Most places I worked for paid interns (quite well in many cases), and asked basically nothing in return (the projects given to them were usually training projects, if they succeed, great, but usually they were just thrown away, because there was basically nothing 99% of students in their second year or so could do for us).
Considering the trouble we often need to go through to find good employees, the money paid to interns can easily be justified as part of recruitment costs. If an intern does well, give him a job offer when he graduates. If he does poorly, the company still hasn't lost too much money. Compare that to the cost of hiring a senior-level engineer who interviews well, but can't/won't handle the work.
For my degree, I needed intern experience in order to graduate.
There were two stipulations -- 1: it be related to my major 2: it is paid
As a student, I felt like I was making lots of money (because my previous work was the sort that didn't even require a high school diploma), but to the company, student labor is still ridiculously cheap. If a company can't afford to pay their interns, then they have no business hiring them.
We used to store information in books, in libraries. Then we digitized our data such that you could look it up from your computer. Now we have computers small enough to fit in our pockets, with access to all of this information. Aliens will have even better technology, therefore they won't want to visit us.
I thought this was one of the greatest things about the Lucas Arts adventure games -- it was (nearly) impossible to die. The game was about solving puzzles, and going on an adventure.
I remember finding a spot in Monkey Island 2 where it was possible to die... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XozZDD5M4os... that is, until the scene fades back to the game's framing, of Guybrush telling the story to Elaine, who points out that if he did fall into a pit of acid like he said, he probably wouldn't be alive, telling her the story.
Lucas Arts used to respond to letters asking for game help. I wrote to them on several occasions, and always got the help I requested. It worked out really well -- the fact that they answered meant I was never completely stuck -- the fact that I had to wait for the post office meant I wouldn't be asking for help until I'd fully explored all available options.
Where do you get electricity to play video games while camping? Do you have someone carry a generator on their back instead of a backpack? Who gets that unpleasant duty?
Some people have strange definitions of camping, which include large diesel-powered vehicles, which are driven to "campgrounds", in an effort to remove all of the peace and quiet that camping generally includes.
I recommend finding a hobby or sport that involves physical activity. But I don't recommend it as a method for getting fit, but as a reason. Let's say you become interested in running. Every time you run farther than before, or faster, you'll feel better about yourself because you know that you accomplished something. And if you really develop a taste for running, you'll start finding additional non-running workouts you can do just to get better at running.
The biggest challenge here is finding the sport or activity that appeals to you. There is no easy answer - everyone has different motivations. But once you've found one that truly appeals to you, you'll do well.
In short: Don't play your sport to get in shape; get in shape to play your sport.
I've had part of this happen to me. My spam e-mail address is of the format FirstName.noun@gmail.com. I imagine if someone is trying to think of a quick e-mail address, and they share my name, they might come up with the same one. Or maybe they created a very similar account on gmail, but forgot that they're actually FirstName.noun1@gmail.com.
Anyway, I'd say on average I get about two notifications per month that someone is trying to create a facebook, twitter, eharmony, or whatever account with this e-mail address, and I need to click a link to proceed. Generally, I just ignore them, and have not had a problem. Only one time did it get annoying -- someone signed up for a dating service (I forgot which), and it didn't do the "click the link to confirm your e-mail address" thing. Instead, I started getting daily e-mails about potential matches. I tried the "reset password" link on the web site, but they required more information than just my e-mail address. Ultimately, I had to send a message to their support department, and they promptly deleted the account.
As one professor pointed out in an econ class - the real value of a degree is the signal it sends - you are someone who at least can stick to something long enough to finish it. Simply put, it takes some of the workload off of the person looking to hire.
There was a job I interviewed for. At some point in the interview, I mentioned how I was planning to work on a Master's degree. As it turned out, that was one of the reasons I didn't get the job. They wanted to be confident that someone they hired would be there for 5+ years. And the job (electronics work, mostly soldering-type stuff) didn't require an advanced degree.
At the time I was annoyed -- I was turned down because I'd eventually be overqualified (even if I wasn't yet). But in retrospect, I think that was a good decision on their part. I probably wouldn't have stuck around for years if I was qualified to do something better.
As long as it's actual two-factor authentication. None of the fake crap that people call two-factor.
For the record, asking me to pick a picture isn't a second form. Something you know, something you have, etc...
