Based on the original posters description, this seems less like a LANGUAGE question, and more like a DESIGN question. I see people saying, "do it in X", where X is the language flavor of the month. The problem is that no matter what language you use, if your design isn't "fault tolerant", your application won't be fault tolerant.
I have done some work in.Net programming, and while there are certain constructs that do help, you have to design your application to use these constructs, and even then, it is no guarantee of stability.
Here are a couple of general pieces of advice:
1. You had a good idea as far as isolating components into separate processes, and having a master application with detects failure and restarts applications. Of course, if the master application fails, or if one of your processes crashes the whole machine, you are dead in the water.
2. If you want to go further, you can isolate modules across several machines, with redundancy. If a machine goes down or gets disconnected from the network, you can have a fallover strategy that tries to use another machine.
3. If your calculation is something that can parallelized, you can have an app farm that does the calculation in a distributed fashion. If any one of the nodes fails, you can redo that node's calculation on another machine.
4. Remember all of the standard coding fundamentals that you learned in your software engineering class (high cohesion, loose coupling, only optimize code as necessary, and test the heck out of the thing).
5. Remember that fault tolerance comes at a cost. There will always be a single point of failure, whether it be the process, the machine, the power grid, etc. Decide what level of fault tolerance you can afford, and what level you can live with, and go from there.
I work for a company that has some critical machines that need near 100% uptime. In order to achieve that, the company has spent millions (if not billions) of dollars to build in as much fault tolerance as possible. Redundant data centers in different parts of the country, each with its own generators, water supply, multiple dedicated network connections, etc, etc, etc. I doubt that you need that level of redundancy. However, when you say that you need your application to be fault tolerant, keep in mind that fault tolerance isn't a yes or no checkbox - it is a scale. You need to decide how much fault tolerance you need, and design from there.
This is a pretty accurate list of "standard" questions, except for "What do you like to read?" I have never been asked this particular question, although I have been asked the more general variant "What do you like to do in your spare time?"
Also, I will add two other pieces of general interviewing advice, which may seem obvious, but which could use saying again....
If you are interviewing for a position that have a specific technical requirement, come prepared to answer some technical questions to prove that you have the knowledge. You may think that having worked with a tool or technology that you may have no need for this, but if you get used to having a manual by your side, it may be harder to recall the answers from memory. For instance, I do programming in C++ and I am pretty darn good at it, but I'll be damned if I can remember the signature of every function in the standard library. However, if I have to write a code snippet from memory in an interview, reversing the order of parameters may be perceived as a knock on my ability.
Second, ALWAYS do some research into a company before going on the interview. This helps both when you are asked the dreaded question about why you want to work there, plus you will sound intelligent when you are giving a chance to ask your own questions. With the Internet at your disposal, there is really no excuse for not doing this.
I was expecting someone to post something along the lines of "I was poor. I came from a disadvantaged background. However, I overcame it and went on to great things."
I have no doubt that there are people like yourself who are able to overcome less than ideal circumstances. Likewise, there are people who have all of the advantages in the world, and end up failing in life for whatever reason. However, I think it is fair to say that if you are born with obstacles, whether it be poverty, a poor home life, limited educational opportunities, you have to work harder to overcome those obstacles. There are some people who have the drive and determination to overcome those hurdles, like yourself. However, you are in the minority unfortunately. The majority of people tend to just go with the "path of least resistance".
If you are born in a disadvantaged state, you have to go out of your way to find the opportunties. The good thing is that the opportunities are there for those with the determination (thats one of the beauties of living in the US). However, I would say that most people tend to have inertia in the sense that if the opportunity isn't presented to them, they will not seek it out. This seems to be the rule rather than the exception, which is sad.
NOTHING is a perfect predictor of success or failure in life. However, there are trends. That's the thing about a correlation. It's rarely equal to 0 or 1. Usually it is something in between.
This is actually somewhat wrong. Judaism is indeed a religion, however Jewish people tend to marry other Jewish people, or at least have done so historically.
I would add that there are certain ethnic traits that are associated with Jews. These traits are not as universal as with other ethnicities, however, they are sometimes present. I would mention larger noses and thick curly hair.
She also could have been identified as a Jew based on her name.
It is interesting that you mention this. There are some "ethnic traits" which are associated with people who are descendants of Jews from Eastern Europe. However, they are a very weak association at best. One could easily convert to Wicca, but still retain these so called traits. Likewise, a person born into an Irish family and decide to convert to Judaism would not all of a sudden grow a "large nose". Is the Wiccan still considered Jewish in your eyes because of their so called "Jewish traits"? Is the Irishman not considered Jewish even though they lack those same traits.
Surname is an even weaker indication. In fact historically, these so-called Jewish surnames are not even Jewish at all. Jews generally named themselves using the formula "X son of Y". However, at a particular point in time, the non-Jewish authorities in the countries where the Jews lives forced Jews to take more "secular" surnames for various reasons. In fact in some countries, Jews were assigned surnames by the authorities. So the notion of a "Jewish-sounding" surname is not even accurate from a historical standpoint.
I think what has happened is that Jews in the US for the most part have come to this country from Eastern Europe, so they tend to have the names and characterics of people from those countries. Therefore, people unwittingly associate some of these traits with Jews, even though Judaism is a religion.
Judaism for some strange reason seems to be associated with traits that are normally associated with nationality or ethnicity. Usually people say "she has an Irish nose" or "he's got a Chinese name". You never hear people saying "she's got a Mormon nose" or "he's got a Taoist name".
You mention that it is because Jews generally marry Jews. Now how is this different than people of any other religion. From my observations, people will generally marry other people within their religious group (although this seems to be changing). Mormons marrying Mormons. Catholics marrying Catholics. Why don't we see Mormon traits? Why don't we see Catholic traits? Especially Mormons traits since they don't appear have the geographic and ethnic diversity of Catholics (or Jews for that matter).
Even ethnic groups which are primarily associated with a particular religion (i.e. Indians with Hinduism). You never hear someone say that person X looks Hindu. Usually you say that they look Indian.
The only other religion that I can think of that seems to be treated like an ethnicity in the US are Muslims, which is another falsehood. There are Muslims of MANY different ethnic groups (Arab, Turk, Indian, etc). They do not all belong to the same ethnic group. Likewise, not all Arabs are Muslim. There are a significant number of ethnic Arabs who are Christian.
Anyway, I have ranted on enough about this issue. Feel free to mark it as off topic since it certainly is!
