to 80% within a couple of years and to be less than 50% in a decade or so, perhaps less. Nearly all of the company's big growth initiatives are in non-advertising businesses. Not that Google doesn't keep pushing the ad revenue numbers upward, and not that they aren't mind-boggling.
someone shows up with a Lit degree but still knows how to code and program
Now you're adding additional qualifications. I've known some excellent programmers who had degrees that weren't in CS or a related field. In that case though their degree is irrelevant. Why not hire people who have on HS diplomas? I've know some excellent people like that too.
I know a couple of Google employees without bachelor's degrees. One has an associate's degree and the other didn't even complete high school. Both are brilliant people and outstanding engineers. Google doesn't really pay attention to credentials in the interview and hiring process. Bock's point wasn't that the CS graduate was more likely to get hired because of what would be written on the diploma, but because the more challenging coursework would be a better preparation.
This presumes, of course, that the CS degree program really is more challenging and requires more critical thinking ability than the English program. I'd generally expect that to be true, but there are counterexamples. My university, for example, had such a weak CS program that the English degree probably was harder.
I should point out, though, that most Google engineers do have BS or MS degrees, along with a substantial leavening of PhDs, and most of them are in CS, math or other engineering fields, but far from all.
What are the chances of pulling four-of-a-kind from a deck of cards in five tries?
It depends on what you mean by "five tries".
Do I shuffle and pull four cards, check to see if they are all the same number, and if not, repeat up to 4 more times? Or, do you mean "what are the chances that you have four-of-a-kind when dealt 5 cards?"
That would be a perfect first response, BTW. Many good interview questions are intentionally vague, precisely to see if the candidate will recognize the ambiguity and ask appropriate questions to clarify it, because that's a critically important skill/habit for the real world.
(I am a Google interviewer.)
My brother owned a draft horse and there was nothing he liked better than pulling. If pulling teams are animal cruelty, then so is playing fetch with your retriever.
Just another anecdote, a friend of mine has sled dogs (~30 dogs, two sleds; he's fairly serious about it) and those dogs clearly love to pull. All you have to do is jingle a harness, or start loading equipment into the trailer used to haul dogs + gear and they go nuts with excitement, crowding over and trying to be first into the traces/trailer. You lay the traces out on the ground and they immediately run to their positions, with some squabbling over who gets to be where, and wait anxiously to be hooked up. The toughest part of getting going in the morning is making them wait until you're ready to go, and then they'll happily run all day long (as long as they get suitable breaks, with food and water). Those who are hurt or otherwise getting a day off are clearly dejected by not getting a chance to get into the traces.
I've known many horses who were almost as excited about their jobs... though I've also known a few who were quite lazy and didn't like to work.
Methane is odourless :)
Pig shit, not so much.
The hipsters should arm themselves. Michigan's gun laws aren't too restrictive, and with the money saved on housing they should be able to afford to arm and train themselves well. Your average hoodlum barely knows how to operate his gun, which is often a piece of junk, so the bar isn't too high.
Top two cities with the highest density of engineers are Huntsville Alabama and Palm Bay/Melbourne Florida for what should be obvious reasons.
I'm sure that's true if you're counting traditional engineering fields, meaning not including software engineers. I'm not sure it would still be true if you included software. Of course many would argue that software engineering isn't yet mature enough to be a real engineering discipline, but it definitely is a big part of "tech", which is the subject of discussion.
I've spent about half of my life in Texas. I've lived in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. I've also lived in Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Southern California.
Every conversation about living in Texas I've had with a West Coaster: "How can you stand living in Texas. Everyone is so bigoted and prejudicial?" "Oh really, have you ever been there?" "No." "..."
And, of course, they completely miss the irony in their own statements.
Why not a security compiler? Seems some clever, creative hackers could work up something which would take raw code, subject it to some scrutiny and give output/feedback. Perhaps even a security switch to the standard compilers or even a security test suite. Shouldn't be that hard to do.
Shouldn't be too hard... in the sense that solving the Halting Problem shouldn't be too difficult. I conjecture that with an appropriate set of assumptions it's possible to use Rice's Theorem to prove that security analysis is equivalent to the Halting Problem.
Of course, static analysis can catch some vulnerabilities, and can highlight potential vulnerabilities. That's what Coverity does. But I don't think any mechanical process can defeat a creative attacker.
