aplusbi

Ah, I see what you mean but I disagree with your premise - I think that IP is an ethical gray area and that copyright infringement can be unethical absent the law/economics. I think it would be unethical for a programmer in a country that doesn't recognize the GPL to use GPL'd code in a proprietary product, for example, because they would be going against the expressed [reasonable] wishes of the content creator.

Just because US law defines IP as an incentive not an inherent right doesn't mean that culturally it's only a incentive.

You have poorly defined what "ethical" means. So far the only clarification you have made is that legal and ethical are too different things. Some people disagree and define "ethical" as "law-abiding" which means that copyright infringement is unethical.

To be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that there is a degree of relativism to your statement. Just because you don't think that copyright infringement is unethical doesn't mean that people who do are wrong.

I'm not really a proponent of moral-relativism but ultimately I have to accepted that ethics are a human construct and as such disagreement will arise over its precise definition. For example, I think eating meat is unethical but most people don't. Does that make me wrong?

If I'm not mistaken, Netflix uses multiple types of DRM (for iOS, PCs, Wii, PS3, etc). The Windows DRM is for PCs and the XBOX, possible some others (Roku might use it, I think the NXP-chip uses Microsoft DRM).

This is actually the problem with Netflix on Android - Android doesn't have any DRM standard, so it's up to the hardware manufacturer to include it.

This depends on how much you believe in moral-relativity. There is a concept of ownership and rights (sometimes legally defined) associated with IP. Disregarding those rights can be seen as unethical. There is no precedence in our culture saying that you have the right to disallow comments on your IP, which is why your example is not considered unethical.

To take your example to an extreme, is it unethical to trespass on someone's property? Is it unethical to look at someone's property from the street? Our concept of ownership would suggest that the former is unethical, the latter is not, but is that just because we have artificial ideas of ownership?

My ethical system includes IP ownership. I think it is unethical to use GPL code without releasing the source, for example.

Those questions can show you if someone is willing to call out an interviewer for asking a stupid question. I doubt the people asking these kinds of questions are looking for that sort of answer however.

I read "We think for a while before typing" to be a snide remark as in, "Think about your feature request for awhile before typing it up."

The problem with toy-based analogies is that people then think the math is a toy. "Who cares if you can solve a Rubik's cube faster?"

How often has Batman fought someone with a gun? Heck, I'm pretty sure he's fought people with frickin' lasers! In any case you're focusing too much on gear. For both of them their greatest asset is their mind. Spock is definitely ahead of Batman in that regard.

Although do keep in mind that Spock is an explorer, Batman is a crime fighter.

Plus Batman has defeated every superhero he's ever fought against including Superman.

I get the feeling that the "avoiding a lawsuit" justification for not supplying feedback is a result of cargo cult thinking, not actual evidence.

No one said you can't use it as your "coolness test". If you expressed the opinion that free soloing is cooler than what this guy did, you wouldn't be getting down-voted. It's the fact that [seemingly] couldn't understand why anyone would want to do any sort of climbing that is in-between riding an escalator and free soloing mountains AND the fact that you did so in a subjectively rude manner.

Saying that I have some sort of insecurity is an ad hominem attack. Just kidding!

No one is saying you can't admire a guy who free solos. What you did say was "Why not just tie yourself to a rope and have your Mommy pull you up?" Followed by "I remember seeing footage of some French guy climbing a rockface ... with no rope, no pitons, nothing. That is climbing." That seems an awful lot like redefining climbing to not include trad climbing (climbing with this sort of protection), and also seems a lot like judging whether people climb with risk or not.

You aren't getting down-voted because you expressed a controversial opinion, it's because you expressed it in a way that appeared to be rude. If you merely said:

>I don't get it, how is this different from a C-clamp?

>I remember seeing footage of some French guy climbing a rockface a thousand feet up swinging like a monkey, with no rope, no pitons, nothing. I admire that.

No one would have down-voted you. They would have explained that it is not a C-clamp (it's dynamic so it gets tighter when you fall) and that free soloing is certainly an exciting form of climbing.

Edit:

>But to your point, you actually could make an escalator the width of a gymnastic balance beam and with bumps, so that it would have adventure and risk, for those who seek that from escalator climbing.

