Nice quip, but actually what he's discovered is a way to create such a phishing page and get google to even host it on their domain... which makes it almost completely impossible to detect as phishing until it's too late.
Besides, you can't do an entire scientific experiment on some of the things that they tackle in 22 minutes or so, and if you could, nobody would watch it because it wouldn't be entertaining.
I don't know, I wrote an HTTP webserver in java that was less than 50 lines including blank lines in about the same amount of time for my college networking class.... and a client too.... using only the basic java (sun) libraries.
I'm not saying this to tote my skills... actually I barely knew java and was still able to do this. I was a C++ student at the time but the prof preferred Java. I'm just trying to say that it doesn't sound entirely unreasonable.
The book titled "How would you move Mount Fuji" by William Poundstone does an excellent examination of the puzzle interview from both the interviewers' and the interviewees' perspectives. The point is, though, not whether you get the solution to the puzzle, but how you structure your thoughts in attempting to solve it.
I work for a small shop and we use such hiring techniques... it has proven to be quite a good method of weeding out the "professional interviewers"... the people who know buzzwords but aren't really capable of backing them up.
Degrees & certifications are often used to weed through the stacks of resumes in the first place, but aren't very important after that. The important thing is the potential that you can find in the candidate. A degree doesn't tell you where they're going, it tells you where they've been.
I do recommend the book, though, it is an excellent read and certainly not dry. It also has a number of puzzle questions, some of which I've seen in interviews myself, and the solutions to them for those of you who just don't get it;-)
The enemies of America have done a good job of disguising themselves as citizens of the land that we fight in. A non-lethal method could potentially give us the ability to incapacitate the "bad guys" without loss of civilian life, not to mention the captives who are a part of the opposition could then be interrogated and we may learn information that would help us end the fight that much sooner.
I agree with some of your points, especially that Hummers and similar vehicles are taken out of context and lost much of their value when driven in suburbia. They are a waste of money both in base cost and in gasoline and upkeep costs. I drive a VW Beetle and would have gotten the diesel version to save even more gas, had I been able to find one used -- people don't want to get rid of them because they're so good!
People tend to overbuy for their purposes, "in case" their purpose changes in the future, which to me seems rational yet ridiculous at the same time. All of the solar-powered or assisted equipment that you mentioned is a great idea but the base cost is unfortunately too high for most people even though the savings could greatly outweigh that. Getting a motorcycle is an OK idea but at the same time, cyclists are more prone to injury in the case of an accident.
I'm certainly not against doing things to keep our environment clean & healthy, but I really would prefer not to be bullied into it by politicians. Seriously, if they want to tell me not to pollute the air, maybe they shouldn't do it from their private Lear-jet or with their limo-SUV parked behind them.
Hey welcome to the daily "Complain about Microsoft" rant post. Please make all the stupid anti-MS comments you can think of and we at Slashdot will gladly mark them all insightful or informative regardless of the actual value of your comments!
Sincerely yours,
-The Slashdot SpEditors
(Oh come on, you'd never mark this one troll or flamebait and you know it!)
Rob, let's face it. CompUSA will be making dollars for each installation they do too so claiming this is a Microsoft push is a bit of a stretch. I worked for the Geek Squad, I know what's going on.
The problem is, Schools do not have a way to build debt in anticipation of new students. Therefore, Bad schools become worse, and good schools become better. You don't get better teachers or student:teacher ratios by taking the money that the school would pay the teachers away from the school.
I do agree that there should be competition but I'm not sure that the incentive should be entirely financial.
You are also losing sight of rural school districts, where there may be one school that people travel miles to get to each day. Those students STILL don't have a choice of where to go, no matter who the money follows.
A huge part of the problem with American education is that there are so many parents who either don't give a shit about their kids or they don't have time to give a shit because they are either both working or are a single parent (and still working).
I don't entirely disagree with you but I just thought I'd point these things out.
Your stance, namely "You did something bad in the past, so you can't possibly do good in the future" is ignorant and invalid. Besides, they did GOOD in the past too and the OP is correct that they are a legitimately successful business.
