Most animals will express dissatisfaction with being left in a cage too long. Do they pass your litmus test?
Freedom means different things to different people. There is no where i can go on this earth (as far as i know) that would afford me the freedom from other entities taking some of my money from me.
I read the modeling human driving paper as race-driver instruction with real tracks and real human drivers is an interest of mine. I was expecting to see a discussion of the information processing problem, the acting-on-incomplete data, and so on, that must happen with a real human in a real car on a real course.
The paper seems very game focused and the extrapolation to real driving seems a bit distant, but I concede not reading the other papers.
One comment I have about your track modelling: all your track evolution approaches appear to be deviants of a 2d plan-layout problem of where to place points. Yet the plan view of a track is not what makes it interesting, but the "riding along it" view is how the driver experiences the track. One thing I noticed is that some of your tracks had violent left-right displacements of successive control points, that in 2d look like very sharp turns but of course to a proper driver would actually be straights because the vehicle can be piloted in the gap between consecutive wall-intrusions on the roadway. The track looks visually "busy" but is actually uninteresting.
Real tracks are constructed of a few basic features - straights, constant radius curves, varying radius curves, and then compositions of these features, like chicanes, hairpins, and so on. The tracks you've evolved with your current models don't appear to evolve these features, but instead make tracks that look very disslimilar to anything one might find in the real world.
I wonder if a segment/feature based approach, using some of the techniques you've already laid out (i.e. using connected bsplines to ensure continuity) might give tracks that have more value/segment, or have more correlation to real-world tracks?
One other thing that came to mind - what if the bsplines are along the racing line, and the walls of the track are a variable distance away from the line on either side? IOW, relax your assumption that the path is always in the center of the track. In reality, the driven line of the track is what matters more than the shape of the track, as a proper drive will only ever have the car positioned on or near the line (you don't appear to discuss off-line or multi-car driving at all).
Also, in the PDF i read there seemed to be some content errors - sentences that just were abruptly terminated. These weren't at column/page breaks.. but just in the middle of a column or so. Consider the last page of the 2007Towards pdf - the last content sentence on my PDF renderer appears to abruptly stop prior to the references section beginning.
I can't tell from your papers or website - do you have track day or other real-world race experience?
Care to explain that? The "list of OSes" information that i think you're talking about is in the BCD store, which i dont think is part of the Vista registry. You muck with that via bcdedit, and the bcdstore is specifiable as an argument.
what is the comment convention? What is the whitespace convention? Does this version of this flavor use spaces or tabs in/etc/fstab (or is it/etc/vfstab on today's OS?) What are the file locking semantics? Which set(s) of files are logically related to the same peice of functionality? What character encodings are supported? What _line termination_ is supported?
nfs export your/etc directory r/w some time. Let someone edit your/etc/fstab in TextEdit on a Mac. Make sure they cut-and-paste from a sample they saw on a website, or that they got via an email. Are you willing to bet your uptime on that working correctly? Even if you control the email or webpage they're pasting from.. are you _sure_ it would work? That there'd be no conversion problems?
Have you ever done a *nix upgrade on a machine? What happens to most of the files in/etc? The answer is NOT "your changes are seamlessly rolled forward"
There's no file to look at. The computer didn't boot.
If you've booted the computer off of some other media and are attempting to repair the configuration info, you're using a special tool to do it (like a text editor for/etc files, or a registry editor for the registry)
Also, I've not seen evidence that a single byte defect renders the registry unreadable or the computer unbootable. I don't dispute that this is possible, but I'd be curious to know if this is a practical issue or a theoretical complaint. For instance, there is redundancy in the registry (last known good being a different spot than current control set, for example).
The registry can be backed up and restored, in whole or in subsections.
The format of the registry is largely irrelevant, but it is described to some extent in the "Inside Windows xxx" series of books (which Russinovich co-authored)
Which specific byte would you "scrozzle" in the registry to render a machine unbootable? How and why would you do it?
Extra credit: Which files under/boot,/etc,/sbin, and so on would you be willing to stake your career on being "safe to corrupt by 1 byte" and still guarantee a bootable system?
There are things to like or dislike about either a registry based approach (opaque data storage with a defined interface) vs a flat text based approach (clear data storage with an undefined interface). I don't think you make a compelling "anti-registry" argument with the points you list, however.
I was going to comment on this also.. but in a slightly different way.
Are there any left-leaning economists? Economics is the study of choice, and the left hates choice. Economics is a science, with definite consequences when those who choose to ignore its principles craft policy. Willful igorance of economics is Leftist Politics 101. (Of course, the right has been following their lead for a while now:/)
You can go buy an engine right now that uses turbocharging, high static compression, and direct injection. The Audi 2.0T FSI engine, featured in the A3, A4, VW Jetta, and VW Passat feature this.
Ethanol is an octane enhancer (which prevents pre-ignition), and lets you run either higher boost, higher static compression, or more ignition advance.. all of which make more power (or more efficiency), and none of which, even in combination, will triple the output OR fuel economy. Many auto enthusiasts are discovering the benefits of running E85 in their modified turbo charged cars, since it is effectively 104 octane fuel, but at normal fuel prices. Ethanol also burns cooler than gasoline so is especially nice on turbocharged engines where unrecaptured heat and absolute exhaust temperatures are your enemy.
