This has got to be one of the oldest cliches in the book... matter of fact I've heard plenty of Microsoft interviewing stories and they always seem to turn on some goofy cliche of a technique that, once you know it, seems obvious, and if you don't, seems impenetrable.
These are the computing equivalents of the sorts of tricks you keep on hand for bar bets...
You know, it's really hard to hire people. but testing them on recall of something out of the CS Grad's Standard Toolkit is perfectly fine, if you want to know if they're loaded and ready to roll, but it's kind of a dumb way to figure out if you'd want to hire them. Three questions of this nature and that's it? I'd be insulted.
spoiler alert, but oh my god this is one of the oldies...
It would have been nice if the article actually said something about the operating systems. This reads like a 4th grade book report.
Cliff Notes version: "There are many operating systems. Some are very popular and I can name them. Others are less popular (and legacy in some cases). And there is a whole flock of "hobbyist" operating systems that are the point of this article, but I've got no substantive information about them, such as why you might want to check into them. But I do know the names!"
That was not a reference to the Intel decision. I don't care what's in the box. That was a comment about 15 years of living with the Apple company and the Apple products, in three roles: user, vendor and developer.
The company has an incredible arrogance toward those who give it money and support it. Unlike some apologists, I do not believe this arrogance is fundamental to making the Apple product what it is. Because of the company's conduct, if something that worked better came along, I would switch to it. I see no reason to pledge blind allegiance to a company that tosses customers around the way Apple does.
I will leave you with just one example, but there are many others: after replacing laptop batteries under Applecare for amny customers, Apple one day decided it would no longer replace failed laptop batteries under AppleCare. This change even applied to customers who had pre-existing Applecare contracts, and even those whose batteries had already been replaced under AppleCare. The AppleCare contract in fact says that Apple can make these whimsical changes whenever it feels the urge - and so isn't much of a fair contract. Many people were burned by this.
However I do not consider it slick and now am wondering if i have been using the wrong equipment to run my life for 15 years cuz i don't want a slick computer. I only want a computer that stays the hell out of my way. that's all.
In consideration of the alternatives, the OS/x interface and user experience are cleaner, better engineered and less demanding of "management" from day to day.
If an alternative existed that was more clean, even better engineered, and even less demanding of management, I would switch to that.
I like the results of Apple engineering, but frankly, I have feel nothing but bitterness toward the company. They happen to have a pretty good product in a world that is full of broken stuff, but they interpret that as a reason to gloat and cheer and stomp down their own customers time and again. I don't much care for that. It's one thing to be the best and wonderful at the same time, and a bit different to be the best amid a field of half-assed stuff that doesn't work very well much of the time.
Developers write to the OS and API provided by the OS, not to the CPU.
Why will it make any difference at all if developers are telling their compilers to compile for x86 or PPC? The application-level code still has to be dealt with, and the CPU isn't even visible to most developers writing most applications, particularly the critical-mass open source stuff that the "masses" would have to adopt to make this turnabout happen.
I'm not happy with the Apple decision, but for reasons other than these.
The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet. 'Remove' IE (and I guess you don't mean remove 'just the GUI') would cripple a great many programs out there.
Why, back where I come from, we used to call that a "library" and it wasn't something we'd keep all warm and idling and share-y. Back in the day, every app could load up its own copy - they ain't so darned big that it matters a whole lot - and everyone goes away happy. This whole IE approach of tryin' to lash application code to this newfangled live executing library-like-but-not code reminds me of the time Poppa Burke was down at the mill and thought we oughta try to power the grinders from the engine on that old junk Chevy he kept settin' out around back. Sure it looked like a good idea, but when he got outta the hospital later that year, he admitted it didn't make no more sense than what yer talkin' about with this IE and "helper objects" and "registry" and stuff. Me? I'm a simple kind a feller and I'll settle for muh libraries the old fashioned way, thank you very much.
Re:Zzzzzz. Wake me up
on
Open source Java?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Cuz then those of us who use Java on Mac OS/X might finally have a faint chance of timely access to new Java releases, and JREs that aren't threaded thru with tripwires and platform-specific bugs that don't seem to be fixed very quickly.
