And my point about FizzBuzz is, because there's a right answer -- even if there's more than one right answer -- this is something that you don't need a particularly knowledgeable person to do.
Conversely, not only do you need a knowledgeable person to properly evaluate the "object oriented" question, you also are, in a sense, "playing dumb" -- remember, the candidate is interviewing the company as much as the other way around. But I guess that's a pitfall of all trick questions.
Honestly, I think FizzBuzz might be a better indicator, because there is a right answer to that.
Could you explain what makes a language object-oriented? It's possible to write OO code in C; is C an OO language? If you mention classes and inheritance, well, what about prototypal languages like JavaScript? For that matter, Erlang uses some of the more fundamental things that make Smalltalk-like OO languages great, without actually being OO in any real sense.
Then again, if someone gave that kind of answer, it would be a lot better than "It has methods in it."
That's not an EULA, it's a notice. Roughly equivalent to having Help->About in a GUI program.
In fact, a lot of people treat the EULA as a license, and put it in a click-wrap, which is actually pretty stupid -- if I really don't want to comply with the GPL, all I have to do is download the source code, remove the click-wrap, and recompile it for myself.
The GPL doesn't restrict anything -- it's just very careful about which rights it grants.
The key is the phrase, "when you close that dialog". I.e., when you confirm your selection via some action.
And that's when the upload takes place.
No. FUCK no. That is nowhere close to what I said. You developed an app that uploads a file upon *highlighting* of a file.
In other words, for the third time, I'm talking about what happens when the window is closed. I am not talking about merely highlighting the file -- that is not what was meant by "select".
And that's why I wrote out that workflow explicitly.
If you upload a file you shouldn't have, that is your liability.
Given the above, we're not uploading it -- the user is.
After all, had you written your application to be malicious, you can upload whatever you want within the open file scope with or without a selection or confirmation of any kind.
Nope. As far as I know, Flash doesn't allow this.
Again, the only difference here is:
- Multi-file selection, rather than having to keep hitting "browse" for another file
- Upload starts as soon as you hit "ok", without having to submit a form as a third step.
I still buy cd's from bands I like. I know most of the money doesn't go to the artist, but at least some does.
Mail them a check, or paypal them. If their label is like most, they're getting less than a dollar out of that CD sale.
I do it because that way I always have a master copy from which I can re-rip high quality mp3's as needed.
Or you could download a FLAC rip, which is a full, master copy -- burn a CD of that, and then, if you must, re-encode to high quality mp3s. (I'd suggest AAC, if your target is an iPod, or Vorbis (or FLAC), if your target is RockBox.)
Now, I'm not saying you should be a pirate. What I am saying is that buying a CD does very little for you or them at this point -- all it does is support the existing, bloated industry.
You know when I buy CDs? When I'm walking out of an Umphrey's McGee concert. They will sell you a freshly-burned copy of the concert you just saw. Or, wait a few days, and they'll sell you a flac download for a somewhat lower price.
My last two jobs, I've worked on both open source, and partially open source projects. Essentially, I'm paid a salary to develop software. I certainly don't expect to stop working at some point, and earn royalties on all the software I've written.
In fact, quite often, I'm paid to work on open source directly, or I'm allowed to open source some of the software that I've written. No one's collecting royalties on that.
In other words, roughly equivalent to a musician, say, playing a wedding. It's not as though they'll mind if you record that music, and sell it later -- they just want live music right now, and they're willing to pay for it.
I don't see the distinction. A site could offer for-pay music downloads ($N per track), with no DRM anywhere in sight, and once you pay for a song, you can go back and redownload it as often as you want.
I was making a distinction between the service and the media.
The non-DRM'd media alone doesn't magically give you this ability. It's the service that gives you this ability, DRM'd or not.
I think what you mean is that music publishers are unlikely to offer certain functionality in their download scheme if the music isn't DRMed
I was implying that, yes, but it's a bit beside the point.
The point is, as a consumer, a DRM'd service may be a better value than a DRM-free track, and the equivalent DRM-free service may not exist. I'm not arguing that the DRM itself is beneficial...
