Yes, I'm playing on the headline and indulging in a little (IMO justified) anger at Sony's recent shafting of Europe. Would be interesting to see how views changed on these matters if it were the US market that received the delayed launch for a change. And if you're not capable of delivering on promises about launch dates, you're better off not making them. Sony has lost more good will by promising a simultaneous launch and then reneging on that promise than it would have done by announcing a staggered launch up front. Whatever the 'technical reasons' for it, it's bad business.
Lik Sang is far from the first company that Sony has sued out of the import market. NuPlayer and ElectricBirdLand spring to mind as examples, since you ask. And thanks for coming back with the Sony li(n)e on why they're doing this for the good of the consumer. But before you parrot that, perhaps you might want to check the power adapter for your PSP, where you'll find the CE mark showing that it conforms to the relevant EU standards:
* CE Marking on a product indicates to governmental officials that the product may be legally placed on the market in their country. * CE Marking on a product ensures the free movement of the product within the EFTA & European Union (EU) single market (total 28 countries)
Oops. Looks like it was certified as a safe product for use in those countries after all.
This isn't a case of anti-Sony fervour. I probably own more PS2s than you do, and I'm a big fan of all of Sony's gaming hardware to date. But I see it as a reasonable reaction to the way they've treated me, personally, with their recent actions. And particularly the insult to the intelligence of anyone who reads their weak justification for their attack on hardware imports and the blatant lies about why their own management imported PSPs themselves (seriously, it's the most transparent lie in videogaming since Square claimed that they couldn't release Chrono Cross in Europe because it was too difficult to translate into German...)
* Committing to a worldwide simultaneous launch, then delaying the launch in the largest of your markets * Preventing consumers from importing PS3s by driving companies that try to export them out of business with multiple spurious lawsuits * Presenting CGI as real-time footage
I doubt it. The sort of person who'll use the latest version of Flash indiscriminately almost certainly wouldn't have waited for a Linux version. All this means is that you now have the option of viewing the sites designed by such asshats.
I would agree with you here, but the (Score: 5, Funny) suggests that the joke's eminently gettable when communicated through text alone, and the points that you make in your angry rebuttal (abusive parents were to blame, the case is clearly about money, not responsibility) are pretty clearly there in the original. If you think there's a 50% chance you're going to miss any given joke, you might want to think twice before responding angrily to a post on Slashdot (which will at least drop your failure rate to 25%).
I normally find that not explaining the joke in clumsy detail works better, but thanks for doing so anyway. Perhaps next time you should read the whole post rather than automatically exploding when you hit the word 'liberal'.
Ok, so if the 14-year-old playing the rated "M" game (for those 17+) was playing obsessively for months, then I would argue that the fault lies with whomever was responsible for him.
Typical kneejerk liberal response. "Ooh, let's blame the parents for letting him play an M-rated game!" "Ooh, let's blame the abusive father!" "Ooh, let's blame the parents who left guns lying around!" "Ooh, let's blame the people who failed to provide any sort of care for a mentally unwell child!" This just shows your complete lack of understanding of the fundamental point of this case and others like it.
There's no way the parents could afford to pay out on a $600m lawsuit, even if they weren't already dead.
Tell you what, let's take an average group of 100 10-year olds and see how many can prove that sqrt(2) is irrational. I wouldn't put money on more than sqrt(2) of them managing it.
Right on the first count, quite possibly wrong on the second - I leapt to exactly the same conclusion but showed the ability to work through the problem when I was told that this was the wrong answer and questioned the assumptions I'd made about how the problem could be solved. I got the job.
A usage note is a note on how the word is used, and will often help out with nuances of definition. In case you're still struggling with it, definition 3 is the one that supports my usage - "These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject or mode of expression." The field in this case being either the comparatively broad one of science (as opposed to arts) or the more narrow one of pure mathematics. The usage guide should help you to see how this is used in the real world, again with the C P Snow example being pretty much a perfect example.
Your definition of 'cultural bias', while informative to people who don't already know what they're talking about, doesn't really help here as it is defined in terms of 'culture', and you've already quoted the definition of culture that I was using, so it fits in with that definition perfectly as well.
I might as well argue requiring someone to spell properly is culturally biased? Well, if I required them to spell properly in English, or in a particular regional variation of English then yes, it clearly would be culturally biased. It's a moot point anyway, because as with the ability to solve pure maths problems the ability to spell correctly can be utterly irrelevant in a programmer. I know a number of extremely strong developers who are dyslexic to varying degrees. Sure, their comments have the occasional misspelling, but it doesn't make their code any worse.