I was with you all the way until you got to the tired old argument that "blacks are dumber than whites".
I think a more accurate view would be that people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to end up as programmers and engineers because of the lack of educational opportunities in those areas. That would be true of poor whites, poor blacks, poor Asians, or poor Martians. The fact is that the quality of education in this country depends on ones economic class.
I think a black kid from a upper-middle class home would be more likely to excel educationally than a poor white kid who lived in poverty.
Now it may APPEAR as if blacks are less capable academically because they, on average, might be more likely to grow up in poorer homes. However, it is important to keep in mind that CORRELATION DOES NOT INDICATE CAUSALITY. Now you would think that somebody like you who is supposedly a member of the "educational elite" would realize this, but I guess even posting on Slashdot does not necessarily indicate that one has the ability to think logically (in other words, even monkeys can click on the Submit button!)
Since Judaism is a religion and not a race or ethnicity, how would a hiring manager KNOW that a person is Jewish. I guess if the person was orthodox man, they might wear a yarmulke. Otherwise, unless you ask someone flat out during the interview (which I believe is illegal in the US), you wouldn't know for sure.
I know people of the Jewish faith, who unless they volunteered that information, you wouldn't have any way to know they are Jewish. Also, I know individuals who are of non-Jewish German or Eastern European descent who are assumed to be Jewish because of their surname or their Eastern European look.
I am currently working on a project with a team that is spread across two locations, and I find that are team is much less efficient than if we were all working in the same building together. The main reason for this is that it is much harder to collaborate on things. Normally, if a group of people need to hash out some ideas together, they get in a room with a white board, put their heads together, and usually they leave with a common understanding of the problem and the solution. However, when you need to do this type of activity with people with whom you cannot meet with face to face, this type of activity takes a lot more time and is a lot more inefficient.
Certainly, technology does help to a certain extent. We use email, phone, instant messaging/ Net Meeting, virtual whiteboard, etc. However, it seems like it is harder to convey ideas using these techniques. What ends up happening is within a site, people generally end up on common ground, but between sites is where most of the disagreements in point of view occur.
The second roadblock is that team unity and cohesion suffers. If you see someone on a regular basis and can have informal conversations with them, you can build up a lot of goodwill and trust over time. You know where the person is "coming from" and you have a better understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and point of view. However, building this type of cohesion across long distances is really hard and it takes a lot more time and effort. As we all know, teams which are "tight" and have a good working relationship are very effective, while teams that lack this often work at cross purposes.
The third roadblock is that communications and information is not propogated efficiently across sites. Sometimes, news and information are passed through informal chats with people. Sometimes I will go over to a co-workers office just to "shoot the breeze" and I will end up learning a lot about what that person is doing and about the project in general that I do not get in the formal meetings.
Based on these personal observations, it seems to me that a virtual team really needs to really need to think about how they are going to overcome these issues in order to really work.
Personally, I think, first and foremost, you need a strong manager who has experience herding cats across time zones.
Second, you need to have a strong technical lead who can set the technical vision and direction for the group, since a virutal team cannot be lead by consensus.
Third, you need to have good collaboration tools to maximize the efficiency of the communications and to try and reproduce the "bull sessions" as best as possible.
Finally, you need to be able to divide up the work so that there are as few dependencies as possible, so that people can work independently on their piece with minimal active collaboration. Obviously, there will be a need to communicate at the integration points, but if you accept the fact that virual teams will not be bale to communicate as efficiently, the need for this communication should be kept as low as possible.
I am not saying that virual teams can't work. However, they need a different style of management, a different style of organization, and they are probably best for certain type of projects.
Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parallels (no pun intended) between parallel computing and the optimal organization of virtual teams. Perhaps there is a thesis topic lurking in there somewhere!
Actually, there are a few points in your post which I do not agree with.
First, if he is just collecting some ad revenue checks from his web log, why does he need get a "business name" (i.e DBA). In my locality, filing a DBA costs a couple hundred dollars and unless you have some public-facing business where you need a catchy name, there really isn't any point. All the guy wants to do is to make sure he doesn't get in trouble with the IRS.
Second, you state:
Now, if you have a lot of purchases associated with your "business" it may make sense to talk to someone like H&R Block about trying to get deductions associated with the business. But if you aren't incurring more than a grand or two worth of expenses, then its not worth itemizing your deductions as they probably won't exceed the standard deduction.
However, this is totally wrong! Business expenses have NO RELATIONSHIP to the standard deduction. The standard deduction applies to personal deductions (like charity and mortgage interest), and not to business deductions on Schedule C. Your business expenses do not have to exceed the standard deduction in order to deduct them. Even if you have $10 worth of expenses, you can deduct that $10 from your business income. Plus, on top of that, you can take the standard deduction.
This is exactly why you should talk to someone who knows what they are talking about, rather than taking the word of me or the above poster.
I am not a professional accountant or lawyer, so take my advice for what it is worth. However, my wife owns her own business so I have some exposure to the world of self-employment.
First, you ask about getting "permits" and such. You will have to check with you locality, but where we live, you probably would not need any "permits" for what you are doing. If you wanted to register a business name, you would need to get a "permit". If you were selling merchadise, you would need to collect sales tax so you would need to register with the proper tax authorities. If you wanted to put out a sign in front of your house advertising your business to attract customers, you might need approval from the local zoning authorities. If you were doing business which had some form of government regulation (i.e selling cigarettes or alcohol), you would probably need the proper licenses.
However, if all you are doing is collecting ad revenue from a website, you probably do not need to involve "big brother". Again, you probably should check with a professional to cover your backside.
As far as taxes go, technically you have to pay taxes on what you are earning. This is especially true if the company which is paying you the ad revenue sends you a Form 1099-MISC in the mail. This means that they have reported to the IRS that they paid you for some sort of service as a non-employee.
You basically have two choices. You can either treat this income as "Income from Non-Business Activities". This means that have earned this money through some activity that you aren't actively engaged in for a profit. There may be some technical criteria for this, so you should consult for a professional for clarification. This type of income is reported as "Other Income" on Form 1040. The upside of doing this is that it is simple, plus you do not have to pay Self-Employment Tax. The downside is that you cannot take deductions for business expenses.