If the company has any money at all, and you have any time at all, you can be paid and so on...
1) If the check is due and does not come, you can write your own demand letter. Opinions and accusations are not needed. Just send a note saying that you need your final check by ___ (date) which should be maybe 1 to 2 weeks after the due date, if you want to be generous. Don't send it "certified" (that's expensive and unnecessary). Send it by Prioirity Mail ($3.89) and be sure to add "signature confirmation" to the delivery specs.
2) If he doesn't pay:
a) File in the local small claims court for the full amount expected plus the small claims filing fee, plus interest (won't be much but add it)
b) Report the employer to whatever state agency regulates companies and employers. One such agency is always the Secretary of State, that handles the official-ness of business entities, but there is probably also a sort of board that regulates the conduct of businesses.
Nikon has tried over and over again to become a software company, and have always had some kind of oddly factored utilities or upgrades as well as other necessities that could be purchased. And they've always tightly controlled the software and access to their gear from all platforms, leading in the past to annoying delays for e.g. Macintosh users.
Unlike the hardware, their software in the past has never been excellent, always a bit awkward to use, always a little bit oddly integrated, mysterious installers, etc. Canon is not different in this regard, however... anyone who has installed Canon's printer drivers for the simplest inkjet certainly knows this.
You are correct that they are not a software company. But Nikon itself has never understood this.
Well, this is certainly an ironic twist. Adobe should have lost its right to complain about the DMCA when it created the Dmitry Sklyarov incident, creating the first and still most ominous DMCA-related precedent for the use of criminal charges for what are fundamentally business problems and civil matters...
Adobe CREATED this and now wants protection from it. That's kinda funny. I don't care so much about white balance. The other issue in this matter is much more interesting.
Actually, WordPerfect, as they told it, got a major screwing-over from Microsoft in conjunction with some "confusion" over the future of OS/2.
The story was that WP was told that OS/2 was it, Windows was a transitional product. And WPCorp put all its resources into developing a new GUI version of WordPerfect for that operating system... well into the process, the famous MSFT/IBM tiff occurred, MSFT announced Windows was the future, and oh by the way, we also have a great new graphical word processor for it, Word for Windows 1.0! That was the beginning of WPCorp's troubles, and also they weren't too happy about they way they'd been played.
The significant difference is the application of this sort of technology allows speculative monitoring of large numbers of people.
In the case of "a human (plainclothes cop)" a really serious decision needs to be made about whether to devote resources to following someone around. With technologies such as these, many people can be "followed around" without much discretion on the part of the police. This is the monitoring analogue of the copyright problem... that being that real-world limitations were sufficient to provide a measure of balance and moderation. Cheap technologies have removed those real-world limitations. Those of us who worry about these issues do so because they do absolutely represent a change in our world that is not always recognized as such (as in the post to which I am replying now).
At my local main post office downtown, the workers like to stand by the machine and "help" the hapless public that apparently cannot use a self-service kiosk by itself. Thus, this machine in particular must have thousands of portraits of the post office staff.
The idea of "buying time" is kind of interesting. I guess it would only apply if you really think that two algorithms are both vulnerable, and you don't know which is weaker.
I think there is also an underlying premise that the crypto algorithms in common use today aren't going to be "lost" suddenly due to some unexpected development.
Intuitutively, yes, and i'm just pulling this out of the air here cuz i'm supposed to be working on something else, but solve a slightly different problem.
If you are concerned that the result-space of a hash algorithm is going to lead to collisions (this is not an ordinary concern because the algorithms claim to have dealt with this for us already) then using two very different hash functions in concert will definitely expand the range of possible results and reduce the probability of collisions by Asize * Bsize.
If however you are concerned about bad guys faking things up, then there is a slightly different problem...
A == MD5 B == SHA
Hashing to both A and B yields a huge range of results. However, if A known or suspected to be broken, then you're down to the security provided by B. A is out of the picture.
If A can be tossed then, then you're totally reliant on B for a safe hash. If that's true, then you didn't need A at all and you'd better be confident that B is gonna do what you need it to do, cuz A don't dance.
The logic derives from the concept of a "right to be let alone" as voiced by US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States (1928), 277 U.S. 438, 478.
