People who think that programming is just a 9-5 job where you punch in, turn on your brain, do work, punch out, turn off your brain, are the bane of this industry.
No I'm not.
They'd be just as happy washing cars for 18 hours a day,
No, I would NOT.
and aren't necessarily interested in solving an annoying problem once and for all.
Yes, I am, but if it takes three 9-5 days instead of 2 9-9 days, so be it. I value my time away from work as much as (or more) than my time at work.
They're just interested in a job, any job, so long as it's doing rote work and getting paid an hourly wage.
Well, since you asked... Here's my daily work environment (Just so you know it's worse somewhere:-) )
- Main application coded in VB 6.0 ("ported" from VB 3.0, so it uses NO "advanced" features of VB 6.0) - Secondary and "tool" applications coded in C/C++ (but compiled with Visual Studio 6.0) - Version control: MKS - Bug Tracking: MKS - SQA -- Only since 2010, and the product in its current form has basically been around since VB 1.0 (the original version was written in Pascal for an Apple ][!) - Code reviews: no - Coding standards: no - Continuous Integration: WTF is that?:-( - Unit testing: HA!
Go out and get Ben Rich's "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed"... A fabulous read of the F-117 development, but also some other great stuff on the SR-71, etc...
My favorite story is Mr. Rich and a young sergeant standing outside a missle command trailer watching the F-117 go over. Rich goes into the van, and the Marines have no clue. They do pick up a bogie, but it's the T-38 chase plane that was several MILES behind the F-117....
One night, as I was driving along a crowded highway with my wife and kids in the car, a red dot scanned across my dashboard, assumedly from the car driving next to me. Not knowing if it was some idiot kid with a pointer, or some psycho with an AimPoint, I clenched so hard that a head-on collision wouldn't have dislodged me.
Now I have to worry about THIS too?!!?! What a world...
I'm not worried about blinding myself, as I would NEVER attempt to make this. I'm worried about someone showing my son and saying "look here"....
(And although I do agree that information -- including the usual bomb-making stuff -- is not harmful in and of itself, I do sometimes wish not so many people knew about it:-( )
Congratulations... No doubt your children would have succeeded no matter what the environment, but I will put you in the (short) column of successes that I have seen or heard about, or experienced first hand....
Honestly, I am very surprised by this. I would have guessed it to be closer to 90% unqualified. The state of education in the U.S. is a shameful thing. I dont have access to the current figures but isn't the U.S. ranking someone around 20th worldwide in education quality?
Yes, because our results come from the ENTIRE population, while most other countries only test (or provide schooling to) the top X% of the population.
I guess its time to out source our education in addition to our jobs.
Oh yes, because outsourcing jobs has worked so well, right?
I guess also its another arguement for Home based schooling, but its a shame that the Military as well as many employers frown upon such practices.
Because most parents who complain about schools, and decide to home school, can't reliably pick their nose, never mind provide education for their own children...
Well, I believe in the right to bear arms, and I cannot wait for our administration to be out in the next elections....
But, here's my answer to your question: If I walk into the capitol building with a bomb strapped to me and make demands of our lawmakers, that could be considered terrorism. If I plot with another group to walk into the capitol building, armed to the teeth, and attempt to make demands of our lawmakers, I'm pretty sure that's treason. If the government rolls tanks into my town, and makes demands of me, I and my armed neighbors can say, "I think not". Not that we'd win, but we could try. I guess the point is that individuals acting alone are treasonous terrorists, but once some critical mass of Americans decides "The hell with this", it crosses into revolution, and we need a way to protect Americans' rights to make the decision to join the critical mass or not.
The only thing I can think of whenever anyone mentions the "bump" is an old WWF (yes, pre-WWE) announcer saying someone had been hit on the "external occipital protuberance". His colleague was confused, so he clarified this as "the bump on the back of your head"...
So my guess is that it is called the "external occipital protuberance":-)
I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users... unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm.