I was making the point that while the "powers that be" try and sort out how they're going to adapt the buggy whip industry to new technology, how they'll make new special hardware, new special software, new protection technology, and new business plans... the "problem" (getting content over the internet) is already solved.
Because I don't have a TV, and I haven't had one for years.
Sure, I've got a DLP projector. And I do have an Avermedia A180 ATSC tuner for my Vista Media Center machine.. but that is mostly a "oh.. i guess ATSC kind of works" thing. My wife will watch 1-3 shows per week recorded over ATSC. If it stops working, it stops working.
Recently, I involved myself in a conversation about IPTV, how long it was taking to roll out, problems with it, and so on.
Sorry - I've been enjoying IPTV for a while now. I've got an HTPC, and I've got bittorrent. All the TV i care about comes in over IP packet.
The internet truly routes around defective nodes, irrespective of the reason for the defect. When they're political or social, the internet works just as well.
Sometimes the ATSC signal is weak enough (poor antenna placement, but fixing it is low-priority) that the recording is unwatchable. my wife will let me know and then i'll go find the torrent (usually within 12 hours of the show airing) and we'll have it in another 2 hours. That is IP TV and that is available today.
Re:And here I was...
on
Crackdown Review
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· Score: 3, Informative
The game is really, really fun. It has none of the control/camera/this is a pointless task things that make the GTA series unfun. to be fair, it has none of the story of the GTA game either.
Tycho at Penny Arcade did a pretty good bit on it. Basically, it manages to be incredibly fun and addictive and you have to want to look for reasons to not like it.
I've played burnout and gete tired of it, because i only like simulation driving games (i.e. i don't like mario kart).
I _love_ Crackdown, because it combines a bunch of different things that i find fun 1) blowing stuff up (you have "explosion" skills and the more you power them up, the bigger your explosions are:) 2) jumping really, really, really long distances 3) platforming (seriously, collecting skill orbs in this huge 3d world is one of the most compelling 3d platformer experiences i've had. Many of the 2d classic platformers really lost something in the transition to 3d.. in crackdown trying to get the orb at the top of some amazing skyscraper is really quite fun for some reason) 4) sniping/sharpshooting
5) co-op. i've only gotten to try this a little and the networking code must have some bugginess because i get lots of drops, but basically, if making crazy jumps and blowing stuff up sounds fun by yourself, its even more fun when you and a friend make a contest out of it.. with the subtext that there is crazy gang violence going on all around you but your characters are powerful enough that you mostly don't care. the XBL 2 player co-op is a good time.
Re:Still more questions...
on
Crackdown Review
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· Score: 4, Informative
You can go into some buildings that are relevant to the plot. The average building, you can't go into.
The driving is something i haven't even bothered with. Jumping from building to building, shooting people you fly-over in mid air... what's the poitn of driving when you can do Matrix-esque leaps across the city?
The hand to hand fighting when you are actually standing right next to someone consists of elbowing them or kicking them, depending on what button you press.
however, most objects in the environment are things you can bash, pickup, and throw. You can throw "generally" or you can throw at a target. This includes things like boxes, barrels, dumpsters, cars. You can melee attack a street lamp, then it will fall over, then you can pick it up and run with it. When you see 5 guys abreast on a sidewalk that are coming at you, you can throw the lamp post at them and it take them out at once.
As you get stronger you can pickup heavier thigns (liek cars) and throw them farther.
You can also melee attack heavy objects as well. I've completely maxxed out my agility, firearms, and strength skills (i've also beaten the game). I can run up to a big truck and kick it and it rolls over. If you're fast and a gang car comes your way you can get over to it and kick it hard enough to knock it over the side of a bridge before the gang members even step out of the car.
Yes, you can pick up bad guys and throw them at other bad guys. Yes, at my level of strength, any person i punch or kick goes _flying_.
Some other enemies will pick up bodies and throw them at _you_.
When you get sufficiently strong and throw a dumpster at just one person they go splat:)
I love it. I've been playing it almost non-stop since i got it.
Anti-trust legislation hasn't been about protecting individuals or consumers for years. It's been about moving money from one business to other sets of businesses.. the selection of which is based on the political motivations of the government body in question.. which is largely determined by the "other businesses".
Where you see true monopoly, you almost always see government collusion.
I apologize if you had a bad interview experience or didn't enjoy your tenure as a contractor.
To be fair, the interview process between a FTE and a contractor is different. The scope/nature of the questions are also different. For contractor interviews, there's more focus on what you know now and less on measuring what you can grow into, since the employment paradigm is completely flopped -- we need you to be productive today, and we don't care if you're ever able to do anything else besides what we need you to do.
You've clearly got a lot of hostility towards the company and to the interview process.