In that case the Supreme Court was of course ruling on the _government's_ ability to intrude on private lives, not private companies' actions... but in practice the concept certainly is not confined, nor should it be, to government actors.
To put it another way, the right to speak does NOT guarantee a right to be heard and does not imply an obligation on anyone to listen.
This is an old commentary, but i'll clarify with what I should have written originally, which is that I can't really stand up and cheer for a consumer products engineer who doesn't even use his own stuff if it's plainly within reason that he *could* use it, as would be the case with the comment to which I was replying.
And i never said you've got to use *all* of it. iirc the original posted said he never used *any* of it.
that's vaguely interesting, but I can't really stand up and cheer for an engineer who doesn't even use his own stuff.
As for the Palm guys who just completed a roadshow - I attended - they all had the devices, and obviously were using them for day to day living. The demos given by the Palm staff were all from personal devices containing personal address books, numbers, etc (to the extent that a friend and I were questioning whether that was a good idea!).
So, to the extent that they can, the company does seem to use its own products.
Internet years are even shorter than cat years... 17 years of computer technology/software/process IS a lifetime or two...
I'm surprised you can't see that.
NOTHING about many of these patents has the first thing to do with "creating a market". Not a bit, in many cases. Have you ever read patents seriously? I have. Hundreds and hundreds. Incredible tripe. Trivial. patenting the obvious. They're a hair shy of patenting every dream, hallucination and cocktail napkin sketch, on the "just in case IP grabbing plan".
This is not what the patent system was created for.
I'm not posting as AC... i just don't see how this can be read as anything but a puff piece. He's looking for support for his project and daggone if it doesn't sound like they're trying to structure a masters program that suits the needs of CA more than the needs of the students.
A masters program at a serious university is not supposed to be a pre-employment technology program. Hmm, this is really weird.
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This has got to be one of the oldest cliches in the book... matter of fact I've heard plenty of Microsoft interviewing stories and they always seem to turn on some goofy cliche of a technique that, once you know it, seems obvious, and if you don't, seems impenetrable.
These are the computing equivalents of the sorts of tricks you keep on hand for bar bets...
You know, it's really hard to hire people. but testing them on recall of something out of the CS Grad's Standard Toolkit is perfectly fine, if you want to know if they're loaded and ready to roll, but it's kind of a dumb way to figure out if you'd want to hire them. Three questions of this nature and that's it? I'd be insulted.
spoiler alert, but oh my god this is one of the oldies...
bitwise:
A = A xor B
B = A xor B
A = A xor B
and you've swapped the values.
Wikipedia entry
It would have been nice if the article actually said something about the operating systems. This reads like a 4th grade book report.
Cliff Notes version:
"There are many operating systems. Some are very popular and I can name them. Others are less popular (and legacy in some cases). And there is a whole flock of "hobbyist" operating systems that are the point of this article, but I've got no substantive information about them, such as why you might want to check into them. But I do know the names!"
That was not a reference to the Intel decision. I don't care what's in the box. That was a comment about 15 years of living with the Apple company and the Apple products, in three roles: user, vendor and developer.
The company has an incredible arrogance toward those who give it money and support it. Unlike some apologists, I do not believe this arrogance is fundamental to making the Apple product what it is. Because of the company's conduct, if something that worked better came along, I would switch to it. I see no reason to pledge blind allegiance to a company that tosses customers around the way Apple does.
I will leave you with just one example, but there are many others: after replacing laptop batteries under Applecare for amny customers, Apple one day decided it would no longer replace failed laptop batteries under AppleCare. This change even applied to customers who had pre-existing Applecare contracts, and even those whose batteries had already been replaced under AppleCare. The AppleCare contract in fact says that Apple can make these whimsical changes whenever it feels the urge - and so isn't much of a fair contract. Many people were burned by this.
I own an OS/X computer.
However I do not consider it slick and now am wondering if i have been using the wrong equipment to run my life for 15 years cuz i don't want a slick computer. I only want a computer that stays the hell out of my way. that's all.
In consideration of the alternatives, the OS/x interface and user experience are cleaner, better engineered and less demanding of "management" from day to day.
