If I am reading this correctly, no. It does not appear to have significant value at the production level. The cost per quantity is astronomical. But what it can be used for is rapid prototyping. Say you have an idea for a new doping agent for a photovoltaic cell. Previously, you would have to either manually concoct the agent, or you would have to design a production system to make it for you. Both of which are incredibly time and financially intensive, especially for something that is just a theory. This machine would allow you to "print" a small batch of your agent, enough to do a proof of concept so that you can determine if it is worth moving forward with a production system to produce it more efficiently.
Correct, except that it costs money to move. Having a continuous pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast makes it dramatically cheaper to get the crude to the world market. Having the line terminate in Chicago makes it cheaper to refine and distribute regionally. This offsets shipping costs of bringing imported fuels in to the middle of the country. While oil as a whole is a fungible commodity in the concept of investment and pricing, the realistic implementation of it is still dependent on infrastructure and transportation.
"It will certainly reduce prices in the US by increasing the global oil supply."
The XL pipeline doesn't alter the world's supply. The same oil is already being pumped and refined, it just makes it cheaper to get to higher priced markets. It would reduce prices in the US if it were more profitable to sell in the US, which is largely what we currently see with the Keystone pipeline terminating in Chicago. With the termination point in the Gulf, the reduced cost of international distribution allows a greater profit to be earned by shipping it to other countries.
"Becoming a net exporter of oil would be terriffic"
And the XL pipeline would have no meaningful impact here. This is Canadian oil.
"and because we'd no longer have a strategic interest in the Middle-East "
The US doesn't currently have any strategic oil interests of our own in the Middle-East, and the XL pipeline would not impact that. The US only imports ~1/4 of our total oil consumption, the vast majority of that comes from Canada and Central America because it's closer and cheaper than floating barges over from Saudi Arabia.
Europe on the other hand, has extremely limited oil supplies, they are quite dependent on Russia, the eastern block states, and the Middle East for their fuel. And the XL pipeline, even with direct access to the coast, isn't going to push enough oil to offset any sort of major disruption from Saudi Arabia or Russia.
So in closing, no, the XL pipeline would not change us into a net exporter, it would not reduce gas prices in the US, and it would not have a meaningful impact on the global oil supply.
This bill would move forward with the XL portion of the pipeline. The Keystone pipeline currently terminates at the refineries near Chicago, Il. The XL portion of the pipeline would extends the line to the Gulf Coast, allowing for the oil to be more easily re-sold on the world market as opposed to being land locked into the US market.
The XL portion was never meant to reduce oil prices in the US, it was meant to increase profit margins by reducing costs to transport the oil and oil products to higher priced markets.
Can we take down the environmentalism straw man yet?
Some fedex driver posted a 'day in the life of' blog and mentioned his 150+ mile daily route. Base salary of a fedex driver is ~$13/hr. Call it $20 as costs (tax/benies/sick/vacation/etc), that puts it at $160/day. Which is right about $1/mile.
But here's the rub, the article claims that switching from a Diesel truck to an electric truck takes their operating expenses from $1/mile to $0.30/mile.
If labor is already $1/mile, then they are either doing absolutely no maintenance and using no fuel on the Diesel and they have hired illegal immigrants to drive the electrics that they are charging up on stolen electricity, or....
labor is not included in the numbers they provided.
An electric truck is already a step up in efficiency and environmental responsibility from traditional internal combustion trucks, with a delivery cost to the shipping company of 30 cents per mile (compared to roughly a dollar per mile with diesel).
they're claiming a 70% cost reduction by going to an electric truck. Same driver, same parcel load, same mileage, ect...
Which would imply that their Diesel fuel + Diesel specific maintenance costs them 70 cents per mile MORE than their electricity and electric specific maintenance.
If they can put that same driver in an electric vehicle and do the same deliveries for 30 cents a mile, I'm thinking that they are doing something really wrong with the Diesel vehicles.
The big wear and tear that they will see over my horse truck is brakes. But even if you figure they drop $1000 on rotors, pads, and labor for brake jobs, every year, they're still putting probably 50k miles a year on those trucks. Which works out to be 2 cents per mile. And that's the hardest hit area.
You could toss in the tranny (although it should be holding up for much more than a single year of stop and go). But even if they're only getting 1 year out of a tranny, and they drop $5k for a new tranny installed each year, that's still only 10 cents a mile.