As I said, I do not watch obsessively. I do, at random points, check histories. I think watching what my kids do online is not "constant surveillance", but is doing my job bringing them up, just as I would watch out for them at any other thing they do in life. It's called "being a parent", or maybe you are one of those people who believe parents should leave their kids alone, then bitch when Johnny does something wrong, saying "Where were his parents in all this?".
You may feel free to disagree, but they aren't your kids. You also don't know me, nor my parenting style, so please do not tell me what is best for them. As they grow older, they will require more privacy, and I will give it to them. By then, hopefully, I will have done at least OK, and they won't get into as much trouble. I think parenting is a balance. You can't just throw then to the wolves, and you can;t lock them in a cage. IT is a daily struggle to find the balance point, and I do try....
I try at every opportunity to let them know about the good and bad of technology. Yes, you have Wikipedia and Google, but you also have pedophiles too. Just like walking down the street. There are good folks and bad folks, and just like it is hard to tell the difference from faces, it is hard to tell the difference online. I try to explain and enforce good online safety and behavior rules. I try to talk to them, and make sure that I am involved in their lives.
However, their computers are facing out, in a public part of the house. I check their activities, and make sure they are doing the right things. I don't check obsessively, but I do check. Trust is a two-way street. They know that if they get bagged, I will crack down. Of course, I also do check logs, history, cookies, and my router:-). But they know mom & dad check up on them, and they accept that. Just like we make sure they aren't watching crap on TV, and we make sure their friends aren't morons, and we pack healthy snacks for school:-). It's all part of the same job... Granted, they may not like it, but sometimes you have to be "mean". My job is to bring them up in the way that I see as "right". I may be friend #1 now, becasue they are young, but that won't last long, and I can accept that. If they are happy, well-adjusted, productive members of society, I did my job...
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Talk to your kids, make sure they know what is right and wrong first. Explain basic safety rules, behavior online, etc. But do make sure to check on them, and make sure they see you as involved. They need to know boundaries, and if they know you are checking and being involved, I think they'll try to live up to it... well, at least until they are teenagers:-) I may change my tune then!:-)
I was asked this after submitting my resume to a company who shall remain nameless. I recently saw it on another job post from another company, so I think it's OK to post:-):
You and a friend are about to eat a pizza. You both consume pizza at precise rates: it always takes you x seconds to eat a slice of pizza, and it takes your friend y seconds. Once the pizza is cut, you will both start eating at the same time. Each person can eat only one slice at a time. You cannot touch the next piece until you finish the one you're eating. Out of generosity, you have agreed in advance to allow your friend to have the last slice if you should both happen to reach for it at the same time. Assuming that you would like as much of the pizza as possible to end up in your stomach, into how many equal-sized slices should you cut the pizza?
I answered, but was rejected.
My answer was: If I eat faster, then cut into 3 slices. If I eat at the same rate or slower, cut into two pieces.
Anyone got any better?
Also, I think I am a solid coder, with 13+ years of experience, and not a single negative review or comment. Somehow, though, none of that mattered, nor did my education or anything else. My answer was "wrong", so I was rejected. Initially, I was mad because I was "wrong", but I got over it... My main problem is that you cannot discuss the answer with someone, nor ask questions, nor describe your thought process. Just give the answer.
I have used riddles before, but only face-to-face, to encourage the person to tell me their thought process. The answer was irrelevant, as long as they could think it out...
Ah well, I suspect web sites with "correct" answers to these will pop up, and render them irrelevant... hopefully:-)
Well, certainly nobody can predict the future, except to look at past trends. Just as I cannot say with 100% certainty that non-net-neutrality will be bad, neither can you say with 100% certainty that it will be good. So if we look at past trends, and try to extrapolate from them, we get many of the pro-net-neutralirty arguments.
You assume that the only three conditions of non-net-neutrality are those you listed. Those may come true, and you don't know it anymore than I do. You also failed to list any negatives:
1. Those who cannot afford to pay more will lose out. How will an independent filmmaker, just starting out, be able to afford the "premium" access speed that Disney can EASILY pay, in order to compete with them? How does that engender fair competition?? You may say the independent has a "flawed business model", or maybe needs to get VC funding first, but the problem with those arguments is that the independant can freely compete *NOW*, and non-net-neutrality will block him off...
