"Make sure you point out to him what you can do and make mention of projects youve worked on (if any) that give a hint that you are good at working on projects. Dont just shy away because you dont have a certain number of years experience."
This is a very important point.
I'm a student now and have done 2 internships so far, 1 paid, 1 not. I'm on my way to third one (paid for certain) this January -- I have an interview tomorrow (technically today.)
The point about listing past projects and achievements is really important because the HR people really seem to key into it. If you actually built [...] software product or designed [...] device, this shows real knowledge and experience. It means you are not raw out of the gate and don't know how to run. It means they don't have to hold your hand. If your resume simply says for each job "Duties included: x, y and z" it doesn't mean you actually did anything... maybe that's why you're looking for a job now!
In every interview I have been to (except stiff government ones where they are forced to ask everyone identical questions) they always want to know about your work with the things you designed/programmed/built. Your technical responses to these questions show you are a 'do-er' and show you can handle yourself with real work.
"How about encouraging users to use browsers that don't suck [mozilla.org]?"
Sometimes encouragement is not necessary. I installed mozilla on my sister's machine, changed the IE link on the desktop to link to mozilla (but still with the blue 'e' icon) and installed an IE-lookalike skin on mozilla and she hasn't noticed the difference yet. (It's been about a month now.)
Hasn't Steve Gibson been promising some sort of freeware hyper speed port scanner for months, possibly years now? If you go take his shieldsup test, there he mentions something about it on one of the pages.
"Europe has a population of 384 Million. They have a land area of 3,191,120 square kilometers. The United States has a popular of 284 Million. We have a land area of 9,629,091 square kilometers. As you can see, US providers have a dramatically smaller population with a FAR larger land area to cover."
Exactly. It is even worse in canada because the country has 1/10 the population of the USA and an even bigger land area. Now I have had few reception problems in cities, but I live in a rural area and it is difficult to get a signal even when outside the house.
"To much regulation? Deregulate cries the geek!
Of course! this explains why the USA's cellphone infrastructure is so much better than Europe's - the EU is just over-regulated!!"
It's not about whether there is too much or too little regulation. The difference is in whether the regulation is done intelligently or not.
"Why not encourage books and hands-on creative outlets rather than computer screens? Do you think they really need to learn about computers at age 3 and 7? Maybe the 11 year old, but I shudder to think you would try to teach your kids ANY OS at such a young age."
Starting them early gives them an advantage. I was editing autoexec.bat when I was 7 and 8 years old, building machines when I was 13. Now I pay for university tuition and books by having programming and hardware jobs. (Debt free student.) Learning early pays.
Re:Viro when did you lose your way?
on
As the Spam Turns
·
· Score: 1
" A while ago I worked for a now defunct dot-com that dealt in e-mail marketing through opt-ins. When we moved to hosting through verio. They threatened to cut us off even though our mailings were opt-in, and sent from a different (non-verio) location. Their anti-spam policies were so draconian that we had to move to exodus. When did they become pro-spam?"
Maybe now that the dot-coms are defunct and not providing Verio with hordes or revenue, the company needs to find alternate sources of income.
Re:Spam comes from unlikely places...
on
As the Spam Turns
·
· Score: 5, Funny
" I got a Nigerian money scam today with a yahoo address in the header. I replied with a cheap goatse.cx link. It went something like "Sure, I'll do it--but can you please check my [a href="http://goatse.cx"]website[/a] tomorrow--I will post a picture of an open door to indicate that you have been granted the go-ahead. If not, it will mean I need another day for my paperwork to be prepared. I have been having troubles with my bank lately, and they might be looking into me, but fortunately I have the right friends. I think email is much too insecure for this." I guess trolls do provide something useful for the community."
Haha, that is good, but I can one-up you on that... I've told this story recently in another slashdot thread but I'll actually post the guy's response this time.
Here is my response to the original spam:
Hello, Mr. Abu, it is wonderful to be doing business with you! My name is James Kirk with phone#202-406-5850 and fax#202-406-5031. [these are the phone and fax number for the US Secret service electronic crimes bureau] Company: Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards Company Address: 33601 Lyon Street, San Francisco CA 94123 I look forward to receiving this money! -James[yes, the james kirk name was inspired by the haxial.org thing]
The guy e-mailed me back and asked me to phone him on his private line. I looked up the phone exchange and it indeed was in Nigeria.