Suspension, power steering, tires, etc... would all be taking the same abuse whether you're in a Diesel or an electric.
To be spending $0.70/mile on a vehicle putting down 50k+ miles a year, means spending over $35,000 a year on vehicle maintenance.
To put that into scope, a Ford e-350 stripped chassis (your basic commercial delivery frame) MSRPs for $25,000. Jump up to an e-350 cutaway (your standard UHaul truck) for $30,000. Even if they blow $15k on a custom cab/body, you're still looking at a $40,000 vehicle. How the heck are they blowing over $35,000 a year maintaining a $40,000 vehicle?
I would assume that the goal would be to pull into a subdivision, park, and then let the drone(s) deliver a half dozen parcels to residence in that subdivision.
Or identify packages that cannot be drone delivered (shape/size/weight), drive to those locations, and have drones launching/returning for the smaller packages while the driver is en route with the big stuff.
From TFA: "A delivery truck costs roughly a dollar per mile with diesel."
I have a 1997 F-250 that pulls a fully loaded 3-horse slant load goose neck trailer and even with amorting out the depreciation over mileage, including tires and maintenance, and obviously Diesel fuel, I'm no where's close to $1/mile.
We don't put nearly as many miles on the truck as a delivery truck, so they are likely seeing higher maintenance costs, but with so many miles their amorted costs are going to be way lower per mile driven.
If they're looking to save costs and they're currently spending $1/mile on their trucks, I think there are some low hanging fruit they could tackle before jumping to drones.
Actually you can do diffing of MS Office docs via SharePoint. Makes picking out when people try to ninja requirement changes into a spec super easy to see;)
There are horrible, horrible things people try to do in SharePoint, but storage/organization, versioning, and collaboration of MS Office documents is actually something it does really, really well.
Ha, that's funny. I was disliked by the senior leadership at my last company because they felt that I didn't work my employees hard enough (expectation was a 42+ hour average work week, my team hovered just over 41)
If one person is really into technology, and they come into work with a bunch of coworkers that are completely disinterested in advancing their knowledge, they will either quickly burn out, or leave.
But if I get two people who are like minded, they come to work and bounce ideas off of each other.
I've found that getting 3 of these people together is where it really takes off. At 3 you have enough to make a majority rule, you have enough that even if someone is busy or uninterested for a bit, the cycle continues, you have enough that they start to carry some weight. It switches from 'those noisy kids and their new fangled technology' to 'the guys/gals that are setting the technical roadmap'.
I don't need everyone to be of that mindset, but I'd rather herd cats of a team of people pushing the envelope than have to walk around kicking complacent people in the seat of the pants.
Interesting, I can understand that point of view to an extent.
For example, I'm just wrapping up a massive hiring spree for a very specific project. Almost 30 new contractors (Mainframe devs, Java devs, BAs, PMs, etc...) and yeah, we put out very specific technical questions. Because in this case I have very specific, highly focused, unit testable deliveries I need to hit. None of it is system re-engineering, it's all just flipping from one ERP to another and having to adjust workflows and integrations.
But I have another posting coming up where I need someone to work on a composite system that requires GIS, Java, and.Net expertise. Getting a trifecta like that on a resume is damn near impossible, and if someone were to have all three, they would be able to charge a mint for it. Instead, I'm going to be looking for someone with GIS/.Net experience (ESRi focuses primarily on.Net) with additional generalist skills and an aptitude for new technologies. Someone that can jump into the Java side of the house, and stand on their own two feet in short order.
Even my last hire I was looking for a Java dev, but I wanted someone with experience in CI, or at least familiar with the concepts. Sure, having Jenkins, Maven, and Sonar experience would be a bonus, but I'd take someone who understands and has played with GIT/AppVayor.
Toss in someone who shows interest/excitement in abstraction, automation, code organization, etc... and you've got a winner.
As long as they can answer the basics. I've had people claiming 8 years of experience in Java that can't tell me what the 4 member access modifiers are. I had one guy tell me that the 'M' in MVC was the database. I don't even bother with things like Stack vs Heap or thread safe vs synchronized until after they can give me a rough description of the difference between a JAR, WAR, and EAR. Sadly, some people don't get that far. And I would be much more lenient of college grads and people jumping into Java for the first time, but for folks claiming 8+ years of Java experience, these things should be long since encountered.
