I certainly hope that before we send a generational ship on a one way mission to check out one of these "Earth like" planets that isn't there, we get this right... Of course it would be a good plot for a movie.
Maybe and maybe not. There is always the chance that the firework could malfunction on it's own. Possible malfunction is one of they many reasons that in professional shows, no one gets to sit under where the fireworks are intended to go or anywhere a wind shift or malfunction may take them. I suppose if a drone collided with a mortar very close to the ground as the mortar was being launched it might alter the trajectory, but at the altitude from where the pictures were being taken, the firework has gone where it is going to go.
Acknowledged that in some smaller shows you used to be able to sit right under the fireworks and having the smoldering hunks of cardboard rain down on you. This was kind of cool, but in my experience, hasn't been an option for a long time.
Did you think about that before you wrote it? If not, take a second and think about it.
There are many, many, many things they cannot do with their site.
Within technical limitations, they can do anything they want with their site. However, some things they could do may have legal or financial consequences.
One of the things that keeps traditional aircraft pretty safe is that the pilot is inside the plane and is highly motivated not to crash. Perhaps to keep drones safe as well, we should keep the risk with the pilot -- if you crash a drone, the penalty is the same as if you were inside the plane you were remotely piloting (penalty up to and including death).
The range of penalties would of course need to be scaled to the size of the drone -- a toy quad-copter is not the same as a Predator, but the point is the legal infrastructure needs to ensure responsibility for those piloting drones. Note that I emphasized the pilot. The pilot needs to be on the hook, not the company employing the pilot, the manufacturer of the drone, or anyone else.
In the event of an outage he literally takes a mule down the face of a cliff to get to it. Places like that really do still exist in the United States, as hard as it is to believe.
Good example of a high bandwidth, high latency data transfer.
PS is worthless because, in order to do anything useful, you need to fire up visual studio. Give me a gnu userland any day.
Um... PowerShell has nothing to do with Visual Studio. In fact (among other things), PowerShell lets you easily script against the native.NET libraries without having to compile code.
I think it is more about understanding the semantics of the interview question, because being able to understand specifically what is being asked is a critical skill in programming. There is a subtle but important distinction between "How would you obtain the value for PI in your program?" and "How would you calculate PI in your program?" An excellent answer to an interview question about "calculating PI" would be a discussion about what is really being asked as such a discussion would indicate that the candidate recognizes the subtleties and also knows that questions asked of programmers are not always clear or precise. (Of course having an answer to each possible flavor or meaning of the question is a bonus.)
It is not clear why you would be trying to calculate a value that is a known constant
Because doing so was the task suggested by the parent thread as a possible interview question. A response to that suggested using a programming library to instantiate a circle object and simply extract the circumference and diameter properties from the object, apply a little math and voila. My comment was that doing so didn't count as calculating PI, rather it was just indirectly extracting the constant from some other programming library.
If I were doing the interviewing I wouldn't expect someone to know how to calculate PI, but I would expect someone to know the difference between extracting a constant from a library (directly or indirectly) and knowing the mathematical or other process for deriving the constant. I would be concerned if a candidate didn't know the definition of PI.
I agree with your comments on memorization of APIs and code being a poor indicator of a solid programmer.
Only if you could tell me to how many digits the approximation of 22/7 is accurate for during the interview. If that was your answer, I would need to further probe into how you approach problems that there is not simple shortcut for.
Instantiate a circle and get the diameter and radius then divide it out. I dont know if it would simple stop at runtime though...or how to control when it stops showing digits...anyone?
Of course then you are not actually calculating PI, you are extracting (via geometry / math) the value of PI embedded in the circle class that you probably didn't write.
Off the top of my head I have no idea how to actually calculate PI from scratch. If I get to leverage the underlying geometric or trigonometric libraries in the environment, sure; but from scratch, no. I could, of course, look it up, but the context of the interview question above didn't imply that reference material was an option.
If I were interviewing someone and asked the "calculate PI question" and they gave me the response that I gave above, I would consider it a "passing" answer. When I interview people (for programming or otherwise), I am more interested in their ability to understand and clarify the question and how they approach answering the question instead of the actual technical answer. You can look up technical references, you can't look up how to think and communicate.