Well, actually, there is one case where it is: Games. Particularly, online multiplayer games, in the form of anti-cheat technology. For a single-player game, I would much, much rather have an open source game, even if I have to pay for the content. But for a multiplayer game, it seems like the game has to at least be closed, if not heavily protected, for many genres of game.
Either your sig is sarcastic, or you're suggesting that the candidate who is actually for net neutrality, and a transparent government, is the opposite of what I want?
Normally I detest Mac and all their little fanboys.... If it works great, if it sucks he denounces it. You have to respect someone like that. We need more of that attitude in every aspect of life.
Maybe you could use more of that attitude, and not detest Mac offhand?
Things like the gameboy and xbox live tightly control the available content, and I don't see nearly as much bitching about them as I do about the iphone.
Probably because neither of those pretended to be a complete computer. The iPhone's biggest appeal is that it is more than just a phone, and is, in fact, a general-purpose pocket computer.
Apple never said this, but frankly, that's where the hype comes from, and I imagine that's largely what these developers see in it.
It's also directly detrimental to consumers -- here's an example of an app which probably would have been beneficial, but Apple blocked it.
All forms of DRM add fetters to that situation without giving any additional abilities or functionality.
There is the possibility of providing a service through which to re-download the media, as many times as you want.
Granted, it's possible to provide that with completely unfettered media -- so, strictly speaking, it's not the DRM itself that adds this. It is, however, possible for a DRM'd system to have additional capabilities that the non-DRM'd media alone wouldn't have.
So...
All DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers.
Consider services like Napster et al -- download anything you want that exists in the service for some reasonable monthly fee, less than the cost of buying two CDs. So if you listen to at least two new albums a month, it's cheaper to go the DRM route.
Consider services like Pandora Radio -- granted, there isn't actually DRM happening there, but I know of no easy way to pull the audio out of that. Mostly, I'm guessing, because people haven't tried. In this case, the benefit to the consumer is, again, a huge media library, but this time, it's free.
In the case of Pandora, the failure modes of DRM really don't affect you -- you'd just go listen to another form of Internet Radio, perhaps last.fm.
Now, in the very limited case of media which you are purchasing, DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers, and no amount of dressing it up will change that fact. Certainly, I would prefer my other media to come without DRM, but at that point, I really don't lose anything by, say, listening to Pandora.
One solution is to switch to a different business model -- make your money from touring, and treat everything else as promotional material.
If a few million people have heard your music because it was pirated, or because it was (illegally!) attached as a soundtrack to a funny YouTube video, well, it's hard (impossible?) to buy publicity that good, and you just got it for free.
In fact, there was a great article about this -- basically arguing that because of how ridiculously greedy the publishers and studios are, you're actually better off playing in bars and nightclubs than you are signing with a major label.
A selection of a file or group of files is not typically actionable until a subsequent command (copy, delete, move, properties, et cetera). This breaks typical UI practice.
Does it?
When I want to open a file, in most cases, I click File -> Open, which provides that browse dialog -- I select the file -- and then I click "Open", in the same dialog, and it opens.
It doesn't even break Web UI practice. When I want to open a file in Gmail, I click "browse", select a file, and click "OK", or whatever the button is to close that dialog with an affirmative. At which point, it adds that file to the list of attachments. Technically, the file isn't actually uploaded until I press "send", but this is an implementation detail most users aren't aware of, and I can't imagine that they care.
How do you know most users want the behavior you have now?
Most of our users? Well, considering the alternative -- among them, the lack of ability to select multiple files in that single dialog -- I would say most of them would rather do it this way.
Further, the alternative you provide for explicit uploads...
In what way are these not explicit?
A web page gives you a "browse", or "add files" button. You click it, and it opens a standard UI dialog for browsing files. You start selecting. When you close that dialog, just where were you intending your files to go?
It sounds like you're asking for yet another "are you sure?" message. Are you sure you want to upload these files you've just chosen to upload?
I suppose if a majority of users complain, we'll change it -- but I can't imagine most users would want it to be less convenient, and take more time, so that they'll have a chance to back out after they've hit "OK".
ought not be 'open source flash' but find another supplier.
