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Comment Re:They do not have to be hard to read (Score 1) 233

Can you explain why these agreements refer to "express" warranties? It should go without saying that the opposite of "implied" is "expressed", and "express" as an adjective only applies to transit routes, as far as I know.

Seeing lawyers unable to accurately express themselves without garbling a fairly common word doesn't instill confidence in their command of the more esoteric parts.

Comment Re:The Virgin Digital EULA was at least fun to rea (Score 1) 233

http://joegratzdotnet.nfshost.com/?p=499

"If you ignore this and then come crying to us later, we're just gong to point you back to this agreement -- which you didn't read in the first place. How do I know that? Because nobody ever reads these things. I'm actually writing this for myself. I'm the only one that will ever read this. And the sad thing is that I'll spell-check it anyway."

Oops.

Comment Re:I had this in my last interview (Score 1) 743

if you claim over a decade of experience with C then you probably should have the first sixteen powers of two memorized.

I wouldn't know the relation, but of course there's always short cuts. The trouble with short cuts is they can be wrong. In particular, human memory is contextual. Maybe you can't remember what 2^10 is if you're mountain biking a thousand miles from home, on vacation. It'd be silly to ask an 'out of context' question and make a serious judgement on your recall in that case. It's a little easier to believe an interviewer shouldn't be too tied to context, but tests are definitely out of usual context.

I saw it as possibly a measure of culture fit. Obviously, knowing it's 1024 right off the top of your head isn't a required skill, since you can always punch it into your favorite command-line-based calculator (e.g. `perl -le 'print 2**10'`), but maybe they're looking for the sort of programmer who likes to have these things memorized, or is hands-dirty enough to need to.

In any case, the interview process ended when I couldn't invent on the spot a linear algorithm for detecting a corrupted (i.e. cyclical) linked list.

Comment Re:The secret to a good FOIA enquiry... (Score 0) 151

Had to post to undo my accidental mod down. Meant to mod you up.

If Slashdot's moderation menu used a submit button for confirmation, this sort of error wouldn't happen and it wouldn't require having scripting enabled.

I'd consider applying for the job of fixing it, but it's in Michigan and they're looking for someone entry-level.

Comment Re:What if they are lying about not lying? (Score 1, Offtopic) 151

There are two doors. Each guarded by one guard. Both will tell you which door goes where (one to where you want to go, the other to certain doom), but there's a catch. You can only ask one of them, and one always tells the truth while the other always lies. So you ask one of them "If I had asked the other guard which door was the correct door, which door would he have pointed to?", and whichever door he points to, you take the other one. It's a twisted logic, but there you go.

The double negation is superfluous. You need merely ask, "What answer would you give to the question 'Which door is the correct one?'?", and you'll get the correct answer regardless of which guard you asked. The lying guard would lie about his lie, canceling it out.

Comment Re:Government jobs (Score 1) 743

I had this aptitude test one time where the interviewers put us into this room with these uncomfortable chairs and they provided no writing surfaces. While we were proctored the test I dragged the only table in the room over to my chair so that I would have something to write on. Turns out, that sort of ingenuity was what they were looking for - it was all a trick question.

I hope you didn't also shoot the girl with the quantum physics textbook.

Comment Re:I had this in my last interview (Score 1) 743

Unless it's a job that requires instant recall, don't test people on what amounts to memorizing log tables.

Funny you mention that. My very first Google interview question was "What's two to the twelfth power?". Then again, if you claim over a decade of experience with C then you probably should have the first sixteen powers of two memorized.

Comment Re:Welcome to real world (Score 1) 542

...and the 4$ a year hosting site with no ads is? (want!)

I don't know what service the GP was referring to, but I suggest looking at NearlyFreeSpeech.net. You deposit money upfront, and they charge you as you go, usually in units of cents per day (but even finer than that for bandwidth and storage). It's a great deal for sites that don't get much traffic but need to be up reliably. On the down side, you don't get HTTPS or persistent processes.

Comment Re:Piss off, Shuttleworth (Score 1) 798

Piss off, Shuttleworth

If I was you I'd ask for my money back. Oh that's right, you didn't pay for it. The sense of entitlement and the ungratefulness of Linux users never ceases to amaze me.

Listen, just because it's free doesn't mean we can't voice an opinion.

The widespread dissatisfaction with Ubuntu's move to Unity challenges BasilBrush's own unquestioning loyalty to Apple. He's just reasserting his threatened worldview -- that criticism is a vice and privilege, not a contribution in itself, and that arguments are to be evaluated not on their own merits but by whether those making them earn the right to speak by paying tribute.

Dissent is not disloyalty, and if you can't brook complaints then you should forbid them in your software license agreement. Oh, that's right, BasilBrush isn't a contributor to the software in question. But a grievance about Canonical is a gripe against Apple by proxy, and the master must be defended from any attack.

The Apple faithful's intolerance of opposing views and expectation for others to conform to their norms never cease to amaze me.

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