no they don't. Many people around here make around $30,000 starting salary. I don't think that's a lot of money for a professional field.
If you're trying to use numbers from big cities, consider cost of living. In my case, I live in Ann Arbor, MI. Apartments in remotely decent areas around here cost $900 a month. My first job out of college, I made $15 an hour. It wasn't even salary for the first 9 months. My next employer paid new guys $32,000 a year starting out of college.
Yeah, you can make $100,000 in california but it also costs 60% more to live there too.
A 300% increase in salary for a 60% increase in living expenses. Sounds like a no-brainer to me. Going to california, I am, brother. Hope to meet some gentle people there.
Musing aside, I still stand by my original belief that if one is good at her job and is willing to work hard, there's money to be made, respect to be had, and happiness to be enjoyed. Yeah, you can join finance and count your money and pretend to be a leet trader by drinking single malts and what not, but if you're doing it only for the money, you're missing out, man.
Oh yeah, one more thing. In today's world, you have to be willing to relocate.
It can even be argued that a copy is even more valuable than the original, because it's easier to use on whatever device I prefer due to lack of DRM.
Really? So if you delete the digital copy, you actually lose more value than if you destroy the original?
What if you make a hundred digital copies, and then delete them? OH MY GOD, you've just lost, like, thousands of dollars!
Don't be inane. When you refer to the "original" you are really talking about the master studio copy of the performance. _Everything_ else is a copy.
Since you appear to need it spelled out, the value is in the entertainment and enjoyment provided by the copy. I think I can put this in simpler terms.
Two people wish to be entertained for two and a half minutes. They both inexplicably love Sanjaya. Person A buys a track from Google Music. Person B copies the track from person A. They both independently listen to the music and are entertained. They have both received _value_. Person A paid $1 to receive that value. Person B paid nothing. One of them is an entitled little shit. Guess which one?
The only reason your argument *sounds* correct is because you have dumbed down this complex problem way too much. Please consider the following usage cases - using your above example: 1. If person A wants to listen to Sanjaya twice, i.e. she wants to be entertained for 5 minutes, not 2.5; should she pay more? 2. If person A listens to Sanjaya along with family or friends, should she pay more? 3. If person A plays the song in her restaurant, should she pay more? 4. If person A creates a personal copy of the song and plays the song on 2 different media devices, should she pay more? 5. If person A sells her song to person C and deletes her personal copy, should she pay more? 6. If person A rents her song to someone else (only one person at a time), should she pay more? 7. If person A rents her song to someone else (multiple people at the same time), should she pay more? 8a. If person A decides to do all of the above but with a much lower quality/bitrate copy, does that change anything? 8b. Alternately, if person B copies a low bitrate version of the song, is she still an entitled little shit? 9. If for some reason, person A loses her song or the song gets corrupted or deleted, should she be able to download it again for free? 10. If person B paid 1 cent to person A with the understanding that she will only listen to the song once in the next 24 hours and then will delete it, and honored the agreement, is she still an entitled little shit?
I'm quite sure I haven't covered all possible usage cases - the above are only some naive ones that I can think of. Even so, I personally cannot think of satisfactory answers that sound ethical and economically fair to both the content creator and the content consumer. I suspect that the correct workable answer would be more reasonable than fair, more practical and just, and would lie somewhere in the middle of the two polar stances that people.are taking on this subject.
An who the hell are you to determine when someone can use their phone? Buses/trains are not bedrooms, sleep in your bed, not on the bus. Don't like someone talking, wear earplugs. If you haven't noticed buses/trains are not the quietest places and phone feedback makes it easy to think your not speaking loud enough. Buses and trains are public congregation points like any other and people have the freedom to speak/entertain themselves as they please. Don't like it, drive your own car. Personally, I hope these jamming pricks run into people with detectors, and forget jail just a good ass whipping should do and then a technology ban.
Aggressive in-your-face "i do what i want" behavior only works if you manage to pull it off without being a jerk to others. What if a guy sitting next to you was coming back from a soccer game and blew a compressed air 120db horn next to your ear? What if someone on the train spat in your face when talking to their neighbor or dropped mustard in your lap while eating a sandwitch and didn't even apologize?
Don't like it? Drive your own damn car. It's easy to have a tough attitude about personal liberty. Difficult when you are facing the brunt of it.
And yes, someone talking for a few minutes on the phone and trying to keep their voice low in a crowded train is one thing. Someone talking very loudly for a couple of hours in a crowded train is completely another thing. There's no rule book for this - the assumption is that as a citizen of society, you would be considerate to others and learn how to co-exist without getting into a fistfight every day. Unfortunately, so many people nowadays are so self-absorbed and grow up with a sense of entitlement, they're forgotten how to be a gentle human being (without necessarily being a pushover). Or they turn their nose at the concept.
Oh, I hate to resort to this, but here goes a car analogy.
To be a driver, you don't need to know how a car works. To be a good driver, you do. To be able to take advantage of facets of driving and handling, you have to understand how the rubber meets the road and all that.
Actually, I would argue that your analogy is incorrect. To be a good driver, you need to know: a. how to control your car really well under different conditions b. and you need to know the rules of the road really well
You really don't need to know how your car works, at least not in great detail. Meaning, you need to know how to fill gas and do basic maintenance, but you really don't need to know what's under the bonnett.
The reason I am getting a bit pedantic on this is to point out the fact that in today's age, it is more important for a newbie to know how browsers work, how internet protocols work, how the internet is structured and how information flows in general. It is becoming less important to know how your computer internals work. The internals have been commoditized to the extent that it is unnecessary to know how your microprocessor and your motherboard works, just as you don't need to know how your phone works in order to make a call or even to do something complex like manage your address book in your phone.
CNG or Compressed Natural Gas vehicles are quite common in India. It started out a decade ago when the big cities in India started converting buses to run on CNG instead of diesel to curb pollution. Then, taxis got converted. Now, you can get your private vehicle fitted with a CNG conversion kit or you can directly buy a CNG version of your car from the manufacturer. I haven't driven one myself, but have spoken to lots of cab drivers. Even if you ignore the environmental benefits, the running cost of CNG is less than half of diesel or gasoline.
The other take on this is to have more power generation plants use CNG instead of coal. I find it highly inefficient to transport energy chemically instead of electrically. If you were developing software, this is how you would abstract your layers. Human beings suck at change. The only time we refactor anything in our lives is if we are forced to do it - like a war or an economic crisis or something similar.
Taking builk testing responsibilities off developers so they can work on more important stuff.
Not quite. Developers often make poor testers. Software tends to get debugged and tuned for the way developers use the software, which is not necessarily how others (in particular customers) will use the software. How many developers have written a piece of code, tested it conscientiously themselves, presented it to others expecting no problems, and watched these other folks find serious bugs within minutes?
Having dedicated testers between developers and customers yields better products, even when the developers take testing seriously.
Actually, that is not necessarily true. I get what you are trying to say, but you seem to gloss over the differences between QA, manual tester, and what the OP was referring to: Software Test Engineer.
To highlight some of the differences:
QA is responsible for "assuring quality". This is different from QC which is "checking quality". More often than not, a good QA is a process expert, with the assumption being that good processes ensure good quality. Their goal is to avoid the problem, not to detect the problem or fix the problem. Where the line gets blurred is the fact that a QA often performs the role of a manual tester. This usually depends on the size of the team.
Manual testing is usually QC - understanding what to test, how to test, and going ahead and testing it. They start off by translating the requirement specification (or user stories if you are agile) into a suite of test cases, add other test cases that might be non-functional or regression related, and finally test the system manually every time before it is released to customers.
Generally (although not always true), a "test engineer" is more of a developer than a tester. They are usually tasked to develop test frameworks using third party tools or even creating their own framework. The former usually involves scripting and lightweight coding and the latter can involve full blown coding. They can be developing a test framework for executing and managing unit tests and functional tests (often white box), and integration tests, regression tests, and performance tests (often black box). While many project teams skimp on devoting this much engineering to testing, it can give huge returns, perhaps even better returns than development can after a certain point.