Your problem here is that you're using a very narrow definition of culture, which the very dictionary entry you quote clearly doesn't support. Maybe the original poster was also specifically intending to use that narrow definition, but it is important to think beyond it, because people from different backgrounds can make excellent developers, and testing pure mathematical knowledge in an environment where that isn't part of the requirements to be a successful developer is not a good way to evaluate potential candidates, any more than a spelling test would be.
And you can't explain what a 'touchdown' or a 'birdie' is? (Not that the golfing example is a worthwhile one either - it's an incredibly simple mathematical problem which I'm sure wasn't intended as an example of the sort of puzzle being discussed here).
And while you're explaining, perhaps you could explain why I'm expected not to take personally garbage like "You did poorly in math, didn't you?" being thrown at me because I disagree with your claim that pure maths questions don't exhibit a cultural bias? That one kind of slipped by me as well.
You can explain what an irrational number is, but the knowledge that "if b is odd, then 2*b^2 only contains one 2 in its decomposition" isn't something you can helpfully provide. There are other proofs that don't require that, but the problem is that the abstract nature of the problem makes it difficult to see a logical chain from the problem to the solution, and it makes it difficult for the problem setter to guide the interviewee towards the right answer if they are entirely stuck - which I would argue is an important part of this sort of test - I disagree strongly with the ludicrous concept of solve-this-and-you-have-a-job. That goes against the whole purpose of such riddles, which is to observe how the person attacks the problem. As with many maths exams, the working is far more important than the right answer.
There's also the fact that many people with a pure maths background will have encountered exactly that problem before, which again renders the test worthless. I don't care whether someone can remember that their second year maths teacher taught them how to prove sqrt(2) is irrational any more than I care whether they can remember what arguments java.lang.String#substring takes.
With that in mind I have a strong preference for riddles that use a very neutral (and preferably simple) set of basic concepts, and which allow for a logical step-by-step approach to solving them. One that I came across when interviewing at IBM was as follows:
Given a simple set of balance scales, how many weights would be required to allow you to weigh out all whole numbered weights from 1g to 250g, and what values would those weights have?
Very simple in its basic setup, no specific knowledge required, can be worked out without needing to resort to anything other than basic mathematics, but isn't simply a test of that. Even better, there's an obvious but wrong answer that it's interesting to see how people work their way out of if they get there.
Perhaps you ought to consult a dictionary before telling me that I have no idea what I'm talking about:
USAGE NOTE The application of the term culture to the collective attitudes and behavior of corporations arose in business jargon during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike many locutions that emerge in business jargon, it spread to popular use in newspapers and magazines. Few Usage Panelists object to it. Over 80 percent of Panelists accept the sentence The new management style is a reversal of GE's traditional corporate culture, in which virtually everything the company does is measured in some form and filed away somewhere. Ever since C.P. Snow wrote of the gap between "the two cultures" (the humanities and science) in the 1950s, the notion that culture can refer to smaller segments of society has seemed implicit.
The arts-science cultural divide (and subdivisions within each of those) is significant, and the sort of puzzle presented by the original poster is heavily slanted towards a specific subcategory of people on the 'science' side of the divide. There are plenty of good puzzles of this nature that check an ability for rational thinking that doesn't require particular knowledge on either side.
The distinction you attempt to draw isn't one that exists - in just the same way that your example requires the knowledge of the meaning of the words 'birdie' and 'eagle', the original examples require understanding of terminology ('quadratic formula' and 'irrational') as well as techniques specific to a particular area of education. They also skew against many of the same social groups as your golfing example.
By the sounds of it you did show a cultural bias - towards people with a background in pure mathematics. If the work required that, then it's fair enough, but it shows next to nothing about problem-solving abilities. I dislike this - and not just because I didn't study pure maths to any particularly high level.
In comments made to Japanese game website Impress Watch, and translated by GameSetWatch contributor Shou Suzuki, Kawanishi noted: "Because we have plans for having Linux on board [the PS3], we also recognize Linux programming activities... Other than game studios tied to official developer licenses, we'd like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3."
It seems that Sony is happy to let basic application and game construction take place without access to the extremely sophisticated rendering and physics libraries available to licensors - Kawanishi further commented: "When a game studio enacts development on a PS3 by entering a license contract, SDK libraries... will be presented, and various technical support given. In contrast, when using Linux World on the PS3... support will fall to the lowest level required, and you must solve and work on things by yourselves."
These tools are very limited in their scope - FindBugs is a very useful and powerful tool for locating bugs or potential bugs in Java code, and I've used it to find some potentially serious bugs in large, relatively mature pieces of code before now. Using it to help find potential failures in newly modified pieces of code seems like a good idea.
Show me a java application that actually does something useful in a mission critical environment that performs better than a C/C++ application for the same task and is truly platform independent. I'm sure you'll find that challenge quite impossible.