Again, you're welcome to find such a supplier for us. The closest mentioned so far was Google Gears, which doesn't have a fraction of the market penetration of Flash.
You won't get any sympathy pumping diesel into your gasoline car, so why should you be entitled to a full refund when you try to run Crysis on your GeForce3?
Mostly because, for that gasoline car, you know you need gasoline. That's it.
In addition to a better video card, you also need at least Windows XP (2000 won't cut it), a fast, modern CPU (either 2.8 ghz for XP, or 3.2 ghz for Vista, but they recommend 2.2 ghz dual-core), probably 2 gigs of RAM, and 6 gigs of free disk space. All of that is quoting the official system requirements.
And on top of that, for it to run acceptably, you have to be reasonably free of viruses, spyware, and crapware -- that last bit probably ruling out most Vista installations. And to appreciate it, you probably at least want an optical mouse.
And even if you meet all of the above, there may well be some subtle incompatibility -- it's entirely possible the game just won't like your soundcard, for example.
So, for most people, the answer to satisfying all of these is simply "Buy a new computer."
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be responsible for the health of their system, or for knowing roughly what it's capable of, but it's far more complex than the fact that your car doesn't take diesel. And I know I couldn't determine, without actually installing a game, whether it would work.
I would agree with giving refunds where the game is crippled by technical issues, but the phrasing as-is is pretty vague.
I imagine that's part of the point.
Short of patching critical issues, the company doesn't owe you diddly squat.
Maybe it's the wording -- I know I at least expect critical issues to be fixed, and too many companies are content to let the community patch it, or simply let the game fester. Especially if it has console ports.
I know that when I installed XP 64-bit, Steam refused to install in the default directory -- "C:\Program Files (32-bit)\Valve\Steam" -- because it had characters Steam didn't expect (the parens). In other words, a new OS feature caused Steam to not work. (Granted, I probably could have installed it in a different place, but along with no working soundcard, this didn't bode well. I tried nVidia's 64-bit demos and was appropriately impressed, then I uninstalled it and went back to 32-bit XP.)
Another example is Beyond Good and Evil. It had two huge problems. The first was a way in which you'd end up with an unplayable savegame, with no way to fix it other than to download a third-party tool to patch your save.
The second was a weird bug which seems to be related to CPU scaling -- I would guess that it's using some metric other than wall time. I say this because it worked fine on my desktop, on which I believe I'd disabled cool&quiet, but it was always unplayably fast or slow on my roommate's laptop, which had Intel's CPU scaling turned on.
Just as it's unreasonable to expect developers to catch every single issue before release, it's also unreasonable for a game to simply stop working after a few months, or if the gamer buys a new computer. The only solution I know of is to expect patches.
I do like Steam, but I'll buy a game on CD (with a good old fashion disk-in-the-drive copy protection system) if it's available rather than buy on Steam.
Disk-in-the-drive copy protection has been significantly less reliable for me than Steam. But depending on who you get, there's a fair chance that either will also be tied to SecuROM's online check (the way Bioshock is).
It's not your problem that someone stole your key...
Actually, it kind of is.
Suppose it was a console game, and someone stole your physical game disc. Should that be their problem?
I find it much easier to keep track of a few pieces of information than a physical disc -- and, were this not the case, I could always write that information to a disc and keep track of the disc. With pre-Steam Half-Life, I could potentially lose the CD. With post-Steam Half-Life, so long as I don't lose my password, I can re-download the game.
Slashdot Mirror
For what that's worth, thanks.
And my point about FizzBuzz is, because there's a right answer -- even if there's more than one right answer -- this is something that you don't need a particularly knowledgeable person to do.
Conversely, not only do you need a knowledgeable person to properly evaluate the "object oriented" question, you also are, in a sense, "playing dumb" -- remember, the candidate is interviewing the company as much as the other way around. But I guess that's a pitfall of all trick questions.
And what about when it's the taxpayers' investment?
Shouldn't the taxpayers at least be able to insist that the pipe is used for its intended purpose?
Wouldn't that "intended purpose" include "Internet access", as in, all of the Internet, unthrottled and unmolested?
Honestly, I think FizzBuzz might be a better indicator, because there is a right answer to that.