Yes, they certainly could do that, and it may very well be a very exciting new sport. But it would not be rock climbing. It wouldn't even be similar to rock climbing. The most similar thing I can think of is perhaps via feratta climbing.

Ultimately you brought up the question of "Why do anything?" Why should you go outside when you can just watch TV? Why do you go to school when you can just lay in bed all day?

The problem is that the type of protection you would typically use for this situation are spring loaded camming devices. These consist of logarithmic spirals that expand when they are pulled. If you fall on one of those in a flake, you are essentially taking a car jack to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device

Well from what I know this "anti-cam" device is the only rock protection that would not have a horizontal force component This guy is the first person to ever try it. All the other pro I can think of catches a fall by wedging into the crack, either by expanding or by taking advantage of a natural choke point.

It's very different from a C-clamp. You'll notice that it has four pivoting logarithmic spirals on the ends (two on each side). That way the clamp tightens when you pull on it. That design is similar to a cam, except that a cam goes inside a crack and the spirals are facing in the opposite direction.

>What is wrong with building an escalator.

It's not rock climbing and it's (arguably) not as fun. You need to keep in mind that the clamp this guy built wasn't be used to pull him up. In fact, if the article is accurate then he didn't even physically need the clamp since he never fell on it.

What he was doing was much more similar to that "real climber" you saw than riding on an escalator.

Here's a video of Dean Potter attempting to climb the Tombstone - he falls but his safety gear catches him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfaFxHYmOmo And for what it's worth, Dean Potter is famous for "free solo" climbimg, meaning that he often climbs without any safety equipment.

You've really only covered two points - why corporate customers won't RTFW and why they ask for discounts. If you are dealing with a corporation you might get contacted multiple times through multiple channels, but probably not from the same person in a short period of time.

Disrespectful and abrupt communications are still a warning sign for larger companies as are unrealistic expectations (at least for the example given).

The article specifically mentions that "Any one of these warning signs is not a big deal, but stack 2 or 3 on top of each other and (depending on their severity) you have yourself a red flag." A corporation might only set off 1 or 2, and if you keep in mind the points you made I don't think it will generate too many false positives.

He was free climbing the flake, which means that his only means of progress was his hands and feet on the rock. The clamp he built (more of a reverse cam, really) was used solely to catch him in the event of a fall.

He mentioned that he practiced placing the gear on the route while top roping, meaning that the rope started from the top of the route. However no one had successfully trad climbed the route before, which means that the rope starts from the bottom and is clipped into removable protection along the way.

Trad (short for traditional) is what most people consider "real" climbing.

I agree completely, and agree with your original statement that the major problem with Everest is that it's full of amateurs.

I'm just saying that the technical difficulty of a rescue isn't the only criteria. In the case of Minamiura, his survivability if he was rescued was high. The chance of him being rescued was low. For someone suffering HAPE/HACE on Everest it's probably the reverse. I didn't mean to suggest that they should be left behind.

At least choose a better example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Hall_(climber). Beck Weathers wasn't suffering from altitude sickness and made it back to camp IV on his own.

I didn't say it was futile to attempt a rescue, I said it was comparatively more futile to attempt a rescue. You have to make an assessment - is it likely that we can save this person and is it worth the risk?

Then there is the psychological aspect. In the Trango rescue, Minamiura was in radio contact with the rescue team. It's a lot harder to leave someone when you can communicate with them.

In the case of David Sharp it's not entirely clear he was beyond help, at least at the point when he was first found. I don't think that Ingall's made the correct decision but I also have to accept that it is difficult for me to really know or understand what happened. What I do know is that many climbers suffering from HACE can die very quickly - often much quicker than they can safely descend. In those cases, they truly are "as good as dead" though I don't believe there is any way judge whether an individual is at that point or not.

And next time try not to cherry pick a single word from my post.

I don't think it's that rescue attempts are more difficult on Everest but rather that they are more futile. If a climber collapses from HAPE/HACE in the death zone it is often too late to help them.

Of course I agree completely that rescue attempts become more difficult when you throw in a bunch of type-A amateurs.

Let me clarify: learning JavaScript is not that important for non-web development.

