Here's a good one on integer overflow:
http://xkcd.com/571/
And another on bug reproducing:
http://xkcd.com/583/
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
[OTHER] XKCD
For those who haven't yet read it, the XKCD web comic is probably one of the best out there. It's especially funny if you're science/programming/math oriented, but that's not necessary to enjoy most of them.
Here's a good one on integer overflow:
http://xkcd.com/571/
And another on bug reproducing:
http://xkcd.com/583/
Here's a good one on integer overflow:
http://xkcd.com/571/
And another on bug reproducing:
http://xkcd.com/583/
Friday, May 8, 2009
[TOOLS] Google calculator
For those who don't know, google has a built in web calculator for you. Just type in a search result as a mathematical expression. For example, "2+2" will return a special page that tells you the answer.
Being the nosy computer scientist that I am, I naturally tested it for its maximum processing ability. For factorials, it caps out at 170!.
Look at the results of 170! here, and 171! here.
It can even do complex expressions, such as
2+2/15%100+987*32
This is useful if you ever find yourself with net access and need to calculate something complicated.
P.S. My tags are getting kind of ridiculous. I feel like I'm making a new one for every post.
Being the nosy computer scientist that I am, I naturally tested it for its maximum processing ability. For factorials, it caps out at 170!.
Look at the results of 170! here, and 171! here.
It can even do complex expressions, such as
2+2/15%100+987*32
This is useful if you ever find yourself with net access and need to calculate something complicated.
P.S. My tags are getting kind of ridiculous. I feel like I'm making a new one for every post.
[IDEA] Gratuity tracking
I'm a pretty generous tipper when it comes to leaving gratuities for waiters and waitresses at restaurants and also service personnel in general (I tip 25% at the hair salon I go to). Having worked in the food service industry before, I know how stressful the environment is and that good tips can go a long way to improving your mood. I always tip at least 15%, on average probably 18% or so.
However, I had an especially bad night recently at a local restaurant that shall remain nameless. The service was abysmal. Let me list the number of things that went wrong:
The general idea of tips is to provide a range in which a diner can reward good service. Even if I thought I had a subpar dining experience, I would still tip 15%. This night was such an incredible exception that I had to tip 10%. I still felt really guilty about it and almost changed my mind, but stuck to it in the end.
My concern is that from the waitresses' point of view, we just look cheap. After all, we clearly look like college students, and there's an unfortunate but probably truthful stereotype that college students are bad tippers. How could she distinguish between cheap students and legitimately pissed customers?
That's when I wished there was some sort of unbiased way of tracking your tips, like an online database. You could provide a code at the end of your meal that links to your tipping history. A waitress who sees that you have been an 18% tipper in the past and gave a 10% tip this meal would know that she should have improved her behavior. It conveys a lot more meaning when an outlier like that occurs than if you always tipped in the low teens.
I know this won't ever get implemented, if nothing else then because of all the practical barriers, but that night's experience still bothers me. I feel guilty for leaving a poor tip and not fully explaining why. Anybody else ever have this experience?
However, I had an especially bad night recently at a local restaurant that shall remain nameless. The service was abysmal. Let me list the number of things that went wrong:
- There was considerable confusion between the waitresses as to who was actually serving us, leading to delays and repeated questions.
- It took forever for them to take our order or give us the check. It wasn't even that busy for most of the dinner.
- One of the drinks we ordered (a lemonade) never showed up. We weren't billed for it, but still...
- We asked for two of the dishes to come out together. Didn't happen.
- We had one water refill the whole hour we were there, and they didn't even check on us to see if we needed anything. I had an empty glass for at least ten minutes while we tried to get their attention. To make matters worse, we were eating a somewhat spicy meal.
- Their overall demeanor was fairly lackluster and not very engaging.
The general idea of tips is to provide a range in which a diner can reward good service. Even if I thought I had a subpar dining experience, I would still tip 15%. This night was such an incredible exception that I had to tip 10%. I still felt really guilty about it and almost changed my mind, but stuck to it in the end.