My American bank does the lame picture you describe. When I opened a bank account while in Europe, every time I would make a transfer, I had to enter a confirmation number, which they would SMS to my phone. It's so simple, and it actually adds a layer of security!
This has made me wonder... why don't more people who own guns for protection have big signs on their door: "Warning: gun inside".
Oh wait, then anyone could make such a sign, whether they actually had guns or not. I wonder if someone could keep an official list of who the real gun owners are...
The larger problem is determining who is the good guy and who is the bad guy often enough.
Sure, someone shooting children is most likely the bad guy.
Sure, the FIRST guy running through the mall with a guy is most likely the bad guy...what about the second one that's behind him? Savior or coconspirator?
Sure, the guy in the uniform is probably a good guy, but there are plenty of examples when that's not the case - be it fake uniforms or unscrupulous security/police.
You know...now that I think about it there's only one single person I can be sure is the good guy. Me. Therefore I should be armed at all times in all places. Then i'm 100% sure a good guy is armed to protect my interests. You all should do the same. It worked in the recent mall shooting even though the media declined to focus on it as it doesn't suit their "neutral" agenda.
So if I'm a good guy and I have a gun, whom do I point it at? You just said it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. How can I be sure I'm not firing at a good guy who's just in the wrong place, or wearing the wrong color shirt?
I guess I should either shoot everyone -- that way I get the bad guys, even if I hit some good guys too. Or nobody -- then I won't hit any good guys.
Most drivers were forced to read their owner's manual to learn how to access their manual key, Camara said.
Is it possible the problem was not simply unlocking the door, but starting the car? My car has a physical key. That physical key contains an RFID or something. I have a duplicate of the metal portion of the key. This duplicate can unlock the door just fine, but when placed in the ignition, the car refuses to start. If the RFID portion of my key were to fail, I would have no idea how to start my car.
But lacking that, "he" is still the correct word because in the English language "he" is both a third-person pronoun referring to "a particular person who is a man" and a third-person pronoun referring to "a person of unknown gender". This is why people who use the pronoun "she" to demonstrate their "cultural sensitivity" are just confusing, because they have forced a gender specificity on the antecedent when none really exists.
I suspect we have this problem because of how gender-neutral English is. Only our pronouns express gender, and then, only when talking about people. In many languages, all nouns have (arbitrary) gender. And pronouns tend to take the gender of the noun they replace. In some languages, even the verb conjugation changes, depending upon the gender of the subject. I suspect that a speaker of a highly-gendered language would take less concern over which gender-pronoun is used when describing an indeterminate person.
Of course, by the same logic, a metal key is easily defeated with a small (but strong) highly adhesive sticker over the keyhole (or just some crap shoved into the lock if you're feeling really mean), whereas a remote entry device has no such limitation. Or a minor physical imperfection in the key itself, of course. Silly arguments work both ways, you know. This isn't a problem in the real world because most people are good most of the time.
My current car has one physical external keyhole. I find this very annoying. Sure, it's quite rare I need to use the key in an keyhole besides the driver's side door, but it's nice to have a backup just in case.
In my previous car, in the winter, my driver's side lock would sometimes freeze up. So I'd just walk over to the passenger side door, and unlock that. Once both locks were frozen, but I still managed to get in thanks to the hatchback.
Novice programmers are simply overwhelmed by vast amounts of code, and have no idea how to do large-scale software development. When you teach them about tools that allow you to find your way through the code, they're all impressed.
Universities simply aren't teaching these boys right.
This!!!
In my first job out of college, I was introduced to Eclipse for the first time. In college, I did all my developing in vi. Seriously, why did not a single professor even mention an IDE to me?
Is there a way to limit the number of backers allowed to back a project? If not, there should be.
Let's say I'm an inventor. I can easily build 1,000 of my widgets in a month. The only problem is I don't have enough funds to buy the components. So I get a bunch of packers, problem solved. But then I get so many backers that I need to produce 10,000 widgets in a month. That means I need to hire help to assemble them. My skill is in inventing -- I don't know how to find the best workers. I don't know how to train them well.
Ideally, funding should stop after I've reached the 1,000 widgets in a month. After a month of successfully making widgets, I should have enough profit to invest in making more (assuming demand exists). Then I can start looking into what I need to do in order to grow my production facility. I should not have to deal with these huge growing pains at the very start of it all. That can easily lead to a premature failure.
