Blizzard's main phone number from whitepages.com: 949-955-1380. In case any wants to call and complain or a Slashdot editor wants to try to get a comment straight from Blizzard
The novel Battlefield Earth is one of the greatest epic sci-fi stories ever told. So, for fans of the book, you've already got pretty much everything you could hope for. The book that you've been saying for years would make the greatest movie ever has finally been translated to film. The plot has been condensed but that's necessary. The writing and cinematography are terrible but John Travolta and Forrest Whitaker are perfect and Barry Pepper actually manages to capture some of the pure badass-ness that is Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, which is a feat in itself. Jonnie the greatest hero ever, he goes from grunting caveman to conqueror of the most powerful species in the galaxy.
So despite the poor execution, a lot of what makes the book so great manages to shine through. Combine that with good special effects and decent action and you've got a pretty good movie.
I agree that ArsDigita's system is better than the standard resume/interview process, which pretty much completely fails to weed out incompetent people. I'm just wondering if they are having any trouble hiring people because their process is so daunting.
The time constraint for me when doing the problem sets was that I had already started my job hunt and had offers from other companies that I had to reply to by a certain date. So I needed to get an answer from AD relatively quickly.
I guess it depends what you mean by "pass". I completed the problem sets... the ArsDigitans just weren't happy with the quality of my code. In my defense I didn't have much time to spend on making my code elegant and pretty.
As for "extra lengths", have you looked at the AD problem sets? They're quite time-consuming, much more so than the resume/interview it takes to get a job pretty much anywhere else.
Upon graduating college I tried (and failed) to get a job at ArsDigita. In today's supposedly tight employee market do you find the extra lengths you ask your job applicants to go to make it difficult for you to find engineers or does your hefty compensation package and geek-friendly environment make up for it?
The thing that struck me about these emails is that if you delete the "bad words" they no are no different than what Alan Cox and others have been saying about the Mindcraft test in more public forums: the methods are poor and the test was unfair. I've never understood why certain words are arbitrarily labelled unsuitable for polite conversation. Why is "this test is shit!" an unacceptable way of saying "I disapprove of your methods and don't trust your results"? Most of these messages used the word "whore". As I understand it, Mindcraft's contract with Microsoft included a clause that prohibited them from releasing their results if they were unfavorable to Microsoft. This seems pretty close to the modern usage of the word "whore"! The "fuck you" message summed up in two words what most of us felt when we learned that Mindcraft was funded by Microsoft. These messages aren't obscene, they're just effective communication.
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According to Robert Scoble, Microsoft has no problem with Windows Media DRM support on Linux devices.
Try Getting Loaded by Peter Bielagus. It's specifically targeted at people in your situation.
Blizzard's main phone number from whitepages.com: 949-955-1380. In case any wants to call and complain or a Slashdot editor wants to try to get a comment straight from Blizzard
So despite the poor execution, a lot of what makes the book so great manages to shine through. Combine that with good special effects and decent action and you've got a pretty good movie.
I agree that ArsDigita's system is better than the standard resume/interview process, which pretty much completely fails to weed out incompetent people. I'm just wondering if they are having any trouble hiring people because their process is so daunting.
The time constraint for me when doing the problem sets was that I had already started my job hunt and had offers from other companies that I had to reply to by a certain date. So I needed to get an answer from AD relatively quickly.
I guess it depends what you mean by "pass". I completed the problem sets... the ArsDigitans just weren't happy with the quality of my code. In my defense I didn't have much time to spend on making my code elegant and pretty.
As for "extra lengths", have you looked at the AD problem sets? They're quite time-consuming, much more so than the resume/interview it takes to get a job pretty much anywhere else.
Upon graduating college I tried (and failed) to get a job at ArsDigita. In today's supposedly tight employee market do you find the extra lengths you ask your job applicants to go to make it difficult for you to find engineers or does your hefty compensation package and geek-friendly environment make up for it?
The thing that struck me about these emails is that if you delete the "bad words" they no are no different than what Alan Cox and others have been saying about the Mindcraft test in more public forums: the methods are poor and the test was unfair. I've never understood why certain words are arbitrarily labelled unsuitable for polite conversation. Why is "this test is shit!" an unacceptable way of saying "I disapprove of your methods and don't trust your results"? Most of these messages used the word "whore". As I understand it, Mindcraft's contract with Microsoft included a clause that prohibited them from releasing their results if they were unfavorable to Microsoft. This seems pretty close to the modern usage of the word "whore"! The "fuck you" message summed up in two words what most of us felt when we learned that Mindcraft was funded by Microsoft. These messages aren't obscene, they're just effective communication.