To be fair, the OP has not mentioned anything else beyond "software test engineer" so the role might very well be manual testing. However, the word "engineer" leads me to believe it is more of a automation role. Having said this, companies often embellish their titles with "engineer" to make it sounds weighty.
Right. He's had one top 40 album of his own, and several top 100 albums.
His own stuff is closer to acoustic folk than rock, which is why he's likely to care about subtle audio quality. Pink Floyd could be played through a bullhorn without much loss.
For what it is worth, Dark Side Of the Moon is widely considered as one of the most well recorded albums of all time.
I simply don't understand why it's slashdotted if nobody RTFA.
The way this is done, dear sir, is to use the mouse middle click or ctrl+click to open up said article in a new tab, and then to avoid switching to the new tab and instead type up a supposedly witty or insightful one-liner to a random comment... erm like I have done.
Very, very little hard SciFi written now-a-days. The entire field has degenerated into "speculative fiction" because it's easier to write. Kinda like giving ribbons to every kid running the race.
I like the hard science fiction sub-genre quite a bit. Any recommendations? What I've read and liked so far (hard sci-fi and sometimes merging with cyberpunk) - Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds.
Desperately looking for more authors and books to read. Please help if you can.
Is it a coincidence that most of these authors are from the British isles?
Part of the job of a captain is to see to the safety of the crew and passengers. He failed at that. Failing at your job alone isn't enough for ridicule. The excuses he made, however, show that he is a failure as a man (or person, if you're going to be PC about it).
And that does deserve ridicule.
Fair enough, in this case, the captain was indeed worthy of ridicule. All I'm saying is that there may be more to this than meets the eye. I like reading and participating in/. because in general, the audience displays a high level of intelligence. You can see this manifest itself in posts that challenge the "basic premise" and are often trollish in nature, besides pedantic arguments about grammar and accuracy, My post was not a reply to the OP but a general statement that lately,/. posts have become more uni-dimensional in nature and is becoming more "mob-like".
For example, the root cause in this case may very well have been a systemic organizational screw-up that others are now frantically trying to cover up. If the captain did indeed veer off the suggested course and was "showboating", was it because of personal reasons or was he mandated to do so as an unwritten rule?
Again, please note that I am not trying to defend this guy - admittedly, his story and his excuses sound quite pathetic. I just didn't want this thread to become too one-dimensional. Plus, everyone is blaming the captain alone as if he was single handedly running the ship. What about the rest of the crew??
Not only did the Coast Guard order him back, but he refused the order. He gave excuses that included "it's too dark" and "but it's on its side".
I can't fathom how such a pathetic human being ever made Captain. He is obviously tremendously unqualified.
One thing needs to be said here - The captain was probably qualified to manage and navigate a boat. However, you and many of the other critics on this thread wanted him to automatically be a *hero* as well, and found him wanting. I'm not trying to defend this guy, but I find it surprising that so many armchair critics demand such an incredibly high standard of professionalism and performance and even heroism from others. I'm not sure if it is Marvel comics to blame or the media that tries to invent its heroes at the drop of a hat, but really, aren't we all going a bit over the top here?? This is the same stupid media overhype that has wrapped a halo around every fireman and coast guard employee and emergency response worker.
Everyone is doing a job to clock their hours, get paid, and go back home to their families with enough money to feed their loved ones. Professionals in every discipline display the same human strengths and weaknesses - varying levels of passion for their job, varying levels of professionalism and commitment, varying levels of hard work, varying levels of intelligence etc. Don't diss someone's screwup to such an extent that you make them the devil incarnate or Mr. Incompetent. Everyone, naysayer or supporter, will only discover their own levels of competence when they find themselves in the middle of a horrifying and paralyzing crisis like this.
This guy was probably weak and lacked the capacity to handle a crisis of this magnitude, but let's also not fall over each other in making him out to be such an incompetent fool as well. Please also remember that in crises like these, most people also go into "Cover Your Ass" mode and usually look for a fall guy to pin everything on.
We're falling into the same 21st century trap that the media has created and oversold - quick to judge and quicker to forget.
I don't understand how people are speaking with conviction at numbers that are based on guesstimates and hearsay, and to the extent that they have already written off a chip that is just launching. Plus, these numbers seem to be wildly incorrect based on initial actual tests.
The Intel Medfield SoC idles at 18mW, consumes 1W during 3G browsing, and 850mW when running a 720p video. The SoC does NOT consume 2 or 2.5W.
Medfield's power performance at idle is significantly better than iPhone4S, somewhat better than Galaxy S2, is somewhat better than both at 3G browsing, and trails a bit in video playback. While Medfield isn't killing ARM with a much lower power consumption, it is definitely at par with ARM chips that are *currently shipping* and will likely be competitive with the slew of upcoming chips as well.
That is their claim in the graphs in the article. Graphs that don't mention which competing devices are being compared and which have no numbers. But they are claiming to be middle of the pack in idle power consumption, which has always been the fatal flaw in x86 mobile devices until now. If they have really managed to get an x86 to idle at a couple of milliamps of current then they are probably in the hunt. If not, it is all bogus like an x86 tablet. Who wants a phone you have to charge daily even if you don't call or even light up the display? It is all about idle time with these more mobile devices, not how many HD frames you can push for the hour or so the battery can hold up.
Anand has done a really good job analyzing Medfield's performance and power usage, with actual comparisons against other shipping competitors. So, to answer your questions:
Intel's Medfield has a good 20-50% performance lead against currently shipping top of the line ARM. Granted most ARM phones are due for a refresh in 6 months which will give them an expected performance boost of about 30-50%, Medfield will still be in the same ballpark performance. Its definitely a viable option. Plus, a Medfield upgrade will also come out in 9-12 months.
2. Power consumption on standby - Medfield standby - 18mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 38mW & Galaxy S2 - 19mW
3. Power consumption during 3G web browsing - Medfield standby - 1W - compare to iPhone 4S - 1.3W & Galaxy S2 - 1.2W
Power consumption during 720p video playback - Medfield standby - 850mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 500mW & Galaxy S2 - 650mW
Barring video playback, Medfield actually has better power consumption numbers than iPhone 4S and Galaxy S2. Even in video playback, Medfield is only a little bit higher. Unlike what people have been warning about, Medfield is NOT a power hog and is in fact at par with currently shipping ARM.
Instead of getting into fanboyism, people should be excited by this news. Firstly, Intel is the small underdog here, while ARM is the 800lb gorilla. Secondly, it sounds like a cliche but competition is almost always A Good Thing. Thirdly, I am personally extremely excited at the idea of a Medfield based tablet - it would give us enough flexibility to run multiple OSes and the millions of legacy x86 apps and games sloshing around in the great wide interweb. It would also allow us to run Win8 when it eventually releases which is also an attractive proposition.
Lastly, if you put aside the purist RISC/CISC debate, x86 over the years has promoted and ensured an open ecosystem of OSes, applications, websites, and open source projects/communities. For all the goodness that ARM contains, its advent into smartphones and now tablets has caused more walled gardens and vendor lockdowns, not less. The root cause may very well be greedy corporations (heck, even El Goog is turning into one) and nothing to do with ARM per se, but I'm calling it like I see it.
The best answer to "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" is always "Doing your job. Only better." It won't get you the job, but it's always a great answer.
As for "What are your goals?", I normally respond with something along the lines of either "They're the things I want to achieve", or "They're the milestones on my way to being better". Not exactly helpful answers, but correct nonetheless. Which *really* annoys interviewers.
Its all fine to give a snobbish answer like yours if you are talking to HR. Honestly, will you give the same answer if you were applying for the position of a programmer and your technical lead or architect (under whom you will eventually be working) was interviewing you and was asking this question? If you gave a stupid answer like this to someone who will be working with you in the future, they *will* assume that you will be an equal pain in the ass smartypants when you will eventually work with them. Many if not most good companies have the programming team interview candidates either separately or they would at least be a part of the panel.
Sorry, your answer may sound clever but it really doesn't cut it. At least, it is bad advice for others.