Communication is challenging because Chinese and English are completely different. Why do we expect him to do a better job learning Chinese than the Chinese developers did of learning English, even though they had a lot more incentive to do so?
Think of it this way -- imagine you're working with Chinese developers. You communicate entirely in English. Occasionally, they make grammatical mistakes, or form awkward sentences that are hard to understand. If you know some Chinese, you'll at least have an idea of how their grammar works. This will give you surprising insight into the nature of their English mistakes, and will actually help you to understand them better, even though nobody has uttered a single word in Chinese.
If he communicates something very clearly in English, they're at fault if they mess up. If he tries to speak Chinese, there's a good chance that he'll eventually get blamed. [...] That being said, learning another language can be a valuable experience. Just don't expect it to be useful on the job.
Here's a small example of where a second language was useful to me. I was writing a program to interface with a particular device. Getting the specs was a ridiculously challenging task, and when I finally got them, they were in German. I was dealing with an American company, but apparently, their office in Germany had designed this particular device.
Fortunately, I'd taken a few German classes in college. Even though I was far from fluent, it was enough that I could understand the spec well enough to decode its RS-232 messages.
Sure, if I didn't have any German experience, I could have paid a translator. Or (had it been available at the time) could have gotten by with something like translate.google.com. But, at least for one single day, my foreign language experience paid off.
1. Find a museum willing to house this collection 2. Start a fund raiser on the museum's behalf to raise the asking price of the collection. 3. Win: the original collector gets compensated for his collection, the and the collection gets preserved in a museum.
I don't know what it is that makes people hold on to outdated ideas, even when the new idea has clear superiority. (Actually, I have no strong opinion on the dollar issue, but that's probably because nearly all of my purcahses are with a credit card.)
Slashdot Mirror
Most places I worked for paid interns (quite well in many cases), and asked basically nothing in return (the projects given to them were usually training projects, if they succeed, great, but usually they were just thrown away, because there was basically nothing 99% of students in their second year or so could do for us).
Considering the trouble we often need to go through to find good employees, the money paid to interns can easily be justified as part of recruitment costs. If an intern does well, give him a job offer when he graduates. If he does poorly, the company still hasn't lost too much money. Compare that to the cost of hiring a senior-level engineer who interviews well, but can't/won't handle the work.
For my degree, I needed intern experience in order to graduate.
There were two stipulations --
1: it be related to my major
2: it is paid
As a student, I felt like I was making lots of money (because my previous work was the sort that didn't even require a high school diploma), but to the company, student labor is still ridiculously cheap. If a company can't afford to pay their interns, then they have no business hiring them.
Let me see if I follow...
We used to store information in books, in libraries.
Then we digitized our data such that you could look it up from your computer.
Now we have computers small enough to fit in our pockets, with access to all of this information.
Aliens will have even better technology, therefore they won't want to visit us.
huh?
I thought this was one of the greatest things about the Lucas Arts adventure games -- it was (nearly) impossible to die. The game was about solving puzzles, and going on an adventure.
I remember finding a spot in Monkey Island 2 where it was possible to die... ... that is, until the scene fades back to the game's framing, of Guybrush telling the story to Elaine, who points out that if he did fall into a pit of acid like he said, he probably wouldn't be alive, telling her the story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XozZDD5M4os
Lucas Arts used to respond to letters asking for game help. I wrote to them on several occasions, and always got the help I requested. It worked out really well -- the fact that they answered meant I was never completely stuck -- the fact that I had to wait for the post office meant I wouldn't be asking for help until I'd fully explored all available options.
Where do you get electricity to play video games while camping? Do you have someone carry a generator on their back instead of a backpack? Who gets that unpleasant duty?
Some people have strange definitions of camping, which include large diesel-powered vehicles, which are driven to "campgrounds", in an effort to remove all of the peace and quiet that camping generally includes.
You're not likely to become "fit" at work.
I recommend finding a hobby or sport that involves physical activity. But I don't recommend it as a method for getting fit, but as a reason. Let's say you become interested in running. Every time you run farther than before, or faster, you'll feel better about yourself because you know that you accomplished something. And if you really develop a taste for running, you'll start finding additional non-running workouts you can do just to get better at running.