You say they steal ideas from others... What kind of progressive society would we be if we did not learn from others' experience? Microsoft has a very large business, they educate their employees. Do you think each person they hire has the knowledge and ability that Microsoft desires and needs right when they are hired in? No, those individuals possess abilities such as structured thinking and problem solving, and as far as their direct knowledge, the have proven that they can learn anything they don't already know. You would be surprised how many teachers come out of college eager to to good, but resort to doing as little as they can while still keeping their job.
By being an obstacle in the path of the progression of schools, not only are you not doing anything for education, you are working AGAINST it. It's obvious that the majority of American schools need a change since so many students come out barely knowing basic math or language skills and have no desire for further education, but it's not obvious what that change is. Cheers to Philidelphia for recognizing this and cheers to Microsoft for taking the helm in trying something new.
So to you I say "Boo." You have in front of you an opportunity for experimentation, learning and growth for both the education system and this set of students and you're willing to throw it away because of your petty grudge against a company.
Please also note that this is a serious and exciting article, yet sadly the first five or more up-modded comments on this silly website are marked "funny." What is this, the laugh-hole of tech nerds? Maybe slashdot should change "stuff that matters" to "stuff that's easy to generate stupid puns about."
Well, just consider that the majority of the "up-modded" posts refer to Window Snyder as "He" and many of those who actually read the article enough to realize Window is FEMALE are posting about how "hot" she is. Obviously all they care about is getting a good mod. So much for slashdot's userbase credibility... as if that ever existed.
I decided to reply here because the parent has a great point of view.
UO was the first "Big Dog" MMO pay-to-play game. Games like Diablo were a bit of a pioneer even for the MMOs since they got people online with somewhat persistant characters. UO was great, full featured, worked (well) on DIAL-UP and was a bargain at 9.95/mo. They opened the door. EQ made MMOs a household idea... they put it in 3D for roughly the same price (9.89/mo) and this is what POPULARIZED the genre. There have been lots of other games since then but WoW is probably the first to draw in new players at a decent rate since UO and EQ.
I don't know if I'd say WoW has taken over the world.... 6 million users.... so what, there are 6 BILLION people in the world. Numbers aren't an advantage anyways because the servers are limited to such a small chunk of those 6 million players at a given time. And as for 6 million people "can't be wrong"... how many votes did George W. get in this last election? There are those who would argue that those voters were wrong.
Anyway. As for the costs. The $50 or less that you pay to get the game in the first place goes towards the debt that the company has incurred in design, development, production and distribution of the game. The company makes very little, if anything, from that initial $50 in the MMO genre. The $15/mo or whatever the fee is for a given game is intended to help cover the maintenance costs of the game such as servers, admins, everything listed by the parent, but it is also where the company is going to make their profit. Let's face it, if the companies aren't making a profit, they wont produce the games anymore.... which means no more MMOs and remember there are at least 6 million people who must like MMOs because they are playing them.
Bottom line is... if you don't want to pay $15/mo for a game then don't do it. If you want to play the game, pay the $15/mo. You can justify all you want but the choice is up to you.
Actually, that's what my district does except they don't have redundant readers. Still, one paper copy and one database means reporting is easy yet if there's a problem, they have hard copies to fall back on.
I think the biggest push behind electronic voting is that it's a silver bullet to fix all the "fixing" that you hear about in the news around our voting system. The truth is, you'd have to do an awful lot of fixing, all over the country to actually throw the presidential vote without it being obvious. As for the smaller votes like city/county/state... does it really matter? Maybe my view there is skewed because I'm in more of a rural area but I don't really see a ton of results coming out of the lower level politicians.
So basically... Electronic voting would be "cool" but it's probably not necessary by any means. As for security... is any type of voting really secure? Do we really care anyway?
While we're at it.... "thousands of customer's personal..." should be "thousands of customers' personal..." in the write-up. Why do we call the folks that run Slashdot "Editors" anyway?
All over the article are the words "Manger says" but nowhere does it say "Evidence shows" or anything along those lines... Sounds like someone in South Africa is trying to get some publicity to me... They should have just said they found a goldfish that looks like the virgin Mary.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean we'll finally defeat global warming today?? (see http://www.venganza.org/)
If you release a CD under a label, chances are that the label owns the copyright and not you.
Nice quip, but actually what he's discovered is a way to create such a phishing page and get google to even host it on their domain... which makes it almost completely impossible to detect as phishing until it's too late.
Do you have a specific example you could cite?
