Don't pay. Contact the DoJ and tell the Cyber Crimes divsion that somone broke into your computer and is trying to extort money from you based on what they claim they found. Do it today!
If what she claims is true, i.e. that Media Sentry broke into her computer to snoop around, then THEY are guilty of copyright infringement whenever they opened one of her files and had it sent over the network for inspection!
Human tools are bigger than gorilla tools... I mean, that's what makes us "great" apes right? (That and out ability to make puns at the drop of a hat!)
The irony is, any reasonable lawyer could have the DNA database thrown out because of unreasonable search and seizure for just about anyone placed in the database this way... So they'll know who did it, but can't convict him!
Hey, mr. brilliant... it IS thier hobby! It is NOT thier business.
Hey Mr. Fuckhead-who-can't-spell-worth-a-shit, if it is just a hobby, quit expecting businesses to take it seriously. When Microsoft wins the contract instead of the guy with the hobby, he has only himself -- and people like you -- to blame.
Blame? Why should I be to blame for a company attempting to run itself into the ground? If they want to make bad, costly choices, go for it...
I consider myself to be a non-partisan technologist, meaning I'll use whatever platform or software that best fits the needs of the company, but what a lot of FOSS proponents seem incapable of grasping is that there's more to software and OS's than "power" and "technical elegance." There's user inteface design, documentation, and consistent professional support to be considered in any enterprise implementation. Saying that Bob's XYZ Library of Useful Widgets can do it all just as well as Bill & Steve's Really Expensive Library of Useful Widgets is only part of this equation. Just writing the damned software and slapping it in an RPM does not finish the project!
Ok, by that token, selling your customer a "service package" but never delivering ALSO does not finish the project. Don't forget "consistent professional support" means, if you never get professional support, then it's consistant... At least with open source you can almost ALWAYS find somone to answer your questions. With closed source, have fun navigating the call tree and trying to make good on that sucker service plan you bought!
the lack of conceptual integrity, professionalism, and innovation
Last closed source company I worked for was promising 5-nines uptime while knowing full well that the entire application was one slightly malformed sql statement away from total and absolute (i.e. read corrupt the database in a way that it will never be recoverable) destruction. They were selling the system based on scalability, uptime, high availability, but knew when it came time to roll out to the customer's customers it would fail to meet even the most minimal load (also knowing, by that time it would be too late for thier clients to back out).
Closed source helps business grow, because you can rely on your marketing department to do the job for you, and marketing chumps are much cheaper to hire than engineers.
You said: I didn't fall into that trap in 2004 though, instead I voted for who I wanted, Michael Badnarik. There were a few others who ran as well. You can either speak up and vote or you can lay down and roll over. Personally I prefer fighting.
I heard: I once met this armored knight on horseback. Boy did I hate him, so I fought 'em. Man, did I hammer my fists against his impenetrible armor untill the bones were broken, the skin was ragged and blood poued from my hands... Didn't scratch him, but damn did I fight!
Given that we already have a nanny state, it seems to me that not voting is representing the nanny state - it says "go right ahead - I don't care enough to oppose you".
And when you have a choice between Dictator 1 and Dictator 2 then voting just says, "hey, I agreee with your repression of me!"
Or maybe they were trying to trick you into problem solving approach. Or test your responses under situation when you don't know the solution to the question. By asking unbeliveably ridiculously specific questions. So at some point you had to admit that you don't know it or try to solve the question.
Well, I have already written elsewhere about the merit of "tricking" the people you want to hire for top paying jobs... But, just to address the second part... You are correct that this approach can work... for example, if you are hiring for the position of international espionage spy. Hiring for QA, I have a suspiscion that you will end up with a sack full of poorly qualified people who couldn't test thier way out of a paper bag.
QA is nothing BUT predictability. When a QA person runs into something unexpected, his job comes to a stand still, and rightly so. You definitly DO NOT want QA people attempting to find a way to make sense of unexpected data. You'd want them to stop testing at that point and raise the red flags.