The beauty of this post is that in 2 sentences you have just educated any readers lacking this knowledge to the point that the OP's interview question could be answered.
This is the danger of specific knowledge questions. Knowing the answer of the top of your head is largely immaterial. Google is just a finger stroke away. And thanks to JITC (Just in time Comprehension) specific knowledge is less critical than general knowledge and thought process.
I have a couple of things I like to look for in an interview. I like to know what a person is passionate about. A person who really enjoys coding, who works on open source projects on the side, does game mods, toys with the latest new technologies, etc... is likely someone who is always going to be pushing for a better solution.
I also have a white board exercise I like to do because it has an easy answer but can be thrown a curve ball based on inputs. Most folks miss the curve ball, so when we point it out, we can see how they debug code.
Those two general points helped to form one of the greatest development teams I've ever worked with. There were days where it took a lot of cat herding to keep some of them on task, but most of the time, you put a problem in front of them, and they will attack it with vigor and get you a solid product at the end of the day.
It gets even more interesting when the last digit is a 5. Accounting rules kick in and you round towards the nearest even number so $22.995 = $23, but $22.985 = $22.98.
This one threw me for a loop when I first hit it as there are some programming languages that the default Math.Round function follows to RNE (round nearest even) definition.
My understanding in this case (which may be incorrect) is that they are doing OS specific versions of React.js to allow them to take advantage of different OS optimizations.
For anyone leveraging React.js, it would still be write-once/run-anywhere assuming that those developers do not also intend to leverage OS optimizations. Or, if they are intending on switching languages/platforms, the port would be significantly easier because even though the code in React changes based on OS, the API remains the same.
The worst offender is the flex-fuel E85 crap. If you want to run ethanol, run ethanol, build up an engine that is designed to take advantage of it's anti-det properties and runs dramatically higher compression for waaaaay better efficiency. And we definitely shouldn't be doing it with corn (Corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, largely negating the total energy boon of ethanol). We should be looking at switch grass and other fast-growing high yield options that can generate vastly more ethanol per acre with dramatically less costs.
Bio Diesel I actually like, sulfur is all but forgotten, and the increased lubricity actually makes it easier on your engine. But the idea of trying to convert a soy crop to BD100 is going to be dumb. Recycling waste vegitable oil from the food processing industry on the other hand, reduces waste and taps into an existing supply.
Even looking at different sectors than just automotive. I have a couple of dairy farming buddies that use methane recovery from their manure processing system to power generators for electricity around the farm. Less raw methane escaping to the atmosphere, and again it's a by-product of the existing manure processing system.
The linked article sure reads like a shill for the oil industry, but it doesn't discount the point that we need to look at using the appropriate tool for the job. Sometimes that will be biofuels.
Pfft, I'm getting 1.1mbps over DSL on a good day where I am. And my 4g phone, when I can get a signal, pulls maybe 600kbps. A 1/4 mile down the road our neighbor has cable at 30mbps, but he pays roughly 4 times as much as we do. Even with that price tag though, they end their line at the corner he's on, there is no service for us.
Sorry, I should specify that the -government- is currently monitoring traffic via those methods.
Private industry has access to things that elements of the government does not, like your cell phone's position and speed (assuming you have Google's positioning system enabled).
Now, the NSA/FBI/Police may have some way of hacking in to get that, or put up stingers to catch it, but for all of the state DOTs out there, individuals' cell phones are not available. And the systems we have available to measure traffic volume, speed, and primary routes are limited.
Current traffic monitoring systems use either CC video analysis, ramp meters, magnetic loop, or blue tooth detection. I've heard of systems to pick up tire pressure indicator signals also, but I haven't seen them first hand.
With all of that, we get ~5-7% of the vehicle speed data on select routes.
In 2017 new requirements go into effect to require all vehicles produced for use in the US to include V2V communications systems. Most of these systems also include V2I communications. Even if they don't, I'd expect detecting that a specific V2V entity just drove past is going to be trivial.
So by the end of 2017, we're going to be on parity with all of our current assorted solutions for penetration. By the end of 2018, we'll have double the penetration. By 2020, roughly 20-25% of all vehicles will contain V2V and/or V2I communications.
So what does that mean? It means we could generate optimum route data and re-route traffic based on travel time recommendations before they get onto a major road with limited access and a traffic issue on the desired route.
