I am 27 years old, I started programming when I was 11. I don't think I'd participate in a contest that's nothing else than ego-feeding bullshit. Programming is not just about tackling a problem in a given period of time, it also has to be beautiful, it's art. It's not about solving a problem in a given period of time, it's about becoming the problem and solving it at its root, it's about the solution flowing out of you without having to put much effort into it. And if you do put effort, it's the kind of effort that after a few lines of code you just have to sit back and enjoy and say "DAMN that was great". A glorious moment experienced only by yourself.
I wonder if picasso participated in many topartist.com competitions, if einstein participated in many topscientist.com contests, etc.
Just because you don't give a shit whether the world thinks you are good or not, doesn't mean you are not good. 'Good' is a relative term anyway, so yeah, all the Dilberts that want to go get a top coder blue ribbon and a comfy job at AMD using a compaq running windows 2000 and IE 5.5 can go take pride on whatever shit they need. Whatever makes them happy. I don't enjoy Nascar, so I don't think a blue ribbon from a bullshit company will do.
why does this surprise you? like a friend of mine used to say: Florida is probably the only place where the average age, temperature and IQ is for all 80.
while europeans made massive strides in exploration and scientific discovery and invention, culminating in china's humiliation in the 1800s at the hands of european powers (the opium wars and the concession of hong kong, for example)
Yeah, you forgot about the millions of native americans that died due to exploration, the plagues they brought to america, how bad they were starving before coming to america and how little they could accomplish with all the gold they stole. I could go on.
I don't think that europe exploring efforts resulted in the best possible outcome. I think our conception of 'moving forward' doesn't always mean that we are 'moving forward'.
I completely understand your point of view and the reason of your original comment. My intention was to point at the fact that there are other variables that need to be contemplated, and I felt it would be a good addition to this conversation to see if you contemplated them or not (which you did as we just found out).
Troll/flaimbait or not, when he mentions the issues he faces when facing a problem and having to interact with other workers to fix it, most of the times I find that this sort of "they reply with stupid crap" argument is only the product of being impulsive and arrogant. We rely so much in our ability to solve problems, that we never listen to others, we take for granted we can do it without help, and sometimes that old guy that has an IQ right above room temperature sees something that nobody else saw.
I am also sick of people blaming others for their inability to lead a happy life (society, my skin color, that guy at work who is a jerk, my IQ is too high for them, etc). Success is not measured by the goals you achieve, but rather by how you deal with the obstacles you face when trying to achieve a particular goal.
To share my experience, I would chalk one up to phrasal verbs when it comes to the first indicator of poor english, or at least it is what was harder for me to learn (and what I am still learning), and mixing 'in' with 'on', etc. It also has to play a role how easy it is from going to your native language to another language. What I mean is, spanish is my first language and learning portuguese would have been much easier than learning german, for example. Anyway, I don't really care about grammar since I find more value in communicating with someone. I rather have poor grammar skills in 10 languages than excellent grammar in 1. I am not implying you do, just sharing my experience.
So yeah, overall, thanks for your reply, and I agree with you: it's just a lot of tired cliches. It wouldn't surprise me that he actually gets 130 in an administered test and is just another case of a guy pretending to be smarter than he actually is, or who just got a big ego boost from tickle.com.
I don't want to play devil's advocate here, but I don't think you can estimate his IQ level based on his use of language in all cases. Don't get me wrong: I know it's possible to do this, I just think that if english was his 4th language and he started learning a little while ago, there's a good chance his use of it and his eloquence is not what you would expect from a high IQ-score.
While the use of language or vocabulary knowledge might be useful when estimating, you should know a little about his background first. For example, Spanish is my first language, I also studied german, japanese and english.
I took an english IQ test and scored 147, and if it was my first language it'd have truly helped.
In any case, having a high-iq doesn't mean that you'll be able to use it at its fullest, an accordingly high emotional intelligence is needed.
To dumb it down: The intelligence IQ is a wheelbarrow, our emotional intelligence is our strength. If the wheelbarrow is too big and we don't have enough strength to roll it, a smaller wheelbarrow might be more adecuate.
Professor: "But, what about your super-intelligence?" Gunther: "When I had that there was too much pressure to use it. All I want out of life is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit. That's why I've decided to transfer to business school!" Professor: "Noooooooooo!"
Considering you *practically* have unlimited funding and the ability to find/hire extremely talented developers, what do you think is the #1 cause for so many security flaws in microsoft's products?
(e.g., we hire the wrong developers, our development procedures are not adecuate, we release our products too soon, we do it on purpose etc).
I'll do my best not to make this sound like flamebait/troll.
Unless you use the palm of your hand to crap, I believe it's the proximity to the bunghole what leads one to believe the buttocks contain more bacteria than your fingers.