Then I got another e-mail from him an hour later:
Subject: WHY?????
Dear Kirk,
If you were not interested in assisting us, you sholud have kindly told us so that we can look for another foreign partner who might be interested in assisting us, instead of agreeing to assist, and giving the number of your secret service for us to contact. Why could'nt you be man enough to tell us that you are not interested.
Well, I wish all the best, as we continue our search for a reliable person that will be genuinely intersted in assisting us.
He actually called it. I got some of the other scammers to fax their documents to the fax number. One guy e-mailed me back and said that the lady on the line didn't know of any James Kirk there. Teehee...
"I am curious to hear stories of anybody who has at any point used gnutella to do anything but transmit copyrighted material in any substantial way."
I was able to find a kickass recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie on gnutella. This is not a joke! (But those who were following the scene when gnutella's concept was first introduced will find it pretty funny.)
strawberry-rhubarb pies.txt
2 cups sliced strawberries 3 cups rhubarb (1/2 inch dice) 1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons orange liqueur or orange juice 2 teaspoons orange or lemon zest 3 tablespoons corn starch 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/8 teaspoon each, nutmeg and ginger 2 tablespoons unsalted butter milk coarse or regular sugar
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Line 9 inch pie pan with pastry, reserving sufficient dough for the top crust.
In a large bowl, toss the strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, orange liqueur or orange juice, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Spoon into pie shell. Dot with butter.
Place top crust on and seal and crimp edges. Brush top with milk and sprinkle lightly with coarse or regular sugar. Cut steam vents.
Place pie on a cookie sheet to catch juices. Place in oven, reduce heat to 375 F. and bake until pie is oozing and top crust is a golden color - 35-45 minutes.
Let pie cool well before serving - about 15-20 minutes.
"OTOH, if you do a good job, and leave it well-documented and maintainable, then (a) you'll have a much more pleasant time if you're the guy doing that maintenance a year later, and (b) you're going to develop a reputation as someone who does a good job, which is about the most valuable thing you can possibly have in the contracting business."
In the big picture, I agree. The program wasn't well documented enough only because I ran out of time and university courses were starting up again.
"Speaking of documenting what you do, it's my opinion that employees in I.T. would be wise to limit how much of this documentation they write.
If you're writing lots of documentation for an employer, you should be getting paid as a "technical writer". If you're employed as an I.T. worker and they're demanding lots of documentation - you need to question it."
I recently just got hired again because of something like this. A company called me back to add some more stuff into software I was developing for them last summer. (I am a full time student except in the summer, and during brief periods between semesters.) They probably couldn't do it themselves because the program wasn't documented enough and most of them are non-software/computer Engineers anyway.
So basically, providing non-comprehensive documentation seems to make it more likely you'll get hired again. Interesting.
"You only spent half an hour testing @ $70 an hour?!?"
The only problem here is that if their RAID breaks down again after a month, the company might be able to sue the guy who supposedly stress testing it for not detecting the problem during testing.
"Well, when I was younger, I left a coke can on my dresser. The next day, I had another coke, put it down somewhere, got the two confused. Next thing I knew I had a mouthful of ants. Ew."
"big deal. What's next in the news: Birds fly into Windows server?"
Birds flying into windows are a big problem! We actually had a window destroyed when a sparrowhawk did a hunting dive into it when it was trying to kill the wooden life size replica duck that we had on the table just inside the window. (The halk was dead after this, btw.)
We have a large room on the back of the house which has 3 walls totally made out of windows (the halk thing btw happenned before this room was built) and every month a few birds get dazed or killed by flying into the glass. We reduce this by putting sparrowhawk sillhouettes on the glass or other dangling things in the windows to prevent the birds from seeing an open path.
"I have a hub that apparently runs at the ideal temperature for incubating ant eggs. At least 3 times ants have come in and tried to build an ant-nursery underneath this hub, which is just sitting on the floor."
Putting any computer related stuff directly on the floot is not so good of an idea. It makes it easily accessible for insects. It allows dust to collect a lot faster. If there was ever flooding, your stuff would get wet.