What is the PL tag in HTML? (WTF? I don't even know this and I have been programming for 11 years)
That's because there isn't one, in the standard anyway.
They're just testing if you're willing to say "I don't know.", or if you try to bullshit your way through the interview.
Funny, the impression I got was that the interviewer was retarded and that any company that hired him was using thier lowest common demoninator to pick the rest of thier engineers and thus the rest of the company must be filled with equally mentally-challenged individuals... Basically, if it were me being interviewed, that kind of half-assed attempt to "trick" me would be the end of the interview, and *I* would be the better off for it. If they want to hire the best they can't act like they are in kindergarten.
What they are doing is not cleverly "testing if you are willing to say 'I don't know'" but instead "testing to see if you are ready for trick questions and thus know how to give the correct 'I don't know' answer during an interview" thus proving absolutely NOTHING except that your candidate is a savvy interviewer and thus will make a good impression when he begins to look for jobs with your competitors.
If you want to know if someone says "I don't know" when they don't know, ask the candidate point blank, like you would ask, say, an adult, or perhaps even an adult who is being hired for his or her very high-intelligence-requiring skill set. If he lies, well, then that means you are working with a liar and when you eventually find that out, kick his ass to the curb with just cause. But if he tells the truth, as would be expected of somone in his/her position, then you've got your answer and didn't have to insult his/her intelligence in the process.
Then you missed the point of the interview completely. They're looking for smart people with excellent problem solving skills, creativity and curiousity. Take a really smart person and you can teach them QA if you have to. Take a mediocre person with lots of QA and then try to teach them anything outside their narrow field.
Last person I hired as a programmer had little actual professional programming experience. He'd been working as a studio musician. One of the best hires I ever made. (Granted, it was at first for mostly front end work, but he's expanded into heavier stuff over time.) Being smart, a fast learner, detail oriented, curious, and having a diverse background is *exactly* what I look for.
That's my freaking point! The questions were NOT along the lines of general problem solving skills. They were along the lines of very specific esoteric knowledge.
Some examples:
* What is the PL tag in HTML? (WTF? I don't even know this and I have been programming for 11 years) * What are the ISO designations for the most popular character encodings used in Russia and Korea today? * In reference to the server, what does a http client do after sending and receiving data? (Hint, the answer that he gave, "closes the connection" is wrong in some way, and any reference to "keepalive" is responded to with "What's that have to do with it?") * What methods in the windows APIs are used to change the start menu from one language to another?
All of these things are things that I would definitly NOT expect a general knowledge programmer to know. In fact, a good problem solver would know that these things are domain specific knowledge and can safely be unstudied until needed. Not one of these questions can't be looked up on, ironically, Google in five minutes (except the PL tag which does not exist, as best as I can discover, nor the HTTP client answer which seems to be some magic thing that happens in a specific client that the interviewer has in mind, but requires mind reading to fully understand).
Some of the very best programmers I have ever seen were those who didn't even touch a computer until they were 21 and had degrees in things like American History. They learned by doing over the course of a few years, and now, hands down, are the best programmes I have met in in 20 years of programming. None of them could answer these questions today, and all of them could wipe the table with a programmer who could... and none of them would be hired by Google, I'll wager.
Non-linear, pure "invention" doesn't occur on a fixed time table. You cannot plan for it. You can't assemble a team, give them a deadline and some money, and say "OK, go invent the next great thing for me.".
All you can do is try to assemable the greatest group(s) of already provably inventive poeple you can find, put them in a positive, stimulating environment, and incent them to come up with something great.
That is what Google is doing. That is exactly NOT what Microsoft, HP, et. al. are doing.
And no, they don't expect you to understand this.
Sooo, put a bunch of smart guys in a room, pay them a lot and wait an indefinite period of time to get a good idea. If you don't get a good idea, you will just have to wait longer... By that same logic you could hire monkeys and buy a bunch of typewriters and do the same thing for a fraction of the cost!
Re:Do they have a strategy behind this?
on
Google Hires Vint Cerf
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Or are they merely collecting people and figuring out what to do with them later? From the outside looking in, it sure seems like the latter.