It also means we can identify true bottlenecks and take completely new approaches to road engineering and project prioritization. This alone is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, funded largely by tax payers. If we can find more efficient ways of taking on these projects, it means less expenditures (or more projects).
But it comes with down sides. A policing agency could in theory query the system to see where you currently are, or where your vehicle was at a specific time. It also makes it possible for the mile traveled road tax, where you can be taxed by mile driven, and those taxes can vary and be distributed by municipalities that own those roads. And of course there is a security concern that a hacker or malicious user could determine your driving habits and use the information to their advantage. I did even hear a member of the law enforcement community asking about such a system's ability to disable vehicles remotely in the case of excessive speed, chases, etc...
Basically, there's a huge shift coming in the US and how we (and the government) interact with our vehicles.
My property taxes went up a couple years ago because the local residents decided to pay $2 million to have a flowage dredged and stocked with fish.
My property taxes are going up next year because the local residents decided to pay $25 million for a new sports complex at the high school.
Now, it may cost a couple mil to get a city wide fiber rollout, but after the initial build out, the monthly fees should cover peering and maintenance. So I get a 1 year bump in my taxes, and a life time of cheaper and faster internet access?
"It turns out that there are zillions of little apps that make businesses run. Some of them are no more robust than an excel workbook on a well known file share. Some are Access applications. Lots of VB6 apps are still keeping businesses running."
I hear ya. Been right there in the trenches for almost 20 years now doing line of business application development/management. The organization I just started with has a product catalog that has over 1000 entries, with tons of additional excel/access solutions that remain undocumented.
But this is a problem. Each of these applications involve risks, maintenance, and support. The more of them there are (and some places have mountains of them) the more maintenance and support cost, the more often those risks present themselves.
The reason these apps exist is because of a business process, and that process was likely designed in a vacuum being held over a fire. It's not that the app is flawed, but the business process itself may be the source of the issue. Working with the business units to identify processes that have multiple IT needs and finding ways to streamline the process, not the apps, will save the company vastly more than sinking time into developing yet another application.
And that's where we get to the rub. There are already hundreds of POS suites, contract managers, document management, BRMs, ERPs, HR tools, taxes and accounting apps, etc... Any core business function that a company may have has likely already been solved with a tool that is vastly cheaper than what it would cost for us to build, with refined business processes built in, and with a significantly lower TCO including maintenance and support.
The world is full of giants. Stand on their shoulders so that your IT department can spend their time on projects that take your business where others can't.
If you're just developing for the fun of it, have at.
But if your goal is to have a POS application, stop writing code right now. There exist hundreds of off the shelf POS apps all ready. For Windows, for Linux, thick clients, thin clients, web, desktop, green screen, etc...
Your time would be vastly better spent finding an existing product and adapting your business process to it. Especially if it is something that can tie into your accounting/inventory systems.
As the old saying goes, "Good developers write good code, great developers steal good code."
Well, part of that is due to the scale. Union membership has been plummeting over the last few decades. We're down to ~14 million total union members in the US.
And we're at ~140 million total non-farm employees in the country.
Assuming that both corporations and unions perform 'evil' at the same rate, we should expect 9 times more 'evil' reports on corporations than we see on unions just as a matter of scale.
Even just some quick google-fu shows that expectation to have some truth. More reports of corporate driven voter intimidation are available than reports of union driven voter intimidation. That isn't to say that unions don't do horrible crap too. Hell, look at that mess in Nevada back in 2010. Uhg. And if union membership wasn't at such a low level and falling, I'd be more concerned about it. But as is, unions are going the way of the dinosaur. They're still making a lot of noise, but their political clout is faltering and they don't have the impact they once did.
I just sent out the warning shot to my management group. 5 years to get there. 2 years of bickering and foot dragging before we have to have a plan in action so we can get Windows 10 rolling out on hardware replacement.
Slashdot Mirror
If I am reading this correctly, no. It does not appear to have significant value at the production level. The cost per quantity is astronomical. But what it can be used for is rapid prototyping. Say you have an idea for a new doping agent for a photovoltaic cell. Previously, you would have to either manually concoct the agent, or you would have to design a production system to make it for you. Both of which are incredibly time and financially intensive, especially for something that is just a theory. This machine would allow you to "print" a small batch of your agent, enough to do a proof of concept so that you can determine if it is worth moving forward with a production system to produce it more efficiently.