Ever since the 80s, I have always put my computers on some sort of riser, even if it is 1 1/4" high piece of wood.
" Okay, I have no idea what this means. Crickets are the consciences of little wooden children?
What aspect of my liberal arts eductaion has been severely neglected to the point that I have no idea what you're talking about??"
I suggest you watch the Disney animated moveie called "Pinnochio" .
It's a movie about a wooden puppet who becomes animated and conscious by the workings of a magical fairy. Through various adventures and lessons about right and wrong, he eventually is granted his wish of becoming a real boy. In these adventures, there is a cricket called "Jimminy Cricket" who always tries to steer Pinnochio into not being influenced by people who wanted to take advantage of him and instead let his consience be his guide.
"I had a friend who had to throw out an alarm clock because he couldn't get the ants out of it. Of all the electronics in his room, they infested that. He had a nice line of ants going to it too, like they were harvesting or something."
What could ants possibily be harvesting from in an alarm clock? Fungus that was growing from the constant heat source of the electronics?
"Most disgusting tech support job I've ever done was cleaning ants out of an Epson ink-jet printer. This lady ate a lot of meals at her computer. Some food crumbs, like bits of jelly from her PB&J sandwiches, had fallen under the printer. The ants found this nice, warm place with a ready food source and moved in. And I had to get them out. Bleagh!"
OK, it's not computer related but still nasty:
Last summer some wasps built a nest on the face of the air-vent for the bathroom fan on the side of the house. It was pretty smart because the vent had a guard over it so the nest was shielded from weather and you couldn't throw a rock at it. Removing that one was... shall we say... a hit and run job.
And a computer related one:
I once had a healthy fungus colony on my mouse pad because I had been habitually eating chocolate and computing. Gross.
"and we're still underworked. There's only 6 of us left, and in general six people got axed during each layoff round.
I'd love to be overworked right now, instead of posting to slashdot..."
Hello, I recently read EMI's November 13th press release outlining the planned online Musicnet distribution system for downloadable music.
I am very excited about this service and will be examining it in detail when it becomes available.
But I have one question for you: Will the music be offered in Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) format? This would be highly desirable (as opposed to MP3, windows media, etc) for both me and you because there are no royalties at all for the format (it would save EMI money) and the sound quality is clearly superior per file size to that of the other format I mentioned, so it would save EMI more money on internet bandwidth while providing a higher quality product to the customer.
Will this be available in the Musicnet service?
Lastly, I must congratulate EMI for these ambitious plans. It is refreshing to see that a music distribution company is actually giving customers what they want instead of producing crippled CDs, a la BMG, Universal, etc. I have stopped buying their products because they treat their customers like theives.
"ogg = format people are demanding? I don't think there are many people who are demanding ogg who won't actually see this post on slashdot.. I know ogg is good, but seriously, no one outside of the tech community has any idea what it is.."
Why don't we just e-mail them and ask them? If EMI got a flood of e-mails asking about OGG format downloads, they would probably start thinking that it's important.
Here is some nice pre-packaged contact information for you:
Jeanne Meyer
Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications
EMI North America
Direct: 212.786.8850
jeanne.meyer@emimusic.]com
"not entirely true.. several people I know outside the tech community use ogg. I may have had something to do with it though.."
Isn't this how the word is spread about these things? How do you think MP3 became popular? Grassroots promotion, one person at a time, is how we can popularise ogg vorbis and other goodness like mozilla.
I feel better knowing that I have shown many IE users the light. Everyone should do the same in a non-zealotry manner.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very important point.
I'm a student now and have done 2 internships so far, 1 paid, 1 not. I'm on my way to third one (paid for certain) this January -- I have an interview tomorrow (technically today.)
The point about listing past projects and achievements is really important because the HR people really seem to key into it. If you actually built [...] software product or designed [...] device, this shows real knowledge and experience. It means you are not raw out of the gate and don't know how to run. It means they don't have to hold your hand. If your resume simply says for each job "Duties included: x, y and z" it doesn't mean you actually did anything ... maybe that's why you're looking for a job now!
