finnw

Are you sure you don't mean COBOL? Fortran is still evolving (albeit even more slowly than Java) and still used for new projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Fortran_2015

This does not necessarily conflict with the diminishing returns theory. If you are 4x as rich as your neighbours, you will probably want to move to a more affluent area. At which point you will have richer neighbours (i.e. stronger competition.) There's a good chance you will again be dissatisfied with your relative wealth and be motivated to increase it further.

And pseudo-entrepreneurs (who may be real coders)

Typical Model-D kafkatrap [1] :-)

    [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122

Probably not in this case. Windows' RNG does not block when it runs low on entropy. AFAIK only Linux does that. And the task is a database query so probably does not use the RNG.

But yes, I have seen a similar case involving linux /dev/random - the user reported that outgoing emails were sometimes delayed for hours and that moving a mouse over a VNC window would sometimes speed it up. I did not believe that at first, but it was exim4 running out of entropy when generating TLS session keys. Worse, it was on a VPS with about 20 exim4 processes competing for the entropy.

Another way to look at it: Of the 9 most populous countries in the world, the US is the only one with any names on that list. So it could be worse.

Edit: Technically wrong: There is one name under "Hong Kong."

Not the only way. You can interleave fields in a ByteBuffer.

You could solve that problem by reading your politician's blog (and donating of course) then voting the way they recommend on each issue.

It has always seemed strange to me that some people find hostile weather sounds calming - Wind, heavy rain, thunder... those can all potentially damage the building you are in. Fire too (I like the sound of a fire only if I can see it.) Leaves would be a good addition though. So would a waterfall (there is a significant difference between a waterfall and rain.)

Thanks. I find some ambient sounds (especially birds & waves) help me focus on work. (Instead of rain I use pink noise from another site)

The language is better, but the backend and ecosystem are not.

It comes with the territory, I'm afraid. Some users will try something once, find a bug or limitation, decide the platform sucks and never touch it again (and if the platform is worthless, why bother filing a bug report.) I've been guilty of it myself quite a few times. First impressions count for a lot, and they can be difficult to control.

Justified, because they are very amusing to watch.

How the hell does this lead to stereotyping an entire race?

It does not. It is just an anecdote, from three people I know, who were required to memorize stuff, and found their coding ability did not contribute much.

Just so you know India and China have produced a large bulk of academics in computing science, across various educational institutions in North America and Europe.

Yes, I did.

They already did that. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8249792.stm

I have friends with computing science degree yet they cannot code or have shipped software.

So do I, but CS degrees are not about memorization. At least not in North America or Europe. For my CS degree, I had to follow the math and deliver code. Toy code of course, but its a long way from "recalling and reciting references." If it had been about memorization I would probably have failed.

I also know people who say they got CS degrees through memorization and the ability to recall and recite references. They are Indian and Chinese. And they can code (even if they believe their degrees do not help.)

Please don't joke about censoring political parties' websites. That is one of the biggest dangers of systems like this after all.

My favorite technical interview question is to ask the candidate about the worst bug they ever wrote.

Are you sure you are getting honest answers? Some candidates may be thinking "He'll never hire me if I admit how stupid I was, so I'll use this secondhand or dumbed-down story instead."

I don't know whether a nearly-empty drive is better or worse than average. But the point is, you had a 1000-block file full of secret data and when you do

    > secrets.txt

With dd and notrunc, the random data goes to the original blocks, overwriting your secrets.

Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback.

The mistake many clients make is to request "cancellation". You should request a refund instead (and in the common case where a contractor goes silent, you will get back 100%.) Then mark the job as "complete" and leave feedback, which will be visible in their history (though it will not affect their average star rating.)

More likely they will never know that she clicked it

No, I mean it will store the new random data in different blocks, thus not overwriting the old blocks.

Yes. It will truncate the file first, then allocate new blocks for the new random data, likely leaving the old blocks lying around.

You can avoid this with the 'conv=notrunc' option of 'dd'[1]. It will overwrite existing blocks instead of truncating (and possibly reallocating):

    notrunc  Do not truncate the output file.  This will preserve
             any blocks in the output file not explicitly written by
             dd.  The notrunc value is not supported for tapes.

I imagine it would be hard to implement efficiently in Java.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

That's because being convincing at interview is much easier to learn than writing good code or laying bricks fast. So for a bad coder (or bad bricklayer) it makes sense to train for interviews instead of training for the actual job.

One thing that is hard to work around is where the interviewee must demonstrate their skill first hand (e.g. implement FizzBuzz followed by strcpy and a binary search.)

Many common interview questions are too indirect (Show me a certificate; Answer this trivia question about a Java API from 1997) or misguided attempts at personality tests (How many sewing machines are there in West Virginia) all of which one can prepare for without having the actual ability to do the job.

These kinds of questions can still work, as long as they have not yet made it into "How to succeed at interviews" type books. Or when the applicants you want to filter out cannot resist outing themselves even with training (e.g. "Tell me about a time when you have been wrong / publicly changed your opinion" will probably always be a useful filter.)

PayPal do not care at all whether their APIs are developer-friendly. Why should they? They are a near-monopoly. You are completely dependent on them and they do not need you at all. I suspect their APIs are a result of minimising what they have to pay their own developers, because they win if they saved just one hour of development time even if 10 million vendors have to spend 10 hours each to work around the limitations.

In the very unlikely event that the developer has any influence in the choice of payment processor (i.e. you are a startup that intends to trade in only one country) they still do not care, because they still need to do the usual due diligence to check whether your company is a fraud/ML risk, but they earn little in fees from you. They would rather let a smaller payment processor deal with you, then try to take over later after your product is established.

How many of the "Github created repositories" are useless altcoins that only mention BTC in the copyright message?

I had a very insecure password on adobe.com. i.e. low-enough entropy that 55 users had the exact same password. I figured since Adobe do not have my credit card number and there is nothing to gain by impersonating me on that site, it did not matter. I have not used the same email/password combination elsewhere, but even if I did it would only be on other low-value accounts. I'm not worried about attackers finding it by association either (they will have it already from dictionary attacks.)

I don't recall what my Adobe password was

This will tell you your password hint (and if any other user had an identical password, you will see their hint also. ) https://lastpass.com/adobe/