-Rick
Ahh good call. My knowledge is dated. The 3rd phase was the leg that connected the gulf cost and it was completed last year.
I should have double checked. If you excuse me, I'm going to go wipe this egg of my face.
-Rick
"Nope - because oil is a world market"
Correct, except that it costs money to move. Having a continuous pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast makes it dramatically cheaper to get the crude to the world market. Having the line terminate in Chicago makes it cheaper to refine and distribute regionally. This offsets shipping costs of bringing imported fuels in to the middle of the country. While oil as a whole is a fungible commodity in the concept of investment and pricing, the realistic implementation of it is still dependent on infrastructure and transportation.
"It will certainly reduce prices in the US by increasing the global oil supply."
The XL pipeline doesn't alter the world's supply. The same oil is already being pumped and refined, it just makes it cheaper to get to higher priced markets. It would reduce prices in the US if it were more profitable to sell in the US, which is largely what we currently see with the Keystone pipeline terminating in Chicago. With the termination point in the Gulf, the reduced cost of international distribution allows a greater profit to be earned by shipping it to other countries.
"Becoming a net exporter of oil would be terriffic"
And the XL pipeline would have no meaningful impact here. This is Canadian oil.
"and because we'd no longer have a strategic interest in the Middle-East "
The US doesn't currently have any strategic oil interests of our own in the Middle-East, and the XL pipeline would not impact that. The US only imports ~1/4 of our total oil consumption, the vast majority of that comes from Canada and Central America because it's closer and cheaper than floating barges over from Saudi Arabia.
Europe on the other hand, has extremely limited oil supplies, they are quite dependent on Russia, the eastern block states, and the Middle East for their fuel. And the XL pipeline, even with direct access to the coast, isn't going to push enough oil to offset any sort of major disruption from Saudi Arabia or Russia.
So in closing, no, the XL pipeline would not change us into a net exporter, it would not reduce gas prices in the US, and it would not have a meaningful impact on the global oil supply.
-Rick
This bill would move forward with the XL portion of the pipeline. The Keystone pipeline currently terminates at the refineries near Chicago, Il. The XL portion of the pipeline would extends the line to the Gulf Coast, allowing for the oil to be more easily re-sold on the world market as opposed to being land locked into the US market.
The XL portion was never meant to reduce oil prices in the US, it was meant to increase profit margins by reducing costs to transport the oil and oil products to higher priced markets.
Can we take down the environmentalism straw man yet?
-Rick
Not saying that this judge is deserving of a doxxing, but I would like to point out his trial history: http://www.plainsite.org/judge...
Which includes almost $300,000 in civil forfeiture cases in southern Texas. Those cases most folks refer to as "state-sanctioned highway robbery".
-Rick
Some fedex driver posted a 'day in the life of' blog and mentioned his 150+ mile daily route. Base salary of a fedex driver is ~$13/hr. Call it $20 as costs (tax/benies/sick/vacation/etc), that puts it at $160/day. Which is right about $1/mile.
But here's the rub, the article claims that switching from a Diesel truck to an electric truck takes their operating expenses from $1/mile to $0.30/mile.
If labor is already $1/mile, then they are either doing absolutely no maintenance and using no fuel on the Diesel and they have hired illegal immigrants to drive the electrics that they are charging up on stolen electricity, or....
labor is not included in the numbers they provided.
I'll let you choose which you feel is correct ;)
-Rick
The full block from TFA:
An electric truck is already a step up in efficiency and environmental responsibility from traditional internal combustion trucks, with a delivery cost to the shipping company of 30 cents per mile (compared to roughly a dollar per mile with diesel).
they're claiming a 70% cost reduction by going to an electric truck. Same driver, same parcel load, same mileage, ect...
Which would imply that their Diesel fuel + Diesel specific maintenance costs them 70 cents per mile MORE than their electricity and electric specific maintenance.
If they can put that same driver in an electric vehicle and do the same deliveries for 30 cents a mile, I'm thinking that they are doing something really wrong with the Diesel vehicles.
The big wear and tear that they will see over my horse truck is brakes. But even if you figure they drop $1000 on rotors, pads, and labor for brake jobs, every year, they're still putting probably 50k miles a year on those trucks. Which works out to be 2 cents per mile. And that's the hardest hit area.