I had the chance to listen in on a google interview last week for some kind of QA position. It was very strange. The questions that were asked had nothing really to do with trying to get to the heart of whether or not the guy was a good programmer, or that he understood the basic QA concepts and how to test properly, etc... Instead it was a kind of game where the candidate was supposed to recall as many esoteric bits of pseudo-knowledge as possible. Like, name all of the character encoding standards in the world that you know, or which RFCs describe HTTP, and explain how the protocol works...
Questions that are essentially meaningless as far as QA is concerned... in fact, meaningless as far as any position they could offer is concerned, unless they are planning to hire an Internet Historian. I think in that entire conversation, which went on for about an hour, only a single question that cold be considered something pertaining to "QA" or testing was asked, and that was oddly half-hearted (I believe it was something like, "In one minute, please name all the test cases you can think of for a web form that takes credit card info").
I got the impression from the questions posed in that call that Google really don't have a clue how to hire. They seem to hire based on same technique as Japanese entrance exams.. i.e. pure knowledge bits are more important than conceptual understanding or problem solving...
Now I am beginning to think that Google isn't actually as smart as people think... They are just remendously lucky...
I'm not saying some games don't lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet.
I'm not saying that apparant plant growth is caused by invisible gnomes that rip up all the plants in the world every few seconds and replace them with slightly larger ones when you aren't looking, but I am saying that the data are not there yet.
Why are you expecting "your leaders" to provide you with Internet access? Is there anything wrong with you, that you must depend on the government?
Yeah... why doesn't he go roll out some fiber from the telco to his house himself? Oh yeah, even if he DID, the telco wouldn't let him. Basically it will take an act of congress to make it happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't pay. Contact the DoJ and tell the Cyber Crimes divsion that somone broke into your computer and is trying to extort money from you based on what they claim they found. Do it today!
If what she claims is true, i.e. that Media Sentry broke into her computer to snoop around, then THEY are guilty of copyright infringement whenever they opened one of her files and had it sent over the network for inspection!
Offering the RIAA a chance to settle for only $6,000.
Human tools are bigger than gorilla tools... I mean, that's what makes us "great" apes right? (That and out ability to make puns at the drop of a hat!)
The irony is, any reasonable lawyer could have the DNA database thrown out because of unreasonable search and seizure for just about anyone placed in the database this way... So they'll know who did it, but can't convict him!
Print a harcopy.
This article was posted already in 1997... Remember, "The network is the computer"?
Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. ... but, I suppose, no songs should ever be LESS?
Hey, mr. brilliant... it IS thier hobby! It is NOT thier business.
Hey Mr. Fuckhead-who-can't-spell-worth-a-shit, if it is just a hobby, quit expecting businesses to take it seriously. When Microsoft wins the contract instead of the guy with the hobby, he has only himself -- and people like you -- to blame.
Blame? Why should I be to blame for a company attempting to run itself into the ground? If they want to make bad, costly choices, go for it...
But until FOSS gets its act together and treats the software business like a business instead of a hobby, we have little choice.
Hey, mr. brilliant... it IS thier hobby! It is NOT thier business.
I consider myself to be a non-partisan technologist, meaning I'll use whatever platform or software that best fits the needs of the company, but what a lot of FOSS proponents seem incapable of grasping is that there's more to software and OS's than "power" and "technical elegance." There's user inteface design, documentation, and consistent professional support to be considered in any enterprise implementation. Saying that Bob's XYZ Library of Useful Widgets can do it all just as well as Bill & Steve's Really Expensive Library of Useful Widgets is only part of this equation. Just writing the damned software and slapping it in an RPM does not finish the project!
Ok, by that token, selling your customer a "service package" but never delivering ALSO does not finish the project. Don't forget "consistent professional support" means, if you never get professional support, then it's consistant... At least with open source you can almost ALWAYS find somone to answer your questions. With closed source, have fun navigating the call tree and trying to make good on that sucker service plan you bought!
the lack of conceptual integrity, professionalism, and innovation
Last closed source company I worked for was promising 5-nines uptime while knowing full well that the entire application was one slightly malformed sql statement away from total and absolute (i.e. read corrupt the database in a way that it will never be recoverable) destruction. They were selling the system based on scalability, uptime, high availability, but knew when it came time to roll out to the customer's customers it would fail to meet even the most minimal load (also knowing, by that time it would be too late for thier clients to back out).
