Blunt

ya know, I just don't agree with anyone who posts here and uses the word "customer." Yea, Bob was a customer but he is also a human being. Less we forget this and remember we are working with other people then you don't need to worry about "snowflakes" or whether you're customers are happy or not. Just treat everyone you come in contact with with respect & regardless of how you met (business or otherwise) and this world would just be a much better place.

I think this is a non sequitur. (IMO) the stuff about "people are colorblind until society teaches them otherwise" is ridiculous, so you put these kids in an environment with no yellow children? Of course they are going to see yellow children as strange- they haven't had the opportunity to interact and learn otherwise. It doesn't have to have anything to do with racist comments from their parents.

Labeling anyone of any color is racicst period. There is only one race called the Human Race!

If everyone recognized this and stopped describing one another in terms of colors, we could end fucking bullshit!

I'm against this. They are trying to impose rules (threading concepts) into the C++ language where it ought not to be. Threads are platform specific (ARM, Intel) albeit with the same idea but underpinnings are different. They are arguing about thread local variables and concurrency issues in the context of the C++ language or standard libraries when really these things are dependent upon the application being written. We don't need all this garbage in the language and there are plenty of class libraries out there to deal with common hardware platforms already that do quite well. Trying to drive a design pattern from high atop ivory towers is stupid and you would think these people would have learned this by now.

I second your Superbly put. I cannot upvote this enough too. I've been doing C and C++ for over 17 years from embedded up to CRUD accounting type apps.... Spot on my friend, spot on!

I guess this means every code compiler is in jeopardy now too.

really an optical illusion? I heard two different flows of water splashing in the bucket which I would not expect if it was just an optical trick.

I'd pledge the full $200K if they would take on C++ immediately. I am so sick and tired of IDEs that suck at delivering solid C++ coding environment. The best tool I've found for the job, to date, is Source Insight.

"My theory is that only idiots get caught"

No, only idiots do this to begin with.

The real hero of the story is the guy or organized the surprise flash mob! Most people would say that was cute and move on, but this guy stopped and took an interest in this kid and in making him feel good about himself. We need more people like that guy!

oh no it's not worth discussing. The discussion is pointless including Yegge's diatribe. Great software is written by great software engineers. (period) end of story. And there is no amount of management that can be thrown in that can make sucky programmers better at their job.

you don't pick the language. The language picks you!

I also concur with #1's finding (small group in a room shut off from the rest). I once worked with 5 other C++ developers all sitting at a couple fold out tables in a one room office to work on a software that was used in a highly competitive niche market and this was by far the most productive I ever was. Like the OP, we could instantly talk to one another about a problem or to ask why certain blocks of code were a certain way. We wrote software used to track bets (off shore gambling). Our software sold for around $100K and at the time (about '93-'95) our only competitor was a large corporation that appeared to struggle to keep up with us. We were so innovative and fast to deliver. Those days long behind me, I often wish to find that same cohesiveness in my work-life again.

Nothing speakers louder than the dollar. Bitching and moaning really does nothing compared to the mighty dollar. Fortunately for me I own a small hosting company with roughly 1500 or so domain names that I will do a bulk transfer too after the xmas holiday. These are domain names I mainly control as a consultant for other companies (my clients)... This ought to get interesting when I begin pulling the trigger. About 6 years ago I did something similar to move away from NetSol and they attempted to block this; making it very difficult to close my accounts.

funnier yet are the over weight people standing on the side watching.

agreed. and if you do any sort of embedded work, you must know C and C++. If history is any predictor of the future, chips will continue to get smaller and the "embedded" development world, I think, will proliforate and demand coders to know C and C++ at least for the next several years until fancy tools/compilers argue things like Java and C# code bloat doesn't matter because a 4Gig embedded system will be the norm... ahem..

completely agree with your reason. I'm a long time Slackware user. I discovered Slackware cicra 1995 or so and throught out the years tried different distributions only to go back to Slackware for its simplicity. Many of the O'reilly books talk about the contests of various config files for NAMED, DHCP, etc..... and Slackware just does not deviate from these. Outside of the Slackware installation, upgrading new packages can be done from the raw tar-balls. Never having to wait or build RPMs or other cryptic incarnations just made things easier, faster, and me a better Linux admin when I had to diagnose issues in other distributions.

150% agree. I have a Pentium III class machine we still use to run our company email. It's been rock solid for so long, there has never been a need to upgrade it. Should the hardware finally fail, we have a few spares kicking around on stand-by and a build script that builds the software and an rsynced version of the mailbox store (cyrus IMAP). I guess, just another data point to your point.

so a $400 iPhone or even a $200 smart phone is a better option than some of the $25 robot kits you can buy that have much more to learn from?

not buying it.