Your other choice is to treat this as businss income. If you go this route, you have to fill out Schedule C (or I believe there is a Schedule C-EZ which may cover your simple case). On Schedule C, you can also take deductions against your business income for expenses related to running your business. Being able to deduct these expenses can offset your income and reduce your taxes. However, you will need to have saved receipts so that if you are audited, you can substantiate your deductions to the IRS. Also, you have to know about the rules for depreciation if you want to deduct the cost of computers and such. Plus, if you use the computer for personal use, that may effect your ability to deduct.
The downside of treating this as a business is that you have to pay a self-employment tax (Scehdule SE). You can deduct 1/2 of this tax from your income on Form 1040, but it is still an extra tax that you wouldn't have to pay otherwise.
If you want to get more complicated, you can incorporate your business and then you wouldn't report your income on Schedule C. Your incorporated business would have to file its own tax forms. I do not know much about this route, but I do know that it is much more complicated - probably more complicated than what you need when you are just making a couple thousand on the side. You are subject to a lot more paperwork, rules, and regulations. Frankly, it seems like in your case, going this route is not worth the hassle.
Just to give you an example, my wife has an unincorporated consulting business. She is clearly doing this activity as a business, so we file her income on Schedule C with all of the associated benefits and drawbacks. However, she also taught a dance class at the local community school, which paid her a couple hundred bucks for her troubles. Teaching dance has nothing to do with her consulting business, and it was done for fun, and not as a money-making, for-profit activity. Therefore, we just reported it as "income from non-business activities".
Okay this is obviously a troll, but.Net is equivalent in Java in its design, which includes the requirement of a virutal machine.
If you are looking for "bare metal" optimization, then neither Java nor.Net is the language for you. You would be better served programming your application in C or C++ (or assembler even).
I am not a UNIX system admin so I would probably fail at your interview. However, I have no doubt that I am tech-savvy enough to be able to pick up anything that you throw at me. I am sure that your questions can probably be answered with a little research by someone who has some general technical aptitude.
If you are really as desperate as you say, maybe you would have better luck trying to find a bright person who might be able to learn what they need with a little bit of tutelage.
Obviously, the ideal candidate would be someone who has done exactly the same job as what you require for the lowest salary. However, life is rarely ideal. Sometimes you have to make due with what you are given.
One place where I agree with you is the person who calls themselves a Senior UNIX admin who doesn't know the basics. Even if that person is a smart person, they obviously cannot be trusted to be honest with you, which would disqualify them for consideration for ANY position with your company.
It seems to me that the time and energy it takes to hire the right team is at least as great as the time and energy it would take to hire individuals.
Perusing the comments, there are at least a few dozen people who have posted "hire us" comments. If you were to try and contact all of them and go through the whole interview process, you would probably take up a lot of time which you say you don't have.
My advice to you would be this:
- Hire a "name brand" company to put together a team for you. At least with a name brand you get some level of assurance without having to do as much due-diligence. I say "as much" because you would be an idiot not to do any, since you can be screwed by the big boys too!
- Find someone you can trust to assemble a team for you. Because you trust them, you probably already have a relationship with that person, so hopefully they will do right by you without you having to check them over. Of course, this may just push the problem down on the person you hire for this purpose, unless they already have a network of pros at their beck and call.
- Bite the bullet and plan to spend the time to assemble your team.
I think the biggest problem in finding people, whether they be a team or individuals, is getting the right people. If you skimp on this, then your project is doomed!
I knew someone at school who was Caucasian who came to the US from Egypt. During the height of the Political Correctness movement on campus, he wrote a letter to the school paper mocking the phrase "African-American". His point was that, technically speaking, he is more "African-American" than most people who claim the title, since he was, in fact, born on the continent of Africa (Egypt being his birthplace), but he had emigrated from there to the US.
He also asked the question as to whether he should be allowed to claim "African-American" status, since such a claim would be very beneficial in many situations (admissions, scholarships). Basically, he said that he saw nothing wrong with claiming such status for himself since he technically met the definition, despite the fact he was white.
The letter caused quite a stir among the PC crowd, and it pointed out the stupidity of such labels.
Also, I have heard people refer to anyone who is black as being "African-American" even if there are not American. Apparently, to some people, this term refers to anyone who is black, regardless of their nationality, which does not make any sense.
Finally, I have heard from people who are Latino that the term Latino/Hispanic is entirely orthogonal to race. There are "black Latinos" and "white Latinos"; however most non-Latinos fail to make this distinction.
Basically, we are all people and we should be judged as such, rather than as members of some nebulous grouping.
Actually, it seems like in my own personal experience that here in the US, the terms "college" and "university" are pretty much interchangable. I can think of many schools which are "colleges" which, other than the fact that they are called "colleges", are pretty much the same as universities: Boston College, College of Charleston, College of William and Mary, are the ones I can name off the top of my head.
One thing that I have also noticed is that some universities refer to divisions within the university as "colleges". For instance, they may have a "college of engineering", "college of arts and sciences", etc. As a side note, the aforementioned "Boston College" appears to have several divisions which they refer to as "colleges".
I have also noticed that some schools have "rebranded" themselves as "universities" in order to appear more "academic" without actually changing their programs of study. That fact alone makes me think you should not judge an institution by whether they are a "college" or a "university" (at least in the US).
I am a parent, and one thing that I try to teach my son is that sharing is a "good thing". Share your toys with a friend. Share your food with the less fortunate, etc. So he gets a warm and fuzzy feeling inside when he shares.
Now, he "shares" some of the songs he ripped from a CD or someone shares a song with him in return. Now "sharing" is a crime and it shouldn't done.
I understand that it really isn't sharing to the adult world, but to a child who has been taught that you should "share", it seems natural that it is okay to share something of yours which you bought with your own allowance.
I am not saying that it is right or wrong, but I think the "powers-that-be" need to be a little less "heavy-handed", and realize that file-sharing may be non-obvious crime to a typical young person.
I am reminded of a story that someone told me recently. A boy was three or four and saw a pile of money on the table. He didn't see it as "money" like an adult, but as just some funny pieces of paper. He took the money, not realizing its importance. The mother caught the boy with the money and punished him for "stealing". The boy protested saying that all he did wanted to do was play with the paper. Instead of explaining the significance of the paper (educating the youngster), she applied adult standards of conduct to the child. I would wager that the boy had no idea what he did wrong, because in his eyes, he was just playing with some paper which he had probably done before.
The point is that we should not assume that children know what they are doing wrong. Rather than looking to punish, we should be looking to educate and bring about understanding. Children are not small adults. They are naieve to the ways of the adult world, and anyone who expects otherwise is an idiot.
