I played the whole game while working from home for several weeks.
Then I went out to the petrol station, filled up, and pulled out onto the right hand side of the road, and drove about 500 metres on the main road. A car pulled out onto the road in front of me, and I realised that in New Zealand, we're meant to drive on the Left!
Cars aren't meant to come towards you in the same lane... Very very freaky feeling.
Grid power may be cheap, but look at what they're using to make it. Coal, oil, and nukes mostly, in a lot of countries.
In New Zealand, where I live, there's an increasing awareness that some sources of generation are simply unacceptable. Even supposedly 'green' projects like hydro and wind generation have been blocked because they have costs to the environment beyond what it costs the corporation to build and generation the plant.
Like the organic food market, there is a demand for better energy generation here. If it costs a bit more, but we keep a river valley from becoming a lake, then its worth while.
Most of the people who are (or were) functionally handicapped without glasses are all for this tech, and those who are mildly near-sighted prefer to keep their specs.
I'm at 6.5 diopter nearsighted... To put it in real terms, that's 5 - 6 inches of focus before things blur badly. At normal monitor distance, I can't read the thinkgeek logo:)
I'm getting this surgery as soon as I can, cos frankly, it's a choice between minor vision defects like night halos and being almost completely non-functional without glasses.
Oh yeah, she was hot.... Yeah, I liked that sexy character... Mmmm... yeah, yummy!
She's voiced a lot of the female characters I've liked the most, and I never knew. And, no, I see nothing wrong with thinking computer-generated women are hot!
I've yet to find anyone who didn't have some project or other that they could show me. Yes, there have been times the applicant got permission to demo code protected by an NDA, but that was no big deal. We cut custom code for clients, and every job is different, we're not Intel headhunting AMD techs.
If someone really has no code whatsoever that they can show me, then I've got to doubt their coding abilities. Every coder I know has some little projects they've written.
The reason we don't do exams, is because I don't want to know how someone will solve a given problem, I want to see what their live code looks like. There's the amateur coders who don't know the basics. There's the web interfaces that are devoid of any attempt to make them look nice. "Gui's are for other people" isn't a good look when the job includes designing publicly-accessible web code. There's the "code comments itself" people, which usually means "Hire me, and I build-in my job security". There's also the guy who takes extra care to make the code bug-free and easy for the user to use. He stands out from the crowd, when you look at his code.
There's so much that you can tell from a look at someone's live code. Even in collaborative code, the coder is usally going "I did this, and this , and not that". Most coders are proud of their code, and want to discuss it. Shutting them up, that's the hard part:)
And in the end, I'm looking for someone with a proven ability to code for my clients. A good interview technique isn't going to show that. Nor is the ability to go home and answer an exam. I've had the lousy coders with good interview techniques. I've fired them 3 weeks later, too.
The bottom line is that I have a responsibilty to find people that can do the job. If I make a bad decision, that has a direct effect on our bottom line, on our reputation with our customers, and with internal morale (and workloads). Of course I want to see live code samples !
There's nothing unethical about it. Unethical is saying you're a linux guru, when you're not. Unethical is saying you have years of coding in a particular language, when what you mean is, you did 2 weeks at school learning about it.
Of the people I've asked to see code samples, one went back to his ex-employer, and was granted permission to show his code. I didn't get a copy, and didn't want a copy. 10 mins behind thesource code showed he didn't understand recursion.
Several others gave me open-source samples or hobby code samples. Most of those didn't measure up either. Believe me, it doesn't take long looking at code to see whether a candidate knows their stuff or not. If the code is faked, or stolen from someone else, that doesn't take long to figure out either.
I have never asked people to break an NDA, with the one exception above, where the guy offered to ask his previous employer, and got permission.
The single biggest expense in a business is the employees. Of course I'm going to check out a candidate's puported skills. I'd ask to see a truck driver's current driver's license, too.
I certainly ask to see code samples for prospective employees.
You'd be amazed how many people out there only think that they can program.
If I'm going to be paying someone good money for coding for me, I'm going to want to know that they're capable of doing the job. Cv's are no more than a general indicator, references and referees can be unreliable, and you sure can't believe what the job applicant says !