Could you explain what makes a language object-oriented? It's possible to write OO code in C; is C an OO language? If you mention classes and inheritance, well, what about prototypal languages like JavaScript? For that matter, Erlang uses some of the more fundamental things that make Smalltalk-like OO languages great, without actually being OO in any real sense.
Then again, if someone gave that kind of answer, it would be a lot better than "It has methods in it."
W Three F.
WTF!
I suppose I should go read TFA, but what's wrong with the W3C?
That's not an EULA, it's a notice. Roughly equivalent to having Help->About in a GUI program.
In fact, a lot of people treat the EULA as a license, and put it in a click-wrap, which is actually pretty stupid -- if I really don't want to comply with the GPL, all I have to do is download the source code, remove the click-wrap, and recompile it for myself.
The GPL doesn't restrict anything -- it's just very careful about which rights it grants.
What they should do is be honest and describe the limitations in the box.
No, what they should do is stop fucking over their customers.
Who's up for organizing a similar protest around Red Alert 3? I would like to think that we won't accept the "just throw 'em a bone" strategy.
Ah, yes, it showed up in my Google search, too, when I was looking to see if that was actually the right link.
And you linked to an IP address, why?
http://www.i2p2.de/
The picture sucks, though -- I think I know how it's supposed to work, but looking at that, I have no clue what it's trying to say.
The key is the phrase, "when you close that dialog". I.e., when you confirm your selection via some action.
And that's when the upload takes place.
No. FUCK no. That is nowhere close to what I said. You developed an app that uploads a file upon *highlighting* of a file.
In other words, for the third time, I'm talking about what happens when the window is closed. I am not talking about merely highlighting the file -- that is not what was meant by "select".
And that's why I wrote out that workflow explicitly.
If you upload a file you shouldn't have, that is your liability.
Given the above, we're not uploading it -- the user is.
After all, had you written your application to be malicious, you can upload whatever you want within the open file scope with or without a selection or confirmation of any kind.
Nope. As far as I know, Flash doesn't allow this.
Again, the only difference here is:
- Multi-file selection, rather than having to keep hitting "browse" for another file
- Upload starts as soon as you hit "ok", without having to submit a form as a third step.
I still buy cd's from bands I like. I know most of the money doesn't go to the artist, but at least some does.
Mail them a check, or paypal them. If their label is like most, they're getting less than a dollar out of that CD sale.
I do it because that way I always have a master copy from which I can re-rip high quality mp3's as needed.
Or you could download a FLAC rip, which is a full, master copy -- burn a CD of that, and then, if you must, re-encode to high quality mp3s. (I'd suggest AAC, if your target is an iPod, or Vorbis (or FLAC), if your target is RockBox.)
Now, I'm not saying you should be a pirate. What I am saying is that buying a CD does very little for you or them at this point -- all it does is support the existing, bloated industry.
You know when I buy CDs? When I'm walking out of an Umphrey's McGee concert. They will sell you a freshly-burned copy of the concert you just saw. Or, wait a few days, and they'll sell you a flac download for a somewhat lower price.
You're being sarcastic, but you're not far off.
My last two jobs, I've worked on both open source, and partially open source projects. Essentially, I'm paid a salary to develop software. I certainly don't expect to stop working at some point, and earn royalties on all the software I've written.
In fact, quite often, I'm paid to work on open source directly, or I'm allowed to open source some of the software that I've written. No one's collecting royalties on that.
In other words, roughly equivalent to a musician, say, playing a wedding. It's not as though they'll mind if you record that music, and sell it later -- they just want live music right now, and they're willing to pay for it.
I don't see the distinction. A site could offer for-pay music downloads ($N per track), with no DRM anywhere in sight, and once you pay for a song, you can go back and redownload it as often as you want.
I was making a distinction between the service and the media.
The non-DRM'd media alone doesn't magically give you this ability. It's the service that gives you this ability, DRM'd or not.
I think what you mean is that music publishers are unlikely to offer certain functionality in their download scheme if the music isn't DRMed
I was implying that, yes, but it's a bit beside the point.