My company is currently in the middle of a lot of college recruiting. Most college students/recent grads have very little to show. If you're lucky they had the forethought to save some of their school projects and post them online.

Even a lot of industry people don't have much to show. Plenty of decent programmers don't have serious side projects (or aren't comfortable releasing them to the public).

As for regurgitated answers, I keep my eye out for those. You can usually tell if someone has seen a similar problem before. If I think they have I ask them. I sometimes ask a different question to see if it was raw ability or familiarity.

They do tell you a lot. They tell you whether the candidate can actually write basic code or not. I'm not trying to see if you are a great programmer, I'm trying to see if you are a bad programmer. It can be really difficult to spot a great programmer, but it's usually very easy to spot a bad one.

Anxiety is a real problem however. I try to take that into account but it affects so many people in so many different ways.

Personally I think resume's are worthless. I think the best form of application would involve some form of code submission - either a simple "screener" problem or perhaps a personal project. That might still be followed by an on-site screening interview (people lie and cheat all the time).

How do you know you were dinged for these silly reasons? Did they actually tell you that?

I wouldn't be surprised if there are programmers out there who ding candidates for silly reasons like that, but in my experience they are the minority.

I agree that it is a glaring assumption, and perhaps is "culturally" biased. Someone programming in Perl or Python, would probably be very familiar with the built in data structures (hashmaps, dictionaries) but may not be familiar with others.

And this is exactly why I would give the programmer the benefit of the doubt. If they are able to implement a binary tree then I wouldn't hold it against them (and I hope most other programmers would extend the same courtesy).

However I have never met a programmer who did not know what a binary tree was.

Also a good point. I'd be surprised if a programmer didn't know what a binary tree was and would certainly consider it a warning sign. I would assume that, given a description, they probably wouldn't be able to code one (or code much of anything). However I'm willing to be proven wrong and if they were able to implement one I would be pleasantly surprised.

Of course, I can only speak for myself. I'm sure many programmers would immediately write them off.

Yeah, we actually did use Lua on some of our games. I'm not saying JavaScript is too slow for games, or can't be used for games, just that it wasn't very useful for console development at the time I was doing that. Plenty of games have been written in JavaScript, although almost all of them are web-based games (and I specifically said it's not that useful for non-web development).

It's often hard to ask relevant questions that will fit into the time allotted for an interview. Your DB schema example is a good one - it shows that the candidate can design (and to a lesser extent, implement) an application. Your example (I'm assuming) is missing strong algorithmic problem solving however. It would be good to have an additional question to test this kind of knowledge.

It's also important to realize that most technical interviews are really about weeding out bad candidates than finding good ones.

It may also be necessary to have questions general enough that any given candidate stands a chance at solving it. If a candidate doesn't have SQL experience your example would be bad (assuming the company didn't require SQL experience).

This is why you see questions like "implement a binary tree." Any competent programmer should be able to implement a binary tree. If they have never seen a binary tree before, they are simple enough to describe in 5 minutes.

I once asked a candidate to implement a trie. He had never heard of a trie before so I drew one on the whiteboard and briefly explained it. He asked me a few questions and then proceeded to implement one. We then discussed the pros and cons of different methods to store the nodes (vector, list, map). It showed me that, given a spec, he could code a data structure and the following discussion showed me he understood memory and time constraints.

What makes you think it was held against you? Most programmers can be kind of OCD about code and would want to point out that kind of error, whether they thought it was relevant to your abilities or not.

I've interviewed a lot of programmers and I think there are many misconceptions about what an interviewer is looking for or expecting.

I don't expect you to be able to code quicksort from memory. I do expect you to be able to code quicksort given the spec for it.

Just because I point out an error doesn't mean I'm counting it against you. I'm pointing it out to see how you handle it.

I do expect you to ask questions. If you are unfamiliar with an algorithm or forget the details, ask. I may not give you the answer but I'll at least point you in the right direction.

I generally try to make this clear to candidates so that they don't get uncomfortable if I point out some problem, but a lot of interviewers don't, which can be hard on the interviewee. I doubt, however, that there are many who expect perfect code on a whiteboard.

It's as much about the process than the result.

Then consider my snarkiness rescinded. Part of the problem with aggregate news sites is that they often remove context.