Besides, you can't do an entire scientific experiment on some of the things that they tackle in 22 minutes or so, and if you could, nobody would watch it because it wouldn't be entertaining.
I don't know, I wrote an HTTP webserver in java that was less than 50 lines including blank lines in about the same amount of time for my college networking class.... and a client too.... using only the basic java (sun) libraries.
I'm not saying this to tote my skills... actually I barely knew java and was still able to do this. I was a C++ student at the time but the prof preferred Java. I'm just trying to say that it doesn't sound entirely unreasonable.
The book titled "How would you move Mount Fuji" by William Poundstone does an excellent examination of the puzzle interview from both the interviewers' and the interviewees' perspectives. The point is, though, not whether you get the solution to the puzzle, but how you structure your thoughts in attempting to solve it.
;-)
I work for a small shop and we use such hiring techniques... it has proven to be quite a good method of weeding out the "professional interviewers"... the people who know buzzwords but aren't really capable of backing them up.
Degrees & certifications are often used to weed through the stacks of resumes in the first place, but aren't very important after that. The important thing is the potential that you can find in the candidate. A degree doesn't tell you where they're going, it tells you where they've been.
I do recommend the book, though, it is an excellent read and certainly not dry. It also has a number of puzzle questions, some of which I've seen in interviews myself, and the solutions to them for those of you who just don't get it
The enemies of America have done a good job of disguising themselves as citizens of the land that we fight in. A non-lethal method could potentially give us the ability to incapacitate the "bad guys" without loss of civilian life, not to mention the captives who are a part of the opposition could then be interrogated and we may learn information that would help us end the fight that much sooner.
I agree with some of your points, especially that Hummers and similar vehicles are taken out of context and lost much of their value when driven in suburbia. They are a waste of money both in base cost and in gasoline and upkeep costs. I drive a VW Beetle and would have gotten the diesel version to save even more gas, had I been able to find one used -- people don't want to get rid of them because they're so good!
People tend to overbuy for their purposes, "in case" their purpose changes in the future, which to me seems rational yet ridiculous at the same time. All of the solar-powered or assisted equipment that you mentioned is a great idea but the base cost is unfortunately too high for most people even though the savings could greatly outweigh that. Getting a motorcycle is an OK idea but at the same time, cyclists are more prone to injury in the case of an accident.
I'm certainly not against doing things to keep our environment clean & healthy, but I really would prefer not to be bullied into it by politicians. Seriously, if they want to tell me not to pollute the air, maybe they shouldn't do it from their private Lear-jet or with their limo-SUV parked behind them.
Preach on, brother!
Hey welcome to the daily "Complain about Microsoft" rant post. Please make all the stupid anti-MS comments you can think of and we at Slashdot will gladly mark them all insightful or informative regardless of the actual value of your comments! Sincerely yours, -The Slashdot SpEditors (Oh come on, you'd never mark this one troll or flamebait and you know it!)
Rob, let's face it. CompUSA will be making dollars for each installation they do too so claiming this is a Microsoft push is a bit of a stretch. I worked for the Geek Squad, I know what's going on.
The problem is, Schools do not have a way to build debt in anticipation of new students. Therefore, Bad schools become worse, and good schools become better. You don't get better teachers or student:teacher ratios by taking the money that the school would pay the teachers away from the school.
I do agree that there should be competition but I'm not sure that the incentive should be entirely financial.
You are also losing sight of rural school districts, where there may be one school that people travel miles to get to each day. Those students STILL don't have a choice of where to go, no matter who the money follows.
A huge part of the problem with American education is that there are so many parents who either don't give a shit about their kids or they don't have time to give a shit because they are either both working or are a single parent (and still working).
I don't entirely disagree with you but I just thought I'd point these things out.
Speculation is rampant.
Your stance, namely "You did something bad in the past, so you can't possibly do good in the future" is ignorant and invalid. Besides, they did GOOD in the past too and the OP is correct that they are a legitimately successful business.
You say they steal ideas from others... What kind of progressive society would we be if we did not learn from others' experience? Microsoft has a very large business, they educate their employees. Do you think each person they hire has the knowledge and ability that Microsoft desires and needs right when they are hired in? No, those individuals possess abilities such as structured thinking and problem solving, and as far as their direct knowledge, the have proven that they can learn anything they don't already know. You would be surprised how many teachers come out of college eager to to good, but resort to doing as little as they can while still keeping their job.