In every interview I have been to (except stiff government ones where they are forced to ask everyone identical questions) they always want to know about your work with the things you designed/programmed/built. Your technical responses to these questions show you are a 'do-er' and show you can handle yourself with real work.
List and emphasise those project accomplishments!
Sometimes encouragement is not necessary. I installed mozilla on my sister's machine, changed the IE link on the desktop to link to mozilla (but still with the blue 'e' icon) and installed an IE-lookalike skin on mozilla and she hasn't noticed the difference yet. (It's been about a month now.)
Hasn't Steve Gibson been promising some sort of freeware hyper speed port scanner for months, possibly years now? If you go take his shieldsup test, there he mentions something about it on one of the pages.
Exactly. It is even worse in canada because the country has 1/10 the population of the USA and an even bigger land area. Now I have had few reception problems in cities, but I live in a rural area and it is difficult to get a signal even when outside the house.
It's not about whether there is too much or too little regulation. The difference is in whether the regulation is done intelligently or not.
Starting them early gives them an advantage. I was editing autoexec.bat when I was 7 and 8 years old, building machines when I was 13. Now I pay for university tuition and books by having programming and hardware jobs. (Debt free student.) Learning early pays.
Maybe now that the dot-coms are defunct and not providing Verio with hordes or revenue, the company needs to find alternate sources of income.
" I got a Nigerian money scam today with a yahoo address in the header. I replied with a cheap goatse.cx link. It went something like "Sure, I'll do it--but can you please check my [a href="http://goatse.cx"]website[/a] tomorrow--I will post a picture of an open door to indicate that you have been granted the go-ahead. If not, it will mean I need another day for my paperwork to be prepared. I have been having troubles with my bank lately, and they might be looking into me, but fortunately I have the right friends. I think email is much too insecure for this." I guess trolls do provide something useful for the community."
Haha, that is good, but I can one-up you on that... I've told this story recently in another slashdot thread but I'll actually post the guy's response this time.
Here is my response to the original spam:
Hello, Mr. Abu, it is wonderful to be doing business with you!
My name is James Kirk with phone#202-406-5850 and fax#202-406-5031. [these are the phone and fax number for the US Secret service electronic crimes bureau]
Company: Utopia Planetia Fleet Yards
Company Address: 33601 Lyon Street, San Francisco CA 94123
I look forward to receiving this money!
-James [yes, the james kirk name was inspired by the haxial.org thing]
The guy e-mailed me back and asked me to phone him on his private line. I looked up the phone exchange and it indeed was in Nigeria.
Then I got another e-mail from him an hour later:
Subject: WHY?????
Dear Kirk,
If you were not interested in assisting us, you sholud have kindly told us so
that we can look for another foreign partner who might be interested in
assisting us, instead of agreeing to assist, and giving the number of your
secret service for us to contact.
Why could'nt you be man enough to tell us that you are not interested.
Well, I wish all the best, as we continue our search for a reliable person
that will be genuinely intersted in assisting us.
He actually called it. I got some of the other scammers to fax their documents to the fax number. One guy e-mailed me back and said that the lady on the line didn't know of any James Kirk there. Teehee...
Verio had it coming.
"I am curious to hear stories of anybody who has at any point used gnutella to do anything but transmit copyrighted material in any substantial way."
I was able to find a kickass recipe for strawberry-rhubarb pie on gnutella. This is not a joke! (But those who were following the scene when gnutella's concept was first introduced will find it pretty funny.)
strawberry-rhubarb pies.txt
2 cups sliced strawberries
3 cups rhubarb (1/2 inch dice)
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons orange liqueur or orange juice
2 teaspoons orange or lemon zest
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each, nutmeg and ginger
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
milk
coarse or regular sugar
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Line 9 inch pie pan with pastry, reserving sufficient dough for the top crust.
In a large bowl, toss the strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, orange liqueur or orange juice, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Spoon into pie shell. Dot with butter.
Place top crust on and seal and crimp edges. Brush top with milk and sprinkle lightly with coarse or regular sugar. Cut steam vents.
Place pie on a cookie sheet to catch juices. Place in oven, reduce heat to 375 F. and bake until pie is oozing and top crust is a golden color - 35-45 minutes.
