You should try code reading (not walkthrough): give the candidate 15 minutes on his own to browse the source code of a small library in an IDE of his choice. Afterwards, ask him what the library does and how. I've done this more than a hundred times with candidates and it turned out to be a very good indicator for how good they are as programmers. My brainteaser-question however turned out to be pretty useless.
Also, supervision of the Internet becomes easier because those trying to circumvent the Great Firewall are now the interesting cases and not mere porn downloads.
Imagine you are the Chinese secret service and trying to hunt down 'criminals' that try to circumvent the Great Firewall in pursuit of their 'criminal' activity. Sooner or later, you'll get frustrated because 99% of the leads you follow end up being porn downloads. By allowing porn, maintaining the Great Firewall becomes manageable again because the ones that you now detect circumventing it are now the ones you really care about.
I'm happy you didn't receive any mod points. Otherwise you would have voted up a completely ignorant post. Google collected much more than the SSID, it also collected transmitted data (see also the comment titled 'RTFA').
Actually, I just logged in in the hope of getting mod points to be able to downvote the ignorant comment and upvote 'RTFA'. But I didn't get any either.
I went to an ACTA public information meeting that was organized by the Swiss delegation ten days ago. They couldn't openly talk about the positions of the different countries, but from what they said, I concluded that we don't have to fear as much as the internet rumors suggest. For example, they wouldn't sign the treaty if it contained a three-strikes-provision as this would be against Swiss law. They also publish quite some information on their website, including a transparency paper that roughly describes the content of ACTA: https://www.ige.ch/en/legal-info/legal-areas/counterfeiting-piracy/acta.html
Overall, they made a good and competent impression and it also seems to me that they are open to input from the public. I'm quite proud that the Swiss government seems to handle this much more democratically and transparently than others.
I went to an ACTA public information meeting this week that was organized by the Swiss delegation. They couldn't openly talk about the positions of the different countries, but from what they said, I concluded that we don't have to fear as much as the internet rumors suggest. For example, they wouldn't sign the treaty if it contained a three-strikes-provision as this would be against Swiss law. They also publish quite some information on their website, including a transparency paper that roughly describes the content of ACTA: https://www.ige.ch/en/legal-info/legal-areas/counterfeiting-piracy/acta.html
Overall, they made a good and competent impression and it also seems to me that they are open to input from the public. I'm quite proud that the Swiss government seems to handle this much more democratically and transparently than others.
Great news! I really hope the 18-30 year olds can still make a difference in an ageing society like Europe. I'm concerned that some decades ago, when the median age was much lower, western democracies were more agile and creative (look for example at the hippies, I'm not sure if that still wouldn't be possible).
This is quite a remarkable statement, and you will have to do both of the following for me to be convinced:
I think a can do that for point 1, but not for point 2:
1. Back up your claim with evidence showing that a company would be able to maintain customers despite inflated prices.
If you define 'inflated' as any price level above the level we would have under perfect competition, then this is easy to show: Many products are sold at different prices in different countries simply because the people in one country have more purchasing power than in the other country. Under perfect competition, this isn't possible. One of the reason there often isn't perfect competition are government granted privileges like patents. So if I want to buy some patent-protected drug, it will often cost me twice as much as in a neighbor country. In a free market, people could start going to the neighbor country and import truckloads of these products, thereby driving the domestic prices down. However, this is forbidden here.
2. Show that the ends justify the means - that it is alright to violate the individual rights of the members of a company to offer their property - their product - at a price they decide, and be held responsible for their actions in the success or failure of those prices.
I'm not sure this is possible to show. It depends on being able to put a number on the effect described in (1). I guess that products in my country (Switzerland) are generally about 10% overpriced, when comparing to Germany, even when taking into account higher wages. Furthermore, this depends on how high you value property rights. This is highly ideological and I could be discussed endlessly. That's why I don't think I can show (2). It's a matter of personal values and ideology.
In any other situation, losing the freedom of action over your property is grounds for police intervention against the perpetrator. What is different here?
One important difference here is that the inflated prices is often only possible because of government granted privileges like patents. In such cases, I don't think we should be too scrupulous in taking something back in return.
A law that forbids price fixing leads to lower prices for the consumer as it allows different vendors of a product to compete against each other. However, this also means that the producer looses some of its control over his products. Most European countries consider this a small price to pay to get the lower prices. Especially if the profits of overpricing go abroad anyway.:)
How about exponentially increasing fees for patent renewal and copyright protection. E.g. first year is free, second year 1000$, third year 4000$, forth 16000$, tenth year 10,000,000$. That way, researching expensive drugs still pays off while less relevant patents expire reasonably fast.
Slashdot Mirror
You should try code reading (not walkthrough): give the candidate 15 minutes on his own to browse the source code of a small library in an IDE of his choice. Afterwards, ask him what the library does and how. I've done this more than a hundred times with candidates and it turned out to be a very good indicator for how good they are as programmers. My brainteaser-question however turned out to be pretty useless.
I use a LaCie Cloudbox http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10563 .
It does the backup itself, so you don't need to keep your PC running. Also, it has built-in encryption.