Because it's a ridiculous challenge, perhaps, and ignores a whole range of things that are actually more important? I've seen plenty of Java applications that do something useful in a mission critical environment, and there are no C/C++ applications for the same task because the Java one works just fine. You've also completely ignored the question of ease of development and maintainability, which is worth far more than raw performance in a real-world environment where throwing an extra CPU at the job is cheaper than hiring another developer to bug-fix.
RIAA: What are we waiting for, why don't we install restrictive DRM software? Slashdot: An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks: One, we don't have the right to install restrictive DRM software and two, we don't have the right to install restrictive DRM software. Now I know technically speaking that's only one drawback, but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.
Slashdot Mirror
Lik Sang is far from the first company that Sony has sued out of the import market. NuPlayer and ElectricBirdLand spring to mind as examples, since you ask. And thanks for coming back with the Sony li(n)e on why they're doing this for the good of the consumer. But before you parrot that, perhaps you might want to check the power adapter for your PSP, where you'll find the CE mark showing that it conforms to the relevant EU standards:
Oops. Looks like it was certified as a safe product for use in those countries after all.
This isn't a case of anti-Sony fervour. I probably own more PS2s than you do, and I'm a big fan of all of Sony's gaming hardware to date. But I see it as a reasonable reaction to the way they've treated me, personally, with their recent actions. And particularly the insult to the intelligence of anyone who reads their weak justification for their attack on hardware imports and the blatant lies about why their own management imported PSPs themselves (seriously, it's the most transparent lie in videogaming since Square claimed that they couldn't release Chrono Cross in Europe because it was too difficult to translate into German...)
* Committing to a worldwide simultaneous launch, then delaying the launch in the largest of your markets
* Preventing consumers from importing PS3s by driving companies that try to export them out of business with multiple spurious lawsuits
* Presenting CGI as real-time footage
I doubt it. The sort of person who'll use the latest version of Flash indiscriminately almost certainly wouldn't have waited for a Linux version. All this means is that you now have the option of viewing the sites designed by such asshats.
What, you mean the way he played it as one of the Chuckle Brothers?
It was interesting, certainly.
I would agree with you here, but the (Score: 5, Funny) suggests that the joke's eminently gettable when communicated through text alone, and the points that you make in your angry rebuttal (abusive parents were to blame, the case is clearly about money, not responsibility) are pretty clearly there in the original. If you think there's a 50% chance you're going to miss any given joke, you might want to think twice before responding angrily to a post on Slashdot (which will at least drop your failure rate to 25%).
I normally find that not explaining the joke in clumsy detail works better, but thanks for doing so anyway. Perhaps next time you should read the whole post rather than automatically exploding when you hit the word 'liberal'.
Typical kneejerk liberal response. "Ooh, let's blame the parents for letting him play an M-rated game!" "Ooh, let's blame the abusive father!" "Ooh, let's blame the parents who left guns lying around!" "Ooh, let's blame the people who failed to provide any sort of care for a mentally unwell child!" This just shows your complete lack of understanding of the fundamental point of this case and others like it.
There's no way the parents could afford to pay out on a $600m lawsuit, even if they weren't already dead.
Where can I buy one of those real-world guns with a slightly clunky auto-aim feature?
Tell you what, let's take an average group of 100 10-year olds and see how many can prove that sqrt(2) is irrational. I wouldn't put money on more than sqrt(2) of them managing it.
Right on the first count, quite possibly wrong on the second - I leapt to exactly the same conclusion but showed the ability to work through the problem when I was told that this was the wrong answer and questioned the assumptions I'd made about how the problem could be solved. I got the job.
A usage note is a note on how the word is used, and will often help out with nuances of definition. In case you're still struggling with it, definition 3 is the one that supports my usage - "These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject or mode of expression." The field in this case being either the comparatively broad one of science (as opposed to arts) or the more narrow one of pure mathematics. The usage guide should help you to see how this is used in the real world, again with the C P Snow example being pretty much a perfect example.
Your definition of 'cultural bias', while informative to people who don't already know what they're talking about, doesn't really help here as it is defined in terms of 'culture', and you've already quoted the definition of culture that I was using, so it fits in with that definition perfectly as well.
I might as well argue requiring someone to spell properly is culturally biased? Well, if I required them to spell properly in English, or in a particular regional variation of English then yes, it clearly would be culturally biased. It's a moot point anyway, because as with the ability to solve pure maths problems the ability to spell correctly can be utterly irrelevant in a programmer. I know a number of extremely strong developers who are dyslexic to varying degrees. Sure, their comments have the occasional misspelling, but it doesn't make their code any worse.
