I work in finance and our company just made the transition from XP to 7 this summer. And that only happened because we were upgrading our hardware which happens every 3 or 4 years.
As to the ancient machines being discussed in the thread that are still running XP, I'd be worried about the hard drives going bad. Forget the OS, the hardware doesn't last forever !
Sounds like the company just wants a free week of work. Instead pay the job candidate like a normal employee. Then both parties would benefit. However I still don't see how anyone other than an unemployed person could participate in this "interview" format. So the company has (by accident) already ruled out the likely best group of candidates - those who are currently employed.
"peer-to-peer file sharing, heavy emailing and chatting online, and a tendency to quickly switch between multiple websites and other online resources all predict a greater propensity to experience symptoms of depression"
All of that sounds like normal teenager behavior in 2012. And seriously, what teenager isn't depressed. Their faces are all spotty, they have to sit in Trigonometry class, won't have gratuitous sex until college, curfew, living with parents, can't drink alcohol, etc. Just remembering all of that makes ME depressed.
I'd definitely recommend C as a starting point for anybody serious about learning how to program. You can do high level stuff (pointers, functions). low level (bit manipulation) and everything in between. Also C is the starting point for so many other languages. The knowledge picked up could be extended to Java, C++, C# pretty quickly.
If C is considered too cumbersome, Python would be an excellent choice. The clean coding style required definitely builds good habits. But, God Forbid, don't start with Javascript !
I think people who excel at competitions would be a perfect fit for Research and Development positions. That would include programming jobs on the cutting edge of some field (computational biology, financial engineering, petabyte data analytics, etc). The speed and insight required for competition success is exactly the qualities you'd want in roles like that. However prize-winning programmers might find normal enterprise computing jobs dull or uninteresting and would probably not be a good fit. Kentucky Derby winners don't make good plow horses !
This phenomenon is likely behind the fact that US kids think they are great at math (but they aren't) and Asian kids think they are not good (but they are). This has been well documented in the education literature. Just another consequence of the "trophy for everybody" mentality of the USA.
The best passwords are those hiding in plain sight. I like to keep a few pictures of things at my desk that instantly remind me of the password. For example it could be a picture of a big fat guy for password 300#FatGuy. That way you're unlikely to forget and still nobody would ever guess the actual password.
From my office in NYC I can see the World Trade towers being constructed. There's all kinds of safety nets around the unfinished floors, mandated harnesses for staff who work outside, etc. I could see all of that type of safety procedures (which I'm sure is the same across the USA and Europe) ignored in the quest for completing the building on time. No doubt a few of these Chinese speed-building workers would die during the process (though no one would ever hear about it in the news).
What happens if you sleep in late ? Does the auto bed maker tuck you in like a mummy ? Could this be a future excuse of why we didn't come into work - "the automatic bed maker trapped me there all day".
Yes but what about sites with stupid developers that limit password size or don't allow special characters (two of the most important aspects of good passwords) ? I've seen plenty of them. In essence you have to dumb down your base password choice to accommodate them. Or remember that for those particular sites you have a short / no special character version of the password. Which you inevitably forget soon after creating the account.
I look at job boards in Finance and see numerous firms advertising for very specialized combinations of skills and experience. For instance expert level C++ coders with several years of ultra-high frequency trading experience. Basically they want to recruit someone who's already doing the exact job they are advertising for. So it's no wonder these jobs go unfilled.
The big teams spend money as quickly as they possibly can. The goal is not to amass revenue but to have no extra money left over at the end of the year (they are non-profits by law). So there is lavish spending everywhere. They house the entire football team at a hotel the night before home games. They send the entire 200 person band to bowl games with hotels & meals. These teams have incredible practice facilities that are like indoor stadiums. The list is endless.
I used to name all of our servers after famous mathematicians / physicists. Pretty nerdy but a big hit with the PhD's who used them.
I've also seen movie stars names - FrankSinatra, GingerRogers, etc. And states / cities.
At my firm we rank-order the projects in terms of priorities. That completely simplifies the resource crunch. If we're out of resources, the last unsupported project just waits.