A simple case of explosive diarrhea could splatter enough bacteria on your buttocks that could then get passed on to the toilet seat, that's the idea we may (un)consciously have
In any case, I think it's a matter of moral cognitivism. I read about a research proving that there's a moral aspect to taste, one of the experiences being that if someone showed you a turd that look like a turd, eventhough he told you it's made of chocolate, you'd still feel some opposition to the idea of eating it, because your first impression was that it was shit, and you know that shit is not something you should eat. Even if you can corroborate the information, you still feel some moral impediment to eating it.
So yeah, there's a moral impediment attached to the idea of licking the toilet seat, even when we are being shown and research shows that there's more bacteria in a keyboard than in the toilet seat. We don't feel the same way about licking the keyboard.
So violent videogames is an issue? that's very interesting, considering the fact that each and every time I turn on my TV or listen to the radio, I see/hear something about war in Iraq.
But hey, they must be right, it gotta be the videogames that incite all the violence we see nowadays......pfftt
You know, I wouldn't measure just the HD but the company behind it too. I've always liked seagate, but a few years ago one of my computers had a maxtor (came with it). After a year of working flawlessly, it started to fail (the BIOS would find the drive 1 out of 10 boots).
I went to maxtor's site, they had a web interface to check if it warranty expired or not. It turns out it was covered by the warranty, and they gave me the option to send me a new HD and keep the fucked up one for a month to transfer the data before returning it.
I guess what I am trying to say is, they will all fail at some point. Thing is how easy it is to deal with the issue once it actually happens. I only buy maxtor HDs now simply because if they fail, they'll send me a replacement (if it's within the warranty bla bla) and the process is hassle free.
So...is any of those $5.4M going to the ppl who actually received the call? I mean, the fine is $5.4M, but they now should reveal who they called, and give away something as an apology.
So the FTC benefited from them breaking the law, but what about the victims that devoted their time to sign up for a DNC list only to find themselves answering the phone?
IMHO the fine is not enough. They should be forced to apologize in some way, or maybe the fine should be divided with some chunk going to the FCC and the rest split it among the victims.
That's when you hire a team of 'super supporters';)
You can always negotiate a contract with ongoing support, or maybe Dev Teams will need to consider this and include in their team a few pros that will take care of support and talking to the customer. Oh wait: that's a small consulting firm!
well, it wouldn't surprise me if they used words such as 'improve functionality' or others subjective terms.
But you do have a point if they said 'add new features' (or something very specific) and then they went ahead and deleted features.
You know, what it is sad is that they use this kind of subtleties and that we always have to assume the default position of defending our rights as consumers.
I can't stand the fact that corporations can be built on the basis of screwing customers.
For example, something fully functional costs $100, and the manufacturer decides to limit the functionality and charge $80. I don't see anything wrong with it...it could be a good or a bad business decision, or whatever.
What I do see wrong is that people agree to those terms and buy it, and then complain because there are limits to what they can do with their newly bought stuff.
If you KNEW a corporation had the potential of manipulating/controlling what you could do with the box, and you agreed to it, then you are not a victim.
I just wouldn't feed the beast. Don't like the terms? don't buy.
Actually, the number of combinations on any numeric system (in any base) is given by:
base ^ no. of digits
For example, on a base 2 system (binary), if you have only one digit you get 2^1 possible combinations, i.e. 2 (0 and 1).
On a decimal system (base 10), if you have 2 digits it'd be 10^2 = 100 (from 00 to 99).
Therefore, 12345 has 5 digits, assuming each one goes from 0 to 9 we can say that the possible number of combinations is 10^5 - 100,000.
On a side note, you quoted just part of his sentence and took it out of context.
He said:
I suspect it is (in reality) much higher than that, given the password/key/combo choosing standards of the general public.
so there's a whole chunk of sentence after the comma that you (conveniently) forgot/ignored.
He was trying to say that not all numbers should have the same weight the same, because eventhough in theory there's equal chance of any combination getting picked by anybody, the reality probably is that most of the time people will go with a popular combination such as 12345, 00000, 11111, etc, so the likelyhood of such numbers being picked is higher
So basically you:
-took something out of context only to attack someone
-just don't 'get math'
-showed a great example on how can 'quite simple' sometimes can be 'quite difficult'.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that question applies to all countries, since most are very progressive on some aspects and fully retarded on others. :-(
what IT department would complain about a user using firefox?
I've dealt with more than one company still using IE 5.5 on a network managed by IBM. And yes, multi billion dollar companies.
I am 27 years old, I started programming when I was 11.
I don't think I'd participate in a contest that's nothing else than ego-feeding bullshit. Programming is not just about tackling a problem in a given period of time, it also has to be beautiful, it's art. It's not about solving a problem in a given period of time, it's about becoming the problem and solving it at its root, it's about the solution flowing out of you without having to put much effort into it. And if you do put effort, it's the kind of effort that after a few lines of code you just have to sit back and enjoy and say "DAMN that was great". A glorious moment experienced only by yourself.