Whoa, what country are you from? Blinking yellow is a yield, just like any 2 way stop intersection. When you don't have a stop sign in your direction, it is, and has always been, an implied yield. The yield signs just emphasize the point because a lot of people won't yield properly and think they own the road.
Here in the United States, in the state of Oregon, a blinking yellow is a cautionary signal, it is not a yield. Here is the driver's manual as a reference. Same rules in the state of Washington and Calfornia. I haven't checked the rest of country but to my knowledge the rules for basic traffic signals are consistent across the entire US.
Please just have a profile option that says "Don't ever change anything on the interface", ever.
If you move the blue button labeled "Compose" located in the upper left corner of the screen to the upper center of the screen, my dad won't be able to find it and he will call me and say his email is broken. If you change the color of the button, he will call me and tell me that email is broken. If you change the label from "Compose" to "New Email", he will call me and say his email is broken. If you pop up a great big dialog box on the middle of the screen that uses a bold blinking font and uses very noticeable colors, and this dialog box says "Welcome to the new mail interface, click here to learn about it.", my dad will somehow figure out how to close the dialog without reading it or the associated help and of course, he will think that email (or the Internet itself) is broken.
No, I can't just teach my dad to be more flexible. Unlike other compatibility issues as technology progresses, I can not replace or "upgrade" my dad. He is 78 years old and is not into learning new tricks. He is a smart guy and is capable off learning new things, but he is old and crotchety and complains a lot every time he has to...
Please please please remember that there is a segment of the user base that views even simple interface changes as a huge deal.
FYI: Blinking red lights mean stop, its the blinking yellow ones you treat as yield signs.
Blinking yellow means you have the right of way (and that you don't have to yield), but that you should use caution because there is potential cross traffic. The potential cross traffic does NOT have the right of way, but the blinking yellow warns your to be alert in case the cross traffic fails to yield.
They would have time to properly follow procedures, and wouldn't have long stretches of idle time (it would be like a call center - they just move from one plane to the next).
"Your safety is important to us, all remote pilots are busy right now, please remain on the line..."
In order to buy a version of TurboTax that would handle my federal and state returns, they wanted $140. I can't stand the thought of paying for the 'privelege' of filing my tax returns.
You aren't paying for the privilege of filing your tax returns; you are paying for the time you would otherwise spend researching, preparing, and filing your taxes. Was the time you spent worth the $140? (I am not saying that it was or wasn't, but the answer should be what drives your decision on if you do your taxes by hand or not.)
By the way, you should be able to purchase TurboTax for much less than $140. The "Home and Business" edition, which should cover the most complicated returns that an individual would normally need (home office deduction, stocks and options, property sales, etc) lists for $110 and can be found for about $80. If you have a simple tax situation, the even less expensive editions would suffice. Whatever the cost for tax software, the question of the software cost vs. the value of your time is what you should focus on.
Of course the question of why our tax system is so complicated that companies like TurboTax can sell software and find plenty of buyers is certainly valid.
If your UPS dies, a suspended machine is screwed just the same.
Not necessarily. Windows desktop machines can write out RAM to disk so that if power is lost during suspend, the machine can come back up to where it left off. It is basically a cross between suspend and hibernate. If power is maintained the machine comes up out of suspend almost instantly, if not it comes out of hibernate.
It is not a analog or digital issue, it is a cost issue. To be secure from remote attack you have to be willing to pay to have trusted (human) individual with a sense of what is reasonable (with respect to the process) to be in the control loop. The problem is of course that trusted humans with a sense of reason are expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
Doing so is really hard if you need to move power between grids - which you probably do.
I certainly hope that before we send a generational ship on a one way mission to check out one of these "Earth like" planets that isn't there, we get this right... Of course it would be a good plot for a movie.