The biggest challenge here is finding the sport or activity that appeals to you. There is no easy answer - everyone has different motivations. But once you've found one that truly appeals to you, you'll do well.
In short: Don't play your sport to get in shape; get in shape to play your sport.
Management was not Yahoo's strongest quality
What is Yahoo's strongest quality?
Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.
Why aren't we taxing walking?!
I've had part of this happen to me. My spam e-mail address is of the format FirstName.noun@gmail.com. I imagine if someone is trying to think of a quick e-mail address, and they share my name, they might come up with the same one. Or maybe they created a very similar account on gmail, but forgot that they're actually FirstName.noun1@gmail.com.
Anyway, I'd say on average I get about two notifications per month that someone is trying to create a facebook, twitter, eharmony, or whatever account with this e-mail address, and I need to click a link to proceed. Generally, I just ignore them, and have not had a problem. Only one time did it get annoying -- someone signed up for a dating service (I forgot which), and it didn't do the "click the link to confirm your e-mail address" thing. Instead, I started getting daily e-mails about potential matches. I tried the "reset password" link on the web site, but they required more information than just my e-mail address. Ultimately, I had to send a message to their support department, and they promptly deleted the account.
As one professor pointed out in an econ class - the real value of a degree is the signal it sends - you are someone who at least can stick to something long enough to finish it. Simply put, it takes some of the workload off of the person looking to hire.
There was a job I interviewed for. At some point in the interview, I mentioned how I was planning to work on a Master's degree. As it turned out, that was one of the reasons I didn't get the job. They wanted to be confident that someone they hired would be there for 5+ years. And the job (electronics work, mostly soldering-type stuff) didn't require an advanced degree.
At the time I was annoyed -- I was turned down because I'd eventually be overqualified (even if I wasn't yet). But in retrospect, I think that was a good decision on their part. I probably wouldn't have stuck around for years if I was qualified to do something better.
As long as it's actual two-factor authentication. None of the fake crap that people call two-factor.
For the record, asking me to pick a picture isn't a second form. Something you know, something you have, etc...
My American bank does the lame picture you describe.
When I opened a bank account while in Europe, every time I would make a transfer, I had to enter a confirmation number, which they would SMS to my phone. It's so simple, and it actually adds a layer of security!
This has made me wonder... why don't more people who own guns for protection have big signs on their door: "Warning: gun inside".
Oh wait, then anyone could make such a sign, whether they actually had guns or not. I wonder if someone could keep an official list of who the real gun owners are...
The larger problem is determining who is the good guy and who is the bad guy often enough.
Sure, someone shooting children is most likely the bad guy.
Sure, the FIRST guy running through the mall with a guy is most likely the bad guy...what about the second one that's behind him? Savior or coconspirator?
Sure, the guy in the uniform is probably a good guy, but there are plenty of examples when that's not the case - be it fake uniforms or unscrupulous security/police.
You know...now that I think about it there's only one single person I can be sure is the good guy. Me. Therefore I should be armed at all times in all places. Then i'm 100% sure a good guy is armed to protect my interests. You all should do the same. It worked in the recent mall shooting even though the media declined to focus on it as it doesn't suit their "neutral" agenda.
So if I'm a good guy and I have a gun, whom do I point it at? You just said it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. How can I be sure I'm not firing at a good guy who's just in the wrong place, or wearing the wrong color shirt?
I guess I should either shoot everyone -- that way I get the bad guys, even if I hit some good guys too. Or nobody -- then I won't hit any good guys.
From the article:
Most drivers were forced to read their owner's manual to learn how to access their manual key, Camara said.
Is it possible the problem was not simply unlocking the door, but starting the car? My car has a physical key. That physical key contains an RFID or something. I have a duplicate of the metal portion of the key. This duplicate can unlock the door just fine, but when placed in the ignition, the car refuses to start. If the RFID portion of my key were to fail, I would have no idea how to start my car.
Not getting into the car is only one issue. The second issue is the problem with the chip in the key for anti theft immobolization.
It would be hilarious if the tow trucks used to remove the stranded cars had the same type of anti-theft system.