I wonder if picasso participated in many topartist.com competitions, if einstein participated in many topscientist.com contests, etc.
Just because you don't give a shit whether the world thinks you are good or not, doesn't mean you are not good. 'Good' is a relative term anyway, so yeah, all the Dilberts that want to go get a top coder blue ribbon and a comfy job at AMD using a compaq running windows 2000 and IE 5.5 can go take pride on whatever shit they need. Whatever makes them happy. I don't enjoy Nascar, so I don't think a blue ribbon from a bullshit company will do.
why does this surprise you? like a friend of mine used to say: Florida is probably the only place where the average age, temperature and IQ is for all 80.
;)
[just a joke, don't waste mod points here)
lazarus is not even close to being as powerful as delphi is.
Don't get me wrong, great idea, free, bla bla. Not very useful at the moment though.
while europeans made massive strides in exploration and scientific discovery and invention, culminating in china's humiliation in the 1800s at the hands of european powers (the opium wars and the concession of hong kong, for example)
Yeah, you forgot about the millions of native americans that died due to exploration, the plagues they brought to america, how bad they were starving before coming to america and how little they could accomplish with all the gold they stole. I could go on.
I don't think that europe exploring efforts resulted in the best possible outcome. I think our conception of 'moving forward' doesn't always mean that we are 'moving forward'.
I completely understand your point of view and the reason of your original comment. My intention was to point at the fact that there are other variables that need to be contemplated, and I felt it would be a good addition to this conversation to see if you contemplated them or not (which you did as we just found out).
Troll/flaimbait or not, when he mentions the issues he faces when facing a problem and having to interact with other workers to fix it, most of the times I find that this sort of "they reply with stupid crap" argument is only the product of being impulsive and arrogant. We rely so much in our ability to solve problems, that we never listen to others, we take for granted we can do it without help, and sometimes that old guy that has an IQ right above room temperature sees something that nobody else saw.
I am also sick of people blaming others for their inability to lead a happy life (society, my skin color, that guy at work who is a jerk, my IQ is too high for them, etc). Success is not measured by the goals you achieve, but rather by how you deal with the obstacles you face when trying to achieve a particular goal.
To share my experience, I would chalk one up to phrasal verbs when it comes to the first indicator of poor english, or at least it is what was harder for me to learn (and what I am still learning), and mixing 'in' with 'on', etc. It also has to play a role how easy it is from going to your native language to another language. What I mean is, spanish is my first language and learning portuguese would have been much easier than learning german, for example.
Anyway, I don't really care about grammar since I find more value in communicating with someone. I rather have poor grammar skills in 10 languages than excellent grammar in 1. I am not implying you do, just sharing my experience.
So yeah, overall, thanks for your reply, and I agree with you: it's just a lot of tired cliches. It wouldn't surprise me that he actually gets 130 in an administered test and is just another case of a guy pretending to be smarter than he actually is, or who just got a big ego boost from tickle.com.
I don't want to play devil's advocate here, but I don't think you can estimate his IQ level based on his use of language in all cases.
Don't get me wrong: I know it's possible to do this, I just think that if english was his 4th language and he started learning a little while ago, there's a good chance his use of it and his eloquence is not what you would expect from a high IQ-score.
While the use of language or vocabulary knowledge might be useful when estimating, you should know a little about his background first. For example, Spanish is my first language, I also studied german, japanese and english.
I took an english IQ test and scored 147, and if it was my first language it'd have truly helped.
In any case, having a high-iq doesn't mean that you'll be able to use it at its fullest, an accordingly high emotional intelligence is needed.
To dumb it down:
The intelligence IQ is a wheelbarrow, our emotional intelligence is our strength. If the wheelbarrow is too big and we don't have enough strength to roll it, a smaller wheelbarrow might be more adecuate.
Professor: "But, what about your super-intelligence?"
Gunther: "When I had that there was too much pressure to use it. All I want out of life is to be a monkey of moderate intelligence who wears a suit. That's why I've decided to transfer to business school!"
Professor: "Noooooooooo!"
Considering you *practically* have unlimited funding and the ability to find/hire extremely talented developers, what do you think is the #1 cause for so many security flaws in microsoft's products?
(e.g., we hire the wrong developers, our development procedures are not adecuate, we release our products too soon, we do it on purpose etc).
I'll do my best not to make this sound like flamebait/troll.
Unless you use the palm of your hand to crap, I believe it's the proximity to the bunghole what leads one to believe the buttocks contain more bacteria than your fingers.