This is really not true. My response to questions like that improved dramatically when I read an article that explained questions way out of left field like that are intended to test your problem solving ability, so do your best to estimate an answer and explain your thought process. Reading that article didn't make me better at debugging hard technical issues, but made me dramatically better at handling off-the-wall interview questions nimbly. You're not measuring what you think you're measuring.
Is this a demonstration of the applicant's unstructured problem ability, or perhaps their prep for the interview game at certain image-conscious technology companies from reading silly books like this one?
That's a good point actually. I would venture to say that if a candidate has taken the trouble to prepare so thoroughly that they have developed a logic way to tackle most unstructured problems, they're still probably better than a candidate who failed miserably at even attempting the problem. There's a stronger chance that such a candidate would pick up a new technology or a new subject area much more quickly quickly than another candidate who has demonstrated no such initiative in the past.
But all said and done, you are right. A clever candidate can always "game" the interview process and say what the interviewer wants to hear. This is where interviewing becomes an inexact science.
God I always hate those fucking questions. "Why did you chose to apply with us?" Because I need a fucking job! Why else do people apply for a job? Why is that not enough?
If you repeat the question to yourself again, you'll see that the question is about why you are applying to that *particular* company, not why you need a job. Are you truly interested in what the company does and what practice area it is involved in, or as you say, are you applying only because "you need the fucking job". This helps the company determine if you are just going to be a pencil pusher clocking your time and going to be a sourpuss about it, or if you are going to kick some ass in your job.
"Where do you see yourself in five years?" Uh, gainfully employed? Do my life goals really matter to whether or not I can fill this position? What if I saw myself working at the fucking circus in five years, would that have a bearing on whether or not I was hired? Why? "What are your goals?" To make enough money to pay my bills with a little left over for fun once in a while? Is that too mundane?
I would imagine that just about *any* company would be interested in you want to do with your career and how the position will fit not just your current needs (bring food on the table as per your statement) but also your future needs as a person AND as a professional. Are you seriously tell me that you are an automaton - you just want to clock in your 8 hrs at work so you get your paycheck and aspire absolutely nothing else from your career??
Why would you react so strongly to an interviewer who is trying to understand your career aspirations? Its not like they are asking you how you lead your life or how you floss your teeth, the question is only about your career goals. Sooner or later, you will end up discussing this with your manager anyway.
If someone is giving you one, they're probably not very intelligent.
I completely disagree, or at least, your statement is so broad it is untrue.
Brain teasers are just like any other interviewing tool - what matters is how you use the tool. As an interviewer, if you use brain teasers to determine *how* the candidate is attempting to solve the problem, you are probably doing it right. If you are using the brain teaser to tick a box in your checklist based on the answer, you're probably doing it wrong.
The really neat thing about brain teasers or puzzles or the bizarre questions you sometimes encounter like "How many pigeons are there is Manhattan" is that they are a very good way to judge someone's unstructured problem solving ability. How someone approaches this kind of a problem is a good proxy for their ability to debug hard technical issues or their problem solving ability in general.
Making a statement like "hire a programmer based on their programming ability" is also an obvious statement to make, apart from being a bit grandiose (look at us , we are cool because we are contrarians and we swim against the tide). The reason why many interviewers resort to other techniques is two fold - one, lack of time or other constraints that prevent the interviewer from directly testing a programmer's programming ability, and secondly, judge the non-programming aspects of the candidate like how they react to an ill-defined problem or a fuzzy situation, how well they will get along with others, how much of a self-starter they are etc.
Or, if I put it another way, if you are not hiring a programmer on the, to quote, "code they have written", what are you doing, hiring candidates on their baking skills? I get what 37signals is saying and all this got messed up to begin with when HR took over the interviewing process from programmers (especially in large companies). However, the other statements that are flying around about how *any* non-programming related question is stupid is also frankly, over the top.
Dunno, I remember Centrino being a very good mobile processor line back in the day. I'm more surprised they didn't enter the market until now, maybe it's because they've been dominating the desktop market pretty hard? I have a hard time recommending AMD with a straight face nowadays for desktops... haven't read too much about what came in the past few months, I know AMD released something decent, but all they're doing is joining in on the party, not starting one there.
They didn't enter the market because they rested on their laurels like they often do, and also got completely blindsided by how quickly smartphones and tablet computing took over the world. Intel is a great company in many respects, but too often relies on a kick in the pants to get moving. Traditionally, AMD has done the kicking like they did with x64 and Athlon, which is why Intel got blindsided when the whipping came from ARM. They responded eventually to AMD with Centrino, Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest, and eventually with Quickpath and Nehalem, and AMD is still recovering.
They are finding it harder to do the same with ARM because both companies are moving in different directions - ARM has an extremely low power and low performance architecture while Intel's x86 is extremely high power and high performance. Plus, Intel has to deal legacy support in every subsequently new "tock" which is why x86 improvement will always remain evolutionary in nature. ARM also found it much easier to scale up its performance at a similar power envelope while Intel has found it much harder to scale down its power consumption while maintaining adequate performance.
Atom was probably the first x86 redesign that targeted power consumption first and only then performance. Even with this design goal, it only managed to scale down to single digit wattage while ARM operates in the sub-watt to milliwatt range. This is still a crucial difference - it is the difference between the weight and size of a netbook sized laptop and a handheld device. On top of this, ARM has been steadily integrating more and more peripheral chips back into the chip while keeping the same power envelope, which makes it even simpler and more attractive to device manufacturers.
Anyway, rambling aside, I suspect that Intel gave up the race for a brief period of time and instead waited for its manufacturing process to shrink to a level (22nm) where it could finally combine its process node lead with the Atom architecture to reach the sub-watt power level. It still hasn't got there, but it will - by 2013. Don't count them out, and I say this mainly because Intel is still the only surviving company that still designs AND manufactures its own chips. The advantages of this kind of vertical integration is huge. Companies love to talk about outsourcing everything but there are significant advantages to being vertically integrated as well. To digress slightly, look at how mainframes continue to survive and thrive in this age of commodity computing.
It is also interesting to reflect that this fortuitously coincides with Microsoft's Win 8 release and MSFT's own struggle to compete in tablet and handheld computing. Again, their true credible answer will be Windows 9 if not Windows 8. I suspect that at least in the tablet playing field, Win 8 will be a very credible competitor, and Win 9 will probably merge back almost fully with x86 architecture. The allure of x86 and its backward compatibility should not be underestimated. Legacy app support is extremely attractive for enterprise IT even if it is not so much so for normal consumers.
I live with 2 indian roommates who tout the same bs about Indian food as you do, that it is SO good and special. But really both my roommates and you are just being arrogant. And judging from their cooking, authentic indian food is crap. Crappy stir fries with way too much oil.
The mistake you are making here is that you are assuming that when a westerner says "Indian food", they care about something from India. We don't. It is about importing a certain tasty flavor profile that originated from India. That's it. It isn't about paying homage to Indian culture. It is about certain flavor that WE like. And now that this flavor has been "imported", it is about our culture, not India's.
Good food isn't brought about by thousands of years of cultural history or diversity, as you seem to imply. Good food comes from being passionate about fresh ingredients and solid cooking techniques. PASSION is the key word there. The best chefs can cook any kind of food, because they are passionate and talented when it comes to cooking. Most regular chefs, and regular people for that matter, can learn how to properly cook food from one or two other cultures. You just need the passion to do it.
I find it deliciously ironic that you worship PASSION in all caps as the secret to high cooking, but you are scornful of the passion that your roommates and I show about Indian food. Think about this - if Indian tribes and subcultures are not passionate about their food, why the heck would they stubbornly stick to their age old recipes and food habits, some of which date back hundreds if not thousands of years? Perhaps it is your roommates that have more passion than skill, I don't know. Perhaps, Indian food IS overcooked and overoiled, I don't know.