2. Define "worsen" your connection. For "premium" sites, your download speed may get better, but for "non-premium" sites, it will certainly get worse. That to me defines "worsening" my connection. If Comcast doesn't give me the SAME download speed, regardless of where the site is, I'm going to get pissed. Why should I have to pay the same rate for a SLOWER speed on some sites?? I understand that network traffic can affect download speed, but this is an artificial limit imposed by my ISP, not just random traffic loads.
3. It is all about freedom. Not just for competition, either. ANYONE can publish music, video, text, whatever, on the internet as it is today, with no advantage, and no penalty. The market will decide who gets the most hits, downloads, page views, etc. Once the high-speed lanes are built, that will change. The smaller guy will have a penalty, and the larger guy will have an advantage. And not because one has a better product, but because one has deeper pockets and can afford the high-speed lane. I don't know about you, but I know very few people who would put up with speed degradation if they can get it from somewhere else faster. That's a problem when the degradation is an artifically-imposed sanction.
My first real computer was a TI-99/4A, bought when they were expensive. I remember being pissed at my friend, because his parents shelled out for the whole deal (monitor, expansion chassis -- 32 whopping KB of RAM, disk drives, seial interface). I had to settle for the TV and a cassette tape. But oh the joy of coding music and sprite graphics. I remember getting "Mini Memory" which gave you an assembler. I was SO confused by the assembly mnemonics! It was like reading ancient sanskrit.
Next up was an Apple IIc. I liked it better than the IIe because is was so much more compact. I remember my girlfriend at the time had written a massive term paper on her IIe, and in order to get it over to a PC, we loaded it on my IIc, then "printed" it to a serial port, and used a comm program on the PC to capture it. Then endless hours on the PC reformatting with WordPerfect.
Next was a 386SX-16 that I built out of parts. 4MB RAM and 40MB hard drive! What a screamer! By then, the PC era was upon us, and I only owned PCs for a long time....
Recently, however, I have owned a IIgs, IIc, IIc+, TI-99, C128, VIC20, a few S-100 CP/M machines, an original 5150 (black power supply), Zenith Z-100 and other assorted bits... Ahhhh, eBay!:-)
... Not because of the whole ODF thing, but because I'm a resident of Massachusetts, and have seen all the crap that Mitt has subjected us to (my wife is a schoolteacher... need I say more?)...
Now I have to cheer for a man I loathe? Oh, the irony...
Considering that, under Mr. Romney's watch, the school my wife works at has a "frozen budget" and cannot even buy basic office supplies (pencils, laminating paper, ink for mimeograph machines, etc.), I am appalled at his suggestions. How about using the "bonus" and "laptop" money to actually FUND SCHOOLS PROPERLY?? No, I guess that doesn't make good press when you're running for Prez.
Seriously, how many people really want to be fixing their car engine? Personally I'd rather just buy a car and let the dealer deal with that - my domain is in a different realm, and the car simply supports it. I'm not going to spend 100s of hours trying to pretend I'm a mechanic as well, and even if there were an itch, I (like the overwhelming majority of non-mechanics) am not skilled in a way to efficiently solve it.
See the problem? Nobody is saying you need to do the fix. If you have an issue with an Open Source app, you can take it to a knowledgeable person/company, and have THEM fix it. You don't have to wait for a service pack, or have the vendor deny the problem. You have the choice of fixing it as you see fit.
Slashdot Mirror
Massachusetts. (where Amazon doesn't have a warehouse..)
But soon, they will:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/bus...
Lewis, is that you?
People who think that programming is just a 9-5 job where you punch in, turn on your brain, do work, punch out, turn off your brain, are the bane of this industry.
No I'm not.
They'd be just as happy washing cars for 18 hours a day,
No, I would NOT.
and aren't necessarily interested in solving an annoying problem once and for all.
Yes, I am, but if it takes three 9-5 days instead of 2 9-9 days, so be it. I value my time away from work as much as (or more) than my time at work.
They're just interested in a job, any job, so long as it's doing rote work and getting paid an hourly wage.