Closed source helps business grow, because you can rely on your marketing department to do the job for you, and marketing chumps are much cheaper to hire than engineers.
SUCKERS!
You said: I didn't fall into that trap in 2004 though, instead I voted for who I wanted, Michael Badnarik. There were a few others who ran as well. You can either speak up and vote or you can lay down and roll over. Personally I prefer fighting.
I heard: I once met this armored knight on horseback. Boy did I hate him, so I fought 'em. Man, did I hammer my fists against his impenetrible armor untill the bones were broken, the skin was ragged and blood poued from my hands... Didn't scratch him, but damn did I fight!
Given that we already have a nanny state, it seems to me that not voting is representing the nanny state - it says "go right ahead - I don't care enough to oppose you".
And when you have a choice between Dictator 1 and Dictator 2 then voting just says, "hey, I agreee with your repression of me!"
Or maybe they were trying to trick you into problem solving approach. Or test your responses under situation when you don't know the solution to the question.
By asking unbeliveably ridiculously specific questions. So at some point you had to admit that you don't know it or try to solve the question.
Well, I have already written elsewhere about the merit of "tricking" the people you want to hire for top paying jobs... But, just to address the second part... You are correct that this approach can work... for example, if you are hiring for the position of international espionage spy. Hiring for QA, I have a suspiscion that you will end up with a sack full of poorly qualified people who couldn't test thier way out of a paper bag.
QA is nothing BUT predictability. When a QA person runs into something unexpected, his job comes to a stand still, and rightly so. You definitly DO NOT want QA people attempting to find a way to make sense of unexpected data. You'd want them to stop testing at that point and raise the red flags.
What is the PL tag in HTML? (WTF? I don't even know this and I have been programming for 11 years)
That's because there isn't one, in the standard anyway.
They're just testing if you're willing to say "I don't know.", or if you try to bullshit your way through the interview.
Funny, the impression I got was that the interviewer was retarded and that any company that hired him was using thier lowest common demoninator to pick the rest of thier engineers and thus the rest of the company must be filled with equally mentally-challenged individuals... Basically, if it were me being interviewed, that kind of half-assed attempt to "trick" me would be the end of the interview, and *I* would be the better off for it. If they want to hire the best they can't act like they are in kindergarten.
What they are doing is not cleverly "testing if you are willing to say 'I don't know'" but instead "testing to see if you are ready for trick questions and thus know how to give the correct 'I don't know' answer during an interview" thus proving absolutely NOTHING except that your candidate is a savvy interviewer and thus will make a good impression when he begins to look for jobs with your competitors.
If you want to know if someone says "I don't know" when they don't know, ask the candidate point blank, like you would ask, say, an adult, or perhaps even an adult who is being hired for his or her very high-intelligence-requiring skill set. If he lies, well, then that means you are working with a liar and when you eventually find that out, kick his ass to the curb with just cause. But if he tells the truth, as would be expected of somone in his/her position, then you've got your answer and didn't have to insult his/her intelligence in the process.
Then you missed the point of the interview completely. They're looking for smart people with excellent problem solving skills, creativity and curiousity. Take a really smart person and you can teach them QA if you have to. Take a mediocre person with lots of QA and then try to teach them anything outside their narrow field.
Last person I hired as a programmer had little actual professional programming experience. He'd been working as a studio musician. One of the best hires I ever made. (Granted, it was at first for mostly front end work, but he's expanded into heavier stuff over time.) Being smart, a fast learner, detail oriented, curious, and having a diverse background is *exactly* what I look for.
That's my freaking point! The questions were NOT along the lines of general problem solving skills. They were along the lines of very specific esoteric knowledge.
