Comment Re:Did they ask if they could look it up? (Score 1) 809
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JimFive
If you would be happy with 'use your public key to send it to you' then it's a perfectly reasonable interview question IMO.
I disagree. If that's an acceptable answer then so is "Click the send encrypted email button in the email client." You do have server integrated encryption don't you? Why is the developer/user even concerned about this? If there's a business need for encrypted email then it should be handled by the infrastructure team and (ideally) not rely on the user to know or care about it.
If you're interviewing for a developer and you want to check into generic domain knowledge ask about Source Code Management and dealing with merge conflicts. And, don't use abbreviations. Just because you know what SCM means doesn't mean that the interviewee is going to pull up the correct reference under stress (and yes, interviewing is stressful).
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JimFive
The guy knowingly created a way for [criminals to do business privately]
Did you know that the US Treasury knowingly creates a mechanism for [criminals] to anonymously exchange goods for value? Should all of their employees be convicted?
Ok, so that's a bit silly, but my point is that creating a system that can be used to facilitate crime isn't necessarily the same thing as committing a crime. In this case it appears that he also used his service to commit crimes which makes it less ambiguous.
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JimFive
Type "cp -a
Because if I didn't include the period, it would be ambiguous. I know so-called "standard English" doesn't like that.
Actually, standard English is fine with that because the "." character inside your quote is not a period. A period is a specific mark used to indicate the end of a sentence. the dot inside your quote, while it looks like a period is actually a symbol representing the current directory and is not a punctuation mark. Likewise, in your previous example, the period is not part of the quote so it goes outside the quote marks.
The point of punctuation is to reduce ambiguity and usage that achieves that is generally correct. I almost always punctuate outside the quotes when quoting and inside the quotes when writing dialog.
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JimFive
500g jar of tomato pasta sauce
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Is it really so bad in America that its cheaper to buy the unhealthy preprocessed crap than it is to buy actual ingredients
I find it humorous that you think a jar of pasta sauce is anything other than "preprocessed crap".
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JimFive
Competition and/or expanding access would go alot further to bettering the internet than increasing the broadband definition.
This is true, but I suspect that there is some sort of money involved in being classified as "broadband" by the FCC and that money is the reason that Verizon and Cable companies don't want to be defined as not broadband. If that's true, then this is the mechanism that the FCC has to encourage companies to improve their network speeds.
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JimFive
Happiness is twin floppies.