Basically if the company hires this guy then they die. I am not saying that they don't do well but that they die a horrible death. If the did a proper check and asked people like me I would say something like, "Are you serious, do you want any staff that work with him to get angry and leave? Do you hate your customers because he will piss them off and they too will leave. As for his product all I can say is that it will be way over documented. Not well built but way way way over documented. So a few upper managers will be happy with the project right up until they realize that he has turned it into complete crap.

Then when they look at the project they will realize that the three stooges would have run it better by accident.

The horrible thing with this guy is that people drink his koolaid until it is way too late. Then they realize that on a simple and not mission critical project that it might not have been a good idea to have a 7 to 1 ratio of QA people to developers.

My neighbour is in possession to the password to his online bank and he is very rich. I would like a new Lamborghini so I am going to spy on his computer until he types his password.

My other neighbour is very sexy and probably showers naked. So I will just put a little camera in to gather some "research" information.

Just because they want information and someone else has it in no way justifies what they do.

I think we can all agree that you can spy on an enemy. But when a country spies on its own people they don't even need to worry about foreign enemies. They have a built in one at home.

I wonder how hard they pursue people who write comments that make them feel bad?

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these asshats have serious anger management issues where they put people who cut them off in traffic onto "extra scrutiny" lists for when they travel. It certainly appears that there is no repercussions to anything they do so why not?

I read an article years ago about a guy who developed the software that made transacting CDOs (Collateralized debt obligations) much easier. Basically that lead to the entire sub-prime mortgage industry which lead to 2008. So I think that he wins this whole discussion.

It is very simple as to why they did this. Amnesty was pestering some bad people. These bad people were doing a deal with the UK government that would come under the umbrella of "realpolitik" in order to smooth this deal the home office was asked to help out with some information that would interfere with Amnesty's work. All the little spy drones would say things like "These orders came from the highest level"

So if you were to ask almost everyone at almost every level if this was a good or a bad thing that they have done they would pretty much all agree that it was in the greater interest of the UK. Thus they did bad things to us for our own good.

What they never seem to ask themselves is what the average person in the UK would think about dealing with these very bad people. Most people would quickly say things like the ends not justifying the means.

If you look at the former prime minister TB and his dealing with Libya's madman leader then you know that these people will pursue their own interests, their career interests, and the interests of their friends and supporters long before they would even give a shrug about the interests of the citizenry.

Also when it comes to these people, I don't see the whole "a few bad apples." because if they know that this is going on and do nothing then they are just as bad as the rest. It is no different than if I know my neighbour is murdering people and I just buy earplugs to not hear the screaming. I might not be guilty of murder but it doesn't make me a good apple.

I was quite pleased with the level. I actually expected either something very pedantic or something so easy that I would have a little weep.

If anything the main problem that I have is that I have met CS grads who might not do so well on that exam. I am not saying it is too hard but that the aforementioned CS grads sucked.

For some reason I have always had two problems with IPv6. One is that it offers me as an end user exactly nothing terribly tangible. Yes yes I know of the whole running out of addresses stuff but I have never contacted a server host who said, "Sorry we are out of addresses." My ISP has never said, "Sorry no more customers we are out of addresses." So why should the average user even give a crap.

The other thing that I have found is that without exception those who I have met who are pushing IPv6 remind me nearly perfectly (and in many cases were) the same Y2K people who told us that the world was going to end. They are grade A assholes. Thus it instantly makes me suspect that IPv6 has hidden surprises buried in it that will piss me off. So paternalistic shit that is "good for me" but in reality somehow allows some asshole admin to fuck up my traffic because his traffic has a higher priority or some such bullshit.

So my prediction is that when all is said and done there will never be IPv6 but someone is going to come up with IPG2 (Generation 2) that is chock a block full of things that we all want. Things where we will be happy to demand that our ISPs make the leap, things that get us out there to buy new networking gear.

IPv6 will basically become XHTML. Some will argue that this is impossible but WEP was pretty much tossed into the trash and everyone was onboard with the new things like WPA in a heartbeat. Not because it satiated the black heart of some pedantic network admin but because it was actually better.

Seeing that when I was young and my computer (VIC-20) was crappy, I hand wrote assembly on paper and then inputted it. So in the case where they are looking for Java solutions, give them handwritten bytecode.

Just finished 10 questions from a sample test: http://manatee.cc.gt.atl.ga.us/apExam/ and I would rate it as FizzBuzz*2. FizzBuzz would be in the lower half of difficulty.

If anything I was a bit slow taking it as I was looking for trick questions that weren't there. But I would say that someone who could pass that test would have at least the basic tools to go fourth and program.

Plus it is in Java which I haven't touched since 2000.

But once I looked it up the solution was completely obvious. The wikipedia entry suggests a linked list, while I was also thinking associative array.

Now my curiosity is demanding a sample copy of the test that I can take. Beyond not having memorized many of the terms I wonder how I would do after 20+ years of programming.

With these sort of tests I often worry that it is just Bulimia Learning where you have to memorize esoterica while never learning to actually program. For instance for you C++ wizzards out there can you answer this one: "What is the compl keyword for? And why is is needed?" Surely as an accomplished C++ programmer you know all the keywords, there aren't that many. (I had to look it up).

But if I look at a sample exam and find out it is all FizzBuzz then I will have a little weep for the children.

I didn't say that she was a republican, more that she is dresses like a little miss perfect young republican. I don't really see much difference between the two parties as I judge them by their actions not their words.

I find that democrats don't actually dress much differently but that republicans are a bit more consistent.

I might argue with you had I visited Yahoo in the last decade.

I have met many Oracle salespeople and she fits the mould perfectly. Young republican hair and clothing style. Uptight. Sleazy. Looks like she either uses you or ignores you if you aren't getting her a sale. And has that I arrived at 6am for work and thus am superior to you regardless of your actual contribution.

She recently had a kid and I am willing to bet that the kid is being raised by nannies.

Thus what kind of crap would she give about customers? Customers exist to be exploited for a better year end bonus. Great products are for the weak.

I hope that within the decade that your statement goes from funny to insightful.

When people ask me to help them get java working I say no bloody way. My simple theory is that Java in the enterprise might be a good thing but java on the home machine is just asking for trouble. To me Java has a perfect storm of people not wanting it. First is that Java must be regularly updated to keep it safe. But I don't trust these updates to not screw me over in some fashion, either through malware such as this or simply popping up at an inconvenient time. For instance I am often recording video tutorials. There is nothing worse than some software update popup showing up in the middle. Especially if it is one of these focus grabbing popups. But the java update is a total bastard as it keeps turning itself back on after I keep turning it off.

So I basically danced around my office when I read that chrome and firefox were pretty much killing Java as an extension/addon.

But adding malware to their install just makes me laugh at how stupid these MBAs are. Yes in the next few quarters they will make lots of money. But how many quarters before people will have significantly reduced their downloads?

Also for Yahoo, I hate Ask.com for their trashy approach to getting users. Make a great product and then people might come. Fooling them into coming is just scummy. So now people will lump Yahoo in with the various sites that over the years have tried to use deception as their marketing tool.

For those of you out there all touchy about Java, my comments are not about the Java language, but the java product.