So yeah, I need to look at code that they've written. I can see their commenting style, their variable naming style, general coding style, and even get a good idea of their competance. That only takes me 5 - 10 minutes.
Yeah, I also look under the hood of any car I'm thinking of buying, too.
Re:color me ignorant, but...
on
Titanic Saturn
·
· Score: 1
Obviously, it's because the entire Nasa budget depends on Bush's personal oil fortune doing well.
One dip in the market, and it's "Cancel that Space stuff, we all gotta go invade some other country in the name of God and more oil! "
Hey, how hard can it be to fudge the cassini data to show significant crude oil reserves? That's get the space program the funding it deserves !
Re:Broadcasting dead...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I want to say "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off"
Amavisd-new has one enormous failing. The author decided as a matter of personal preference to disallow any re-writing of the email bodies.
This is despite the very nice email re-writing that spam assassin uses. For the un-initiated, you can tell spamassassin to deliver suspected spam mails as attachments instead of in the message body. It's great because the spammers don't even get a change to flash their message at the reader before it's gone. I've had my customers call me up just to tell me how nice it is they don't have to see the the porno spam in their face any more. (These are non-techy foks who wouldn't know a filter if it bit them on the butt, so don't go there, ok?)
Anyway, that pretty much ruled out amavisd-new, which is a pity because otherwise, it would have done exactly what I wanted.
In fact, DC is much more efficient to transmit long distances that AC, as there are less line losses.
It's used in Sweden and New Zealand that I know of. I've worked on the New Zealand link. It carries DC from the Benmore Dam (Largest earth dam in the Southern Hemisphere) several hundred km's to Wellington, including several km's of undersea transmission.
The DC is converted to/from AC using 2 poles, the original a mercury arc valve system, the new method is a gi-normous Thyristor.
The link runs at 270 kV, and there's talk of moving to 300kV
At peak capacity, it can run at over 1200 MWs, and it routinely uses the ground as a return path.
I coded something in visual basic for Excel last week for a local accountant. She regularly records excel macros, but this one was a bit too tough for her.
Headline should be "How to write a program"
on
Implementing VisiCalc
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
And all young programmers should be made to sit an exam based on this.
With concepts like "VisiCalc was a product, not a program"
"The goal was to give the user a conceptual model which was unsurprising -- it was called the principle of least surprise. We were illusionists synthesizing an experience."
"One guiding principle was to always have functioning code. It was the scaffolding and all I needed to do was flesh it out. Or not. Since the program held together omitting a feature was a choice and it gave us flexibility"
and from the section on 'kidding': "I doubt if any but the most geeky users were even aware that there was an issue let alone a solution. This is the kind of design detail that makes a program feel good even if you don't know why."
I've tried to tell several younger coders things like this on many occassions, and getting the message through can be hard work !
This article shows not only why these principles are important, but how to approach projects overall. Someone should carve it in stone (then hit newbie programmers over the head with it until it sinks in:-) )
The cd is a mixed mode cd, 2 sessions. The first is standard cd-da format. The second has the bandlink software - 2 mb. There's an autorun that pops up saying "You must agree to this to listen to this cd"
However... when I open windows media player 8, select Play > Cd-audio, then the cd plays just like any other.
... and before the 2 US teams can even try to compete against New Zealand for the Cup, one of them needs to win the Louis Vitton Cup, against all other challengers.
Only then does the winner get to sail against the Kiwi defenders.
Take a look outside those borders - there's more to the America's Cup than 2 yanks with too much money.
Your intiial quote is only the beginning on any decent sized project.
Are you asking enough for the project that you'll be able to pay your salary and your overheads and still be in business in 12 months time? The project will need amintenance, and if you're not on the scene through undercharging, then you've done both yourself and your customer a disservice.
Slashdot Mirror
I played the whole game while working from home for several weeks.
Then I went out to the petrol station, filled up, and pulled out onto the right hand side of the road, and drove about 500 metres on the main road. A car pulled out onto the road in front of me, and I realised that in New Zealand, we're meant to drive on the Left!
Cars aren't meant to come towards you in the same lane... Very very freaky feeling.
I tried going out on dates, but my wife found out and it all ended badly....
Safer to stick to the games!
Grid power may be cheap, but look at what they're using to make it. Coal, oil, and nukes mostly, in a lot of countries.
