Move to another city, just so I can subscribe to a service I don't want and -- with much more effort -- get bundle pricing that's still more expensive than streaming services?

The math is easy here. Are live sports/politics worth ($100 - $8 - $8 - $15) = $69 to you? If yes, get cable TV.

This isn't universally true. Where I live, the bundle is cheaper -- for the first 12 months. Then the price goes up so now those live sports and politics are worth an extra $100 (compared to just netflix+hulu+hbo). If that is worthwhile value for you, by all means, get the cable TV bundle.

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Just some quick math:

According to Nielsen, in 2013 (last year I could find numbers for) "over 33 billion hours of national sports programming were consumed by 255 million people in the U.S.". That works out to an average of less than 11 hours per month per person. So on average, if people are only get anything besides Netflix+Hulu+HBO for sports, they are paying about $9.27/hr.

Outside of a subscription-based service, most 45-hour shows cost around $2 (or $2.67/hr) if you buy them individually (which is the most expensive way). Using this as a basis, that 10.78 hours sports per month on cable are about 247% more expensive entertainment per hour.

Thank you, exactly this.

I don't know what the OP actually did, but presumably this was not an interview question (since OP said they hired them), and part of actual assigned work. I would expect any even mildly-decent developer to be able to learn about IPs, netmasks and figure out how to do calculations with them in a couple of hours, even with no prior knowledge (I say this knowing much about it myself). One of the most important skills of a developer is to be able to learn. This is not just learning new languages, libraries, techniques and patterns, but also the new (to you) business domains, user needs, and "why" behind requirements/features/stories.

On the other hand, expecting any random dev to know this off the top of their head would be asinine. If they were fired for this, then the OP did them a favour because it's probably an awful place to work. And if all three were hired with the explicit expectation of being an expert in networking but don't know what a netmask is, well holy crap, the OP needed to learn how to better screen candidates at least two hires ago.

So.. your "Unlimited Everything" plan has a limit of 10GB tethered data, and 80GB/month transfer..?

> Watching a youtube video of a skydive is kind of neat, but I think actually being along for the ride would be a gamer changer.

Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Even better, watch it in the Youtube app on an Android phone/tablet.

> I would need to see something really compelling tomorrow if i'm to be convinced to try something else, let alone in addition.

Such as "all competing apps have been removed from the app store per Apple policy"?

Yeah, this is actually a great idea. Make it all or nothing. You don't get to block NEGATIVE reviews, you either take them all, or take none.

Let the public decide of they want to do business when they see a message like "All reviews of this establishment have been removed due to a court order demanding removal of one or more specific reviews. Per Google's all-or-nothing policy, all reviews are suspended."

I generally stopped shopping at FS due to the commission-based sales vultures, but I did buy a stove and fridge there almost 3 years ago (needed new ones, and they had a good sale going on). Huge amount of pressure to get extended warranties, of course. I started asking about it, having had previous (negative) experience trying to actually use a warranty.

Basically, the extended warranty was 3 / 5 / 8 years depending on what you paid. If something breaks, you call them, they come out and repair or replace at their discretion. If something were to break say, 6 months after your purchase, and they came out and decided that replacing it was the most economical option, you get a new fridge. Great! Here's the catch: your Future Shop warranty is now terminated. That's right.. the remaining 7.5 years are null and void. I think you get the 1 year parts-only manufacturer warranty (which I'm convinced FS negotiates to be deliberately crappy to make their plan look better.

The economics of this are just too much in their favour: if there's a (minor) problem, it's actually in their interest to replace it (terminating the remainder of the warranty), then fix the old one and re-sell it (hopefully at least as refurbished model -- but I wouldn't be surprised to find these as "floor models" or "open-box").

In every interview I've ever had, even from back when I was a kid getting a paper route, the interviewer asked if I had any questions (sometimes with the suffix of "about the job" or "about our company" etc). Come prepared! The interviewer had to come up with all their questions and concerns and such, and you should too!

Absolutely! When I'm the one doing the interviewing, I often find this is one of the most useful parts of the whole thing.