No, wrong again.
No passion for technology
TOTALLY wrong.
Well, since you asked ... Here's my daily work environment (Just so you know it's worse somewhere :-) )
- Main application coded in VB 6.0 ("ported" from VB 3.0, so it uses NO "advanced" features of VB 6.0) :-(
- Secondary and "tool" applications coded in C/C++ (but compiled with Visual Studio 6.0)
- Version control: MKS
- Bug Tracking: MKS
- SQA -- Only since 2010, and the product in its current form has basically been around since VB 1.0 (the original version was written in Pascal for an Apple ][!)
- Code reviews: no
- Coding standards: no
- Continuous Integration: WTF is that?
- Unit testing: HA!
The good news is, we're hiring!
The Knuth shall set you free...
Go out and get Ben Rich's "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed"... A fabulous read of the F-117 development, but also some other great stuff on the SR-71, etc...
My favorite story is Mr. Rich and a young sergeant standing outside a missle command trailer watching the F-117 go over. Rich goes into the van, and the Marines have no clue. They do pick up a bogie, but it's the T-38 chase plane that was several MILES behind the F-117....
One night, as I was driving along a crowded highway with my wife and kids in the car, a red dot scanned across my dashboard, assumedly from the car driving next to me. Not knowing if it was some idiot kid with a pointer, or some psycho with an AimPoint, I clenched so hard that a head-on collision wouldn't have dislodged me.
:-( )
Now I have to worry about THIS too?!!?! What a world...
I'm not worried about blinding myself, as I would NEVER attempt to make this. I'm worried about someone showing my son and saying "look here"....
(And although I do agree that information -- including the usual bomb-making stuff -- is not harmful in and of itself, I do sometimes wish not so many people knew about it
Congratulations ... No doubt your children would have succeeded no matter what the environment, but I will put you in the (short) column of successes that I have seen or heard about, or experienced first hand....
Did you not read my post? I didn't say it couldn't be done.... Nor did I say it was hard ....
I said most who try it do a crappy job...
Honestly, I am very surprised by this. I would have guessed it to be closer to 90% unqualified. The state of education in the U.S. is a shameful thing. I dont have access to the current figures but isn't the U.S. ranking someone around 20th worldwide in education quality?
Yes, because our results come from the ENTIRE population, while most other countries only test (or provide schooling to) the top X% of the population.
I guess its time to out source our education in addition to our jobs.
Oh yes, because outsourcing jobs has worked so well, right?
I guess also its another arguement for Home based schooling, but its a shame that the Military as well as many employers frown upon such practices.
Because most parents who complain about schools, and decide to home school, can't reliably pick their nose, never mind provide education for their own children...
It's no secret ... There are more Windows boxes in sensitive areas (servers, etc.) than Macs. Focusing on Windows is more bang-for-the-buck....
Well, I believe in the right to bear arms, and I cannot wait for our administration to be out in the next elections....
But, here's my answer to your question: If I walk into the capitol building with a bomb strapped to me and make demands of our lawmakers, that could be considered terrorism. If I plot with another group to walk into the capitol building, armed to the teeth, and attempt to make demands of our lawmakers, I'm pretty sure that's treason. If the government rolls tanks into my town, and makes demands of me, I and my armed neighbors can say, "I think not". Not that we'd win, but we could try. I guess the point is that individuals acting alone are treasonous terrorists, but once some critical mass of Americans decides "The hell with this", it crosses into revolution, and we need a way to protect Americans' rights to make the decision to join the critical mass or not.
The only thing I can think of whenever anyone mentions the "bump" is an old WWF (yes, pre-WWE) announcer saying someone had been hit on the "external occipital protuberance". His colleague was confused, so he clarified this as "the bump on the back of your head" ...
:-)
So my guess is that it is called the "external occipital protuberance"
I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users ... unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm.
Does the world really mean that little to you???
It's strange to think that technology really could lead to a more moral society
(SARCASM on)
What drove the videotape's use into the home: pr0n
What drive cable TV into the home: pr0n
What drive the Internet into the home: pr0n
What drove broadband into the home: pr0n
Technology NEVER will produce morality....