In New Zealand, where I live, there's an increasing awareness that some sources of generation are simply unacceptable. Even supposedly 'green' projects like hydro and wind generation have been blocked because they have costs to the environment beyond what it costs the corporation to build and generation the plant.
Like the organic food market, there is a demand for better energy generation here. If it costs a bit more, but we keep a river valley from becoming a lake, then its worth while.
Most of the people who are (or were) functionally handicapped without glasses are all for this tech, and those who are mildly near-sighted prefer to keep their specs.
:)
I'm at 6.5 diopter nearsighted... To put it in real terms, that's 5 - 6 inches of focus before things blur badly. At normal monitor distance, I can't read the thinkgeek logo
I'm getting this surgery as soon as I can, cos frankly, it's a choice between minor vision defects like night halos and being almost completely non-functional without glasses.
Reading thru her filmography...
Oh yeah, she was hot....
Yeah, I liked that sexy character...
Mmmm... yeah, yummy!
She's voiced a lot of the female characters I've liked the most, and I never knew.
And, no, I see nothing wrong with thinking computer-generated women are hot!
I'm a geek, dammit !
I've yet to find anyone who didn't have some project or other that they could show me. Yes, there have been times the applicant got permission to demo code protected by an NDA, but that was no big deal. We cut custom code for clients, and every job is different, we're not Intel headhunting AMD techs.
:)
If someone really has no code whatsoever that they can show me, then I've got to doubt their coding abilities. Every coder I know has some little projects they've written.
The reason we don't do exams, is because I don't want to know how someone will solve a given problem, I want to see what their live code looks like.
There's the amateur coders who don't know the basics.
There's the web interfaces that are devoid of any attempt to make them look nice. "Gui's are for other people" isn't a good look when the job includes designing publicly-accessible web code.
There's the "code comments itself" people, which usually means "Hire me, and I build-in my job security".
There's also the guy who takes extra care to make the code bug-free and easy for the user to use. He stands out from the crowd, when you look at his code.
There's so much that you can tell from a look at someone's live code. Even in collaborative code, the coder is usally going "I did this, and this , and not that". Most coders are proud of their code, and want to discuss it. Shutting them up, that's the hard part
And in the end, I'm looking for someone with a proven ability to code for my clients. A good interview technique isn't going to show that. Nor is the ability to go home and answer an exam.
I've had the lousy coders with good interview techniques. I've fired them 3 weeks later, too.
The bottom line is that I have a responsibilty to find people that can do the job. If I make a bad decision, that has a direct effect on our bottom line, on our reputation with our customers, and with internal morale (and workloads).
Of course I want to see live code samples !
There's nothing unethical about it.
Unethical is saying you're a linux guru, when you're not. Unethical is saying you have years of coding in a particular language, when what you mean is, you did 2 weeks at school learning about it.
Of the people I've asked to see code samples, one went back to his ex-employer, and was granted permission to show his code. I didn't get a copy, and didn't want a copy. 10 mins behind thesource code showed he didn't understand recursion.
Several others gave me open-source samples or hobby code samples. Most of those didn't measure up either. Believe me, it doesn't take long looking at code to see whether a candidate knows their stuff or not. If the code is faked, or stolen from someone else, that doesn't take long to figure out either.
I have never asked people to break an NDA, with the one exception above, where the guy offered to ask his previous employer, and got permission.
The single biggest expense in a business is the employees. Of course I'm going to check out a candidate's puported skills. I'd ask to see a truck driver's current driver's license, too.
I certainly ask to see code samples for prospective employees.
You'd be amazed how many people out there only think that they can program.
If I'm going to be paying someone good money for coding for me, I'm going to want to know that they're capable of doing the job. Cv's are no more than a general indicator, references and referees can be unreliable, and you sure can't believe what the job applicant says !
So yeah, I need to look at code that they've written. I can see their commenting style, their variable naming style, general coding style, and even get a good idea of their competance.
That only takes me 5 - 10 minutes.
Yeah, I also look under the hood of any car I'm thinking of buying, too.
Obviously, it's because the entire Nasa budget depends on Bush's personal oil fortune doing well.