If an alternative existed that was more clean, even better engineered, and even less demanding of management, I would switch to that.
I like the results of Apple engineering, but frankly, I have feel nothing but bitterness toward the company. They happen to have a pretty good product in a world that is full of broken stuff, but they interpret that as a reason to gloat and cheer and stomp down their own customers time and again. I don't much care for that. It's one thing to be the best and wonderful at the same time, and a bit different to be the best amid a field of half-assed stuff that doesn't work very well much of the time.
Developers write to the OS and API provided by the OS, not to the CPU.
Why will it make any difference at all if developers are telling their compilers to compile for x86 or PPC? The application-level code still has to be dealt with, and the CPU isn't even visible to most developers writing most applications, particularly the critical-mass open source stuff that the "masses" would have to adopt to make this turnabout happen.
I'm not happy with the Apple decision, but for reasons other than these.
The reason its 'part of the OS' is that the back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel) to connect to the internet. 'Remove' IE (and I guess you don't mean remove 'just the GUI') would cripple a great many programs out there.
Why, back where I come from, we used to call that a "library" and it wasn't something we'd keep all warm and idling and share-y. Back in the day, every app could load up its own copy - they ain't so darned big that it matters a whole lot - and everyone goes away happy. This whole IE approach of tryin' to lash application code to this newfangled live executing library-like-but-not code reminds me of the time Poppa Burke was down at the mill and thought we oughta try to power the grinders from the engine on that old junk Chevy he kept settin' out around back. Sure it looked like a good idea, but when he got outta the hospital later that year, he admitted it didn't make no more sense than what yer talkin' about with this IE and "helper objects" and "registry" and stuff. Me? I'm a simple kind a feller and I'll settle for muh libraries the old fashioned way, thank you very much.
Cuz then those of us who use Java on Mac OS/X might finally have a faint chance of timely access to new Java releases, and JREs that aren't threaded thru with tripwires and platform-specific bugs that don't seem to be fixed very quickly.
If the company has any money at all, and you have any time at all, you can be paid and so on...
1) If the check is due and does not come, you can write your own demand letter. Opinions and accusations are not needed. Just send a note saying that you need your final check by ___ (date) which should be maybe 1 to 2 weeks after the due date, if you want to be generous. Don't send it "certified" (that's expensive and unnecessary). Send it by Prioirity Mail ($3.89) and be sure to add "signature confirmation" to the delivery specs.
2) If he doesn't pay:
a) File in the local small claims court for the full amount expected plus the small claims filing fee, plus interest (won't be much but add it)
b) Report the employer to whatever state agency regulates companies and employers. One such agency is always the Secretary of State, that handles the official-ness of business entities, but there is probably also a sort of board that regulates the conduct of businesses.
And they could not have practices that leap for 17 years if the Kodak patents were written properly...
And a patent would have yielded 17 years of protection, rather than 9. Bad call on Kodak's part.
Nikon has tried over and over again to become a software company, and have always had some kind of oddly factored utilities or upgrades as well as other necessities that could be purchased. And they've always tightly controlled the software and access to their gear from all platforms, leading in the past to annoying delays for e.g. Macintosh users.
Unlike the hardware, their software in the past has never been excellent, always a bit awkward to use, always a little bit oddly integrated, mysterious installers, etc. Canon is not different in this regard, however... anyone who has installed Canon's printer drivers for the simplest inkjet certainly knows this.
You are correct that they are not a software company. But Nikon itself has never understood this.
Well, this is certainly an ironic twist. Adobe should have lost its right to complain about the DMCA when it created the Dmitry Sklyarov incident, creating the first and still most ominous DMCA-related precedent for the use of criminal charges for what are fundamentally business problems and civil matters...
Adobe CREATED this and now wants protection from it. That's kinda funny. I don't care so much about white balance. The other issue in this matter is much more interesting.
Actually, WordPerfect, as they told it, got a major screwing-over from Microsoft in conjunction with some "confusion" over the future of OS/2.
The story was that WP was told that OS/2 was it, Windows was a transitional product. And WPCorp put all its resources into developing a new GUI version of WordPerfect for that operating system... well into the process, the famous MSFT/IBM tiff occurred, MSFT announced Windows was the future, and oh by the way, we also have a great new graphical word processor for it, Word for Windows 1.0! That was the beginning of WPCorp's troubles, and also they weren't too happy about they way they'd been played.