Just make sure to allocate 10 or 20 % time to support or that will wreck your timelines.
As to online degrees, I tend to value that much less than classroom-based schooling when I evaluate candidates. I just don't think it's as rigorous and at least a few online schools are just diploma mills. But in some circumstances (like the OP) I'd take into account the lack of local universities. Actually I'd consider it a plus. It would should initiative and hard work to have somebody complete a degree program like that while working full time. But I'd still likely quiz that person more stringently about the material compared to somebody with an Ivy / well-respected state U degree.
I'm surprised at the lack of support for continuing education that many have mentioned here. My firm (Wall Street) REQUIRES annual education. If you don't do it, you get downgraded on your annual review. Nothing worse than people who let their skills ossify. Both I and my manager follow this HR directive closely. And the firm puts its money where its mouth is - it pays up to 15K per year for classes.
I live and work in the Financial District, NYC so I can give first hand information on what I've seen. So far the protests have been minor and largely ignored by the population down here. The largest march had maybe 200 people. I've seen another with about 50 - 100. So it's small scale events. The protesters are camped out in a common area with tents, sleeping bags & such. All participants seem to be basically peaceful young hippie types, many students, etc. About as non-threatening as one could imagine. The police have erected barricades everywhere to impede pedestrian traffic. That makes it a hassle to get around both for protesters and residents. Lots more cops than usual are in the area (and this place is normally manned like a fortress). Mostly the cops are just standing around looking bored. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if they are reacting strongly to the protesters. All the NYPD has focused on in the last 10 years is anti-terrorist training. The result is a force ill-equipped to handle peaceful, non-violent protests. So the overreaction to the crowds (such as pepper-spraying women) is not a surprise to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Nokia would have been better served partnering with Facebook to produce a good mobile version. That would have served both companies well.
I work in finance and our company just made the transition from XP to 7 this summer. And that only happened because we were upgrading our hardware which happens every 3 or 4 years. As to the ancient machines being discussed in the thread that are still running XP, I'd be worried about the hard drives going bad. Forget the OS, the hardware doesn't last forever !
Yeager did it in level flight - a huge difference
excellent observation as to VS - I think you're likely correct
Sounds like the company just wants a free week of work. Instead pay the job candidate like a normal employee. Then both parties would benefit. However I still don't see how anyone other than an unemployed person could participate in this "interview" format. So the company has (by accident) already ruled out the likely best group of candidates - those who are currently employed.
ha ha - great story about the world's fastest manhole cover ! That should have it's own slashdot entry.
"peer-to-peer file sharing, heavy emailing and chatting online, and a tendency to quickly switch between multiple websites and other online resources all predict a greater propensity to experience symptoms of depression" All of that sounds like normal teenager behavior in 2012. And seriously, what teenager isn't depressed. Their faces are all spotty, they have to sit in Trigonometry class, won't have gratuitous sex until college, curfew, living with parents, can't drink alcohol, etc. Just remembering all of that makes ME depressed.
I'd definitely recommend C as a starting point for anybody serious about learning how to program. You can do high level stuff (pointers, functions). low level (bit manipulation) and everything in between. Also C is the starting point for so many other languages. The knowledge picked up could be extended to Java, C++, C# pretty quickly. If C is considered too cumbersome, Python would be an excellent choice. The clean coding style required definitely builds good habits. But, God Forbid, don't start with Javascript !
I think people who excel at competitions would be a perfect fit for Research and Development positions. That would include programming jobs on the cutting edge of some field (computational biology, financial engineering, petabyte data analytics, etc). The speed and insight required for competition success is exactly the qualities you'd want in roles like that. However prize-winning programmers might find normal enterprise computing jobs dull or uninteresting and would probably not be a good fit. Kentucky Derby winners don't make good plow horses !
This phenomenon is likely behind the fact that US kids think they are great at math (but they aren't) and Asian kids think they are not good (but they are). This has been well documented in the education literature. Just another consequence of the "trophy for everybody" mentality of the USA.