I would imagine that those at the RIAA are all child-less, because they have no common sense when it comes to these things.
I think the nature of the game industry has changed to a certain extent. Back in the day, games could be produced on a small budget, usually by one or two individuals doing everything from end to end. Game companies could take more "risks" and so there were a lot of original games. That's not to say that all of these original games were GOOD, just that there was a lot more freedom to experience with new and different concepts.
Fast forward to today... creating a typical game requires a much bigger budget and a lot more people. You have the programmers, level designers, artists, voice-over talent, composers, testers, tech writers, etc, etc. The big game companies that dominate the market can't afford to flush money down the toilet, so the games have to make money. That means playing it safe with proven concepts. EA, for instance, seems to survive by milking its proven franchises, which is safe from a sales standpoint, but it hardly results in original games.
Of course original doesnt make a game "good" and unoriginal doesnt make a game "bad", and I agree that there were A LOT of bad games in the Atari era. However, I think there was more experimentation in mainstream gaming back in the 80's, so that may be why the original poster finds that those games have more soul.
Personally, I find that today's games are mostly "variations on a theme", so to speak. There are maybe about a dozen or so basic "themes" which most games fall into, and there may be one or two tweaks to a game that differentiates a game within a theme. Thats not to say that these are BAD games because they are just variations on a theme, but they even at their best, they still feel like something that you've seen before.
During the 80's, you still had your share of knockoffs, but it seems like there were good games that defined their own category. I think it is that uniqueness that even the good games of today lack.
You are right about ceiling fans. I find that bulbs of all types burn out quite fast in ceiling fans. The only bulbs that last in them are bulbs marked "heavy duty" or "rough service", since they are made to handle the vibrations of a ceiling fan.
They cost more than regular bulbs but you save from not having to replace them every few weeks.
What does it say about our world when you can make the statement that marketing is a "feature" with a straight face?:-)
Dear submitter.... READ THE ARTICLE
on
Who Needs Harvard?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The article doesn't say that companies are hiring fewer Ivy Leaguers. It says that fewer "C-level" (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc) execs went to an Ivy League school as an undergrad. Also, it is not like NONE of them are Ivy grads. The percentage dropped from 14% to 10%. This is still a LARGE number when you compare the enrollment size of the Ivy's with the size of the population at large. Based on this number, Ivy schools have a disproportionate representation in the board room, relative to their size.
Based upon the erroneous conclusions of the submitter and the author of the original article, I would say that both probably attended a public college.:-)
Right on: preach it, brother. This is one of the least understood principles of modern design: machine time is significantly inferior to programmer time. Herb Brooks would be proud.
For those who don't know, Herb Brooks is the lesser known brother of famed author Fred Brooks. Herb is best known for writing the obsure tome, _The Legendary Monkey-Hour_. LMH is not as well known as older brother Fred's _Mythical Man Month_, but among primate coders, it is the bible.
Herb is also the President of the Billy Einstein Appreciation Society, a group dedicated to studying the work of the oft-forgotten sibling of Albert Einstein, who penned the Theory of Absolutitivity.
I think Yahoo Group emails would still be allowed since they are usually solicited. Normally, you only receive emails from a Yahoo Group if you explicitly sign up for them.
I find it hard to believe that the odds of a catastrophic event over a 100 year period are 1 in 455. If you extrapolate, that means that over 455 one hundred year periods (45,500 years), an event will occur that will wipe out human life on Earth. If a remember correctly, the oldest modern human (Homo Sapiens) fossils date from about 100,000 years ago. That means that since the dawn of man, the expected number of species-ending events would be two. Of course, we are still here! Based on that little back-of-the-envelope calculation, I find it hard to believe that his statistic is correct.
The scary thing is that the general public probably doesn't have the insight to recognize this statistic for what it is. Most people would take the number at face value, especially since it came from a respected member of the NASA community, and I would imagine that it could be used by some to justify policies which may not be warranted.
Don't get me wrong. I think that space exploration and colonization is a worthy cause. However, it irks me that people like Mr. Young need to use questionable scare tactics to push this agenda. It is up there with people who justify crazy things in the name of protecting children, widows, and orphans. I would much prefer an honest debate on the merits rather than all this fear mongering.
Just because CR is unbiased doesn't mean that their tests aren't subject to the type of "tweaking" that the original poster describes. If the methodology of the testing that CR uses is known by the manufacturers, then they can design their products to do well at the test. Hopefully this would have the effect of being an indicator of the overall quality of the product, but as we know, this isn't always the case.
As a hypothetical, let's say that CR judges crash-worthiness of a car using a 35 mph head on collison test. Car manufacturers which know this are going to optimize the structural integrity of the car to hold up well under this test at the expense of other types of crashs (side impact crashs, say). Another car may not perform as well in the head on test, but it may be safer over a entire universe of possible crashes. However, because it is not optimized for the CR crash test, it won't get as high a rating.
Lest you think I am putting stuff out of my butt, this situation actually occurred with respect to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Up until a few years ago, cars were generally crash tested using the head on methodology. However, the IIHS decided to start using an offset crash methodology since was more likely to occur in real life. They found the results from the offset crashes did not necessarily match the results from the head on crashes. Cars that did well in the head on tests did not do as well in the offset crash tests. Obviously manufacturers had optimized crash worthiness for the test and not for overall safety.
So where does the blame lie? I would say it lies both with the testers and the manufacturers. The testers are to blame for coming up with a test that doesn't necessarily reflect real life. Meanwhile car makers are to blame for designing products to "beat the test" rather than to be safe overall.
I think the same is true in the case of the original poster. His company isn't doing anything illegal; if the tests can be beaten so easily, then what good are they? In fact, one could argue that his company is helping in the sense that they are revealing the test's shortcoming. However, I find it hard to believe that their underlying motives are altruistic. I would guess that their motivation for tweaking their system is to beat the test for their own gain, and not for some higher moral purpose. So in a sense they are violating the spirit of the competition, in my opinion, even if what they are doing isn't wrong in the legal sense.
Funny you should mention kids doing things their parent's do...
I have a 11th month old who often watches my while I work on the computer. One day he came over and started expressing an interesting in what I was doing. I decided to give him one of my spare keyboards to "bang" on, and he immediately got to work. Now whenever I am working in the office, he wants to come in, bang on his keyboard, and work too!