The point is, as a consumer, a DRM'd service may be a better value than a DRM-free track, and the equivalent DRM-free service may not exist. I'm not arguing that the DRM itself is beneficial...
Well, actually, there is one case where it is: Games. Particularly, online multiplayer games, in the form of anti-cheat technology. For a single-player game, I would much, much rather have an open source game, even if I have to pay for the content. But for a multiplayer game, it seems like the game has to at least be closed, if not heavily protected, for many genres of game.
If Microsoft had pulled this stunt, they would have been ridiculed till the cows come home.
Read the above comments. Apple is being ridiculed for this, and there is outrage.
Either your sig is sarcastic, or you're suggesting that the candidate who is actually for net neutrality, and a transparent government, is the opposite of what I want?
No, it's more the point that "pod" is exactly one character off from "ped". No one would confuse it for "electro" or "nucleo".
Normally I detest Mac and all their little fanboys.... If it works great, if it sucks he denounces it. You have to respect someone like that. We need more of that attitude in every aspect of life.
Maybe you could use more of that attitude, and not detest Mac offhand?
Things like the gameboy and xbox live tightly control the available content, and I don't see nearly as much bitching about them as I do about the iphone.
Probably because neither of those pretended to be a complete computer. The iPhone's biggest appeal is that it is more than just a phone, and is, in fact, a general-purpose pocket computer.
Apple never said this, but frankly, that's where the hype comes from, and I imagine that's largely what these developers see in it.
It's also directly detrimental to consumers -- here's an example of an app which probably would have been beneficial, but Apple blocked it.
All forms of DRM add fetters to that situation without giving any additional abilities or functionality.
There is the possibility of providing a service through which to re-download the media, as many times as you want.
Granted, it's possible to provide that with completely unfettered media -- so, strictly speaking, it's not the DRM itself that adds this. It is, however, possible for a DRM'd system to have additional capabilities that the non-DRM'd media alone wouldn't have.
So...
All DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers.
Consider services like Napster et al -- download anything you want that exists in the service for some reasonable monthly fee, less than the cost of buying two CDs. So if you listen to at least two new albums a month, it's cheaper to go the DRM route.
Consider services like Pandora Radio -- granted, there isn't actually DRM happening there, but I know of no easy way to pull the audio out of that. Mostly, I'm guessing, because people haven't tried. In this case, the benefit to the consumer is, again, a huge media library, but this time, it's free.
In the case of Pandora, the failure modes of DRM really don't affect you -- you'd just go listen to another form of Internet Radio, perhaps last.fm.
Now, in the very limited case of media which you are purchasing, DRM is inherently defective and bad for consumers, and no amount of dressing it up will change that fact. Certainly, I would prefer my other media to come without DRM, but at that point, I really don't lose anything by, say, listening to Pandora.
One solution is to switch to a different business model -- make your money from touring, and treat everything else as promotional material.
If a few million people have heard your music because it was pirated, or because it was (illegally!) attached as a soundtrack to a funny YouTube video, well, it's hard (impossible?) to buy publicity that good, and you just got it for free.
In fact, there was a great article about this -- basically arguing that because of how ridiculously greedy the publishers and studios are, you're actually better off playing in bars and nightclubs than you are signing with a major label.
A selection of a file or group of files is not typically actionable until a subsequent command (copy, delete, move, properties, et cetera). This breaks typical UI practice.
Does it?
When I want to open a file, in most cases, I click File -> Open, which provides that browse dialog -- I select the file -- and then I click "Open", in the same dialog, and it opens.
It doesn't even break Web UI practice. When I want to open a file in Gmail, I click "browse", select a file, and click "OK", or whatever the button is to close that dialog with an affirmative. At which point, it adds that file to the list of attachments. Technically, the file isn't actually uploaded until I press "send", but this is an implementation detail most users aren't aware of, and I can't imagine that they care.
How do you know most users want the behavior you have now?
Most of our users? Well, considering the alternative -- among them, the lack of ability to select multiple files in that single dialog -- I would say most of them would rather do it this way.
Further, the alternative you provide for explicit uploads...
In what way are these not explicit?