This is the dumbest article on the internet
I'd add a bottle of good scotch. It will be even better in 25 years (and something to toast your discovery with).
The best passwords are those hiding in plain sight. I like to keep a few pictures of things at my desk that instantly remind me of the password. For example it could be a picture of a big fat guy for password 300#FatGuy. That way you're unlikely to forget and still nobody would ever guess the actual password.
From my office in NYC I can see the World Trade towers being constructed. There's all kinds of safety nets around the unfinished floors, mandated harnesses for staff who work outside, etc. I could see all of that type of safety procedures (which I'm sure is the same across the USA and Europe) ignored in the quest for completing the building on time. No doubt a few of these Chinese speed-building workers would die during the process (though no one would ever hear about it in the news).
What happens if you sleep in late ? Does the auto bed maker tuck you in like a mummy ? Could this be a future excuse of why we didn't come into work - "the automatic bed maker trapped me there all day".
Yes but what about sites with stupid developers that limit password size or don't allow special characters (two of the most important aspects of good passwords) ? I've seen plenty of them. In essence you have to dumb down your base password choice to accommodate them. Or remember that for those particular sites you have a short / no special character version of the password. Which you inevitably forget soon after creating the account.
I look at job boards in Finance and see numerous firms advertising for very specialized combinations of skills and experience. For instance expert level C++ coders with several years of ultra-high frequency trading experience. Basically they want to recruit someone who's already doing the exact job they are advertising for. So it's no wonder these jobs go unfilled.
The big teams spend money as quickly as they possibly can. The goal is not to amass revenue but to have no extra money left over at the end of the year (they are non-profits by law). So there is lavish spending everywhere. They house the entire football team at a hotel the night before home games. They send the entire 200 person band to bowl games with hotels & meals. These teams have incredible practice facilities that are like indoor stadiums. The list is endless.
I used to name all of our servers after famous mathematicians / physicists. Pretty nerdy but a big hit with the PhD's who used them. I've also seen movie stars names - FrankSinatra, GingerRogers, etc. And states / cities.
At my firm we rank-order the projects in terms of priorities. That completely simplifies the resource crunch. If we're out of resources, the last unsupported project just waits.
Just make sure to allocate 10 or 20 % time to support or that will wreck your timelines.
As to online degrees, I tend to value that much less than classroom-based schooling when I evaluate candidates. I just don't think it's as rigorous and at least a few online schools are just diploma mills. But in some circumstances (like the OP) I'd take into account the lack of local universities. Actually I'd consider it a plus. It would should initiative and hard work to have somebody complete a degree program like that while working full time. But I'd still likely quiz that person more stringently about the material compared to somebody with an Ivy / well-respected state U degree.
I'm surprised at the lack of support for continuing education that many have mentioned here. My firm (Wall Street) REQUIRES annual education. If you don't do it, you get downgraded on your annual review. Nothing worse than people who let their skills ossify. Both I and my manager follow this HR directive closely. And the firm puts its money where its mouth is - it pays up to 15K per year for classes.
"If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. "
No one did get anything.
Except for the lawyers.
SAS is a great package but is probably prohibitively expensive. An open source version like R is probably more appropriate.
I live and work in the Financial District, NYC so I can give first hand information on what I've seen. So far the protests have been minor and largely ignored by the population down here. The largest march had maybe 200 people. I've seen another with about 50 - 100. So it's small scale events. The protesters are camped out in a common area with tents, sleeping bags & such. All participants seem to be basically peaceful young hippie types, many students, etc. About as non-threatening as one could imagine. The police have erected barricades everywhere to impede pedestrian traffic. That makes it a hassle to get around both for protesters and residents. Lots more cops than usual are in the area (and this place is normally manned like a fortress). Mostly the cops are just standing around looking bored. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if they are reacting strongly to the protesters. All the NYPD has focused on in the last 10 years is anti-terrorist training. The result is a force ill-equipped to handle peaceful, non-violent protests. So the overreaction to the crowds (such as pepper-spraying women) is not a surprise to me.