A simple case of explosive diarrhea could splatter enough bacteria on your buttocks that could then get passed on to the toilet seat, that's the idea we may (un)consciously have
In any case, I think it's a matter of moral cognitivism. I read about a research proving that there's a moral aspect to taste, one of the experiences being that if someone showed you a turd that look like a turd, eventhough he told you it's made of chocolate, you'd still feel some opposition to the idea of eating it, because your first impression was that it was shit, and you know that shit is not something you should eat. Even if you can corroborate the information, you still feel some moral impediment to eating it.
So yeah, there's a moral impediment attached to the idea of licking the toilet seat, even when we are being shown and research shows that there's more bacteria in a keyboard than in the toilet seat. We don't feel the same way about licking the keyboard.
hmmm interesting.
I wonder what would happen if I get a macbook and spill very hot coffee on it. Would I be entitled to $$$$$$$ ?
So violent videogames is an issue?
that's very interesting, considering the fact that each and every time I turn on my TV or listen to the radio, I see/hear something about war in Iraq.
But hey, they must be right, it gotta be the videogames that incite all the violence we see nowadays......pfftt
yeah, let's become a nation without music, that is doubleplusgood All we need is the telescreen ;)
Actually, in Argentina it's on Dec 28th, still late one day but close.
Keep playing!!
You know, I wouldn't measure just the HD but the company behind it too.
I've always liked seagate, but a few years ago one of my computers had a maxtor (came with it). After a year of working flawlessly, it started to fail (the BIOS would find the drive 1 out of 10 boots).
I went to maxtor's site, they had a web interface to check if it warranty expired or not. It turns out it was covered by the warranty, and they gave me the option to send me a new HD and keep the fucked up one for a month to transfer the data before returning it.
I guess what I am trying to say is, they will all fail at some point. Thing is how easy it is to deal with the issue once it actually happens. I only buy maxtor HDs now simply because if they fail, they'll send me a replacement (if it's within the warranty bla bla) and the process is hassle free.
Damn...for one reason or another I never get to test the anti-telemarketing Counterscript
me too. It's all my own CDs, the ones where I burned the stuff I got from kaz..ERRR....the music store! yeah, that's it.
So...is any of those $5.4M going to the ppl who actually received the call?
I mean, the fine is $5.4M, but they now should reveal who they called, and give away something as an apology.
So the FTC benefited from them breaking the law, but what about the victims that devoted their time to sign up for a DNC list only to find themselves answering the phone?
IMHO the fine is not enough. They should be forced to apologize in some way, or maybe the fine should be divided with some chunk going to the FCC and the rest split it among the victims.
FTFA "Prior to the DirecTV settlement, the biggest penalty levied over unsolicited calls was a $500,000 penalty against a company called Flagship."
That's when you hire a team of 'super supporters' ;)
You can always negotiate a contract with ongoing support, or maybe Dev Teams will need to consider this and include in their team a few pros that will take care of support and talking to the customer. Oh wait: that's a small consulting firm!
That's what systems analysts are there for: analysis and design. ;)
well, it wouldn't surprise me if they used words such as 'improve functionality' or others subjective terms.
But you do have a point if they said 'add new features' (or something very specific) and then they went ahead and deleted features.
You know, what it is sad is that they use this kind of subtleties and that we always have to assume the default position of defending our rights as consumers.
I can't stand the fact that corporations can be built on the basis of screwing customers.
For example, something fully functional costs $100, and the manufacturer decides to limit the functionality and charge $80. I don't see anything wrong with it...it could be a good or a bad business decision, or whatever.
What I do see wrong is that people agree to those terms and buy it, and then complain because there are limits to what they can do with their newly bought stuff.
If you KNEW a corporation had the potential of manipulating/controlling what you could do with the box, and you agreed to it, then you are not a victim.
I just wouldn't feed the beast. Don't like the terms? don't buy.
by 10^5 - 100,000 I meant 10^5 = 100,000, sorry for the typo
Actually, the number of combinations on any numeric system (in any base) is given by:
base ^ no. of digits
For example, on a base 2 system (binary), if you have only one digit you get 2^1 possible combinations, i.e. 2 (0 and 1).
On a decimal system (base 10), if you have 2 digits it'd be 10^2 = 100 (from 00 to 99).
Therefore, 12345 has 5 digits, assuming each one goes from 0 to 9 we can say that the possible number of combinations is 10^5 - 100,000.
On a side note, you quoted just part of his sentence and took it out of context.
He said:
I suspect it is (in reality) much higher than that, given the password/key/combo choosing standards of the general public.
so there's a whole chunk of sentence after the comma that you (conveniently) forgot/ignored.
He was trying to say that not all numbers should have the same weight the same, because eventhough in theory there's equal chance of any combination getting picked by anybody, the reality probably is that most of the time people will go with a popular combination such as 12345, 00000, 11111, etc, so the likelyhood of such numbers being picked is higher
So basically you:
-took something out of context only to attack someone
-just don't 'get math'
-showed a great example on how can 'quite simple' sometimes can be 'quite difficult'.