I don't mean to sound like I'm suggesting that our interview process is perfect, or that it results only in high quality hires, or that nobody good is ever turned away. An excellent friend of mine didn't get an offer, and he's fantastic. I flunked my first round of interviews, so you might surmise that i am just on the borderline of how dumb one could be and still be employable. Of course, that's not how I actually "rank" against my peers.
That said, I've worked in and out of MS, and i've interviewed people in and out of MS. The people I work with here DO tend to be smarter than people I've worked with at other places. The interview process here DOES seem to be more objective and rigorous than at other places.
The company, the company's products, the company's employees, and the company's hiring process are all imperfect. You've not convinced me that you're offering better alternatives, although to be fair, even if you were, I could only implement them in my own limited sphere of influence.
Even so, I'm not sure that your intent is to improve Microsoft more than it is to be pejorative. I can't help but think that you've got some sort of chip on your shoulder about your experience. What group did you work in? What role did you have? When was this? What specifically did you dislike?
I didn't get the first set of positions I interviewed for:)
I'd guess that was 50% me being a "normal" coder instead of a "legendary" one.. and the other 50% was my attitude.
One of the questions the HR lady asked me was
"so, how are you as a C programmer.. on a scale of 1-10?" "9" "Ok, what would make you a 10?" "I donno.. i could have the lang spec memorized or something... i haven't written a C compiler yet"
Yeah. She knew that I'd be interviewing with people writing C compilers, but I was too arrogant to connect the dots. Maybe every snotty kid who's used to being "the computer guy" and who doesn't have to try very hard in school runs into reality.. I certainly did:)
The interviews didn't go very well. My up-until-then-invincible-ego thoroughly crushed, I was given a second set of interviews for a different type of position and that went much better.
And unless you recently finished a CS class, then remembering a good implementation of any random C function is not going to be on the top of your head. So, it's all but guaranteed that the MS interviewer will rip apart the answer because it wasn't very good because it came about through a completely bad process. Big surprise.
This is not about _remembering_, it's about deriving. If someone knows the question off the top of their head, we try something different. If someone cannot derive an implementation of a string function, they're not an interesting candidate. _Especially_ if they're interviewing for a position with the BCL or other platform/framework type group.
"Ripping apart" answers isn't something we do. Rarely does someone issue a perfect answer on their first try - both in interviews and in the real world. For almost any answer someone gives, there is some possible drawback or "gocha". What is the memory consumption of your routine? How many conditional branch statements would it require? Asking these follow-on questions are what makes it a less-worthless question, and seeing how someone thinks about the implications of their decisions and describes the tradeoffs is what makes it worthwhile.
That's because the first thing they think is, "Wow, what a stupid question." And then, "What? Oh, he's actually serious." Then, "do I really want to work here if that is the best interview question they can come up with?"
That's a fine response to have, but i'd ask you to justify it. Why is it a stupid question? Obviously, i'd ask it as an allegorical question to the problem of how to test software. Fundamentally, a coffee maker is something many people are familiar with, so its something that doesn't require significant introduction.
It's not the "best" question. It is _a_ question. And i'll ask you again - justify why you think it is a poor/irrelevant quesiton?
Having actually conducted several interviews for senior developers, you need to do two things: see if you like them and see if they can actually do the job.
We agree so far. Although i'm not sure about "liking them".
You look over their resume and verify what's listed there.
Done.
You ask them about their previous positions and one major problem they encountered in each place. I then like to ask relevant questions that have come up recently in my own work
I'm with you there. Sometimes, these are college hires. Sometimes, these are people that haven't had previous work experience.
The questions are high-level, don't require writing on a whiteboard, and are difficult enough to tell whether they're bullshitting their way through an answer or not
I find that the opposite is true -- people that are unwilling to delve into the details of an answer.. people that keep things "high level" are bullshit artists. The saying "The devil is in the details" is a saying for a _reason_.
We don't have a perfect hiring philosophy. I'm not sure where your animosity comes from, however.
I know very few 80hr/week employees. As in, i can't think of any right now.
OK, great, what's a good average number for a leaf node employee with a product behind schedule?
Hard to day. When i was working in devdiv, most days i got in between 9 and 10, and left around 7. When it was crunch time to get VS.NET (7.0) out the door, for a while there it was team-dinnners every nite, and people would be at work until 8 or 9. Of course, nobody got to work before 9. In redmond, at 7:59am, the main doors to buildings are still locked.
Now that I am on a different campus (in Fargo), the local culture is much different. At 8:30 the parking lot is full and at 6 its empty. Leaving the Redmond main campus at 6pm was suicide because the traffic was so outrageous. You could leave at 5 or at 6:45 and get home at the same time.
- Qualified potential US applicants by and large don't want to work at Microsoft - Microsoft isn't paying enough to attract qualified US applicants
Yeah, one or both is likely. MS isn't the darling of the tech world it once was; you're no longer a millionaire after 7 years. The compensation structure has chnaged a few times since 2000 when people were leaving MS in droves to do startups. Many people think we made some poor hiring decisions around that time frame (after all, _I_ was hired, and my main motivation for interviewing was to get a free trip to Seattle and to mouth-off about how awesome linux was to a bunch of MSFT people:)
MSFT doesn't aim to be the pay-leader, so people purely motivated by that will probably look elsewhere.