By being an obstacle in the path of the progression of schools, not only are you not doing anything for education, you are working AGAINST it. It's obvious that the majority of American schools need a change since so many students come out barely knowing basic math or language skills and have no desire for further education, but it's not obvious what that change is. Cheers to Philidelphia for recognizing this and cheers to Microsoft for taking the helm in trying something new.
So to you I say "Boo." You have in front of you an opportunity for experimentation, learning and growth for both the education system and this set of students and you're willing to throw it away because of your petty grudge against a company.
Please also note that this is a serious and exciting article, yet sadly the first five or more up-modded comments on this silly website are marked "funny." What is this, the laugh-hole of tech nerds? Maybe slashdot should change "stuff that matters" to "stuff that's easy to generate stupid puns about."
A lot of hardware manufacturers have already begun to port their drivers to vista so that beta testers can use their hardware.
Well, just consider that the majority of the "up-modded" posts refer to Window Snyder as "He" and many of those who actually read the article enough to realize Window is FEMALE are posting about how "hot" she is. Obviously all they care about is getting a good mod. So much for slashdot's userbase credibility... as if that ever existed.
I decided to reply here because the parent has a great point of view. UO was the first "Big Dog" MMO pay-to-play game. Games like Diablo were a bit of a pioneer even for the MMOs since they got people online with somewhat persistant characters. UO was great, full featured, worked (well) on DIAL-UP and was a bargain at 9.95/mo. They opened the door. EQ made MMOs a household idea... they put it in 3D for roughly the same price (9.89/mo) and this is what POPULARIZED the genre. There have been lots of other games since then but WoW is probably the first to draw in new players at a decent rate since UO and EQ. I don't know if I'd say WoW has taken over the world.... 6 million users.... so what, there are 6 BILLION people in the world. Numbers aren't an advantage anyways because the servers are limited to such a small chunk of those 6 million players at a given time. And as for 6 million people "can't be wrong"... how many votes did George W. get in this last election? There are those who would argue that those voters were wrong. Anyway. As for the costs. The $50 or less that you pay to get the game in the first place goes towards the debt that the company has incurred in design, development, production and distribution of the game. The company makes very little, if anything, from that initial $50 in the MMO genre. The $15/mo or whatever the fee is for a given game is intended to help cover the maintenance costs of the game such as servers, admins, everything listed by the parent, but it is also where the company is going to make their profit. Let's face it, if the companies aren't making a profit, they wont produce the games anymore.... which means no more MMOs and remember there are at least 6 million people who must like MMOs because they are playing them. Bottom line is... if you don't want to pay $15/mo for a game then don't do it. If you want to play the game, pay the $15/mo. You can justify all you want but the choice is up to you.
So we have a link to the hearsay but is there any reference in the article to the actual posting on Sony's PS3 website?
Actually, that's what my district does except they don't have redundant readers. Still, one paper copy and one database means reporting is easy yet if there's a problem, they have hard copies to fall back on.
I think the biggest push behind electronic voting is that it's a silver bullet to fix all the "fixing" that you hear about in the news around our voting system. The truth is, you'd have to do an awful lot of fixing, all over the country to actually throw the presidential vote without it being obvious. As for the smaller votes like city/county/state... does it really matter? Maybe my view there is skewed because I'm in more of a rural area but I don't really see a ton of results coming out of the lower level politicians.
So basically... Electronic voting would be "cool" but it's probably not necessary by any means. As for security... is any type of voting really secure? Do we really care anyway?
Just admit that you'll never be happy with MS no matter what they do, and stop whining.
Damn them for not making a secure browser, but damn them again for trying to fix it, eh?
Flame on, since I'll probably get marked as troll for pointing out the truth.
While we're at it.... "thousands of customer's personal..." should be "thousands of customers' personal..." in the write-up. Why do we call the folks that run Slashdot "Editors" anyway?
How much did Blizzard pay Slashdot for this kind of advertisement?
"whinging"...
You keep saying that word.... I do not think it means what you think it means.
All over the article are the words "Manger says" but nowhere does it say "Evidence shows" or anything along those lines... Sounds like someone in South Africa is trying to get some publicity to me... They should have just said they found a goldfish that looks like the virgin Mary.