Some examples:
* What is the PL tag in HTML? (WTF? I don't even know this and I have been programming for 11 years)
* What are the ISO designations for the most popular character encodings used in Russia and Korea today?
* In reference to the server, what does a http client do after sending and receiving data? (Hint, the answer that he gave, "closes the connection" is wrong in some way, and any reference to "keepalive" is responded to with "What's that have to do with it?")
* What methods in the windows APIs are used to change the start menu from one language to another?
All of these things are things that I would definitly NOT expect a general knowledge programmer to know. In fact, a good problem solver would know that these things are domain specific knowledge and can safely be unstudied until needed. Not one of these questions can't be looked up on, ironically, Google in five minutes (except the PL tag which does not exist, as best as I can discover, nor the HTTP client answer which seems to be some magic thing that happens in a specific client that the interviewer has in mind, but requires mind reading to fully understand).
Some of the very best programmers I have ever seen were those who didn't even touch a computer until they were 21 and had degrees in things like American History. They learned by doing over the course of a few years, and now, hands down, are the best programmes I have met in in 20 years of programming. None of them could answer these questions today, and all of them could wipe the table with a programmer who could... and none of them would be hired by Google, I'll wager.
The more you know the luckier you get.
Vegas loves people like you.
Very, very few truly inventive poeple find money (eg. personal enrichment, leisure, prestige, etc.) an incentive.
Name two.
Non-linear, pure "invention" doesn't occur on a fixed time table. You cannot plan for it. You can't assemble a team, give them a deadline and some money, and say "OK, go invent the next great thing for me.".
All you can do is try to assemable the greatest group(s) of already provably inventive poeple you can find, put them in a positive, stimulating environment, and incent them to come up with something great.
That is what Google is doing. That is exactly NOT what Microsoft, HP, et. al. are doing.
And no, they don't expect you to understand this.
Sooo, put a bunch of smart guys in a room, pay them a lot and wait an indefinite period of time to get a good idea. If you don't get a good idea, you will just have to wait longer... By that same logic you could hire monkeys and buy a bunch of typewriters and do the same thing for a fraction of the cost!
Or are they merely collecting people and figuring out what to do with them later? From the outside looking in, it sure seems like the latter.
I had the chance to listen in on a google interview last week for some kind of QA position. It was very strange. The questions that were asked had nothing really to do with trying to get to the heart of whether or not the guy was a good programmer, or that he understood the basic QA concepts and how to test properly, etc... Instead it was a kind of game where the candidate was supposed to recall as many esoteric bits of pseudo-knowledge as possible. Like, name all of the character encoding standards in the world that you know, or which RFCs describe HTTP, and explain how the protocol works...
Questions that are essentially meaningless as far as QA is concerned... in fact, meaningless as far as any position they could offer is concerned, unless they are planning to hire an Internet Historian. I think in that entire conversation, which went on for about an hour, only a single question that cold be considered something pertaining to "QA" or testing was asked, and that was oddly half-hearted (I believe it was something like, "In one minute, please name all the test cases you can think of for a web form that takes credit card info").
I got the impression from the questions posed in that call that Google really don't have a clue how to hire. They seem to hire based on same technique as Japanese entrance exams.. i.e. pure knowledge bits are more important than conceptual understanding or problem solving...
Now I am beginning to think that Google isn't actually as smart as people think... They are just remendously lucky...
They don't compare very well at all... Oracle doesn' hold a candle to postgres.
AKA, How can we make money with these damn libraries? They cost a fortune and nobody uses them for anything but, ick, study.
I'm not saying some games don't lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet.
I'm not saying that apparant plant growth is caused by invisible gnomes that rip up all the plants in the world every few seconds and replace them with slightly larger ones when you aren't looking, but I am saying that the data are not there yet.
Why are you expecting "your leaders" to provide you with Internet access? Is there anything wrong with you, that you must depend on the government?
Yeah... why doesn't he go roll out some fiber from the telco to his house himself? Oh yeah, even if he DID, the telco wouldn't let him. Basically it will take an act of congress to make it happen.