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Based on the original posters description, this seems less like a LANGUAGE question, and more like a DESIGN question. I see people saying, "do it in X", where X is the language flavor of the month. The problem is that no matter what language you use, if your design isn't "fault tolerant", your application won't be fault tolerant.
.Net programming, and while there are certain constructs that do help, you have to design your application to use these constructs, and even then, it is no guarantee of stability.
I have done some work in
Here are a couple of general pieces of advice:
1. You had a good idea as far as isolating components into separate processes, and having a master application with detects failure and restarts applications. Of course, if the master application fails, or if one of your processes crashes the whole machine, you are dead in the water.
2. If you want to go further, you can isolate modules across several machines, with redundancy. If a machine goes down or gets disconnected from the network, you can have a fallover strategy that tries to use another machine.
3. If your calculation is something that can parallelized, you can have an app farm that does the calculation in a distributed fashion. If any one of the nodes fails, you can redo that node's calculation on another machine.
4. Remember all of the standard coding fundamentals that you learned in your software engineering class (high cohesion, loose coupling, only optimize code as necessary, and test the heck out of the thing).
5. Remember that fault tolerance comes at a cost. There will always be a single point of failure, whether it be the process, the machine, the power grid, etc. Decide what level of fault tolerance you can afford, and what level you can live with, and go from there.
I work for a company that has some critical machines that need near 100% uptime. In order to achieve that, the company has spent millions (if not billions) of dollars to build in as much fault tolerance as possible. Redundant data centers in different parts of the country, each with its own generators, water supply, multiple dedicated network connections, etc, etc, etc. I doubt that you need that level of redundancy. However, when you say that you need your application to be fault tolerant, keep in mind that fault tolerance isn't a yes or no checkbox - it is a scale. You need to decide how much fault tolerance you need, and design from there.
This is a pretty accurate list of "standard" questions, except for "What do you like to read?" I have never been asked this particular question, although I have been asked the more general variant "What do you like to do in your spare time?"
Also, I will add two other pieces of general interviewing advice, which may seem obvious, but which could use saying again....
If you are interviewing for a position that have a specific technical requirement, come prepared to answer some technical questions to prove that you have the knowledge. You may think that having worked with a tool or technology that you may have no need for this, but if you get used to having a manual by your side, it may be harder to recall the answers from memory. For instance, I do programming in C++ and I am pretty darn good at it, but I'll be damned if I can remember the signature of every function in the standard library. However, if I have to write a code snippet from memory in an interview, reversing the order of parameters may be perceived as a knock on my ability.
Second, ALWAYS do some research into a company before going on the interview. This helps both when you are asked the dreaded question about why you want to work there, plus you will sound intelligent when you are giving a chance to ask your own questions. With the Internet at your disposal, there is really no excuse for not doing this.
I was expecting someone to post something along the lines of "I was poor. I came from a disadvantaged background. However, I overcame it and went on to great things."
I have no doubt that there are people like yourself who are able to overcome less than ideal circumstances. Likewise, there are people who have all of the advantages in the world, and end up failing in life for whatever reason. However, I think it is fair to say that if you are born with obstacles, whether it be poverty, a poor home life, limited educational opportunities, you have to work harder to overcome those obstacles. There are some people who have the drive and determination to overcome those hurdles, like yourself. However, you are in the minority unfortunately. The majority of people tend to just go with the "path of least resistance".
If you are born in a disadvantaged state, you have to go out of your way to find the opportunties. The good thing is that the opportunities are there for those with the determination (thats one of the beauties of living in the US). However, I would say that most people tend to have inertia in the sense that if the opportunity isn't presented to them, they will not seek it out. This seems to be the rule rather than the exception, which is sad.
NOTHING is a perfect predictor of success or failure in life. However, there are trends. That's the thing about a correlation. It's rarely equal to 0 or 1. Usually it is something in between.
This is actually somewhat wrong. Judaism is indeed a religion, however Jewish people tend to marry other Jewish people, or at least have done so historically.
I would add that there are certain ethnic traits that are associated with Jews. These traits are not as universal as with other ethnicities, however, they are sometimes present. I would mention larger noses and thick curly hair.
She also could have been identified as a Jew based on her name.
It is interesting that you mention this. There are some "ethnic traits" which are associated with people who are descendants of Jews from Eastern Europe. However, they are a very weak association at best. One could easily convert to Wicca, but still retain these so called traits. Likewise, a person born into an Irish family and decide to convert to Judaism would not all of a sudden grow a "large nose". Is the Wiccan still considered Jewish in your eyes because of their so called "Jewish traits"? Is the Irishman not considered Jewish even though they lack those same traits.
Surname is an even weaker indication. In fact historically, these so-called Jewish surnames are not even Jewish at all. Jews generally named themselves using the formula "X son of Y". However, at a particular point in time, the non-Jewish authorities in the countries where the Jews lives forced Jews to take more "secular" surnames for various reasons. In fact in some countries, Jews were assigned surnames by the authorities. So the notion of a "Jewish-sounding" surname is not even accurate from a historical standpoint.
I think what has happened is that Jews in the US for the most part have come to this country from Eastern Europe, so they tend to have the names and characterics of people from those countries. Therefore, people unwittingly associate some of these traits with Jews, even though Judaism is a religion.
Judaism for some strange reason seems to be associated with traits that are normally associated with nationality or ethnicity. Usually people say "she has an Irish nose" or "he's got a Chinese name". You never hear people saying "she's got a Mormon nose" or "he's got a Taoist name".
You mention that it is because Jews generally marry Jews. Now how is this different than people of any other religion. From my observations, people will generally marry other people within their religious group (although this seems to be changing). Mormons marrying Mormons. Catholics marrying Catholics. Why don't we see Mormon traits? Why don't we see Catholic traits? Especially Mormons traits since they don't appear have the geographic and ethnic diversity of Catholics (or Jews for that matter).
Even ethnic groups which are primarily associated with a particular religion (i.e. Indians with Hinduism). You never hear someone say that person X looks Hindu. Usually you say that they look Indian.
The only other religion that I can think of that seems to be treated like an ethnicity in the US are Muslims, which is another falsehood. There are Muslims of MANY different ethnic groups (Arab, Turk, Indian, etc). They do not all belong to the same ethnic group. Likewise, not all Arabs are Muslim. There are a significant number of ethnic Arabs who are Christian.
Anyway, I have ranted on enough about this issue. Feel free to mark it as off topic since it certainly is!
I was with you all the way until you got to the tired old argument that "blacks are dumber than whites".