That said, I think many tech companies have open positions and describe having difficulty filling them. Does the entire sector, as a whole, not pay enough? Are there people out there that are not working for anyone, rather than work for what they deem to be too little? Said another way, if you see that across the board, tech companies have open heads, it's hard to suggest that it is purely a Microsoft problem related to salary or other undesirability. Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people? Apple?
I've been turned down for jobs because I didn't have experience with a particular version of a software product
That would be irrelevant for a MS product development team. Anything technology, language, or toolset specific that is true today will probably false in 1-5 years. We're not looking for people for 1-5 year tenures, we want people that learn whatever they need to learn to remain effective.
Which is why our interviews have a repuation for being $(adjective) (insert your favorite(s)). We're trying to assess what you can learn -- how smart you are, how adaptible you are, etc. What you know is much less relevant (after a certain point).
I'd rather have a rational, logical thinker that knew C that I could get up to speed in a C++ environment (in most cases, C will do the job just fine) than someone who was an expert at C++ but had no rational problem-solving skills
Of course.
That's why the US (which is Microsoft-centric in the extreme) trails most of the rest of the world in technology
That's an odd statement. How would you justify it?
You'd be shocked at the number of people that can graduate college that can't answer a question like:
"implement $(randomly selected function in the C string library) on this white board. Use whatever language you like. It doesn't even have to be a real language if you can explain it to me and it's coherent"
You'd be shocked at the number of people that just draw a blank when you say:
"describe how you'd test a coffee maker"
These aren't especially interesting or novel questions. It's a shame you even have to ask them except that you still meet people that CANT ANSWER THEM!
As an aside, based on your knowledge of what makes a good candidate, and what makes a poor interview, what would you suggest asking potential candidates for developers? For testers?
Qualified means "people we make offers to", pretty much by definition. We talk to a lot more people than the number of people we choose to extend offers to. Ergo, we have a problem finding qualified applicants.
The only caveat is that there are probably a set of people out there that would be qualified (i.e. we'd hire them) but they won't talk to us. I don't know how large that set of people is.
What I can tell you is that there are plenty of people who _do_ interview with us who we feel are not qualified to join us... at least at the time of the interview.
I've never paid attention to someone's degree status during an interview. I look at their resume and see what they say they've done. Then I ask them about it. Then I ask them a few other questions. I can't speak for the layers of recruiting that come before me - they may have an unhealthy fixation on university degrees. But I personally do not, and it's also something that never comes up amongst the other interviewers I talk to.
I know very few 80hr/week employees. As in, i can't think of any right now.
Microsoft doesn't have a problem finding applicants. Microsoft has a problem finding _qualified_ applicants. I've done a bunch of interviews. We interview _way_ more people than we hire. And I don't even want to think about the people that _don't_ make it to me and don't even pass the HR and phone-screening stages of the process.
We want good people no matter where they come from. There is no particular focus on H1-B workers. Given the extra paperwork and overhead involved, and the legal restriction that they get the same pay, etc etc, don't you think we'd rather not deal with the extra hassle?
Maybe you'd better read up on where most of the technological advances of the last 100+ years originated
transistor - invented in germany, but refined and popularized in the US by Bell Labs
Integrated Circuit:
The first integrated circuits were manufactured independently by two scientists: Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed a patent for a "Solid Circuit" made of germanium on February 6, 1959. Kilby received patents U.S. Patent 3138743 , U.S. Patent 3138747 , U.S. Patent 3261081 , and U.S. Patent 3434015
About the only place where you see government leading the way is the defense sector.. where the defense establishment says "we need capability X" and then the private sector comes up with the solution. The poster child of government-fostering-tech (the "internet") was a DARPA project and was a curious toy for over 20 years. Not until commercialization started in the late 90s did it become the world-changing force that it is today.
may sound good to those who have no clue and no brain,
It sounded pretty good to Jefferson and the rest of the constitution's framers. Maybe you know something about starting nations and governments that they didn't? Of course, that's possible, but you'll need a more convincing argument than "proponents of small government have no brains"
you really should ask yourself why, decade after decade, your party is a perennial non-entity
I am not invested as much in the LP as what the LP is trying to acheive. Anyone trying to do the same thing with a different name is still working on my behalf. That said, 100 years ago, there was no need for the LP, and the LP didn't exist until 1971.
answer just too uncomfortable for you to contemplate?
Members of the LP have won more elections than you have.
The LP doesn't need to win the presidency to acheive it's aims -- any political or social impact that reduces the powers of the federal government to something more in-line with what was originally intended is a move in the right direction. Infact, it's likely that a LP president with no other political changes would not be much of a victory.. if the same corrupt congress and unaccountable committees are still running things, the executive branch can only do so much.
The real victory is that people are slowly but surely taking advantage of political dissent in this country and that people are asking for limited government. There are a few of us that want a government that succeeds at protecting our freedoms more than we want one that fails at protecting our lifestyle security (aka entitlement government).