It gives insight into the person's personality (Are their primary concerns/first questions about salary and hours and benefits? Do they ask intelligible questions? Did they research the company/products? Are they curious about the language, technologies and dev environment? Types of problems they'll be solving?), plus it's often a launch pad into further conversations that help judge the candidate.

I also want to hire people that will get along with the team (and me), and we would be concerned about things like: source control, if CI is being used, how testing/QA is done, what dev methodology is used, why are you hiring/what is dev effort being directed against.. So if I talk to someone that doesn't ask those questions (particularly if they're "senior"; junior people have an excuse) it's an indicator they won't get along with the team.

Yeah this is exactly the problem. The idea of a control that is fixed in a predictable easy-to-reach location, with tactile feedback (so you can use it without seeing it -- eg in the dark because the lights are off) and requires a single press to activate (eg: a switch on the wall) is a very good one, regardless of the fact that most if not all people have been trained to be used to this feature their whole lives.

There's this huge marketing effort dedicated to "control your lights from anywhere" and "do cool stuff with your smartphone" combined with a focus on products that don't require rewiring (eg: "smart bulbs" and plug-in modules). Great, it's a neat technology demo to get people sort of interested in doing more, but if it's taking away the simplicity of a light switch to get it, it's not going to succeed.

The biggest unwritten requirement is if you'd want to spend and interact 40+ hours a week with that person.

This is certainly an important point, and ties into one of the things that really turns me off potential hires: admitting limitations.

I can't tell you how many times I've asked a question like "I see you've listed X, Y and Z as languages you are an expert in, but I don't see anything explaining where you have experience in language Y -- where did you use Y and what did you do with it?" and gotten answers anywhere from "Well, I used it for this one assignment in school" to "Part of the code I worked on talked to the piece written in Y, though I didn't actually work on that myself" to "Oh really? That's not supposed to be there".

Personally, I give absolutely zero craps about the specific languages and whether the job they are being considered for uses them or not: my philosophy is that any reasonable developer can learn any language / toolset necessary. But I do care very deeply that the people I work with are honest. I'd rather someone admit they don't know something than muddle through and not make any progress.

So when someone misrepresents themselves during the interview, this tells me a lot about their character and what it would be like working with them, and someone that doesn't admit their limitations is not someone I enjoy working with.

Seriously, no one knows everything. No one expects everyone to know everything. It's okay to say "I don't know" in an interview. One of two things will happen: The interviewee will get the job anyway, and the company will know they'll either have to invest in training them in the things they don't know or not have them do those things; or the interviewee won't get the job because they aren't qualified and the employer can't train them.

By the way, I've had the opposite response once, from a very junior developer: "Well I did it in school, and then also used it for this personal project, but didn't really think it was relevant for my resume since I didn't get paid". That person got the job (and some resume tips).

.NET Framework is really two parts: the "built in libraries" and the CLR (common language runtime). When you install a Framework version, it installs only the CLR version it depends on, and not earlier ones (at least this is true at time of writing).

.NET Framework 1.0 runs on CLR 1.0, and .NET Framework 2.0 runs on CLR 2.0. Okay, this makes sense and is easy to follow.

Where it gets confusing is .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 -- both still run on CLR 2.0.

.NET Framework 4.0, 4.5, and 4.5.1 runs on CLR 4 (they actually just call it "4", not "4.0").

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u...

What's makes this stupidly confusing is the compatibility: If you have .NET 3.5 installed, you can run a 2.0 application. If you have .NET 4.5 installed, you can run a 4.0 application, but you can't run a 3.5 application.

IMHO, if they had just used 2.1 and 2.2 instead of 3.0 and 3.5, this could be much less confusing: .NET 4 apps run on .NET 4, and .NET 2 apps would run on .NET 2. Maybe they're doing this from now on, but the fact that 3.x is really 2.0 has screwed this up. I also don't get why they skip to .5 but that's far less of an issue.

That said, this is the company that thinks 95+1 = 98, Vista+1 = 7, and 8+1 = 10.

Yes: Roslyn. Open sourced back in April. Currently in development for C# 6.

The Roslyn page on MSDN has links to nuget packages and their git repo.