I think a more accurate view would be that people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to end up as programmers and engineers because of the lack of educational opportunities in those areas. That would be true of poor whites, poor blacks, poor Asians, or poor Martians. The fact is that the quality of education in this country depends on ones economic class.
I think a black kid from a upper-middle class home would be more likely to excel educationally than a poor white kid who lived in poverty.
Now it may APPEAR as if blacks are less capable academically because they, on average, might be more likely to grow up in poorer homes. However, it is important to keep in mind that CORRELATION DOES NOT INDICATE CAUSALITY. Now you would think that somebody like you who is supposedly a member of the "educational elite" would realize this, but I guess even posting on Slashdot does not necessarily indicate that one has the ability to think logically (in other words, even monkeys can click on the Submit button!)
Since Judaism is a religion and not a race or ethnicity, how would a hiring manager KNOW that a person is Jewish. I guess if the person was orthodox man, they might wear a yarmulke. Otherwise, unless you ask someone flat out during the interview (which I believe is illegal in the US), you wouldn't know for sure.
I know people of the Jewish faith, who unless they volunteered that information, you wouldn't have any way to know they are Jewish. Also, I know individuals who are of non-Jewish German or Eastern European descent who are assumed to be Jewish because of their surname or their Eastern European look.
I am currently working on a project with a team that is spread across two locations, and I find that are team is much less efficient than if we were all working in the same building together. The main reason for this is that it is much harder to collaborate on things. Normally, if a group of people need to hash out some ideas together, they get in a room with a white board, put their heads together, and usually they leave with a common understanding of the problem and the solution. However, when you need to do this type of activity with people with whom you cannot meet with face to face, this type of activity takes a lot more time and is a lot more inefficient.
Certainly, technology does help to a certain extent. We use email, phone, instant messaging/ Net Meeting, virtual whiteboard, etc. However, it seems like it is harder to convey ideas using these techniques. What ends up happening is within a site, people generally end up on common ground, but between sites is where most of the disagreements in point of view occur.
The second roadblock is that team unity and cohesion suffers. If you see someone on a regular basis and can have informal conversations with them, you can build up a lot of goodwill and trust over time. You know where the person is "coming from" and you have a better understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and point of view. However, building this type of cohesion across long distances is really hard and it takes a lot more time and effort. As we all know, teams which are "tight" and have a good working relationship are very effective, while teams that lack this often work at cross purposes.
The third roadblock is that communications and information is not propogated efficiently across sites. Sometimes, news and information are passed through informal chats with people. Sometimes I will go over to a co-workers office just to "shoot the breeze" and I will end up learning a lot about what that person is doing and about the project in general that I do not get in the formal meetings.
Based on these personal observations, it seems to me that a virtual team really needs to really need to think about how they are going to overcome these issues in order to really work.
Personally, I think, first and foremost, you need a strong manager who has experience herding cats across time zones.
Second, you need to have a strong technical lead who can set the technical vision and direction for the group, since a virutal team cannot be lead by consensus.
Third, you need to have good collaboration tools to maximize the efficiency of the communications and to try and reproduce the "bull sessions" as best as possible.
Finally, you need to be able to divide up the work so that there are as few dependencies as possible, so that people can work independently on their piece with minimal active collaboration. Obviously, there will be a need to communicate at the integration points, but if you accept the fact that virual teams will not be bale to communicate as efficiently, the need for this communication should be kept as low as possible.
I am not saying that virual teams can't work. However, they need a different style of management, a different style of organization, and they are probably best for certain type of projects.
Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parallels (no pun intended) between parallel computing and the optimal organization of virtual teams. Perhaps there is a thesis topic lurking in there somewhere!
Actually, there are a few points in your post which I do not agree with.
First, if he is just collecting some ad revenue checks from his web log, why does he need get a "business name" (i.e DBA). In my locality, filing a DBA costs a couple hundred dollars and unless you have some public-facing business where you need a catchy name, there really isn't any point. All the guy wants to do is to make sure he doesn't get in trouble with the IRS.
Second, you state:
Now, if you have a lot of purchases associated with your "business" it may make sense to talk to someone like H&R Block about trying to get deductions associated with the business. But if you aren't incurring more than a grand or two worth of expenses, then its not worth itemizing your deductions as they probably won't exceed the standard deduction.
However, this is totally wrong! Business expenses have NO RELATIONSHIP to the standard deduction. The standard deduction applies to personal deductions (like charity and mortgage interest), and not to business deductions on Schedule C. Your business expenses do not have to exceed the standard deduction in order to deduct them. Even if you have $10 worth of expenses, you can deduct that $10 from your business income. Plus, on top of that, you can take the standard deduction.
This is exactly why you should talk to someone who knows what they are talking about, rather than taking the word of me or the above poster.
I am not a professional accountant or lawyer, so take my advice for what it is worth. However, my wife owns her own business so I have some exposure to the world of self-employment.
First, you ask about getting "permits" and such. You will have to check with you locality, but where we live, you probably would not need any "permits" for what you are doing. If you wanted to register a business name, you would need to get a "permit". If you were selling merchadise, you would need to collect sales tax so you would need to register with the proper tax authorities. If you wanted to put out a sign in front of your house advertising your business to attract customers, you might need approval from the local zoning authorities. If you were doing business which had some form of government regulation (i.e selling cigarettes or alcohol), you would probably need the proper licenses.
However, if all you are doing is collecting ad revenue from a website, you probably do not need to involve "big brother". Again, you probably should check with a professional to cover your backside.
As far as taxes go, technically you have to pay taxes on what you are earning. This is especially true if the company which is paying you the ad revenue sends you a Form 1099-MISC in the mail. This means that they have reported to the IRS that they paid you for some sort of service as a non-employee.
You basically have two choices. You can either treat this income as "Income from Non-Business Activities". This means that have earned this money through some activity that you aren't actively engaged in for a profit. There may be some technical criteria for this, so you should consult for a professional for clarification. This type of income is reported as "Other Income" on Form 1040. The upside of doing this is that it is simple, plus you do not have to pay Self-Employment Tax. The downside is that you cannot take deductions for business expenses.
Your other choice is to treat this as businss income. If you go this route, you have to fill out Schedule C (or I believe there is a Schedule C-EZ which may cover your simple case). On Schedule C, you can also take deductions against your business income for expenses related to running your business. Being able to deduct these expenses can offset your income and reduce your taxes. However, you will need to have saved receipts so that if you are audited, you can substantiate your deductions to the IRS. Also, you have to know about the rules for depreciation if you want to deduct the cost of computers and such. Plus, if you use the computer for personal use, that may effect your ability to deduct.