However, I also get the sense that you are a bit (not a lot, mind you) of a close minded bigot. Any flavor, smell, or taste outside of the palate you are used to or that your mother used to cook seems to be intolerable to you. Never mind, there are millions like you. Fortunately, there are millions others who have an open mind about food and cultures and trying out different and sometimes even repulsive things. The sad part is that it is the close minded bigots of the world who seem to be procreating much more, and i fear of a future that is only filled with people intolerant to anything different.
I appreciate your point about the diversity and scope of Indian culture and sociopolitical systems.
However, I disagree with your statement that there's "nothing called Indian food."
It's not "incorrect," for example, when someone "talks about European soup." European stock bases will vary quite a bit, but they will be more comparable to one another than to, say, an East Asian stock base. "European soup" is a meaningful distinction relative to other things worldwide.
It's also probably true that a more appropriate comparison to Indian curries are European beer, wine, cheese, or bread.
I can say "European bread," as opposed to "South Asian bread," for example, and it's a meaningful distinction. Although different parts of Europe tend to use different sorts of grains to different extents, European breads tend to be larger, higher loafs, yeast-leavened, and baked in larger ovens. Similar things could be said about cheese: they're more often aged relative to cheeses from other parts of the world, where milk cheese might not nonexistent in traditional cuisine.
India is an incredibly diverse place, more so than many recognize, but I don't think it's meaningless to talk about "Indian cuisine" any more than "European cuisine" or "Western cuisine" or "South Asian cuisine" or "Asian cuisine."
You actually make a good point, and you are correct if we stick to generalization. I mentioned this in another reply, but your statement is also not true for large classes of "Indians". India is simply too heterogenous. Please take a look at the number of Indian tribes for example.
For the record, I consider myself a world citizen. I happen to know more about India than other countries which is why I spoke up. If I had known more about Mexican food (and I intend to do so), I would have spoken up about it as well.
I posted this in an earlier reply, but I will say this again. India's diversity in food habits comes from its tribes. Here's a list of Indian tribes. See for yourself.
While you are up on that pedestal lecturing everyone about making assumptions about "Indian" food maybe you shouldn't be making assumptions about "Mexican" food. The nation of Mexico has a diverse palette and cuisine that ranges from the Sonoran food that most American's equate to "Mexican" all the way to the fruit, corn and coca (mole!) based diets of the Mayans of southern Mexico. With just about everything in between.
Mexican cuisine is just as diverse as Indian cuisine when consideration of size of the country and population is taken into account. As with India, the defining characteristic of the food is often not the ingredients or the type of food, but how it's served that is unique to the name. Just as the ingredients of the curry change dramatically as you move across the Indian subcontinent but the use of the curry itself remains fairly constant so does the Tortilla and it's use in meal remains relatively constant across Mexico even though the primary ingredients (including the grain used in the tortilla itself) changes as you move across the Mexican nation.
Much as when we discuss "Indian" food when in fact we are talking about the peculiarities of cuisine specific to the Indian subcontinent we also refer to the specifics of the Mexican cuisine when we refer to Mexican. That there may be a far wider variety to the cuisine doesn't mean calling it Indian is meaningless. But more importantly, if you choose to attack a generalization, don't generalize another culture to make you point.
I apologize if I came across as lecturing or standing up on a pedestal. The only reason why I brought up the Mexican comparison was because the GP chose to do so. I shouldn't have made generic statements about a culture I know little of. From a naiive perspective however, I would still argue that Mexico is a smaller country with a smaller population and landmass compared to the Indian subcontinent. Having said this, I should have researched better - I actually thought Mexico was a lot smaller than it actually is. In this sense, I am guilty of ironically painting with the same wide brush that I took objection to. Again, the only reason I bring this up is to make sure that comparisons should be meaningful.
Another thing: India has quite a few drastically different food cultures mainly because of the numerous number of tribes that still passionately stick to their traditional food habits. There are hundreds of such tribes in India and not too many people even in India are aware of how diverse and omnipresent they are. It is these tribes that provide the diversity I am talking about, not the masses living in urban centers. Food cooked in North-east India for example is polar opposite of food cooked a few hundred miles away in Calcutta. A friend of mine cooks amazing Naga food, and I can tell you for sure that it is nothing like what you think of "Indian" food. Naga food usually consists of smoked or fermented vegetables, meats (pork, dog, etc.) and fish, and very often organ meat. The spices too are mostly fresh and not dried or powdered. There are several tribes among the Nagas themselves but it gets too complex and I too don't know enough about this subject.
If you think I am again reverting to hyperbole, please refer to this list of tribes in India. I dare say, not too many countries have this level of diversity.
I don't know about Indian cuisine but in Mexico we don't brag about how impossibly hot a dish is. Chile is used as an additional condiment and is never the main focus of the meal... Mexicans know when something needs to be spiced up to make it taste better, enough to make you salivate just by smelling it and make it perfect. That hot spicy sensation is addictive and a good source of endorphins... It is never a goal to make it impossible to swallow, give you cramps and make you faint.
Pinches gringos locos....
Indians don't brag about the heat levels of their food as well. I would like to dispel some myths about Indian food here:
- Firstly, there is nothing called Indian food. India is an agglomeration of about 50-100 or so cultures, a bit like Europe. Each culture has its own history, language or dialect, culture, and most importantly, food. While culture has changed or diluted over time, food habits have not changed much. Anyone who talks about "Indian curry" is as incorrect as someone who talks about "European soup".
- Indian food by and large is not super-spicy to begin with. Home cooked food in India is usually mild and often a bit overcooked. Yes, certain cuisines such as Kolhapuri or Sahuji is known for being hotter. Even then, this is usually hype promoted by restaurants as a publicity stunt. While restaurants often label their dish "kolhapuri chicken" by adding 5 extra red chiles, authentic Kolhapuri food is not cooked this way
- Indian food, unlike many other cuisines, is very flavorful and aromatic and a typical dish will consist of numerous spices and herbs. Perhaps, this is because India is the birthplace of most herbs and spices (maybe not most, South America kicks ass too). Indian flavor is usually multi-dimensional and layered - heat is just one component. A really well made Indian dish (such as a "curry") will usually be hot, sour, salty, and a bit sweet at the same time. Mostly not bitter, but sometimes bitter too, especially in dishes such as bitter gourd curry. Bottom-line - spicy does not mean hot, it means full of spice, and each spice has a different flavor and aroma. This is the whole point of mixing multiple spices, or using pre-mixed spices ("garam masala", "panch phoran", etc.)
- Chile is also often an extra condiment in Indian cuisine as well - a typical Indian dish will consist of plain rice or wheat bread with a somewhat mild curry, a slightly spicier dry vegetable or meat, salad ("kachumbar") or yogurt based sauce to provide relief for the spice ("raita"). It is also usually accompanied by one or more chutneys that can range from fiery hot to minty cool, and by one or more pickles again ranging from fiery hot to sweet and tangy. The chutneys and pickles are meant to provide additional heat for people who like more heat in their food. There are several dozens, even hundreds, of pickles and chutneys. Note that Indian pickles are much more complex and flavourful compared to pickle popular in many other parts which is usually made with vegetables preserved in vinegar and salt. Indian pickles are usually pickled in a variety of oils.
- This whole thing of eating really hot food is really just a sport, the need for some people to turn anything into a competitive sport. Then, there are hotels like this one cashing in on this whole thing to get more publicity.
- With all due respect, Mexican food is delicious and very fresh and complex, but you cannot compare it with a country where you have hundreds of parallel food cultures all running back several thousands of years. You can probably compare Mexico to a specific Indian state, but that's about it. Comparing India to South America would be more accurate.
Before this becomes a flame war, please note: I'm not trying to put down down Mexico or say that India is better or worse. Just saying that the complexity of Mexican culture and food is comparable to the complexity of the culture and food of an Indian state - in terms of population, size, history, and complexity
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no they don't. Many people around here make around $30,000 starting salary. I don't think that's a lot of money for a professional field.
If you're trying to use numbers from big cities, consider cost of living. In my case, I live in Ann Arbor, MI. Apartments in remotely decent areas around here cost $900 a month. My first job out of college, I made $15 an hour. It wasn't even salary for the first 9 months. My next employer paid new guys $32,000 a year starting out of college.