By and large, proponents of libertarianism are not brainless. Go read some Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, or even further back, John Stuart Mill. The principles of liberalism, in the original British sense of the word, have allowed for more real affluence and real freedom than any other system in history. Don't be so eager to continue throwing it away after only a few hundred years.
Oh? So you forgot that he was one of the only people who voted against PATRIOT, and one of the co-sponsors of the rider on PATRIOT that denied arbitrary email reading provisions that the original had?
Ron Paul is generally against the federal government spending money -- even on tech programs. He is 100% pro freedom, against federal monitoring or censorship or any such issues.
I'd be surprised at how you might construe him as anti-tech. Maybe he's anti subsidizing tech but that's ultimately better for technology (government non-involvement is always best)
I'm legitimately interested in any thing you can find though. I want to be well informed.
Slashdot Mirror
Most animals will express dissatisfaction with being left in a cage too long. Do they pass your litmus test?
Freedom means different things to different people. There is no where i can go on this earth (as far as i know) that would afford me the freedom from other entities taking some of my money from me.
And Texas was only reluctantly admitted to the US, something that both Texans and the rest of the US are equally proud of :)
I read the modeling human driving paper as race-driver instruction with real tracks and real human drivers is an interest of mine. I was expecting to see a discussion of the information processing problem, the acting-on-incomplete data, and so on, that must happen with a real human in a real car on a real course.
The paper seems very game focused and the extrapolation to real driving seems a bit distant, but I concede not reading the other papers.
One comment I have about your track modelling: all your track evolution approaches appear to be deviants of a 2d plan-layout problem of where to place points. Yet the plan view of a track is not what makes it interesting, but the "riding along it" view is how the driver experiences the track. One thing I noticed is that some of your tracks had violent left-right displacements of successive control points, that in 2d look like very sharp turns but of course to a proper driver would actually be straights because the vehicle can be piloted in the gap between consecutive wall-intrusions on the roadway. The track looks visually "busy" but is actually uninteresting.
Real tracks are constructed of a few basic features - straights, constant radius curves, varying radius curves, and then compositions of these features, like chicanes, hairpins, and so on. The tracks you've evolved with your current models don't appear to evolve these features, but instead make tracks that look very disslimilar to anything one might find in the real world.
I wonder if a segment/feature based approach, using some of the techniques you've already laid out (i.e. using connected bsplines to ensure continuity) might give tracks that have more value/segment, or have more correlation to real-world tracks?
One other thing that came to mind - what if the bsplines are along the racing line, and the walls of the track are a variable distance away from the line on either side? IOW, relax your assumption that the path is always in the center of the track. In reality, the driven line of the track is what matters more than the shape of the track, as a proper drive will only ever have the car positioned on or near the line (you don't appear to discuss off-line or multi-car driving at all).
Also, in the PDF i read there seemed to be some content errors - sentences that just were abruptly terminated. These weren't at column/page breaks.. but just in the middle of a column or so. Consider the last page of the 2007Towards pdf - the last content sentence on my PDF renderer appears to abruptly stop prior to the references section beginning.
I can't tell from your papers or website - do you have track day or other real-world race experience?
Care to explain that? The "list of OSes" information that i think you're talking about is in the BCD store, which i dont think is part of the Vista registry. You muck with that via bcdedit, and the bcdstore is specifiable as an argument.
Are you seriously asking?
/etc/fstab (or is it /etc/vfstab on today's OS?)
/etc directory r/w some time. Let someone edit your /etc/fstab in TextEdit on a Mac. Make sure they cut-and-paste from a sample they saw on a website, or that they got via an email. Are you willing to bet your uptime on that working correctly? Even if you control the email or webpage they're pasting from.. are you _sure_ it would work? That there'd be no conversion problems?
/etc? The answer is NOT "your changes are seamlessly rolled forward"
what is the comment convention?
What is the whitespace convention?
Does this version of this flavor use spaces or tabs in
What are the file locking semantics?
Which set(s) of files are logically related to the same peice of functionality?
What character encodings are supported?
What _line termination_ is supported?
nfs export your
Have you ever done a *nix upgrade on a machine? What happens to most of the files in
There's no file to look at. The computer didn't boot.
/etc files, or a registry editor for the registry)
If you've booted the computer off of some other media and are attempting to repair the configuration info, you're using a special tool to do it (like a text editor for
Also, I've not seen evidence that a single byte defect renders the registry unreadable or the computer unbootable. I don't dispute that this is possible, but I'd be curious to know if this is a practical issue or a theoretical complaint. For instance, there is redundancy in the registry (last known good being a different spot than current control set, for example).
The registry can be backed up and restored, in whole or in subsections.
/boot, /etc, /sbin, and so on would you be willing to stake your career on being "safe to corrupt by 1 byte" and still guarantee a bootable system?
The format of the registry is largely irrelevant, but it is described to some extent in the "Inside Windows xxx" series of books (which Russinovich co-authored)
Which specific byte would you "scrozzle" in the registry to render a machine unbootable? How and why would you do it?