Maybe and maybe not. There is always the chance that the firework could malfunction on it's own. Possible malfunction is one of they many reasons that in professional shows, no one gets to sit under where the fireworks are intended to go or anywhere a wind shift or malfunction may take them. I suppose if a drone collided with a mortar very close to the ground as the mortar was being launched it might alter the trajectory, but at the altitude from where the pictures were being taken, the firework has gone where it is going to go.
Acknowledged that in some smaller shows you used to be able to sit right under the fireworks and having the smoldering hunks of cardboard rain down on you. This was kind of cool, but in my experience, hasn't been an option for a long time.
They can do whatever they want, it's their site.
Did you think about that before you wrote it? If not, take a second and think about it.
There are many, many, many things they cannot do with their site.
Within technical limitations, they can do anything they want with their site. However, some things they could do may have legal or financial consequences.
One of the things that keeps traditional aircraft pretty safe is that the pilot is inside the plane and is highly motivated not to crash. Perhaps to keep drones safe as well, we should keep the risk with the pilot -- if you crash a drone, the penalty is the same as if you were inside the plane you were remotely piloting (penalty up to and including death).
The range of penalties would of course need to be scaled to the size of the drone -- a toy quad-copter is not the same as a Predator, but the point is the legal infrastructure needs to ensure responsibility for those piloting drones. Note that I emphasized the pilot. The pilot needs to be on the hook, not the company employing the pilot, the manufacturer of the drone, or anyone else.
Think of the fun that could be had with this. Fits in the same socket and does who knows what.
In the event of an outage he literally takes a mule down the face of a cliff to get to it. Places like that really do still exist in the United States, as hard as it is to believe.
Good example of a high bandwidth, high latency data transfer.
Web browsers should at this point be able to parse some sort of bytecode that can be translated to native.
You mean like Java Web Start or .Net Click Once?
As long as internal car data bus allows me to tie the sound system to the suspension system so I can bounce with the music down the road.
Powershell is worthless. HyperV is great.
PS is worthless because, in order to do anything useful, you need to fire up visual studio. Give me a gnu userland any day.
Um... PowerShell has nothing to do with Visual Studio. In fact (among other things), PowerShell lets you easily script against the native .NET libraries without having to compile code.
Is this a patentable business model?
Prior art: New Coke.
I think it is more about understanding the semantics of the interview question, because being able to understand specifically what is being asked is a critical skill in programming. There is a subtle but important distinction between "How would you obtain the value for PI in your program?" and "How would you calculate PI in your program?" An excellent answer to an interview question about "calculating PI" would be a discussion about what is really being asked as such a discussion would indicate that the candidate recognizes the subtleties and also knows that questions asked of programmers are not always clear or precise. (Of course having an answer to each possible flavor or meaning of the question is a bonus.)
It is not clear why you would be trying to calculate a value that is a known constant
Because doing so was the task suggested by the parent thread as a possible interview question. A response to that suggested using a programming library to instantiate a circle object and simply extract the circumference and diameter properties from the object, apply a little math and voila. My comment was that doing so didn't count as calculating PI, rather it was just indirectly extracting the constant from some other programming library.
If I were doing the interviewing I wouldn't expect someone to know how to calculate PI, but I would expect someone to know the difference between extracting a constant from a library (directly or indirectly) and knowing the mathematical or other process for deriving the constant. I would be concerned if a candidate didn't know the definition of PI.
I agree with your comments on memorization of APIs and code being a poor indicator of a solid programmer.
Only if you could tell me to how many digits the approximation of 22/7 is accurate for during the interview. If that was your answer, I would need to further probe into how you approach problems that there is not simple shortcut for.
Instantiate a circle and get the diameter and radius then divide it out. I dont know if it would simple stop at runtime though...or how to control when it stops showing digits...anyone?
Of course then you are not actually calculating PI, you are extracting (via geometry / math) the value of PI embedded in the circle class that you probably didn't write.
Off the top of my head I have no idea how to actually calculate PI from scratch. If I get to leverage the underlying geometric or trigonometric libraries in the environment, sure; but from scratch, no. I could, of course, look it up, but the context of the interview question above didn't imply that reference material was an option.