Yeah, you can make $100,000 in california but it also costs 60% more to live there too.
A 300% increase in salary for a 60% increase in living expenses. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Going to california, I am, brother. Hope to meet some gentle people there.
Musing aside, I still stand by my original belief that if one is good at her job and is willing to work hard, there's money to be made, respect to be had, and happiness to be enjoyed. Yeah, you can join finance and count your money and pretend to be a leet trader by drinking single malts and what not, but if you're doing it only for the money, you're missing out, man.
Oh yeah, one more thing. In today's world, you have to be willing to relocate.
It can even be argued that a copy is even more valuable than the original, because it's easier to use on whatever device I prefer due to lack of DRM.
Really? So if you delete the digital copy, you actually lose more value than if you destroy the original?
What if you make a hundred digital copies, and then delete them? OH MY GOD, you've just lost, like, thousands of dollars!
Don't be inane. When you refer to the "original" you are really talking about the master studio copy of the performance. _Everything_ else is a copy.
Since you appear to need it spelled out, the value is in the entertainment and enjoyment provided by the copy. I think I can put this in simpler terms.
Two people wish to be entertained for two and a half minutes. They both inexplicably love Sanjaya. Person A buys a track from Google Music. Person B copies the track from person A. They both independently listen to the music and are entertained. They have both received _value_. Person A paid $1 to receive that value. Person B paid nothing. One of them is an entitled little shit. Guess which one?
The only reason your argument *sounds* correct is because you have dumbed down this complex problem way too much.
Please consider the following usage cases - using your above example:
1. If person A wants to listen to Sanjaya twice, i.e. she wants to be entertained for 5 minutes, not 2.5; should she pay more?
2. If person A listens to Sanjaya along with family or friends, should she pay more?
3. If person A plays the song in her restaurant, should she pay more?
4. If person A creates a personal copy of the song and plays the song on 2 different media devices, should she pay more?
5. If person A sells her song to person C and deletes her personal copy, should she pay more?
6. If person A rents her song to someone else (only one person at a time), should she pay more?
7. If person A rents her song to someone else (multiple people at the same time), should she pay more?
8a. If person A decides to do all of the above but with a much lower quality/bitrate copy, does that change anything?
8b. Alternately, if person B copies a low bitrate version of the song, is she still an entitled little shit?
9. If for some reason, person A loses her song or the song gets corrupted or deleted, should she be able to download it again for free?
10. If person B paid 1 cent to person A with the understanding that she will only listen to the song once in the next 24 hours and then will delete it, and honored the agreement, is she still an entitled little shit?
I'm quite sure I haven't covered all possible usage cases - the above are only some naive ones that I can think of. Even so, I personally cannot think of satisfactory answers that sound ethical and economically fair to both the content creator and the content consumer. I suspect that the correct workable answer would be more reasonable than fair, more practical and just, and would lie somewhere in the middle of the two polar stances that people.are taking on this subject.
An who the hell are you to determine when someone can use their phone? Buses/trains are not bedrooms, sleep in your bed, not on the bus. Don't like someone talking, wear earplugs. If you haven't noticed buses/trains are not the quietest places and phone feedback makes it easy to think your not speaking loud enough. Buses and trains are public congregation points like any other and people have the freedom to speak/entertain themselves as they please. Don't like it, drive your own car. Personally, I hope these jamming pricks run into people with detectors, and forget jail just a good ass whipping should do and then a technology ban.
Aggressive in-your-face "i do what i want" behavior only works if you manage to pull it off without being a jerk to others. What if a guy sitting next to you was coming back from a soccer game and blew a compressed air 120db horn next to your ear? What if someone on the train spat in your face when talking to their neighbor or dropped mustard in your lap while eating a sandwitch and didn't even apologize?
Don't like it? Drive your own damn car. It's easy to have a tough attitude about personal liberty. Difficult when you are facing the brunt of it.
And yes, someone talking for a few minutes on the phone and trying to keep their voice low in a crowded train is one thing. Someone talking very loudly for a couple of hours in a crowded train is completely another thing. There's no rule book for this - the assumption is that as a citizen of society, you would be considerate to others and learn how to co-exist without getting into a fistfight every day. Unfortunately, so many people nowadays are so self-absorbed and grow up with a sense of entitlement, they're forgotten how to be a gentle human being (without necessarily being a pushover). Or they turn their nose at the concept.
Oh, I hate to resort to this, but here goes a car analogy.
To be a driver, you don't need to know how a car works. To be a good driver, you do. To be able to take advantage of facets of driving and handling, you have to understand how the rubber meets the road and all that.
Actually, I would argue that your analogy is incorrect. To be a good driver, you need to know:
a. how to control your car really well under different conditions
b. and you need to know the rules of the road really well
You really don't need to know how your car works, at least not in great detail. Meaning, you need to know how to fill gas and do basic maintenance, but you really don't need to know what's under the bonnett.
The reason I am getting a bit pedantic on this is to point out the fact that in today's age, it is more important for a newbie to know how browsers work, how internet protocols work, how the internet is structured and how information flows in general. It is becoming less important to know how your computer internals work. The internals have been commoditized to the extent that it is unnecessary to know how your microprocessor and your motherboard works, just as you don't need to know how your phone works in order to make a call or even to do something complex like manage your address book in your phone.
CNG or Compressed Natural Gas vehicles are quite common in India. It started out a decade ago when the big cities in India started converting buses to run on CNG instead of diesel to curb pollution. Then, taxis got converted. Now, you can get your private vehicle fitted with a CNG conversion kit or you can directly buy a CNG version of your car from the manufacturer. I haven't driven one myself, but have spoken to lots of cab drivers. Even if you ignore the environmental benefits, the running cost of CNG is less than half of diesel or gasoline.
The other take on this is to have more power generation plants use CNG instead of coal. I find it highly inefficient to transport energy chemically instead of electrically. If you were developing software, this is how you would abstract your layers. Human beings suck at change. The only time we refactor anything in our lives is if we are forced to do it - like a war or an economic crisis or something similar.
Taking builk testing responsibilities off developers so they can work on more important stuff.
Not quite. Developers often make poor testers. Software tends to get debugged and tuned for the way developers use the software, which is not necessarily how others (in particular customers) will use the software. How many developers have written a piece of code, tested it conscientiously themselves, presented it to others expecting no problems, and watched these other folks find serious bugs within minutes?
Having dedicated testers between developers and customers yields better products, even when the developers take testing seriously.
Actually, that is not necessarily true. I get what you are trying to say, but you seem to gloss over the differences between QA, manual tester, and what the OP was referring to: Software Test Engineer.
To highlight some of the differences:
QA is responsible for "assuring quality". This is different from QC which is "checking quality". More often than not, a good QA is a process expert, with the assumption being that good processes ensure good quality. Their goal is to avoid the problem, not to detect the problem or fix the problem. Where the line gets blurred is the fact that a QA often performs the role of a manual tester. This usually depends on the size of the team.
Manual testing is usually QC - understanding what to test, how to test, and going ahead and testing it. They start off by translating the requirement specification (or user stories if you are agile) into a suite of test cases, add other test cases that might be non-functional or regression related, and finally test the system manually every time before it is released to customers.
Generally (although not always true), a "test engineer" is more of a developer than a tester. They are usually tasked to develop test frameworks using third party tools or even creating their own framework. The former usually involves scripting and lightweight coding and the latter can involve full blown coding. They can be developing a test framework for executing and managing unit tests and functional tests (often white box), and integration tests, regression tests, and performance tests (often black box). While many project teams skimp on devoting this much engineering to testing, it can give huge returns, perhaps even better returns than development can after a certain point.
To be fair, the OP has not mentioned anything else beyond "software test engineer" so the role might very well be manual testing. However, the word "engineer" leads me to believe it is more of a automation role. Having said this, companies often embellish their titles with "engineer" to make it sounds weighty.
Right. He's had one top 40 album of his own, and several top 100 albums.
His own stuff is closer to acoustic folk than rock, which is why he's likely to care about subtle audio quality. Pink Floyd could be played through a bullhorn without much loss.