The downside of treating this as a business is that you have to pay a self-employment tax (Scehdule SE). You can deduct 1/2 of this tax from your income on Form 1040, but it is still an extra tax that you wouldn't have to pay otherwise.
If you want to get more complicated, you can incorporate your business and then you wouldn't report your income on Schedule C. Your incorporated business would have to file its own tax forms. I do not know much about this route, but I do know that it is much more complicated - probably more complicated than what you need when you are just making a couple thousand on the side. You are subject to a lot more paperwork, rules, and regulations. Frankly, it seems like in your case, going this route is not worth the hassle.
Just to give you an example, my wife has an unincorporated consulting business. She is clearly doing this activity as a business, so we file her income on Schedule C with all of the associated benefits and drawbacks. However, she also taught a dance class at the local community school, which paid her a couple hundred bucks for her troubles. Teaching dance has nothing to do with her consulting business, and it was done for fun, and not as a money-making, for-profit activity. Therefore, we just reported it as "income from non-business activities".
Somebody mentioned estimated taxes. If the amo
Okay this is obviously a troll, but .Net is equivalent in Java in its design, which includes the requirement of a virutal machine.
.Net is the language for you. You would be better served programming your application in C or C++ (or assembler even).
If you are looking for "bare metal" optimization, then neither Java nor
Right tool for the right job, and all that jazz.
I am not a UNIX system admin so I would probably fail at your interview. However, I have no doubt that I am tech-savvy enough to be able to pick up anything that you throw at me. I am sure that your questions can probably be answered with a little research by someone who has some general technical aptitude.
If you are really as desperate as you say, maybe you would have better luck trying to find a bright person who might be able to learn what they need with a little bit of tutelage.
Obviously, the ideal candidate would be someone who has done exactly the same job as what you require for the lowest salary. However, life is rarely ideal. Sometimes you have to make due with what you are given.
One place where I agree with you is the person who calls themselves a Senior UNIX admin who doesn't know the basics. Even if that person is a smart person, they obviously cannot be trusted to be honest with you, which would disqualify them for consideration for ANY position with your company.
It seems to me that the time and energy it takes to hire the right team is at least as great as the time and energy it would take to hire individuals.
Perusing the comments, there are at least a few dozen people who have posted "hire us" comments. If you were to try and contact all of them and go through the whole interview process, you would probably take up a lot of time which you say you don't have.
My advice to you would be this:
- Hire a "name brand" company to put together a team for you. At least with a name brand you get some level of assurance without having to do as much due-diligence. I say "as much" because you would be an idiot not to do any, since you can be screwed by the big boys too!
- Find someone you can trust to assemble a team for you. Because you trust them, you probably already have a relationship with that person, so hopefully they will do right by you without you having to check them over. Of course, this may just push the problem down on the person you hire for this purpose, unless they already have a network of pros at their beck and call.
- Bite the bullet and plan to spend the time to assemble your team.
I think the biggest problem in finding people, whether they be a team or individuals, is getting the right people. If you skimp on this, then your project is doomed!
I knew someone at school who was Caucasian who came to the US from Egypt. During the height of the Political Correctness movement on campus, he wrote a letter to the school paper mocking the phrase "African-American". His point was that, technically speaking, he is more "African-American" than most people who claim the title, since he was, in fact, born on the continent of Africa (Egypt being his birthplace), but he had emigrated from there to the US.
He also asked the question as to whether he should be allowed to claim "African-American" status, since such a claim would be very beneficial in many situations (admissions, scholarships). Basically, he said that he saw nothing wrong with claiming such status for himself since he technically met the definition, despite the fact he was white.
The letter caused quite a stir among the PC crowd, and it pointed out the stupidity of such labels.
Also, I have heard people refer to anyone who is black as being "African-American" even if there are not American. Apparently, to some people, this term refers to anyone who is black, regardless of their nationality, which does not make any sense.
Finally, I have heard from people who are Latino that the term Latino/Hispanic is entirely orthogonal to race. There are "black Latinos" and "white Latinos"; however most non-Latinos fail to make this distinction.
Basically, we are all people and we should be judged as such, rather than as members of some nebulous grouping.
Actually, it seems like in my own personal experience that here in the US, the terms "college" and "university" are pretty much interchangable. I can think of many schools which are "colleges" which, other than the fact that they are called "colleges", are pretty much the same as universities: Boston College, College of Charleston, College of William and Mary, are the ones I can name off the top of my head.
One thing that I have also noticed is that some universities refer to divisions within the university as "colleges". For instance, they may have a "college of engineering", "college of arts and sciences", etc. As a side note, the aforementioned "Boston College" appears to have several divisions which they refer to as "colleges".
I have also noticed that some schools have "rebranded" themselves as "universities" in order to appear more "academic" without actually changing their programs of study. That fact alone makes me think you should not judge an institution by whether they are a "college" or a "university" (at least in the US).
I am a parent, and one thing that I try to teach my son is that sharing is a "good thing". Share your toys with a friend. Share your food with the less fortunate, etc. So he gets a warm and fuzzy feeling inside when he shares.
Now, he "shares" some of the songs he ripped from a CD or someone shares a song with him in return. Now "sharing" is a crime and it shouldn't done.
I understand that it really isn't sharing to the adult world, but to a child who has been taught that you should "share", it seems natural that it is okay to share something of yours which you bought with your own allowance.
I am not saying that it is right or wrong, but I think the "powers-that-be" need to be a little less "heavy-handed", and realize that file-sharing may be non-obvious crime to a typical young person.
I am reminded of a story that someone told me recently. A boy was three or four and saw a pile of money on the table. He didn't see it as "money" like an adult, but as just some funny pieces of paper. He took the money, not realizing its importance. The mother caught the boy with the money and punished him for "stealing". The boy protested saying that all he did wanted to do was play with the paper. Instead of explaining the significance of the paper (educating the youngster), she applied adult standards of conduct to the child. I would wager that the boy had no idea what he did wrong, because in his eyes, he was just playing with some paper which he had probably done before.
The point is that we should not assume that children know what they are doing wrong. Rather than looking to punish, we should be looking to educate and bring about understanding. Children are not small adults. They are naieve to the ways of the adult world, and anyone who expects otherwise is an idiot.