I've done some X10 in the past, but now all my stuff is Insteon (and most dual-band, which actually works quite reliably). I have a few things installed in my house now, which while they are part of an "automation system" I'm not sure I'd call it a "smart home":

* Keypad by the front door
    * Has a button that both shows if the garage door is opened/closed and can open/close it
    * Has an 'all off' that turns off the kitchen / living room lights
    * Can control the outside soffit plug for x-mas lights
* Outside lights
    * Turn on to 50% when it gets dark (ISY99 controller that automatically accounts for DST changing of daytime throughout the year), turn off at midnight
    * Quickly go to 100% when there's motion outside, OR if the garage door is open, anytime when it's dark out
    * All transitions fade: eg, After motion stops, they take ~1min to slowly fade from 100% back to 50%. This is subtle and just a nice touch that's easy because of the system
* Kitchen keypad has 'bright', 'dim', and 'off' buttons, which control the lights over the island, sink, range hood and under-cabinet.
    * There's also a button used to indicate if the garage door is open, so we can see from the back half of the house

I haven't installed it yet (change of season made it not important now) but I will be adding a keypad to the bedroom to control the fan/lights. Right now there's just one switch and if you want fan/lights you have to pull the chains. During the summer we are constantly walking into the dark room, turning the switch, and all that happens is the fan turns on.

I think for me, a lot of the use case behind using insteon, is less about 'automation' and more about being able to make virtual 3/4/5-way switches and scene-based lighting without having to rip apart drywall and rewire.

Heck, one really convenient thing is that the switch in the living room controls lights on the other side of the room -- without a plug-in module, I'd either have to adjust those lights manually (meaning they'd be left off and/or on all the time), have an extension cord running in front of my fireplace, or open up drywall to rewire. I didn't build the house or choose to make the switch operate a plug on the same wall 6ft away, but at least I can make our lives easier with very little effort.

A lot of this is really just laziness in way, but at the same time, when you have to use 4 different controls in the kitchen to get all the lights on/off you simply don't turn them on and/or leave them on most of the time. One button gets better use of what's there, and just makes life a tiny bit more pleasant.

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One thing I really don't get is the fascination with using smartphones to control. I've tried it, I just don't find it useful or convenient. Assuming I have my phone on me (I don't always, while at home), I have to take it out, swipe to unlock, wait a second for it to load, find the control app, wait a second for it to load, find the lights/scene I want, then change it. How the hell is that more convenient than the switch/keypad that's always on the wall right next to the door that I walk by as I am coming into the room? Seriously, I don't understand.

This whole 'you can control the lights from anywhere' thing is just a non-existent use case, as far as I'm concerned. We accidentally leave the lights on maybe a handful of times a year.. that is not a primary case of why to install these types of systems. I haven't even had my system exposed to the internet for the last couple years (changed my router, and never set up port forwarding again) because I NEVER used it remotely.

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I have a wifi-connected thermostat, which is great for exactly 3 reasons: It is miles easier to program than the cheap piece of crap it replaced; I have a linux cron job that turns on the fan a few times through the day that greatly helps balance out the temperature (otherwise the back of the house facing the sun gets significantly warmer than the front), and I could only find this feature on MUCH more expensive thermostats; and lastly, I can adjust the temperature from my bed, particularly handy on holidays when we're sleeping in but the temperature is set as if we're away at work.

There certainly are people that interview terribly, but there are still ways to see past that and judge their skills. I find the best way is to figure out what they're passionate about and get them to talk about that -- for example "tell me all about the latest technology/framework/language/whatever that has you excited and you've spent time learning about." You can pretty easily tell the difference between people that chase buzzwords and people that actually care and spend time trying things out or learning more than superficially.

There are also some people that have been working in a job where the technology is old, and maybe family life doesn't afford much spare time to always be learning new things in depth. That's fine also -- you can ask things like "What is the worst part about using ? What would you change about it if you code?". There's a HUGE difference between someone that says "Well, it's COBOL, it's old, what more needs to be said? haha" and "As soon as you start to get mildly complex, program flow becomes very difficult to follow and use of global variables leads to all sorts of bugs caused by competing uses of the same name which aren't always obvious".