For what it is worth, Dark Side Of the Moon is widely considered as one of the most well recorded albums of all time.
I simply don't understand why it's slashdotted if nobody RTFA.
The way this is done, dear sir, is to use the mouse middle click or ctrl+click to open up said article in a new tab, and then to avoid switching to the new tab and instead type up a supposedly witty or insightful one-liner to a random comment... erm like I have done.
Very, very little hard SciFi written now-a-days. The entire field has degenerated into "speculative fiction" because it's easier to write. Kinda like giving ribbons to every kid running the race.
I like the hard science fiction sub-genre quite a bit. Any recommendations?
What I've read and liked so far (hard sci-fi and sometimes merging with cyberpunk) - Stephen Baxter, Peter F Hamilton, Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds.
Desperately looking for more authors and books to read. Please help if you can.
Is it a coincidence that most of these authors are from the British isles?
Part of the job of a captain is to see to the safety of the crew and passengers. He failed at that. Failing at your job alone isn't enough for ridicule. The excuses he made, however, show that he is a failure as a man (or person, if you're going to be PC about it).
And that does deserve ridicule.
Fair enough, in this case, the captain was indeed worthy of ridicule. All I'm saying is that there may be more to this than meets the eye. I like reading and participating in /. because in general, the audience displays a high level of intelligence. You can see this manifest itself in posts that challenge the "basic premise" and are often trollish in nature, besides pedantic arguments about grammar and accuracy, My post was not a reply to the OP but a general statement that lately, /. posts have become more uni-dimensional in nature and is becoming more "mob-like".
For example, the root cause in this case may very well have been a systemic organizational screw-up that others are now frantically trying to cover up. If the captain did indeed veer off the suggested course and was "showboating", was it because of personal reasons or was he mandated to do so as an unwritten rule?
Again, please note that I am not trying to defend this guy - admittedly, his story and his excuses sound quite pathetic. I just didn't want this thread to become too one-dimensional. Plus, everyone is blaming the captain alone as if he was single handedly running the ship. What about the rest of the crew??
Not only did the Coast Guard order him back, but he refused the order. He gave excuses that included "it's too dark" and "but it's on its side".
I can't fathom how such a pathetic human being ever made Captain. He is obviously tremendously unqualified.
One thing needs to be said here - The captain was probably qualified to manage and navigate a boat. However, you and many of the other critics on this thread wanted him to automatically be a *hero* as well, and found him wanting. I'm not trying to defend this guy, but I find it surprising that so many armchair critics demand such an incredibly high standard of professionalism and performance and even heroism from others. I'm not sure if it is Marvel comics to blame or the media that tries to invent its heroes at the drop of a hat, but really, aren't we all going a bit over the top here?? This is the same stupid media overhype that has wrapped a halo around every fireman and coast guard employee and emergency response worker.
Everyone is doing a job to clock their hours, get paid, and go back home to their families with enough money to feed their loved ones. Professionals in every discipline display the same human strengths and weaknesses - varying levels of passion for their job, varying levels of professionalism and commitment, varying levels of hard work, varying levels of intelligence etc. Don't diss someone's screwup to such an extent that you make them the devil incarnate or Mr. Incompetent. Everyone, naysayer or supporter, will only discover their own levels of competence when they find themselves in the middle of a horrifying and paralyzing crisis like this.
This guy was probably weak and lacked the capacity to handle a crisis of this magnitude, but let's also not fall over each other in making him out to be such an incompetent fool as well. Please also remember that in crises like these, most people also go into "Cover Your Ass" mode and usually look for a fall guy to pin everything on.
We're falling into the same 21st century trap that the media has created and oversold - quick to judge and quicker to forget.
I don't understand how people are speaking with conviction at numbers that are based on guesstimates and hearsay, and to the extent that they have already written off a chip that is just launching. Plus, these numbers seem to be wildly incorrect based on initial actual tests.
Please see the Anandtech article that contains actual performance and power numbers:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones
The Intel Medfield SoC idles at 18mW, consumes 1W during 3G browsing, and 850mW when running a 720p video.
The SoC does NOT consume 2 or 2.5W.
Medfield's power performance at idle is significantly better than iPhone4S, somewhat better than Galaxy S2, is somewhat better than both at 3G browsing, and trails a bit in video playback. While Medfield isn't killing ARM with a much lower power consumption, it is definitely at par with ARM chips that are *currently shipping* and will likely be competitive with the slew of upcoming chips as well.
Sorry for replying to my own comment, but I just realized that my link to the Anandtech article got stripped out.
Here's the link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5365/intels-medfield-atom-z2460-arrive-for-smartphones
That is their claim in the graphs in the article. Graphs that don't mention which competing devices are being compared and which have no numbers. But they are claiming to be middle of the pack in idle power consumption, which has always been the fatal flaw in x86 mobile devices until now. If they have really managed to get an x86 to idle at a couple of milliamps of current then they are probably in the hunt. If not, it is all bogus like an x86 tablet. Who wants a phone you have to charge daily even if you don't call or even light up the display? It is all about idle time with these more mobile devices, not how many HD frames you can push for the hour or so the battery can hold up.
Anand has done a really good job analyzing Medfield's performance and power usage, with actual comparisons against other shipping competitors.
So, to answer your questions:
1. Performance comparison -
Sunspider javascript benchmark (lower is better) -
Intel Medfield - 1331 - compare to iPhone 4S - 2250 & Galaxy Nexus running Android Icecream Sandwitch - 1988
Browsermark benchmark scores (higher is better) -
Medfield - 116425 - compare to iPhone 4S - 87841 & Galaxy Nexus running Android Icecream Sandwitch - 97381
Intel's Medfield has a good 20-50% performance lead against currently shipping top of the line ARM. Granted most ARM phones are due for a refresh in 6 months which will give them an expected performance boost of about 30-50%, Medfield will still be in the same ballpark performance. Its definitely a viable option. Plus, a Medfield upgrade will also come out in 9-12 months.
2. Power consumption on standby -
Medfield standby - 18mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 38mW & Galaxy S2 - 19mW
3. Power consumption during 3G web browsing -
Medfield standby - 1W - compare to iPhone 4S - 1.3W & Galaxy S2 - 1.2W
Power consumption during 720p video playback -
Medfield standby - 850mW - compare to iPhone 4S - 500mW & Galaxy S2 - 650mW
Barring video playback, Medfield actually has better power consumption numbers than iPhone 4S and Galaxy S2. Even in video playback, Medfield is only a little bit higher. Unlike what people have been warning about, Medfield is NOT a power hog and is in fact at par with currently shipping ARM.
Instead of getting into fanboyism, people should be excited by this news. Firstly, Intel is the small underdog here, while ARM is the 800lb gorilla. Secondly, it sounds like a cliche but competition is almost always A Good Thing. Thirdly, I am personally extremely excited at the idea of a Medfield based tablet - it would give us enough flexibility to run multiple OSes and the millions of legacy x86 apps and games sloshing around in the great wide interweb. It would also allow us to run Win8 when it eventually releases which is also an attractive proposition.
Lastly, if you put aside the purist RISC/CISC debate, x86 over the years has promoted and ensured an open ecosystem of OSes, applications, websites, and open source projects/communities. For all the goodness that ARM contains, its advent into smartphones and now tablets has caused more walled gardens and vendor lockdowns, not less. The root cause may very well be greedy corporations (heck, even El Goog is turning into one) and nothing to do with ARM per se, but I'm calling it like I see it.
The best answer to "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" is always "Doing your job. Only better." It won't get you the job, but it's always a great answer.
As for "What are your goals?", I normally respond with something along the lines of either "They're the things I want to achieve", or "They're the milestones on my way to being better". Not exactly helpful answers, but correct nonetheless. Which *really* annoys interviewers.
Its all fine to give a snobbish answer like yours if you are talking to HR.