Extra credit:
Which files under
There are things to like or dislike about either a registry based approach (opaque data storage with a defined interface) vs a flat text based approach (clear data storage with an undefined interface). I don't think you make a compelling "anti-registry" argument with the points you list, however.
Haha.
:/)
I was going to comment on this also.. but in a slightly different way.
Are there any left-leaning economists? Economics is the study of choice, and the left hates choice. Economics is a science, with definite consequences when those who choose to ignore its principles craft policy. Willful igorance of economics is Leftist Politics 101. (Of course, the right has been following their lead for a while now
You can go buy an engine right now that uses turbocharging, high static compression, and direct injection. The Audi 2.0T FSI engine, featured in the A3, A4, VW Jetta, and VW Passat feature this.
Ethanol is an octane enhancer (which prevents pre-ignition), and lets you run either higher boost, higher static compression, or more ignition advance.. all of which make more power (or more efficiency), and none of which, even in combination, will triple the output OR fuel economy. Many auto enthusiasts are discovering the benefits of running E85 in their modified turbo charged cars, since it is effectively 104 octane fuel, but at normal fuel prices. Ethanol also burns cooler than gasoline so is especially nice on turbocharged engines where unrecaptured heat and absolute exhaust temperatures are your enemy.
Oh, I am aware of that.
I was making the point that while the "powers that be" try and sort out how they're going to adapt the buggy whip industry to new technology, how they'll make new special hardware, new special software, new protection technology, and new business plans... the "problem" (getting content over the internet) is already solved.
I'm afraid so :)
Not really - but my answer to most of these DRM / Broadcast Flag / HD-DVD discussions is the same:
"Who cares? Why put up with this crap?"
Because I don't have a TV, and I haven't had one for years.
Sure, I've got a DLP projector. And I do have an Avermedia A180 ATSC tuner for my Vista Media Center machine.. but that is mostly a "oh.. i guess ATSC kind of works" thing. My wife will watch 1-3 shows per week recorded over ATSC. If it stops working, it stops working.
Recently, I involved myself in a conversation about IPTV, how long it was taking to roll out, problems with it, and so on.
Sorry - I've been enjoying IPTV for a while now. I've got an HTPC, and I've got bittorrent. All the TV i care about comes in over IP packet.
The internet truly routes around defective nodes, irrespective of the reason for the defect. When they're political or social, the internet works just as well.
Sometimes the ATSC signal is weak enough (poor antenna placement, but fixing it is low-priority) that the recording is unwatchable. my wife will let me know and then i'll go find the torrent (usually within 12 hours of the show airing) and we'll have it in another 2 hours. That is IP TV and that is available today.
The game is really, really fun. It has none of the control/camera/this is a pointless task things that make the GTA series unfun. to be fair, it has none of the story of the GTA game either.
:)
Tycho at Penny Arcade did a pretty good bit on it. Basically, it manages to be incredibly fun and addictive and you have to want to look for reasons to not like it.
I've played burnout and gete tired of it, because i only like simulation driving games (i.e. i don't like mario kart).
I _love_ Crackdown, because it combines a bunch of different things that i find fun
1) blowing stuff up (you have "explosion" skills and the more you power them up, the bigger your explosions are
2) jumping really, really, really long distances
3) platforming (seriously, collecting skill orbs in this huge 3d world is one of the most compelling 3d platformer experiences i've had. Many of the 2d classic platformers really lost something in the transition to 3d.. in crackdown trying to get the orb at the top of some amazing skyscraper is really quite fun for some reason)
4) sniping/sharpshooting
5) co-op. i've only gotten to try this a little and the networking code must have some bugginess because i get lots of drops, but basically, if making crazy jumps and blowing stuff up sounds fun by yourself, its even more fun when you and a friend make a contest out of it.. with the subtext that there is crazy gang violence going on all around you but your characters are powerful enough that you mostly don't care. the XBL 2 player co-op is a good time.
You can go into some buildings that are relevant to the plot. The average building, you can't go into.
:)
The driving is something i haven't even bothered with. Jumping from building to building, shooting people you fly-over in mid air... what's the poitn of driving when you can do Matrix-esque leaps across the city?
The hand to hand fighting when you are actually standing right next to someone consists of elbowing them or kicking them, depending on what button you press.
however, most objects in the environment are things you can bash, pickup, and throw. You can throw "generally" or you can throw at a target. This includes things like boxes, barrels, dumpsters, cars. You can melee attack a street lamp, then it will fall over, then you can pick it up and run with it. When you see 5 guys abreast on a sidewalk that are coming at you, you can throw the lamp post at them and it take them out at once.
As you get stronger you can pickup heavier thigns (liek cars) and throw them farther.
You can also melee attack heavy objects as well. I've completely maxxed out my agility, firearms, and strength skills (i've also beaten the game). I can run up to a big truck and kick it and it rolls over. If you're fast and a gang car comes your way you can get over to it and kick it hard enough to knock it over the side of a bridge before the gang members even step out of the car.
Yes, you can pick up bad guys and throw them at other bad guys. Yes, at my level of strength, any person i punch or kick goes _flying_.