(SARCASM off)
Note to humor impaired: I'm not anti-pr0n, I just thought the sentence italicized above was hilarious....
Ok, I'll bite ...
As I said, I do not watch obsessively. I do, at random points, check histories. I think watching what my kids do online is not "constant surveillance", but is doing my job bringing them up, just as I would watch out for them at any other thing they do in life. It's called "being a parent", or maybe you are one of those people who believe parents should leave their kids alone, then bitch when Johnny does something wrong, saying "Where were his parents in all this?".
You may feel free to disagree, but they aren't your kids. You also don't know me, nor my parenting style, so please do not tell me what is best for them. As they grow older, they will require more privacy, and I will give it to them. By then, hopefully, I will have done at least OK, and they won't get into as much trouble. I think parenting is a balance. You can't just throw then to the wolves, and you can;t lock them in a cage. IT is a daily struggle to find the balance point, and I do try....
Well, I do have kids .. two boys, 10 and 6 ...
:-). But they know mom & dad check up on them, and they accept that. Just like we make sure they aren't watching crap on TV, and we make sure their friends aren't morons, and we pack healthy snacks for school :-). It's all part of the same job... Granted, they may not like it, but sometimes you have to be "mean". My job is to bring them up in the way that I see as "right". I may be friend #1 now, becasue they are young, but that won't last long, and I can accept that. If they are happy, well-adjusted, productive members of society, I did my job...
... well, at least until they are teenagers :-) I may change my tune then! :-)
I try at every opportunity to let them know about the good and bad of technology. Yes, you have Wikipedia and Google, but you also have pedophiles too. Just like walking down the street. There are good folks and bad folks, and just like it is hard to tell the difference from faces, it is hard to tell the difference online. I try to explain and enforce good online safety and behavior rules. I try to talk to them, and make sure that I am involved in their lives.
However, their computers are facing out, in a public part of the house. I check their activities, and make sure they are doing the right things. I don't check obsessively, but I do check. Trust is a two-way street. They know that if they get bagged, I will crack down. Of course, I also do check logs, history, cookies, and my router
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Talk to your kids, make sure they know what is right and wrong first. Explain basic safety rules, behavior online, etc. But do make sure to check on them, and make sure they see you as involved. They need to know boundaries, and if they know you are checking and being involved, I think they'll try to live up to it
This seems to make sense ... alas, too late :-)
However, I still have no earthly clue what this puzzle has to do with my coding skills...
I was asked this after submitting my resume to a company who shall remain nameless. I recently saw it on another job post from another company, so I think it's OK to post :-):
...
... hopefully :-)
You and a friend are about to eat a pizza. You both consume pizza at precise rates: it always takes you x seconds to eat a slice of pizza, and it takes your friend y seconds. Once the pizza is cut, you will both start eating at the same time. Each person can eat only one slice at a time. You cannot touch the next piece until you finish the one you're eating. Out of generosity, you have agreed in advance to allow your friend to have the last slice if you should both happen to reach for it at the same time. Assuming that you would like as much of the pizza as possible to end up in your stomach, into how many equal-sized slices should you cut the pizza?
I answered, but was rejected.
My answer was: If I eat faster, then cut into 3 slices. If I eat at the same rate or slower, cut into two pieces.
Anyone got any better?
Also, I think I am a solid coder, with 13+ years of experience, and not a single negative review or comment. Somehow, though, none of that mattered, nor did my education or anything else. My answer was "wrong", so I was rejected. Initially, I was mad because I was "wrong", but I got over it... My main problem is that you cannot discuss the answer with someone, nor ask questions, nor describe your thought process. Just give the answer.
I have used riddles before, but only face-to-face, to encourage the person to tell me their thought process. The answer was irrelevant, as long as they could think it out
Ah well, I suspect web sites with "correct" answers to these will pop up, and render them irrelevant
Well, certainly nobody can predict the future, except to look at past trends. Just as I cannot say with 100% certainty that non-net-neutrality will be bad, neither can you say with 100% certainty that it will be good. So if we look at past trends, and try to extrapolate from them, we get many of the pro-net-neutralirty arguments.