First of all, Thank you for the contribution to the OSS community but I just have to ask one question. With all the language wars and what not:

1. This is written in C#, correct? 2. Two full years of your life - do you literally mean 40+ Hours/week?

If this took two full years as in 40hours/week or working on it full time, I'm shocked it took two years. SMTP, POP3, and IMAPv4 are exceedingly simple protocols and the UI just seems to look like standard controls, no custom UI elements. Just had to ask.

I know I could probably whip together a decent email client in C++ within a couple months from scratch and maybe a week or two if I used any number of libraries out there.

another fucking story about Steve Jobs... RIP in piece Ralph Steinman!

funny is how they bitch about virtualbox and then their own dam site is down at the same time. A bit of the pot calling the kettle black?

seriously, I don't get it. There are tons of off-the-shelf electronic kits that already do this (ARM, PIC, AVAR, etc)... And most of this is just simple logic. Follow a light beam, follow color, bla, bla, bla... Anything really useful, to me, appears one would need a bit more than a smart phone. Honda's robot comes to mind and that quadraped that supposedly is suppose to help military carry heavy things through tough terrain.

I agree with you. In fact, the comments contradict one another.

If they did their homework, they would know Jobs holds many design patents.

and this one is funny...

"Steve Jobs was not a visionary. He put the dots together and saw where they led."

vs.

"He created an organization that predictably and reliably created emotionally resonant products."

" He made a company that predictably and reliably made blockbusters."

"He created new markets that attracted and sustained competitors."

" He gave others the freedom to think about what jobs products are hired to do."

"He brought engineering processes to works of creativity and the creative process to engineering."

I'm not sure how you "make a company" and "create new markets" without being a visionary.

All this hype about a geek yet no one really paid attention to another fine gentleman by the name of Ralph Steinman.

I am so sick and tired of people like Jobs getting all this attention and maybe I ought to start using it as a stage to remind people that while Jobs contributions to computer science are important, we ought to give the same attention to others who are equally, if not, great contributors to science. I never knew Jobs earned a nobel prize?

really, now, what is the point to all this?

Frankly, I find this type of interview insulting. Let's face it. Unless you work with "algorithms" on a dialy basis, I'm willing to bet that most who do not cannot regurgitate a red black tree at the drop of a hat. I work in this field off in on as an embedded developer and I'm always going to various texts on the subject to align my thinking with the code I'm writing (C++ in my case). It's one thing to talk through these scenarios in an interview and it's yet another to judge one's ability to solve problems on how well they come up with a solution to an interview question. I give merit to the "talking through" and this is what I do. I find that if a candidate can carry on an intelligent conversation about a particular problem domain, he's hirable material and in 15 years of running my own company I've had only 2 out of 43 people leave my company.

I've been on both sides of the fence: 1. as an entrepreneur involved in three start-ups all boot strapped that later attracked VCs and, 2. as an investor. I mostly agree that business plans are just words on paper as one of my fellow investor puts it but I would like to point out that a business plan tells potential investors the same thing a college degree does to potential employers. It says I did my homework, I did my SWOT analysis, I know my numbers, and I have thought about my competition and/or long term goals in terms of exit strategy. That's all! Every investor knows that five year financial are mostly guess work but at least by doing this you have shown you know the potential your idea has in terms of being bought or adopted.... It really is that simple.

".NET would be the way to write Windows applications. Win32 would still exist for backwards compatibility, but it would be frozen and left static."

OMG, Another non-technical person trying to write about technology again <sigh>

"they better be damn sure they are getting the right ones." No, see, the problem is you're not in control of FB. They are still a private company and they get to do what ever they want, obviously within the confines of US Laws and, obviously, to the benefit or detriment of their company. Life is simple: If you don't agree with their practices, then you have the power to chose to stop using their services. Why is that so hard for people to understand?

Teleportation is a misnomer here. Nothing is being teleported or transmitted rather information is being measured in two different locations simultaneously as if it were teleported. What I believe is that information is showing up in two different locations simultaneously. This term, entanglement, I think means that every quantum spin has an equal and opposite quantum spin at some other location that always exists. In other words, there's an opposite "thing" of our "thing" and when we adjust our "thing" we can now see or measure the opposite "thing" adjusting oppositely.

"Maybe once out of every thousand flights or something."

So what gives you or anyone else the right to play God? Have you missed the point about these scanners being a health concern as much as flying is?