Yearly Archives: 2010

Parental Fears vs Reality

Seen on Bruce Schneier’s web site:

Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

  1. Kidnapping
  2. School snipers
  3. Terrorists
  4. Dangerous strangers
  5. Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

  1. Car accidents
  2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
  3. Abuse
  4. Suicide
  5. Drowning

Why such a big discrepancy between worries and reality? Barnes says parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children.

Think about this the next time you don’t let your 10 year old walk down the street to the store.

Posted in Parenting | Leave a comment

The Non-Programming Programmer

I just discovered this article, as well as an earlier article on Coding Horror, and can’t help but agree – the majority of programming/software engineering candidates out there looking for jobs are not qualified to be programmers. They do not have the skills and cannot write anything beyond simple programs.

From the article:

“…I am stunned, but not entirely surprised, to hear that three years later “the vast majority” of so-called programmers who apply for a programming job interview are unable to write the smallest of programs. To be clear, hard is a relative term — we’re not talking about complicated, Google-style graduate computer science interview problems. This is extremely simple stuff we’re asking candidates to do. And they can’t. It’s the equivalent of attempting to hire a truck driver and finding out that 90 percent of the job applicants can’t find the gas pedal or the gear shift.

I agree, it’s insane. But it happens every day, and is (apparently) an epidemic hiring problem in our industry. “

Joel Spolsky from Joel on Software had also written about this problem back in 2005, positing a hypothetical 200 resumes received for a job posting:

Now, when you get those 200 resumes, and hire the best person from the top 200, does that mean you’re hiring the top 0.5%?

No. You’re not. Think about what happens to the other 199 that you didn’t hire.

They go look for another job.

That means, in this horribly simplified universe, that the entire world could consist of 1,000,000 programmers, of whom the worst 199 keep applying for every job and never getting them, but the best 999,801 always get jobs as soon as they apply for one. So every time a job is listed the 199 losers apply, as usual, and one guy from the pool of 999,801 applies, and he gets the job, of course, because he’s the best, and now, in this contrived example, every employer thinks they’re getting the top 0.5% when they’re actually getting the top 99.9801%.

Interesting insight, and I think very close to reality.

Recruiters are of little help, as they 1) are not technical enough to weed out the weenies, and 2) in some instances they lie and maneuver to get these weak candidates past your screening process.

The importance of the screening process cannot be overstated. There’s no reason why you should have to perform in-person interviews on anyone that can’t do the job.

Posted in Management, Tech | Tagged | 7 Comments

Silicon Valley’s secret rock star

How cool is this?

Iggy and Williamson in Detroit in 1973

Offices are full of people with past lives — and for more than two decades James Williamson kept his a secret. Before retiring last year, Williamson was the vice president of technology standards at Sony Electronics, where he traveled around the world developing compatibility guidelines for products. Former colleagues describe him as calm and analytical. He looks the part of a Silicon Valley exec — short white hair, suit jacket — and enjoys vacationing in Hawaii and playing tennis. A few years ago he took up the ukulele and the slack-key guitar. It was his first time picking up an instrument, he says, since the 1970s, when he played guitar for the Stooges, one of the most famous punk-rock bands of all time. (That would be his secret.)

Continue reading...

Posted in Interesting, Music | Leave a comment

Emoticons in Unicode 6.0

I don’t know why I’m excited about this, but I am. Unicode 6.0 now contains emoticons.

Happy Unicode

Here’s the list – http://www.unicode.org/Public/6.0.0/charts/versioned/U1F600.pdf

Posted in Amusements, Geek, Tech | Leave a comment

Strike Three for the Massachusetts?

First it catches on fire in the middle of Boston Harbor. Next, it is hit by another commuter boat while I am onboard. Today, while on a whale watch with my family, we see this near Deer Island in Boston Harbor:

From Boston.com:

More than 170 passengers and crew of a vessel that ran aground this morning 1.5 miles off Deer Island in Boston Harbor were being taken to shore in Hull by the Coast Guard, local agencies, and even a few lobster boats, according to the Coast Guard and witnesses at the scene.
The 87-foot passenger vessel, Massachusetts, ran aground after straying from the safety of the south channel, said Demos Kouvaris, a recreational fisherman who heard the distress signal and hurried to the scene in his own boat. The boat strayed from the safety of the South Channel as it was heading away from Boston Harbor and struck an underwater formation called “Devil’s Back.”

Posted in Interesting | Leave a comment

I am the Internet

c/o JWZ

I am the Internet

Posted in Amusements | Leave a comment

Inventions

Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature. That’s how it should be.

Anything invented between your 15th and 35th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there.

Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.

– Douglas Adams

Posted in Amusements, DeepThoughts | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Real Mac vs PC Commercial

Posted in Amusements, Geek, Mac, Tech | Tagged | Leave a comment

Music Joke

Found on reddit.com:

C, an E-flat, and G go into a bar. The bartender says: “Sorry, but we don’t serve minors.” So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished: the G is out flat.

An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough. A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me, I’ll just be a second.”

An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor. Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims: “Get out now! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.” The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes.

The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says: “You’re looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development.” This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit and stands there au natural. Eventually, the C sobers up and realizes in horror that he’s under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility.

On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless. The bartender decides, however, that since he’s only had tenor so patrons, the soprano out in the bathroom, and everything has become alto much treble, he needs a rest and closes the bar.

Posted in Amusements, Music | Leave a comment

The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash

Interesting insight into the Apple/Adobe kerfuffle from science fiction writer, Charlie Stross.

I’ve got a theory, and it’s this: Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market. HP have woken up and smelled the forest fire, two or three years late; Microsoft are mired in a tar pit, unable to grasp that the inferno heading towards them is going to burn down the entire ecosystem in which they exist. There is the smell of panic in the air, and here’s why …

Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat. That’s the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone’s trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.

Posted in Mac, Tech | Tagged | Leave a comment