Your problem here is that you're using a very narrow definition of culture, which the very dictionary entry you quote clearly doesn't support. Maybe the original poster was also specifically intending to use that narrow definition, but it is important to think beyond it, because people from different backgrounds can make excellent developers, and testing pure mathematical knowledge in an environment where that isn't part of the requirements to be a successful developer is not a good way to evaluate potential candidates, any more than a spelling test would be.
And you can't explain what a 'touchdown' or a 'birdie' is? (Not that the golfing example is a worthwhile one either - it's an incredibly simple mathematical problem which I'm sure wasn't intended as an example of the sort of puzzle being discussed here).
And while you're explaining, perhaps you could explain why I'm expected not to take personally garbage like "You did poorly in math, didn't you?" being thrown at me because I disagree with your claim that pure maths questions don't exhibit a cultural bias? That one kind of slipped by me as well.
You can explain what an irrational number is, but the knowledge that "if b is odd, then 2*b^2 only contains one 2 in its decomposition" isn't something you can helpfully provide. There are other proofs that don't require that, but the problem is that the abstract nature of the problem makes it difficult to see a logical chain from the problem to the solution, and it makes it difficult for the problem setter to guide the interviewee towards the right answer if they are entirely stuck - which I would argue is an important part of this sort of test - I disagree strongly with the ludicrous concept of solve-this-and-you-have-a-job. That goes against the whole purpose of such riddles, which is to observe how the person attacks the problem. As with many maths exams, the working is far more important than the right answer.
There's also the fact that many people with a pure maths background will have encountered exactly that problem before, which again renders the test worthless. I don't care whether someone can remember that their second year maths teacher taught them how to prove sqrt(2) is irrational any more than I care whether they can remember what arguments java.lang.String#substring takes.
With that in mind I have a strong preference for riddles that use a very neutral (and preferably simple) set of basic concepts, and which allow for a logical step-by-step approach to solving them. One that I came across when interviewing at IBM was as follows:
Given a simple set of balance scales, how many weights would be required to allow you to weigh out all whole numbered weights from 1g to 250g, and what values would those weights have?
Very simple in its basic setup, no specific knowledge required, can be worked out without needing to resort to anything other than basic mathematics, but isn't simply a test of that. Even better, there's an obvious but wrong answer that it's interesting to see how people work their way out of if they get there.
No, I did pretty well, thanks, though I'm starting to see why you have a problem with identifying logic problems.
That's even worse, then. It's not a test of the ability to think, it's a test of the ability to remember something you were taught at the age of 14.
The arts-science cultural divide (and subdivisions within each of those) is significant, and the sort of puzzle presented by the original poster is heavily slanted towards a specific subcategory of people on the 'science' side of the divide. There are plenty of good puzzles of this nature that check an ability for rational thinking that doesn't require particular knowledge on either side.
The distinction you attempt to draw isn't one that exists - in just the same way that your example requires the knowledge of the meaning of the words 'birdie' and 'eagle', the original examples require understanding of terminology ('quadratic formula' and 'irrational') as well as techniques specific to a particular area of education. They also skew against many of the same social groups as your golfing example.
By the sounds of it you did show a cultural bias - towards people with a background in pure mathematics. If the work required that, then it's fair enough, but it shows next to nothing about problem-solving abilities. I dislike this - and not just because I didn't study pure maths to any particularly high level.
How about here?
Gamasutra
So, Sony has never once said you would be able to, except when they did.
No. OS X isn't compatible with Golden Delicious. You should be able to run it on a Cox's Pippin or a Granny Smith, though.
These tools are very limited in their scope - FindBugs is a very useful and powerful tool for locating bugs or potential bugs in Java code, and I've used it to find some potentially serious bugs in large, relatively mature pieces of code before now. Using it to help find potential failures in newly modified pieces of code seems like a good idea.
I think this says it all...
And don't forget Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix, Paper Mario or Super Paper Mario. Who said that milking was dead?
There's your problem, then. With a Conroe you'd have enough power to display up to ten flash ads at the same time.
Because it's a ridiculous challenge, perhaps, and ignores a whole range of things that are actually more important? I've seen plenty of Java applications that do something useful in a mission critical environment, and there are no C/C++ applications for the same task because the Java one works just fine. You've also completely ignored the question of ease of development and maintainability, which is worth far more than raw performance in a real-world environment where throwing an extra CPU at the job is cheaper than hiring another developer to bug-fix.
With apologies to Red Dwarf:
RIAA: What are we waiting for, why don't we install restrictive DRM software?
Slashdot: An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks: One, we don't have the right to install restrictive DRM software and two, we don't have the right to install restrictive DRM software. Now I know technically speaking that's only one drawback, but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.