Honestly, will you give the same answer if you were applying for the position of a programmer and your technical lead or architect (under whom you will eventually be working) was interviewing you and was asking this question? If you gave a stupid answer like this to someone who will be working with you in the future, they *will* assume that you will be an equal pain in the ass smartypants when you will eventually work with them. Many if not most good companies have the programming team interview candidates either separately or they would at least be a part of the panel.
Sorry, your answer may sound clever but it really doesn't cut it. At least, it is bad advice for others.
This is really not true. My response to questions like that improved dramatically when I read an article that explained questions way out of left field like that are intended to test your problem solving ability, so do your best to estimate an answer and explain your thought process. Reading that article didn't make me better at debugging hard technical issues, but made me dramatically better at handling off-the-wall interview questions nimbly. You're not measuring what you think you're measuring.
You have a point.
Is this a demonstration of the applicant's unstructured problem ability, or perhaps their prep for the interview game at certain image-conscious technology companies from reading silly books like this one?
That's a good point actually. I would venture to say that if a candidate has taken the trouble to prepare so thoroughly that they have developed a logic way to tackle most unstructured problems, they're still probably better than a candidate who failed miserably at even attempting the problem. There's a stronger chance that such a candidate would pick up a new technology or a new subject area much more quickly quickly than another candidate who has demonstrated no such initiative in the past.
But all said and done, you are right. A clever candidate can always "game" the interview process and say what the interviewer wants to hear. This is where interviewing becomes an inexact science.
God I always hate those fucking questions. "Why did you chose to apply with us?" Because I need a fucking job! Why else do people apply for a job? Why is that not enough?
If you repeat the question to yourself again, you'll see that the question is about why you are applying to that *particular* company, not why you need a job. Are you truly interested in what the company does and what practice area it is involved in, or as you say, are you applying only because "you need the fucking job". This helps the company determine if you are just going to be a pencil pusher clocking your time and going to be a sourpuss about it, or if you are going to kick some ass in your job.
"Where do you see yourself in five years?" Uh, gainfully employed? Do my life goals really matter to whether or not I can fill this position? What if I saw myself working at the fucking circus in five years, would that have a bearing on whether or not I was hired? Why? "What are your goals?" To make enough money to pay my bills with a little left over for fun once in a while? Is that too mundane?
I would imagine that just about *any* company would be interested in you want to do with your career and how the position will fit not just your current needs (bring food on the table as per your statement) but also your future needs as a person AND as a professional. Are you seriously tell me that you are an automaton - you just want to clock in your 8 hrs at work so you get your paycheck and aspire absolutely nothing else from your career??
Why would you react so strongly to an interviewer who is trying to understand your career aspirations? Its not like they are asking you how you lead your life or how you floss your teeth, the question is only about your career goals. Sooner or later, you will end up discussing this with your manager anyway.
If someone is giving you one, they're probably not very intelligent.
I completely disagree, or at least, your statement is so broad it is untrue.
Brain teasers are just like any other interviewing tool - what matters is how you use the tool.
As an interviewer, if you use brain teasers to determine *how* the candidate is attempting to solve the problem, you are probably doing it right.
If you are using the brain teaser to tick a box in your checklist based on the answer, you're probably doing it wrong.
The really neat thing about brain teasers or puzzles or the bizarre questions you sometimes encounter like "How many pigeons are there is Manhattan" is that they are a very good way to judge someone's unstructured problem solving ability. How someone approaches this kind of a problem is a good proxy for their ability to debug hard technical issues or their problem solving ability in general.
Making a statement like "hire a programmer based on their programming ability" is also an obvious statement to make, apart from being a bit grandiose (look at us , we are cool because we are contrarians and we swim against the tide). The reason why many interviewers resort to other techniques is two fold - one, lack of time or other constraints that prevent the interviewer from directly testing a programmer's programming ability, and secondly, judge the non-programming aspects of the candidate like how they react to an ill-defined problem or a fuzzy situation, how well they will get along with others, how much of a self-starter they are etc.
Or, if I put it another way, if you are not hiring a programmer on the, to quote, "code they have written", what are you doing, hiring candidates on their baking skills? I get what 37signals is saying and all this got messed up to begin with when HR took over the interviewing process from programmers (especially in large companies). However, the other statements that are flying around about how *any* non-programming related question is stupid is also frankly, over the top.
Dunno, I remember Centrino being a very good mobile processor line back in the day. I'm more surprised they didn't enter the market until now, maybe it's because they've been dominating the desktop market pretty hard? I have a hard time recommending AMD with a straight face nowadays for desktops... haven't read too much about what came in the past few months, I know AMD released something decent, but all they're doing is joining in on the party, not starting one there.
They didn't enter the market because they rested on their laurels like they often do, and also got completely blindsided by how quickly smartphones and tablet computing took over the world. Intel is a great company in many respects, but too often relies on a kick in the pants to get moving. Traditionally, AMD has done the kicking like they did with x64 and Athlon, which is why Intel got blindsided when the whipping came from ARM. They responded eventually to AMD with Centrino, Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest, and eventually with Quickpath and Nehalem, and AMD is still recovering.
They are finding it harder to do the same with ARM because both companies are moving in different directions - ARM has an extremely low power and low performance architecture while Intel's x86 is extremely high power and high performance. Plus, Intel has to deal legacy support in every subsequently new "tock" which is why x86 improvement will always remain evolutionary in nature. ARM also found it much easier to scale up its performance at a similar power envelope while Intel has found it much harder to scale down its power consumption while maintaining adequate performance.
Atom was probably the first x86 redesign that targeted power consumption first and only then performance. Even with this design goal, it only managed to scale down to single digit wattage while ARM operates in the sub-watt to milliwatt range. This is still a crucial difference - it is the difference between the weight and size of a netbook sized laptop and a handheld device. On top of this, ARM has been steadily integrating more and more peripheral chips back into the chip while keeping the same power envelope, which makes it even simpler and more attractive to device manufacturers.
Anyway, rambling aside, I suspect that Intel gave up the race for a brief period of time and instead waited for its manufacturing process to shrink to a level (22nm) where it could finally combine its process node lead with the Atom architecture to reach the sub-watt power level. It still hasn't got there, but it will - by 2013. Don't count them out, and I say this mainly because Intel is still the only surviving company that still designs AND manufactures its own chips. The advantages of this kind of vertical integration is huge. Companies love to talk about outsourcing everything but there are significant advantages to being vertically integrated as well. To digress slightly, look at how mainframes continue to survive and thrive in this age of commodity computing.
It is also interesting to reflect that this fortuitously coincides with Microsoft's Win 8 release and MSFT's own struggle to compete in tablet and handheld computing. Again, their true credible answer will be Windows 9 if not Windows 8. I suspect that at least in the tablet playing field, Win 8 will be a very credible competitor, and Win 9 will probably merge back almost fully with x86 architecture. The allure of x86 and its backward compatibility should not be underestimated. Legacy app support is extremely attractive for enterprise IT even if it is not so much so for normal consumers.
I live with 2 indian roommates who tout the same bs about Indian food as you do, that it is SO good and special. But really both my roommates and you are just being arrogant. And judging from their cooking, authentic indian food is crap. Crappy stir fries with way too much oil.
The mistake you are making here is that you are assuming that when a westerner says "Indian food", they care about something from India. We don't. It is about importing a certain tasty flavor profile that originated from India. That's it. It isn't about paying homage to Indian culture. It is about certain flavor that WE like. And now that this flavor has been "imported", it is about our culture, not India's.
Good food isn't brought about by thousands of years of cultural history or diversity, as you seem to imply. Good food comes from being passionate about fresh ingredients and solid cooking techniques. PASSION is the key word there. The best chefs can cook any kind of food, because they are passionate and talented when it comes to cooking. Most regular chefs, and regular people for that matter, can learn how to properly cook food from one or two other cultures. You just need the passion to do it.
I find it deliciously ironic that you worship PASSION in all caps as the secret to high cooking, but you are scornful of the passion that your roommates and I show about Indian food. Think about this - if Indian tribes and subcultures are not passionate about their food, why the heck would they stubbornly stick to their age old recipes and food habits, some of which date back hundreds if not thousands of years? Perhaps it is your roommates that have more passion than skill, I don't know. Perhaps, Indian food IS overcooked and overoiled, I don't know.