You could toss in the tranny (although it should be holding up for much more than a single year of stop and go). But even if they're only getting 1 year out of a tranny, and they drop $5k for a new tranny installed each year, that's still only 10 cents a mile.
Suspension, power steering, tires, etc... would all be taking the same abuse whether you're in a Diesel or an electric.
To be spending $0.70/mile on a vehicle putting down 50k+ miles a year, means spending over $35,000 a year on vehicle maintenance.
To put that into scope, a Ford e-350 stripped chassis (your basic commercial delivery frame) MSRPs for $25,000. Jump up to an e-350 cutaway (your standard UHaul truck) for $30,000. Even if they blow $15k on a custom cab/body, you're still looking at a $40,000 vehicle. How the heck are they blowing over $35,000 a year maintaining a $40,000 vehicle?
-Rick
I would assume that the goal would be to pull into a subdivision, park, and then let the drone(s) deliver a half dozen parcels to residence in that subdivision.
Or identify packages that cannot be drone delivered (shape/size/weight), drive to those locations, and have drones launching/returning for the smaller packages while the driver is en route with the big stuff.
-Rick
From TFA:
"A delivery truck costs roughly a dollar per mile with diesel."
I have a 1997 F-250 that pulls a fully loaded 3-horse slant load goose neck trailer and even with amorting out the depreciation over mileage, including tires and maintenance, and obviously Diesel fuel, I'm no where's close to $1/mile.
We don't put nearly as many miles on the truck as a delivery truck, so they are likely seeing higher maintenance costs, but with so many miles their amorted costs are going to be way lower per mile driven.
If they're looking to save costs and they're currently spending $1/mile on their trucks, I think there are some low hanging fruit they could tackle before jumping to drones.
-Rick
Actually you can do diffing of MS Office docs via SharePoint. Makes picking out when people try to ninja requirement changes into a spec super easy to see ;)
There are horrible, horrible things people try to do in SharePoint, but storage/organization, versioning, and collaboration of MS Office documents is actually something it does really, really well.
-Rick
Ha, that's funny. I was disliked by the senior leadership at my last company because they felt that I didn't work my employees hard enough (expectation was a 42+ hour average work week, my team hovered just over 41)
If one person is really into technology, and they come into work with a bunch of coworkers that are completely disinterested in advancing their knowledge, they will either quickly burn out, or leave.
But if I get two people who are like minded, they come to work and bounce ideas off of each other.
I've found that getting 3 of these people together is where it really takes off. At 3 you have enough to make a majority rule, you have enough that even if someone is busy or uninterested for a bit, the cycle continues, you have enough that they start to carry some weight. It switches from 'those noisy kids and their new fangled technology' to 'the guys/gals that are setting the technical roadmap'.
I don't need everyone to be of that mindset, but I'd rather herd cats of a team of people pushing the envelope than have to walk around kicking complacent people in the seat of the pants.
-Rick
Interesting, I can understand that point of view to an extent.
For example, I'm just wrapping up a massive hiring spree for a very specific project. Almost 30 new contractors (Mainframe devs, Java devs, BAs, PMs, etc...) and yeah, we put out very specific technical questions. Because in this case I have very specific, highly focused, unit testable deliveries I need to hit. None of it is system re-engineering, it's all just flipping from one ERP to another and having to adjust workflows and integrations.
But I have another posting coming up where I need someone to work on a composite system that requires GIS, Java, and .Net expertise. Getting a trifecta like that on a resume is damn near impossible, and if someone were to have all three, they would be able to charge a mint for it. Instead, I'm going to be looking for someone with GIS/.Net experience (ESRi focuses primarily on .Net) with additional generalist skills and an aptitude for new technologies. Someone that can jump into the Java side of the house, and stand on their own two feet in short order.
Even my last hire I was looking for a Java dev, but I wanted someone with experience in CI, or at least familiar with the concepts. Sure, having Jenkins, Maven, and Sonar experience would be a bonus, but I'd take someone who understands and has played with GIT/AppVayor.
Toss in someone who shows interest/excitement in abstraction, automation, code organization, etc... and you've got a winner.
As long as they can answer the basics. I've had people claiming 8 years of experience in Java that can't tell me what the 4 member access modifiers are. I had one guy tell me that the 'M' in MVC was the database. I don't even bother with things like Stack vs Heap or thread safe vs synchronized until after they can give me a rough description of the difference between a JAR, WAR, and EAR. Sadly, some people don't get that far. And I would be much more lenient of college grads and people jumping into Java for the first time, but for folks claiming 8+ years of Java experience, these things should be long since encountered.