I would imagine that those at the RIAA are all child-less, because they have no common sense when it comes to these things.
I think the nature of the game industry has changed to a certain extent. Back in the day, games could be produced on a small budget, usually by one or two individuals doing everything from end to end. Game companies could take more "risks" and so there were a lot of original games. That's not to say that all of these original games were GOOD, just that there was a lot more freedom to experience with new and different concepts.
Fast forward to today... creating a typical game requires a much bigger budget and a lot more people. You have the programmers, level designers, artists, voice-over talent, composers, testers, tech writers, etc, etc. The big game companies that dominate the market can't afford to flush money down the toilet, so the games have to make money. That means playing it safe with proven concepts. EA, for instance, seems to survive by milking its proven franchises, which is safe from a sales standpoint, but it hardly results in original games.
Of course original doesnt make a game "good" and unoriginal doesnt make a game "bad", and I agree that there were A LOT of bad games in the Atari era. However, I think there was more experimentation in mainstream gaming back in the 80's, so that may be why the original poster finds that those games have more soul.
Personally, I find that today's games are mostly "variations on a theme", so to speak. There are maybe about a dozen or so basic "themes" which most games fall into, and there may be one or two tweaks to a game that differentiates a game within a theme. Thats not to say that these are BAD games because they are just variations on a theme, but they even at their best, they still feel like something that you've seen before.
During the 80's, you still had your share of knockoffs, but it seems like there were good games that defined their own category. I think it is that uniqueness that even the good games of today lack.
You are right about ceiling fans. I find that bulbs of all types burn out quite fast in ceiling fans. The only bulbs that last in them are bulbs marked "heavy duty" or "rough service", since they are made to handle the vibrations of a ceiling fan.
They cost more than regular bulbs but you save from not having to replace them every few weeks.
What does it say about our world when you can make the statement that marketing is a "feature" with a straight face? :-)
The article doesn't say that companies are hiring fewer Ivy Leaguers. It says that fewer "C-level" (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc) execs went to an Ivy League school as an undergrad. Also, it is not like NONE of them are Ivy grads. The percentage dropped from 14% to 10%. This is still a LARGE number when you compare the enrollment size of the Ivy's with the size of the population at large. Based on this number, Ivy schools have a disproportionate representation in the board room, relative to their size.
:-)
Based upon the erroneous conclusions of the submitter and the author of the original article, I would say that both probably attended a public college.
Right on: preach it, brother. This is one of the least understood principles of modern design: machine time is significantly inferior to programmer time. Herb Brooks would be proud.
For those who don't know, Herb Brooks is the lesser known brother of famed author Fred Brooks. Herb is best known for writing the obsure tome, _The Legendary Monkey-Hour_. LMH is not as well known as older brother Fred's _Mythical Man Month_, but among primate coders, it is the bible.
Herb is also the President of the Billy Einstein Appreciation Society, a group dedicated to studying the work of the oft-forgotten sibling of Albert Einstein, who penned the Theory of Absolutitivity.
I think Yahoo Group emails would still be allowed since they are usually solicited. Normally, you only receive emails from a Yahoo Group if you explicitly sign up for them.
Likewise to other ad-funded mailing lists...
With apologies to Justice Potter Stewart:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced, but I know it when I see it... "
I find it hard to believe that the odds of a catastrophic event over a 100 year period are 1 in 455. If you extrapolate, that means that over 455 one hundred year periods (45,500 years), an event will occur that will wipe out human life on Earth. If a remember correctly, the oldest modern human (Homo Sapiens) fossils date from about 100,000 years ago. That means that since the dawn of man, the expected number of species-ending events would be two. Of course, we are still here! Based on that little back-of-the-envelope calculation, I find it hard to believe that his statistic is correct.
The scary thing is that the general public probably doesn't have the insight to recognize this statistic for what it is. Most people would take the number at face value, especially since it came from a respected member of the NASA community, and I would imagine that it could be used by some to justify policies which may not be warranted.
Don't get me wrong. I think that space exploration and colonization is a worthy cause. However, it irks me that people like Mr. Young need to use questionable scare tactics to push this agenda. It is up there with people who justify crazy things in the name of protecting children, widows, and orphans. I would much prefer an honest debate on the merits rather than all this fear mongering.
Shame on you Mr. Young!
Just because CR is unbiased doesn't mean that their tests aren't subject to the type of "tweaking" that the original poster describes. If the methodology of the testing that CR uses is known by the manufacturers, then they can design their products to do well at the test. Hopefully this would have the effect of being an indicator of the overall quality of the product, but as we know, this isn't always the case.
As a hypothetical, let's say that CR judges crash-worthiness of a car using a 35 mph head on collison test. Car manufacturers which know this are going to optimize the structural integrity of the car to hold up well under this test at the expense of other types of crashs (side impact crashs, say). Another car may not perform as well in the head on test, but it may be safer over a entire universe of possible crashes. However, because it is not optimized for the CR crash test, it won't get as high a rating.
Lest you think I am putting stuff out of my butt, this situation actually occurred with respect to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Up until a few years ago, cars were generally crash tested using the head on methodology. However, the IIHS decided to start using an offset crash methodology since was more likely to occur in real life. They found the results from the offset crashes did not necessarily match the results from the head on crashes. Cars that did well in the head on tests did not do as well in the offset crash tests. Obviously manufacturers had optimized crash worthiness for the test and not for overall safety.
So where does the blame lie? I would say it lies both with the testers and the manufacturers. The testers are to blame for coming up with a test that doesn't necessarily reflect real life. Meanwhile car makers are to blame for designing products to "beat the test" rather than to be safe overall.
I think the same is true in the case of the original poster. His company isn't doing anything illegal; if the tests can be beaten so easily, then what good are they? In fact, one could argue that his company is helping in the sense that they are revealing the test's shortcoming. However, I find it hard to believe that their underlying motives are altruistic. I would guess that their motivation for tweaking their system is to beat the test for their own gain, and not for some higher moral purpose. So in a sense they are violating the spirit of the competition, in my opinion, even if what they are doing isn't wrong in the legal sense.
Funny you should mention kids doing things their parent's do...
I have a 11th month old who often watches my while I work on the computer. One day he came over and started expressing an interesting in what I was doing. I decided to give him one of my spare keyboards to "bang" on, and he immediately got to work. Now whenever I am working in the office, he wants to come in, bang on his keyboard, and work too!