However, I also get the sense that you are a bit (not a lot, mind you) of a close minded bigot. Any flavor, smell, or taste outside of the palate you are used to or that your mother used to cook seems to be intolerable to you. Never mind, there are millions like you. Fortunately, there are millions others who have an open mind about food and cultures and trying out different and sometimes even repulsive things. The sad part is that it is the close minded bigots of the world who seem to be procreating much more, and i fear of a future that is only filled with people intolerant to anything different.
I appreciate your point about the diversity and scope of Indian culture and sociopolitical systems.
However, I disagree with your statement that there's "nothing called Indian food."
It's not "incorrect," for example, when someone "talks about European soup." European stock bases will vary quite a bit, but they will be more comparable to one another than to, say, an East Asian stock base. "European soup" is a meaningful distinction relative to other things worldwide.
It's also probably true that a more appropriate comparison to Indian curries are European beer, wine, cheese, or bread.
I can say "European bread," as opposed to "South Asian bread," for example, and it's a meaningful distinction. Although different parts of Europe tend to use different sorts of grains to different extents, European breads tend to be larger, higher loafs, yeast-leavened, and baked in larger ovens. Similar things could be said about cheese: they're more often aged relative to cheeses from other parts of the world, where milk cheese might not nonexistent in traditional cuisine.
India is an incredibly diverse place, more so than many recognize, but I don't think it's meaningless to talk about "Indian cuisine" any more than "European cuisine" or "Western cuisine" or "South Asian cuisine" or "Asian cuisine."
You actually make a good point, and you are correct if we stick to generalization. I mentioned this in another reply, but your statement is also not true for large classes of "Indians". India is simply too heterogenous. Please take a look at the number of Indian tribes for example.
For the record, I consider myself a world citizen. I happen to know more about India than other countries which is why I spoke up. If I had known more about Mexican food (and I intend to do so), I would have spoken up about it as well.
I posted this in an earlier reply, but I will say this again. India's diversity in food habits comes from its tribes. Here's a list of Indian tribes. See for yourself.
While you are up on that pedestal lecturing everyone about making assumptions about "Indian" food maybe you shouldn't be making assumptions about "Mexican" food. The nation of Mexico has a diverse palette and cuisine that ranges from the Sonoran food that most American's equate to "Mexican" all the way to the fruit, corn and coca (mole!) based diets of the Mayans of southern Mexico. With just about everything in between.
Mexican cuisine is just as diverse as Indian cuisine when consideration of size of the country and population is taken into account. As with India, the defining characteristic of the food is often not the ingredients or the type of food, but how it's served that is unique to the name. Just as the ingredients of the curry change dramatically as you move across the Indian subcontinent but the use of the curry itself remains fairly constant so does the Tortilla and it's use in meal remains relatively constant across Mexico even though the primary ingredients (including the grain used in the tortilla itself) changes as you move across the Mexican nation.
Much as when we discuss "Indian" food when in fact we are talking about the peculiarities of cuisine specific to the Indian subcontinent we also refer to the specifics of the Mexican cuisine when we refer to Mexican. That there may be a far wider variety to the cuisine doesn't mean calling it Indian is meaningless. But more importantly, if you choose to attack a generalization, don't generalize another culture to make you point.
I apologize if I came across as lecturing or standing up on a pedestal. The only reason why I brought up the Mexican comparison was because the GP chose to do so. I shouldn't have made generic statements about a culture I know little of. From a naiive perspective however, I would still argue that Mexico is a smaller country with a smaller population and landmass compared to the Indian subcontinent. Having said this, I should have researched better - I actually thought Mexico was a lot smaller than it actually is. In this sense, I am guilty of ironically painting with the same wide brush that I took objection to. Again, the only reason I bring this up is to make sure that comparisons should be meaningful.
Another thing: India has quite a few drastically different food cultures mainly because of the numerous number of tribes that still passionately stick to their traditional food habits. There are hundreds of such tribes in India and not too many people even in India are aware of how diverse and omnipresent they are. It is these tribes that provide the diversity I am talking about, not the masses living in urban centers. Food cooked in North-east India for example is polar opposite of food cooked a few hundred miles away in Calcutta. A friend of mine cooks amazing Naga food, and I can tell you for sure that it is nothing like what you think of "Indian" food. Naga food usually consists of smoked or fermented vegetables, meats (pork, dog, etc.) and fish, and very often organ meat. The spices too are mostly fresh and not dried or powdered. There are several tribes among the Nagas themselves but it gets too complex and I too don't know enough about this subject.
If you think I am again reverting to hyperbole, please refer to this list of tribes in India. I dare say, not too many countries have this level of diversity.
I don't know about Indian cuisine but in Mexico we don't brag about how impossibly hot a dish is.
Chile is used as an additional condiment and is never the main focus of the meal... Mexicans know when something needs to be spiced up to make it taste better, enough to make you salivate just by smelling it and make it perfect. That hot spicy sensation is addictive and a good source of endorphins... It is never a goal to make it impossible to swallow, give you cramps and make you faint.
Pinches gringos locos....
Indians don't brag about the heat levels of their food as well. I would like to dispel some myths about Indian food here:
- Firstly, there is nothing called Indian food. India is an agglomeration of about 50-100 or so cultures, a bit like Europe. Each culture has its own history, language or dialect, culture, and most importantly, food. While culture has changed or diluted over time, food habits have not changed much. Anyone who talks about "Indian curry" is as incorrect as someone who talks about "European soup".
- Indian food by and large is not super-spicy to begin with. Home cooked food in India is usually mild and often a bit overcooked. Yes, certain cuisines such as Kolhapuri or Sahuji is known for being hotter. Even then, this is usually hype promoted by restaurants as a publicity stunt. While restaurants often label their dish "kolhapuri chicken" by adding 5 extra red chiles, authentic Kolhapuri food is not cooked this way
- Indian food, unlike many other cuisines, is very flavorful and aromatic and a typical dish will consist of numerous spices and herbs. Perhaps, this is because India is the birthplace of most herbs and spices (maybe not most, South America kicks ass too). Indian flavor is usually multi-dimensional and layered - heat is just one component. A really well made Indian dish (such as a "curry") will usually be hot, sour, salty, and a bit sweet at the same time. Mostly not bitter, but sometimes bitter too, especially in dishes such as bitter gourd curry. Bottom-line - spicy does not mean hot, it means full of spice, and each spice has a different flavor and aroma. This is the whole point of mixing multiple spices, or using pre-mixed spices ("garam masala", "panch phoran", etc.)
- Chile is also often an extra condiment in Indian cuisine as well - a typical Indian dish will consist of plain rice or wheat bread with a somewhat mild curry, a slightly spicier dry vegetable or meat, salad ("kachumbar") or yogurt based sauce to provide relief for the spice ("raita"). It is also usually accompanied by one or more chutneys that can range from fiery hot to minty cool, and by one or more pickles again ranging from fiery hot to sweet and tangy. The chutneys and pickles are meant to provide additional heat for people who like more heat in their food. There are several dozens, even hundreds, of pickles and chutneys. Note that Indian pickles are much more complex and flavourful compared to pickle popular in many other parts which is usually made with vegetables preserved in vinegar and salt. Indian pickles are usually pickled in a variety of oils.
- This whole thing of eating really hot food is really just a sport, the need for some people to turn anything into a competitive sport. Then, there are hotels like this one cashing in on this whole thing to get more publicity.
- With all due respect, Mexican food is delicious and very fresh and complex, but you cannot compare it with a country where you have hundreds of parallel food cultures all running back several thousands of years. You can probably compare Mexico to a specific Indian state, but that's about it. Comparing India to South America would be more accurate.
Before this becomes a flame war, please note: I'm not trying to put down down Mexico or say that India is better or worse. Just saying that the complexity of Mexican culture and food is comparable to the complexity of the culture and food of an Indian state - in terms of population, size, history, and complexity