The significant difference is the application of this sort of technology allows speculative monitoring of large numbers of people.
In the case of "a human (plainclothes cop)" a really serious decision needs to be made about whether to devote resources to following someone around. With technologies such as these, many people can be "followed around" without much discretion on the part of the police. This is the monitoring analogue of the copyright problem... that being that real-world limitations were sufficient to provide a measure of balance and moderation. Cheap technologies have removed those real-world limitations. Those of us who worry about these issues do so because they do absolutely represent a change in our world that is not always recognized as such (as in the post to which I am replying now).
At my local main post office downtown, the workers like to stand by the machine and "help" the hapless public that apparently cannot use a self-service kiosk by itself. Thus, this machine in particular must have thousands of portraits of the post office staff.
The idea of "buying time" is kind of interesting. I guess it would only apply if you really think that two algorithms are both vulnerable, and you don't know which is weaker.
I think there is also an underlying premise that the crypto algorithms in common use today aren't going to be "lost" suddenly due to some unexpected development.
Intuitutively, yes, and i'm just pulling this out of the air here cuz i'm supposed to be working on something else, but solve a slightly different problem.
If you are concerned that the result-space of a hash algorithm is going to lead to collisions (this is not an ordinary concern because the algorithms claim to have dealt with this for us already) then using two very different hash functions in concert will definitely expand the range of possible results and reduce the probability of collisions by Asize * Bsize.
If however you are concerned about bad guys faking things up, then there is a slightly different problem...
A == MD5
B == SHA
Hashing to both A and B yields a huge range of results.
However, if A known or suspected to be broken, then you're down to the security provided by B. A is out of the picture.
If A can be tossed then, then you're totally reliant on B for a safe hash. If that's true, then you didn't need A at all and you'd better be confident that B is gonna do what you need it to do, cuz A don't dance.
Note to experts: Please do not grade harshly.
The logic derives from the concept of a "right to be let alone" as voiced by US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States (1928), 277 U.S. 438, 478.
In that case the Supreme Court was of course ruling on the _government's_ ability to intrude on private lives, not private companies' actions... but in practice the concept certainly is not confined, nor should it be, to government actors.
To put it another way, the right to speak does NOT guarantee a right to be heard and does not imply an obligation on anyone to listen.
This is an old commentary, but i'll clarify with what I should have written originally, which is that I can't really stand up and cheer for a consumer products engineer who doesn't even use his own stuff if it's plainly within reason that he *could* use it, as would be the case with the comment to which I was replying.
And i never said you've got to use *all* of it. iirc the original posted said he never used *any* of it.
Commercial speech does not have the ordinary "First amendement protections" afforded to other speech.
that's vaguely interesting, but I can't really stand up and cheer for an engineer who doesn't even use his own stuff.
As for the Palm guys who just completed a roadshow - I attended - they all had the devices, and obviously were using them for day to day living. The demos given by the Palm staff were all from personal devices containing personal address books, numbers, etc (to the extent that a friend and I were questioning whether that was a good idea!).
So, to the extent that they can, the company does seem to use its own products.
also it is apparently the slowest digital photograph in the world!
Internet years are even shorter than cat years... 17 years of computer technology/software/process IS a lifetime or two...
I'm surprised you can't see that.
NOTHING about many of these patents has the first thing to do with "creating a market". Not a bit, in many cases. Have you ever read patents seriously? I have. Hundreds and hundreds. Incredible tripe. Trivial. patenting the obvious. They're a hair shy of patenting every dream, hallucination and cocktail napkin sketch, on the "just in case IP grabbing plan".
This is not what the patent system was created for.
are you a troll? Let me know first before i waste time writing a reply. Thanks!
I'm not posting as AC... i just don't see how this can be read as anything but a puff piece. He's looking for support for his project and daggone if it doesn't sound like they're trying to structure a masters program that suits the needs of CA more than the needs of the students.
A masters program at a serious university is not supposed to be a pre-employment technology program. Hmm, this is really weird.