A web page gives you a "browse", or "add files" button. You click it, and it opens a standard UI dialog for browsing files. You start selecting. When you close that dialog, just where were you intending your files to go?
It sounds like you're asking for yet another "are you sure?" message. Are you sure you want to upload these files you've just chosen to upload?
I suppose if a majority of users complain, we'll change it -- but I can't imagine most users would want it to be less convenient, and take more time, so that they'll have a chance to back out after they've hit "OK".
ought not be 'open source flash' but find another supplier.
Again, you're welcome to find such a supplier for us. The closest mentioned so far was Google Gears, which doesn't have a fraction of the market penetration of Flash.
More or less. HURD is at least in a bootable, runnable state, somewhat. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case when Linux came out.
Someone tell them, that a Mac is just a PC too.
I think they know:
"I'm a Mac."
"I'm a PC."
"And I'm a PC, too."
You won't get any sympathy pumping diesel into your gasoline car, so why should you be entitled to a full refund when you try to run Crysis on your GeForce3?
Mostly because, for that gasoline car, you know you need gasoline. That's it.
In addition to a better video card, you also need at least Windows XP (2000 won't cut it), a fast, modern CPU (either 2.8 ghz for XP, or 3.2 ghz for Vista, but they recommend 2.2 ghz dual-core), probably 2 gigs of RAM, and 6 gigs of free disk space. All of that is quoting the official system requirements.
And on top of that, for it to run acceptably, you have to be reasonably free of viruses, spyware, and crapware -- that last bit probably ruling out most Vista installations. And to appreciate it, you probably at least want an optical mouse.
And even if you meet all of the above, there may well be some subtle incompatibility -- it's entirely possible the game just won't like your soundcard, for example.
So, for most people, the answer to satisfying all of these is simply "Buy a new computer."
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be responsible for the health of their system, or for knowing roughly what it's capable of, but it's far more complex than the fact that your car doesn't take diesel. And I know I couldn't determine, without actually installing a game, whether it would work.
I would agree with giving refunds where the game is crippled by technical issues, but the phrasing as-is is pretty vague.
I imagine that's part of the point.
Short of patching critical issues, the company doesn't owe you diddly squat.
Maybe it's the wording -- I know I at least expect critical issues to be fixed, and too many companies are content to let the community patch it, or simply let the game fester. Especially if it has console ports.
I know that when I installed XP 64-bit, Steam refused to install in the default directory -- "C:\Program Files (32-bit)\Valve\Steam" -- because it had characters Steam didn't expect (the parens). In other words, a new OS feature caused Steam to not work. (Granted, I probably could have installed it in a different place, but along with no working soundcard, this didn't bode well. I tried nVidia's 64-bit demos and was appropriately impressed, then I uninstalled it and went back to 32-bit XP.)
Another example is Beyond Good and Evil. It had two huge problems. The first was a way in which you'd end up with an unplayable savegame, with no way to fix it other than to download a third-party tool to patch your save.
The second was a weird bug which seems to be related to CPU scaling -- I would guess that it's using some metric other than wall time. I say this because it worked fine on my desktop, on which I believe I'd disabled cool&quiet, but it was always unplayably fast or slow on my roommate's laptop, which had Intel's CPU scaling turned on.
Just as it's unreasonable to expect developers to catch every single issue before release, it's also unreasonable for a game to simply stop working after a few months, or if the gamer buys a new computer. The only solution I know of is to expect patches.
I do like Steam, but I'll buy a game on CD (with a good old fashion disk-in-the-drive copy protection system) if it's available rather than buy on Steam.
Disk-in-the-drive copy protection has been significantly less reliable for me than Steam. But depending on who you get, there's a fair chance that either will also be tied to SecuROM's online check (the way Bioshock is).
It's not your problem that someone stole your key...
Actually, it kind of is.
Suppose it was a console game, and someone stole your physical game disc. Should that be their problem?
I find it much easier to keep track of a few pieces of information than a physical disc -- and, were this not the case, I could always write that information to a disc and keep track of the disc. With pre-Steam Half-Life, I could potentially lose the CD. With post-Steam Half-Life, so long as I don't lose my password, I can re-download the game.
I think that hardly counts as "defective".