Some other enemies will pick up bodies and throw them at _you_.
When you get sufficiently strong and throw a dumpster at just one person they go splat
I love it. I've been playing it almost non-stop since i got it.
Anti-trust legislation hasn't been about protecting individuals or consumers for years. It's been about moving money from one business to other sets of businesses.. the selection of which is based on the political motivations of the government body in question.. which is largely determined by the "other businesses".
Where you see true monopoly, you almost always see government collusion.
I apologize if you had a bad interview experience or didn't enjoy your tenure as a contractor.
To be fair, the interview process between a FTE and a contractor is different. The scope/nature of the questions are also different. For contractor interviews, there's more focus on what you know now and less on measuring what you can grow into, since the employment paradigm is completely flopped -- we need you to be productive today, and we don't care if you're ever able to do anything else besides what we need you to do.
You've clearly got a lot of hostility towards the company and to the interview process.
I don't mean to sound like I'm suggesting that our interview process is perfect, or that it results only in high quality hires, or that nobody good is ever turned away. An excellent friend of mine didn't get an offer, and he's fantastic. I flunked my first round of interviews, so you might surmise that i am just on the borderline of how dumb one could be and still be employable. Of course, that's not how I actually "rank" against my peers.
That said, I've worked in and out of MS, and i've interviewed people in and out of MS. The people I work with here DO tend to be smarter than people I've worked with at other places. The interview process here DOES seem to be more objective and rigorous than at other places.
The company, the company's products, the company's employees, and the company's hiring process are all imperfect. You've not convinced me that you're offering better alternatives, although to be fair, even if you were, I could only implement them in my own limited sphere of influence.
Even so, I'm not sure that your intent is to improve Microsoft more than it is to be pejorative. I can't help but think that you've got some sort of chip on your shoulder about your experience. What group did you work in? What role did you have? When was this? What specifically did you dislike?
I didn't get the first set of positions I interviewed for :)
:)
I'd guess that was 50% me being a "normal" coder instead of a "legendary" one.. and the other 50% was my attitude.
One of the questions the HR lady asked me was
"so, how are you as a C programmer.. on a scale of 1-10?"
"9"
"Ok, what would make you a 10?"
"I donno.. i could have the lang spec memorized or something... i haven't written a C compiler yet"
Yeah. She knew that I'd be interviewing with people writing C compilers, but I was too arrogant to connect the dots. Maybe every snotty kid who's used to being "the computer guy" and who doesn't have to try very hard in school runs into reality.. I certainly did
The interviews didn't go very well. My up-until-then-invincible-ego thoroughly crushed, I was given a second set of interviews for a different type of position and that went much better.
This is not about _remembering_, it's about deriving. If someone knows the question off the top of their head, we try something different. If someone cannot derive an implementation of a string function, they're not an interesting candidate. _Especially_ if they're interviewing for a position with the BCL or other platform/framework type group.
"Ripping apart" answers isn't something we do. Rarely does someone issue a perfect answer on their first try - both in interviews and in the real world. For almost any answer someone gives, there is some possible drawback or "gocha". What is the memory consumption of your routine? How many conditional branch statements would it require? Asking these follow-on questions are what makes it a less-worthless question, and seeing how someone thinks about the implications of their decisions and describes the tradeoffs is what makes it worthwhile.
That's a fine response to have, but i'd ask you to justify it. Why is it a stupid question? Obviously, i'd ask it as an allegorical question to the problem of how to test software. Fundamentally, a coffee maker is something many people are familiar with, so its something that doesn't require significant introduction.
It's not the "best" question. It is _a_ question. And i'll ask you again - justify why you think it is a poor/irrelevant quesiton?
We agree so far. Although i'm not sure about "liking them".
Done.
I'm with you there. Sometimes, these are college hires. Sometimes, these are people that haven't had previous work experience.
I find that the opposite is true -- people that are unwilling to delve into the details of an answer.. people that keep things "high level" are bullshit artists. The saying "The devil is in the details" is a saying for a _reason_.
We don't have a perfect hiring philosophy. I'm not sure where your animosity comes from, however.
Hard to day. When i was working in devdiv, most days i got in between 9 and 10, and left around 7. When it was crunch time to get VS.NET (7.0) out the door, for a while there it was team-dinnners every nite, and people would be at work until 8 or 9. Of course, nobody got to work before 9. In redmond, at 7:59am, the main doors to buildings are still locked.
Now that I am on a different campus (in Fargo), the local culture is much different. At 8:30 the parking lot is full and at 6 its empty. Leaving the Redmond main campus at 6pm was suicide because the traffic was so outrageous. You could leave at 5 or at 6:45 and get home at the same time.
Yeah, one or both is likely. MS isn't the darling of the tech world it once was; you're no longer a millionaire after 7 years. The compensation structure has chnaged a few times since 2000 when people were leaving MS in droves to do startups. Many people think we made some poor hiring decisions around that time frame (after all, _I_ was hired, and my main motivation for interviewing was to get a free trip to Seattle and to mouth-off about how awesome linux was to a bunch of MSFT people
MSFT doesn't aim to be the pay-leader, so people purely motivated by that will probably look elsewhere.