This could be the product that matches your described use-case the most closely.
> Is my five letter password more secure if the salt is 15 characters long?
No. The salt helps against dictionary attacks. Normally, it is different for every user, but not secret. It does not help against brute-force attacks.
What does help, is adding more rounds to your key-derivation function (e.g. PBKDF2). Or choosing a longer password.
Also, supervision of the Internet becomes easier because those trying to circumvent the Great Firewall are now the interesting cases and not mere porn downloads.
Imagine you are the Chinese secret service and trying to hunt down 'criminals' that try to circumvent the Great Firewall in pursuit of their 'criminal' activity. Sooner or later, you'll get frustrated because 99% of the leads you follow end up being porn downloads. By allowing porn, maintaining the Great Firewall becomes manageable again because the ones that you now detect circumventing it are now the ones you really care about.
I'm happy you didn't receive any mod points. Otherwise you would have voted up a completely ignorant post. Google collected much more than the SSID, it also collected transmitted data (see also the comment titled 'RTFA').
Actually, I just logged in in the hope of getting mod points to be able to downvote the ignorant comment and upvote 'RTFA'. But I didn't get any either.
I signed up for it. I'd love to see this succeed. A flat rate to pay for things that can be copied without cost makes economical sense.
I went to an ACTA public information meeting that was organized by the Swiss delegation ten days ago. They couldn't openly talk about the positions of the different countries, but from what they said, I concluded that we don't have to fear as much as the internet rumors suggest. For example, they wouldn't sign the treaty if it contained a three-strikes-provision as this would be against Swiss law. They also publish quite some information on their website, including a transparency paper that roughly describes the content of ACTA:
https://www.ige.ch/en/legal-info/legal-areas/counterfeiting-piracy/acta.html
Overall, they made a good and competent impression and it also seems to me that they are open to input from the public. I'm quite proud that the Swiss government seems to handle this much more democratically and transparently than others.
I went to an ACTA public information meeting this week that was organized by the Swiss delegation. They couldn't openly talk about the positions of the different countries, but from what they said, I concluded that we don't have to fear as much as the internet rumors suggest. For example, they wouldn't sign the treaty if it contained a three-strikes-provision as this would be against Swiss law. They also publish quite some information on their website, including a transparency paper that roughly describes the content of ACTA:
https://www.ige.ch/en/legal-info/legal-areas/counterfeiting-piracy/acta.html
Overall, they made a good and competent impression and it also seems to me that they are open to input from the public. I'm quite proud that the Swiss government seems to handle this much more democratically and transparently than others.
Great news! I really hope the 18-30 year olds can still make a difference in an ageing society like Europe. I'm concerned that some decades ago, when the median age was much lower, western democracies were more agile and creative (look for example at the hippies, I'm not sure if that still wouldn't be possible).
The grammar nazi in me wants to tell you: it's "per se", not "per say".
This is quite a remarkable statement, and you will have to do both of the following for me to be convinced:
I think a can do that for point 1, but not for point 2:
1. Back up your claim with evidence showing that a company would be able to maintain customers despite inflated prices.
If you define 'inflated' as any price level above the level we would have under perfect competition, then this is easy to show:
Many products are sold at different prices in different countries simply because the people in one country have more purchasing power than in the other country. Under perfect competition, this isn't possible. One of the reason there often isn't perfect competition are government granted privileges like patents. So if I want to buy some patent-protected drug, it will often cost me twice as much as in a neighbor country. In a free market, people could start going to the neighbor country and import truckloads of these products, thereby driving the domestic prices down. However, this is forbidden here.
2. Show that the ends justify the means - that it is alright to violate the individual rights of the members of a company to offer their property - their product - at a price they decide, and be held responsible for their actions in the success or failure of those prices.
I'm not sure this is possible to show. It depends on being able to put a number on the effect described in (1). I guess that products in my country (Switzerland) are generally about 10% overpriced, when comparing to Germany, even when taking into account higher wages. Furthermore, this depends on how high you value property rights. This is highly ideological and I could be discussed endlessly. That's why I don't think I can show (2). It's a matter of personal values and ideology.
In any other situation, losing the freedom of action over your property is grounds for police intervention against the perpetrator. What is different here?
One important difference here is that the inflated prices is often only possible because of government granted privileges like patents. In such cases, I don't think we should be too scrupulous in taking something back in return.
A law that forbids price fixing leads to lower prices for the consumer as it allows different vendors of a product to compete against each other. However, this also means that the producer looses some of its control over his products. :)
Most European countries consider this a small price to pay to get the lower prices. Especially if the profits of overpricing go abroad anyway.
Enforcing braces is a good idea, I've seen the following class of mistakes too often:
if (condition)
statement
is changed to
if (condition)
log("doing x")
statement
which obviously brakes the code. If you don't like the braces, you can often use ? and : instead.
Why? Is there a 'better' alternative?
How about exponentially increasing fees for patent renewal and copyright protection. E.g. first year is free, second year 1000$, third year 4000$, forth 16000$, tenth year 10,000,000$. That way, researching expensive drugs still pays off while less relevant patents expire reasonably fast.