Let pie cool well before serving - about 15-20 minutes.
In the big picture, I agree. The program wasn't well documented enough only because I ran out of time and university courses were starting up again.
I recently just got hired again because of something like this. A company called me back to add some more stuff into software I was developing for them last summer. (I am a full time student except in the summer, and during brief periods between semesters.) They probably couldn't do it themselves because the program wasn't documented enough and most of them are non-software/computer Engineers anyway.
So basically, providing non-comprehensive documentation seems to make it more likely you'll get hired again. Interesting.
The only problem here is that if their RAID breaks down again after a month, the company might be able to sue the guy who supposedly stress testing it for not detecting the problem during testing.
Oh gawd, I was just about to eat breakfast too.
Birds flying into windows are a big problem! We actually had a window destroyed when a sparrowhawk did a hunting dive into it when it was trying to kill the wooden life size replica duck that we had on the table just inside the window. (The halk was dead after this, btw.)
We have a large room on the back of the house which has 3 walls totally made out of windows (the halk thing btw happenned before this room was built) and every month a few birds get dazed or killed by flying into the glass. We reduce this by putting sparrowhawk sillhouettes on the glass or other dangling things in the windows to prevent the birds from seeing an open path.
Putting any computer related stuff directly on the floot is not so good of an idea. It makes it easily accessible for insects. It allows dust to collect a lot faster. If there was ever flooding, your stuff would get wet.
Ever since the 80s, I have always put my computers on some sort of riser, even if it is 1 1/4" high piece of wood.
I suggest you watch the Disney animated moveie called "Pinnochio" .
It's a movie about a wooden puppet who becomes animated and conscious by the workings of a magical fairy. Through various adventures and lessons about right and wrong, he eventually is granted his wish of becoming a real boy. In these adventures, there is a cricket called "Jimminy Cricket" who always tries to steer Pinnochio into not being influenced by people who wanted to take advantage of him and instead let his consience be his guide.
What could ants possibily be harvesting from in an alarm clock? Fungus that was growing from the constant heat source of the electronics?
Or could capacitor electrolytics be yummy?
/me quickly examines my alarm clocks...
I found a spider but no ants ... whew.
OK, it's not computer related but still nasty:
Last summer some wasps built a nest on the face of the air-vent for the bathroom fan on the side of the house. It was pretty smart because the vent had a guard over it so the nest was shielded from weather and you couldn't throw a rock at it. Removing that one was ... shall we say ... a hit and run job.
And a computer related one:
I once had a healthy fungus colony on my mouse pad because I had been habitually eating chocolate and computing. Gross.
I always had heard that joke but it was about an Engineer...
I hope you're not posting from the office...
Hello, I recently read EMI's November 13th press release outlining the planned online Musicnet distribution system for downloadable music.
I am very excited about this service and will be examining it in detail when it becomes available.
But I have one question for you: Will the music be offered in Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) format? This would be highly desirable (as opposed to MP3, windows media, etc) for both me and you because there are no royalties at all for the format (it would save EMI money) and the sound quality is clearly superior per file size to that of the other format I mentioned, so it would save EMI more money on internet bandwidth while providing a higher quality product to the customer.
Will this be available in the Musicnet service?
Lastly, I must congratulate EMI for these ambitious plans. It is refreshing to see that a music distribution company is actually giving customers what they want instead of producing crippled CDs, a la BMG, Universal, etc. I have stopped buying their products because they treat their customers like theives.
Thank you for your time,
- (my name)
Ontario, Canada
Why don't we just e-mail them and ask them? If EMI got a flood of e-mails asking about OGG format downloads, they would probably start thinking that it's important.
Here is some nice pre-packaged contact information for you:
Jeanne Meyer
Senior Vice President, Corporate
Communications
EMI North America
Direct: 212.786.8850 jeanne.meyer@emimusic.]com
Isn't this how the word is spread about these things? How do you think MP3 became popular? Grassroots promotion, one person at a time, is how we can popularise ogg vorbis and other goodness like mozilla.
I feel better knowing that I have shown many IE users the light. Everyone should do the same in a non-zealotry manner.
Oh man, that combined with the "from the barney-and-teletubbies-considered-safe dept." line makes my skin crawl.