That said, I think many tech companies have open positions and describe having difficulty filling them. Does the entire sector, as a whole, not pay enough? Are there people out there that are not working for anyone, rather than work for what they deem to be too little? Said another way, if you see that across the board, tech companies have open heads, it's hard to suggest that it is purely a Microsoft problem related to salary or other undesirability. Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people? Apple?
That would be irrelevant for a MS product development team. Anything technology, language, or toolset specific that is true today will probably false in 1-5 years. We're not looking for people for 1-5 year tenures, we want people that learn whatever they need to learn to remain effective.
Which is why our interviews have a repuation for being $(adjective) (insert your favorite(s)). We're trying to assess what you can learn -- how smart you are, how adaptible you are, etc. What you know is much less relevant (after a certain point).
Of course.
That's an odd statement. How would you justify it?
You'd be shocked at the number of people that can graduate college that can't answer a question like:
"implement $(randomly selected function in the C string library) on this white board. Use whatever language you like. It doesn't even have to be a real language if you can explain it to me and it's coherent"
You'd be shocked at the number of people that just draw a blank when you say:
"describe how you'd test a coffee maker"
These aren't especially interesting or novel questions. It's a shame you even have to ask them except that you still meet people that CANT ANSWER THEM!
As an aside, based on your knowledge of what makes a good candidate, and what makes a poor interview, what would you suggest asking potential candidates for developers? For testers?
Qualified means "people we make offers to", pretty much by definition. We talk to a lot more people than the number of people we choose to extend offers to. Ergo, we have a problem finding qualified applicants.
The only caveat is that there are probably a set of people out there that would be qualified (i.e. we'd hire them) but they won't talk to us. I don't know how large that set of people is.
What I can tell you is that there are plenty of people who _do_ interview with us who we feel are not qualified to join us... at least at the time of the interview.
I've never paid attention to someone's degree status during an interview. I look at their resume and see what they say they've done. Then I ask them about it. Then I ask them a few other questions. I can't speak for the layers of recruiting that come before me - they may have an unhealthy fixation on university degrees. But I personally do not, and it's also something that never comes up amongst the other interviewers I talk to.
I work at Microsoft.
I know very few 80hr/week employees. As in, i can't think of any right now.
Microsoft doesn't have a problem finding applicants. Microsoft has a problem finding _qualified_ applicants. I've done a bunch of interviews. We interview _way_ more people than we hire. And I don't even want to think about the people that _don't_ make it to me and don't even pass the HR and phone-screening stages of the process.
We want good people no matter where they come from. There is no particular focus on H1-B workers. Given the extra paperwork and overhead involved, and the legal restriction that they get the same pay, etc etc, don't you think we'd rather not deal with the extra hassle?
transistor - invented in germany, but refined and popularized in the US by Bell Labs
Integrated Circuit:
About the only place where you see government leading the way is the defense sector.. where the defense establishment says "we need capability X" and then the private sector comes up with the solution. The poster child of government-fostering-tech (the "internet") was a DARPA project and was a curious toy for over 20 years. Not until commercialization started in the late 90s did it become the world-changing force that it is today.
It sounded pretty good to Jefferson and the rest of the constitution's framers. Maybe you know something about starting nations and governments that they didn't? Of course, that's possible, but you'll need a more convincing argument than "proponents of small government have no brains"
I am not invested as much in the LP as what the LP is trying to acheive. Anyone trying to do the same thing with a different name is still working on my behalf. That said, 100 years ago, there was no need for the LP, and the LP didn't exist until 1971.
Members of the LP have won more elections than you have.
The LP doesn't need to win the presidency to acheive it's aims -- any political or social impact that reduces the powers of the federal government to something more in-line with what was originally intended is a move in the right direction. Infact, it's likely that a LP president with no other political changes would not be much of a victory.. if the same corrupt congress and unaccountable committees are still running things, the executive branch can only do so much.
The real victory is that people are slowly but surely taking advantage of political dissent in this country and that people are asking for limited government. There are a few of us that want a government that succeeds at protecting our freedoms more than we want one that fails at protecting our lifestyle security (aka entitlement government).
By and large, proponents of libertarianism are not brainless. Go read some Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, or even further back, John Stuart Mill. The principles of liberalism, in the original British sense of the word, have allowed for more real affluence and real freedom than any other system in history. Don't be so eager to continue throwing it away after only a few hundred years.
Oh? So you forgot that he was one of the only people who voted against PATRIOT, and one of the co-sponsors of the rider on PATRIOT that denied arbitrary email reading provisions that the original had?
Ron Paul is generally against the federal government spending money -- even on tech programs. He is 100% pro freedom, against federal monitoring or censorship or any such issues.
I'd be surprised at how you might construe him as anti-tech. Maybe he's anti subsidizing tech but that's ultimately better for technology (government non-involvement is always best)
I'm legitimately interested in any thing you can find though. I want to be well informed.