But lacking that, "he" is still the correct word because in the English language "he" is both a third-person pronoun referring to "a particular person who is a man" and a third-person pronoun referring to "a person of unknown gender". This is why people who use the pronoun "she" to demonstrate their "cultural sensitivity" are just confusing, because they have forced a gender specificity on the antecedent when none really exists.
I suspect we have this problem because of how gender-neutral English is. Only our pronouns express gender, and then, only when talking about people. In many languages, all nouns have (arbitrary) gender. And pronouns tend to take the gender of the noun they replace. In some languages, even the verb conjugation changes, depending upon the gender of the subject. I suspect that a speaker of a highly-gendered language would take less concern over which gender-pronoun is used when describing an indeterminate person.
Of course, by the same logic, a metal key is easily defeated with a small (but strong) highly adhesive sticker over the keyhole (or just some crap shoved into the lock if you're feeling really mean), whereas a remote entry device has no such limitation. Or a minor physical imperfection in the key itself, of course. Silly arguments work both ways, you know. This isn't a problem in the real world because most people are good most of the time.
My current car has one physical external keyhole. I find this very annoying. Sure, it's quite rare I need to use the key in an keyhole besides the driver's side door, but it's nice to have a backup just in case.
In my previous car, in the winter, my driver's side lock would sometimes freeze up. So I'd just walk over to the passenger side door, and unlock that. Once both locks were frozen, but I still managed to get in thanks to the hatchback.
Novice programmers are simply overwhelmed by vast amounts of code, and have no idea how to do large-scale software development.
When you teach them about tools that allow you to find your way through the code, they're all impressed.
Universities simply aren't teaching these boys right.
This!!!
In my first job out of college, I was introduced to Eclipse for the first time. In college, I did all my developing in vi. Seriously, why did not a single professor even mention an IDE to me?
Is there a way to limit the number of backers allowed to back a project? If not, there should be.
Let's say I'm an inventor. I can easily build 1,000 of my widgets in a month. The only problem is I don't have enough funds to buy the components. So I get a bunch of packers, problem solved. But then I get so many backers that I need to produce 10,000 widgets in a month. That means I need to hire help to assemble them. My skill is in inventing -- I don't know how to find the best workers. I don't know how to train them well.
Ideally, funding should stop after I've reached the 1,000 widgets in a month. After a month of successfully making widgets, I should have enough profit to invest in making more (assuming demand exists). Then I can start looking into what I need to do in order to grow my production facility. I should not have to deal with these huge growing pains at the very start of it all. That can easily lead to a premature failure.
Communication is challenging because Chinese and English are completely different. Why do we expect him to do a better job learning Chinese than the Chinese developers did of learning English, even though they had a lot more incentive to do so?
Think of it this way -- imagine you're working with Chinese developers. You communicate entirely in English. Occasionally, they make grammatical mistakes, or form awkward sentences that are hard to understand. If you know some Chinese, you'll at least have an idea of how their grammar works. This will give you surprising insight into the nature of their English mistakes, and will actually help you to understand them better, even though nobody has uttered a single word in Chinese.
If he communicates something very clearly in English, they're at fault if they mess up. If he tries to speak Chinese, there's a good chance that he'll eventually get blamed. [...] That being said, learning another language can be a valuable experience. Just don't expect it to be useful on the job.
Here's a small example of where a second language was useful to me. I was writing a program to interface with a particular device. Getting the specs was a ridiculously challenging task, and when I finally got them, they were in German. I was dealing with an American company, but apparently, their office in Germany had designed this particular device.
Fortunately, I'd taken a few German classes in college. Even though I was far from fluent, it was enough that I could understand the spec well enough to decode its RS-232 messages.
Sure, if I didn't have any German experience, I could have paid a translator. Or (had it been available at the time) could have gotten by with something like translate.google.com. But, at least for one single day, my foreign language experience paid off.
1. Find a museum willing to house this collection
2. Start a fund raiser on the museum's behalf to raise the asking price of the collection.
3. Win: the original collector gets compensated for his collection, the and the collection gets preserved in a museum.
I don't know what it is that makes people hold on to outdated ideas, even when the new idea has clear superiority. (Actually, I have no strong opinion on the dollar issue, but that's probably because nearly all of my purcahses are with a credit card.)
Unless slashdot is using a different definition of "news" than I am, something that happened 90 years ago isn't news.