One dip in the market, and it's "Cancel that Space stuff, we all gotta go invade some other country in the name of God and more oil! "
Hey, how hard can it be to fudge the cassini data to show significant crude oil reserves? That's get the space program the funding it deserves !
I want to say "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off"
Amavisd-new has one enormous failing.
The author decided as a matter of personal preference to disallow any re-writing of the email bodies.
This is despite the very nice email re-writing that spam assassin uses. For the un-initiated, you can tell spamassassin to deliver suspected spam mails as attachments instead of in the message body. It's great because the spammers don't even get a change to flash their message at the reader before it's gone. I've had my customers call me up just to tell me how nice it is they don't have to see the the porno spam in their face any more. (These are non-techy foks who wouldn't know a filter if it bit them on the butt, so don't go there, ok?)
Anyway, that pretty much ruled out amavisd-new, which is a pity because otherwise, it would have done exactly what I wanted.
The jumper cables are thicker because the 12 DC is carrying a huge current to turn over the starter motor in your car.
Even then, if you try to use them for a long time - (eg remove the spark plug leads) then they'll get really hot.
Power, in Watts, is Volts x Current - which means the 120V lines aren't capable of carrying the same power as the jumper cables.
All of which is a mile away from long-distance transmission of power, which uses very high voltages and low currents.
In fact, DC is much more efficient to transmit long distances that AC, as there are less line losses.
It's used in Sweden and New Zealand that I know of. I've worked on the New Zealand link. It carries DC from the Benmore Dam (Largest earth dam in the Southern Hemisphere) several hundred km's to Wellington, including several km's of undersea transmission.
The DC is converted to/from AC using 2 poles, the original a mercury arc valve system, the new method is a gi-normous Thyristor.
The link runs at 270 kV, and there's talk of moving to 300kV
At peak capacity, it can run at over 1200 MWs, and it routinely uses the ground as a return path.
All in all, it's pretty cool tech !
When you read the article, Speilberg praises the boys' "vast amounts of imagination and originality".
That's good enough for me.
Besides, these kids were *kids* - not Gus Wossname with millions of bucks and a full production crew.
Kudos to the kids !
I bought a 6.7 kVA petrol generator last year - ex y2k stuff.
I'm just waiting for the spot price to get high enough that I can make a profit out of burning petrol to make power !
It came and stayed.
I coded something in visual basic for Excel last week for a local accountant. She regularly records excel macros, but this one was a bit too tough for her.
And all young programmers should be made to sit an exam based on this.
:
:-) )
With concepts like
"VisiCalc was a product, not a program"
"The goal was to give the user a conceptual model which was unsurprising -- it was called the principle of least surprise. We were illusionists synthesizing an experience."
"One guiding principle was to always have functioning code. It was the scaffolding and all I needed to do was flesh it out. Or not. Since the program held together omitting a feature was a choice and it gave us flexibility"
and from the section on 'kidding'
"I doubt if any but the most geeky users were even aware that there was an issue let alone a solution. This is the kind of design detail that makes a program feel good even if you don't know why."
I've tried to tell several younger coders things like this on many occassions, and getting the message through can be hard work !
This article shows not only why these principles are important, but how to approach projects overall. Someone should carve it in stone (then hit newbie programmers over the head with it until it sinks in
crap!
It's not lame, it's cool.
Ok, so it's not groundbreaking, but who gives a toss?
This article encourages others to give it a go - can't see your comment helping much.
The cd is a mixed mode cd, 2 sessions.
The first is standard cd-da format.
The second has the bandlink software - 2 mb.
There's an autorun that pops up saying "You must agree to this to listen to this cd"
However... when I open windows media player 8, select Play > Cd-audio, then the cd plays just like any other.
... and before the 2 US teams can even try to compete against New Zealand for the Cup, one of them needs to win the Louis Vitton Cup, against all other challengers.
Only then does the winner get to sail against the Kiwi defenders.
Take a look outside those borders - there's more to the America's Cup than 2 yanks with too much money.
Your intiial quote is only the beginning on any decent sized project.
Are you asking enough for the project that you'll be able to pay your salary and your overheads and still be in business in 12 months time? The project will need amintenance, and if you're not on the scene through undercharging, then you've done both yourself and your customer a disservice.