-Rick
The beauty of this post is that in 2 sentences you have just educated any readers lacking this knowledge to the point that the OP's interview question could be answered.
This is the danger of specific knowledge questions. Knowing the answer of the top of your head is largely immaterial. Google is just a finger stroke away. And thanks to JITC (Just in time Comprehension) specific knowledge is less critical than general knowledge and thought process.
I have a couple of things I like to look for in an interview. I like to know what a person is passionate about. A person who really enjoys coding, who works on open source projects on the side, does game mods, toys with the latest new technologies, etc... is likely someone who is always going to be pushing for a better solution.
I also have a white board exercise I like to do because it has an easy answer but can be thrown a curve ball based on inputs. Most folks miss the curve ball, so when we point it out, we can see how they debug code.
Those two general points helped to form one of the greatest development teams I've ever worked with. There were days where it took a lot of cat herding to keep some of them on task, but most of the time, you put a problem in front of them, and they will attack it with vigor and get you a solid product at the end of the day.
-Rick
It gets even more interesting when the last digit is a 5. Accounting rules kick in and you round towards the nearest even number so $22.995 = $23, but $22.985 = $22.98.
This one threw me for a loop when I first hit it as there are some programming languages that the default Math.Round function follows to RNE (round nearest even) definition.
-Rick
My understanding in this case (which may be incorrect) is that they are doing OS specific versions of React.js to allow them to take advantage of different OS optimizations.
For anyone leveraging React.js, it would still be write-once/run-anywhere assuming that those developers do not also intend to leverage OS optimizations. Or, if they are intending on switching languages/platforms, the port would be significantly easier because even though the code in React changes based on OS, the API remains the same.
-Rick
The worst offender is the flex-fuel E85 crap. If you want to run ethanol, run ethanol, build up an engine that is designed to take advantage of it's anti-det properties and runs dramatically higher compression for waaaaay better efficiency. And we definitely shouldn't be doing it with corn (Corn requires nitrogen fertilizer, largely negating the total energy boon of ethanol). We should be looking at switch grass and other fast-growing high yield options that can generate vastly more ethanol per acre with dramatically less costs.
Bio Diesel I actually like, sulfur is all but forgotten, and the increased lubricity actually makes it easier on your engine. But the idea of trying to convert a soy crop to BD100 is going to be dumb. Recycling waste vegitable oil from the food processing industry on the other hand, reduces waste and taps into an existing supply.
Even looking at different sectors than just automotive. I have a couple of dairy farming buddies that use methane recovery from their manure processing system to power generators for electricity around the farm. Less raw methane escaping to the atmosphere, and again it's a by-product of the existing manure processing system.
The linked article sure reads like a shill for the oil industry, but it doesn't discount the point that we need to look at using the appropriate tool for the job. Sometimes that will be biofuels.
-Rick
Cause I got no points and that's a handy tip!
-Rick
Pfft, I'm getting 1.1mbps over DSL on a good day where I am. And my 4g phone, when I can get a signal, pulls maybe 600kbps. A 1/4 mile down the road our neighbor has cable at 30mbps, but he pays roughly 4 times as much as we do. Even with that price tag though, they end their line at the corner he's on, there is no service for us.
-Rick
Sorry, I should specify that the -government- is currently monitoring traffic via those methods.
Private industry has access to things that elements of the government does not, like your cell phone's position and speed (assuming you have Google's positioning system enabled).
Now, the NSA/FBI/Police may have some way of hacking in to get that, or put up stingers to catch it, but for all of the state DOTs out there, individuals' cell phones are not available. And the systems we have available to measure traffic volume, speed, and primary routes are limited.
-Rick
They're beating us in this one.
Current traffic monitoring systems use either CC video analysis, ramp meters, magnetic loop, or blue tooth detection. I've heard of systems to pick up tire pressure indicator signals also, but I haven't seen them first hand.
With all of that, we get ~5-7% of the vehicle speed data on select routes.
In 2017 new requirements go into effect to require all vehicles produced for use in the US to include V2V communications systems. Most of these systems also include V2I communications. Even if they don't, I'd expect detecting that a specific V2V entity just drove past is going to be trivial.