You assume that the only three conditions of non-net-neutrality are those you listed. Those may come true, and you don't know it anymore than I do. You also failed to list any negatives:
1. Those who cannot afford to pay more will lose out. How will an independent filmmaker, just starting out, be able to afford the "premium" access speed that Disney can EASILY pay, in order to compete with them? How does that engender fair competition?? You may say the independent has a "flawed business model", or maybe needs to get VC funding first, but the problem with those arguments is that the independant can freely compete *NOW*, and non-net-neutrality will block him off...
2. Define "worsen" your connection. For "premium" sites, your download speed may get better, but for "non-premium" sites, it will certainly get worse. That to me defines "worsening" my connection. If Comcast doesn't give me the SAME download speed, regardless of where the site is, I'm going to get pissed. Why should I have to pay the same rate for a SLOWER speed on some sites?? I understand that network traffic can affect download speed, but this is an artificial limit imposed by my ISP, not just random traffic loads.
3. It is all about freedom. Not just for competition, either. ANYONE can publish music, video, text, whatever, on the internet as it is today, with no advantage, and no penalty. The market will decide who gets the most hits, downloads, page views, etc. Once the high-speed lanes are built, that will change. The smaller guy will have a penalty, and the larger guy will have an advantage. And not because one has a better product, but because one has deeper pockets and can afford the high-speed lane. I don't know about you, but I know very few people who would put up with speed degradation if they can get it from somewhere else faster. That's a problem when the degradation is an artifically-imposed sanction.
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it"....
My first real computer was a TI-99/4A, bought when they were expensive. I remember being pissed at my friend, because his parents shelled out for the whole deal (monitor, expansion chassis -- 32 whopping KB of RAM, disk drives, seial interface). I had to settle for the TV and a cassette tape. But oh the joy of coding music and sprite graphics. I remember getting "Mini Memory" which gave you an assembler. I was SO confused by the assembly mnemonics! It was like reading ancient sanskrit.
....
:-)
Next up was an Apple IIc. I liked it better than the IIe because is was so much more compact. I remember my girlfriend at the time had written a massive term paper on her IIe, and in order to get it over to a PC, we loaded it on my IIc, then "printed" it to a serial port, and used a comm program on the PC to capture it. Then endless hours on the PC reformatting with WordPerfect.
Next was a 386SX-16 that I built out of parts. 4MB RAM and 40MB hard drive! What a screamer! By then, the PC era was upon us, and I only owned PCs for a long time
Recently, however, I have owned a IIgs, IIc, IIc+, TI-99, C128, VIC20, a few S-100 CP/M machines, an original 5150 (black power supply), Zenith Z-100 and other assorted bits... Ahhhh, eBay!
... Not because of the whole ODF thing, but because I'm a resident of Massachusetts, and have seen all the crap that Mitt has subjected us to (my wife is a schoolteacher ... need I say more?)...
Now I have to cheer for a man I loathe? Oh, the irony...
Considering that, under Mr. Romney's watch, the school my wife works at has a "frozen budget" and cannot even buy basic office supplies (pencils, laminating paper, ink for mimeograph machines, etc.), I am appalled at his suggestions. How about using the "bonus" and "laptop" money to actually FUND SCHOOLS PROPERLY?? No, I guess that doesn't make good press when you're running for Prez.
is MICE ... If you're going to criticize something, at least get the name right....
Seriously, how many people really want to be fixing their car engine? Personally I'd rather just buy a car and let the dealer deal with that - my domain is in a different realm, and the car simply supports it. I'm not going to spend 100s of hours trying to pretend I'm a mechanic as well, and even if there were an itch, I (like the overwhelming majority of non-mechanics) am not skilled in a way to efficiently solve it.
See the problem? Nobody is saying you need to do the fix. If you have an issue with an Open Source app, you can take it to a knowledgeable person/company, and have THEM fix it. You don't have to wait for a service pack, or have the vendor deny the problem. You have the choice of fixing it as you see fit.