This analysis is based on an erroneous assumption which is derived from an inductive fallacy. Specifically, the author assumes that because one researcher who found one bug believes he could have found a second for roughly the same level of effort means that the researcher believes this process could be repeated indefinitely. I'm certain that if Kohno were asked he would deny the validity of this assumption. I'm sure he would say that his team could find a handful of similar bugs for similar level of effort, but once the pool of low-hanging fruit bugs was exhausted, the cost and difficulty would rise.
The desk I have is motorized. Push a button, takes about five seconds. Another option is to get a desk that is always positioned at standing level and a tall chair. That seems cheaper and more convenient but there are some downsides. One is that you have far fewer options in chairs than if you're getting normal-height chairs. Another is that changing the level of the desk is difficult, which is particularly problematic if the seating gets rearranged regularly.
I'd recommend a standing desk to anyone with the willpower to make it through the transition.
And I'd recommend a sit-stand desk to anyone at all. Even if you don't stand all the time (I don't), being able to spend part of your day standing will make you feel better without discomfort, in fact being able to switch back and forth is more comfortable than sitting.
Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.
Unless your insider view involved board meetings making top-level executive decisions, I'm not impressed.
Obviously not, but you may not realize how open the company is internally. Larry Page stands up in front of the entire company every week, for example, and takes -- and answers -- live questions. There are no negative consequences for asking hard questions, and hard questions do get asked. Sometimes the executives duck or dance around them, but not very often, and questions that aren't really answered continue getting asked until they do get answered.
In addition to that, other than things like acquisitions there are very few "top-level executive decisions" at Google. Most decisionmaking is driven from the bottom up.
You're probably still not impressed. Whatever. I'm just giving you my perspective and opinion. I would think that an intelligent insider's viewpoint would be of use to you; you're certainly free to dismiss it, whether or not that makes any sense. Time will tell, and I'm quite confident that the future will bear out my statements.
YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model.
YouTube managed to grow to epic proportions before Google had to "save" them, as you imply. They also good have slapped ads onto their service at any time without Google buying them out.
Not according to YouTube employees who made the transition.
...when the main problem isn't really sitting down, but being STILL in the same position hour after hour.
This is why it's not a "standing desk" but a "sit-stand desk". The idea is that you alternate between sitting and standing, changing position every hour or two.
My basis is the same as yours, except not from the inside, and not from just three years.
Then it's not the same as mine. I've also followed the company from the beginning... and I have the benefit of the insider view.
The tipping point came when they bought YouTube for an obscene amount of money (at the time). You don't spread your tendrils in such fashion throughout the industry just because you like technology.
YouTube was a very obvious acquisition. What YouTube needed to survive and grow was low-cost scalability and a way to monetize the views it was getting. What Google had was massive data centers and network connectivity, plus a proven revenue model. YouTube also needed a better search engine, and Google was interested in finding ways to index and search non-textual content. It was an ideal match, technologically.
Google's primary goal is the technology, the profits and competitive advantage are a means to that end, not the other way around.
They are empire building. The technology is a means to that end.
The basis for your claim is?
The basis for my claim is three years of seeing how the company operates and what decisions it makes, and how, from the inside.
At least, won't everyone who's paid a middle to upper middle class wage, buys a house and saves for retirement eventually be a millionaire?
If you want to retire at 65 and have enough money to live a decent life for 30 years after that, you need pretty close to a million dollars plus a paid-off house. And, frankly, it's not that hard to accumulate a million dollars of net worth over a ~40-year career, assuming reasonable returns on your retirement account and modest appreciation on your home. I'm actually targeting net assets of two million for retirement, given that it's still 20 years away and I expect that inflation will roughly halve the value of the dollar between now and then.
Regardless of the number of exclamation points you use, Mountain View and SF housing do affect one another. I know several people who have lived in both areas and who have opted for one over the other based on questions of price and convenience. Said (insane, IMO) prefer to live in SF, but some choose MTV because SF is too expensive. Lowering the cost of housing in MTV further -- and making it more convenient to the Google campus -- would induce some more to leave SF.
Except that's bullshit, because if people really cared about using their guns to defend our freedoms, there would already be a gallows set up on Capitol Hill with half of congress swinging from it.
Utter nonsense.
There are problems -- lots of them -- but peaceful civilian control of our government has not yet failed. Things aren't bad enough to justify civil war, but that doesn't mean it will never get to that point.
And to pretend that the Founders never intended the Constitution to be amended is silly since we have an amendment process.
Of course they intended it to be amended. Which means that if people would like to ban civilian firearm possession, they should amend the constitution. Not that any such amendment would have a prayer of getting ratified.