So by the end of 2017, we're going to be on parity with all of our current assorted solutions for penetration. By the end of 2018, we'll have double the penetration. By 2020, roughly 20-25% of all vehicles will contain V2V and/or V2I communications.
So what does that mean? It means we could generate optimum route data and re-route traffic based on travel time recommendations before they get onto a major road with limited access and a traffic issue on the desired route.
It also means we can identify true bottlenecks and take completely new approaches to road engineering and project prioritization. This alone is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, funded largely by tax payers. If we can find more efficient ways of taking on these projects, it means less expenditures (or more projects).
But it comes with down sides. A policing agency could in theory query the system to see where you currently are, or where your vehicle was at a specific time. It also makes it possible for the mile traveled road tax, where you can be taxed by mile driven, and those taxes can vary and be distributed by municipalities that own those roads. And of course there is a security concern that a hacker or malicious user could determine your driving habits and use the information to their advantage. I did even hear a member of the law enforcement community asking about such a system's ability to disable vehicles remotely in the case of excessive speed, chases, etc...
Basically, there's a huge shift coming in the US and how we (and the government) interact with our vehicles.
-Rick
My property taxes went up a couple years ago because the local residents decided to pay $2 million to have a flowage dredged and stocked with fish.
My property taxes are going up next year because the local residents decided to pay $25 million for a new sports complex at the high school.
Now, it may cost a couple mil to get a city wide fiber rollout, but after the initial build out, the monthly fees should cover peering and maintenance. So I get a 1 year bump in my taxes, and a life time of cheaper and faster internet access?
Now that's something I can get behind!
-Rick
"It turns out that there are zillions of little apps that make businesses run. Some of them are no more robust than an excel workbook on a well known file share. Some are Access applications. Lots of VB6 apps are still keeping businesses running."
I hear ya. Been right there in the trenches for almost 20 years now doing line of business application development/management. The organization I just started with has a product catalog that has over 1000 entries, with tons of additional excel/access solutions that remain undocumented.
But this is a problem. Each of these applications involve risks, maintenance, and support. The more of them there are (and some places have mountains of them) the more maintenance and support cost, the more often those risks present themselves.
The reason these apps exist is because of a business process, and that process was likely designed in a vacuum being held over a fire. It's not that the app is flawed, but the business process itself may be the source of the issue. Working with the business units to identify processes that have multiple IT needs and finding ways to streamline the process, not the apps, will save the company vastly more than sinking time into developing yet another application.
And that's where we get to the rub. There are already hundreds of POS suites, contract managers, document management, BRMs, ERPs, HR tools, taxes and accounting apps, etc... Any core business function that a company may have has likely already been solved with a tool that is vastly cheaper than what it would cost for us to build, with refined business processes built in, and with a significantly lower TCO including maintenance and support.
The world is full of giants. Stand on their shoulders so that your IT department can spend their time on projects that take your business where others can't.
-Rick
If you're just developing for the fun of it, have at.
But if your goal is to have a POS application, stop writing code right now. There exist hundreds of off the shelf POS apps all ready. For Windows, for Linux, thick clients, thin clients, web, desktop, green screen, etc...
Your time would be vastly better spent finding an existing product and adapting your business process to it. Especially if it is something that can tie into your accounting/inventory systems.
As the old saying goes, "Good developers write good code, great developers steal good code."
-Rick
Well, part of that is due to the scale. Union membership has been plummeting over the last few decades. We're down to ~14 million total union members in the US.
And we're at ~140 million total non-farm employees in the country.
Assuming that both corporations and unions perform 'evil' at the same rate, we should expect 9 times more 'evil' reports on corporations than we see on unions just as a matter of scale.
Even just some quick google-fu shows that expectation to have some truth. More reports of corporate driven voter intimidation are available than reports of union driven voter intimidation. That isn't to say that unions don't do horrible crap too. Hell, look at that mess in Nevada back in 2010. Uhg. And if union membership wasn't at such a low level and falling, I'd be more concerned about it. But as is, unions are going the way of the dinosaur. They're still making a lot of noise, but their political clout is faltering and they don't have the impact they once did.
-Rick
I just sent out the warning shot to my management group. 5 years to get there. 2 years of bickering and foot dragging before we have to have a plan in action so we can get Windows 10 rolling out on hardware replacement.
-Rick