If I were interviewing someone and asked the "calculate PI question" and they gave me the response that I gave above, I would consider it a "passing" answer. When I interview people (for programming or otherwise), I am more interested in their ability to understand and clarify the question and how they approach answering the question instead of the actual technical answer. You can look up technical references, you can't look up how to think and communicate.
Whoa, what country are you from? Blinking yellow is a yield, just like any 2 way stop intersection. When you don't have a stop sign in your direction, it is, and has always been, an implied yield. The yield signs just emphasize the point because a lot of people won't yield properly and think they own the road.
Here in the United States, in the state of Oregon, a blinking yellow is a cautionary signal, it is not a yield. Here is the driver's manual as a reference. Same rules in the state of Washington and Calfornia. I haven't checked the rest of country but to my knowledge the rules for basic traffic signals are consistent across the entire US.
Where are you from where this is not the case?
Please just have a profile option that says "Don't ever change anything on the interface", ever.
If you move the blue button labeled "Compose" located in the upper left corner of the screen to the upper center of the screen, my dad won't be able to find it and he will call me and say his email is broken. If you change the color of the button, he will call me and tell me that email is broken. If you change the label from "Compose" to "New Email", he will call me and say his email is broken. If you pop up a great big dialog box on the middle of the screen that uses a bold blinking font and uses very noticeable colors, and this dialog box says "Welcome to the new mail interface, click here to learn about it.", my dad will somehow figure out how to close the dialog without reading it or the associated help and of course, he will think that email (or the Internet itself) is broken.
No, I can't just teach my dad to be more flexible. Unlike other compatibility issues as technology progresses, I can not replace or "upgrade" my dad. He is 78 years old and is not into learning new tricks. He is a smart guy and is capable off learning new things, but he is old and crotchety and complains a lot every time he has to...
Please please please remember that there is a segment of the user base that views even simple interface changes as a huge deal.
How about even simpler? Cyclists follow the same rules as drivers of cars or any other vehicle type on the road.
FYI: Blinking red lights mean stop, its the blinking yellow ones you treat as yield signs.
Blinking yellow means you have the right of way (and that you don't have to yield), but that you should use caution because there is potential cross traffic. The potential cross traffic does NOT have the right of way, but the blinking yellow warns your to be alert in case the cross traffic fails to yield.
When I play rock, paper, scissors with someone, we just play once unless it's a tie, so there are no patterns.
If you play to the death there are no patterns either.
They would have time to properly follow procedures, and wouldn't have long stretches of idle time (it would be like a call center - they just move from one plane to the next).
"Your safety is important to us, all remote pilots are busy right now, please remain on the line..."
In order to buy a version of TurboTax that would handle my federal and state returns, they wanted $140. I can't stand the thought of paying for the 'privelege' of filing my tax returns.
You aren't paying for the privilege of filing your tax returns; you are paying for the time you would otherwise spend researching, preparing, and filing your taxes. Was the time you spent worth the $140? (I am not saying that it was or wasn't, but the answer should be what drives your decision on if you do your taxes by hand or not.)
By the way, you should be able to purchase TurboTax for much less than $140. The "Home and Business" edition, which should cover the most complicated returns that an individual would normally need (home office deduction, stocks and options, property sales, etc) lists for $110 and can be found for about $80. If you have a simple tax situation, the even less expensive editions would suffice. Whatever the cost for tax software, the question of the software cost vs. the value of your time is what you should focus on.
Of course the question of why our tax system is so complicated that companies like TurboTax can sell software and find plenty of buyers is certainly valid.
If your UPS dies, a suspended machine is screwed just the same.
Not necessarily. Windows desktop machines can write out RAM to disk so that if power is lost during suspend, the machine can come back up to where it left off. It is basically a cross between suspend and hibernate. If power is maintained the machine comes up out of suspend almost instantly, if not it comes out of hibernate.
It is not a analog or digital issue, it is a cost issue. To be secure from remote attack you have to be willing to pay to have trusted (human) individual with a sense of what is reasonable (with respect to the process) to be in the control loop. The problem is of course that trusted humans with a sense of reason are expensive.
If you can't complete, purchase. Then you can either absorb or eliminate.