My concern is that from the waitresses' point of view, we just look cheap. After all, we clearly look like college students, and there's an unfortunate but probably truthful stereotype that college students are bad tippers. How could she distinguish between cheap students and legitimately pissed customers?
That's when I wished there was some sort of unbiased way of tracking your tips, like an online database. You could provide a code at the end of your meal that links to your tipping history. A waitress who sees that you have been an 18% tipper in the past and gave a 10% tip this meal would know that she should have improved her behavior. It conveys a lot more meaning when an outlier like that occurs than if you always tipped in the low teens.
I know this won't ever get implemented, if nothing else then because of all the practical barriers, but that night's experience still bothers me. I feel guilty for leaving a poor tip and not fully explaining why. Anybody else ever have this experience?
Monday, May 4, 2009
[INDUSTRY] Linux, and why you're not using it
Linux is one of the most interesting software stories of our time. It is the paradigm of open source software. It's not a small desktop application that does some neat tricks for you that you'd otherwise have to pay $20 for. It's a huge (relatively) collaboration of thousands of volunteers building an entire operating system that is given out for free. For comparison, Windows Vista is selling at $100.
And yet it still has a tiny percentage of the market share. It's the fringe word that average people hear but don't really understand. What is Linux? What does it do? Why should I ever care about it?
Neal Stephenson (author of famous books Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon among others) put it best in this hilarious and well written story.
"The people who live there are making tanks (Linux). These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology ... But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car... Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."
The main reason why people aren't lining up to pick up their free tanks is because there just isn't enough software out for it. It's a vicious circle. You can't find such common consumer products such as Photoshop or Microsoft Office on Linux because there aren't enough Linux users. There aren't enough Linux users because there aren't enough products out for them. See the problem?
This article does a good job summarizing the problems facing Linux right now, and why we still aren't likely to see it become common any day soon. I have the same reservations as the ones listed by McAllister. I'd have to download and install it myself, praying that I can find compatible drivers for all my hardware. I would have to search for, learn and install alternates to all my software. I couldn't play games (WINE is a good fill in but not fast enough for competitive gaming without a decked out system) or run Internet Explorer if I absolutely had to go to a non-Firefox friendly site.
This is all coming from someone who is not only technically inclined but already fluent in Unix. I shudder to think of how a "normal" person would approach a monstrous task like installing a Linux distro.
"Hey, it's just like installing Windows... hit a few 'next buttons' and you're nearly done. By the way, you might need to compile some of the packages yourself, and maybe write drivers for your old sound card..."
P.S. I would underline those book titles if I could figure out how :(
And yet it still has a tiny percentage of the market share. It's the fringe word that average people hear but don't really understand. What is Linux? What does it do? Why should I ever care about it?
Neal Stephenson (author of famous books Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon among others) put it best in this hilarious and well written story.
"The people who live there are making tanks (Linux). These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology ... But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car... Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."
The main reason why people aren't lining up to pick up their free tanks is because there just isn't enough software out for it. It's a vicious circle. You can't find such common consumer products such as Photoshop or Microsoft Office on Linux because there aren't enough Linux users. There aren't enough Linux users because there aren't enough products out for them. See the problem?
This article does a good job summarizing the problems facing Linux right now, and why we still aren't likely to see it become common any day soon. I have the same reservations as the ones listed by McAllister. I'd have to download and install it myself, praying that I can find compatible drivers for all my hardware. I would have to search for, learn and install alternates to all my software. I couldn't play games (WINE is a good fill in but not fast enough for competitive gaming without a decked out system) or run Internet Explorer if I absolutely had to go to a non-Firefox friendly site.
This is all coming from someone who is not only technically inclined but already fluent in Unix. I shudder to think of how a "normal" person would approach a monstrous task like installing a Linux distro.
"Hey, it's just like installing Windows... hit a few 'next buttons' and you're nearly done. By the way, you might need to compile some of the packages yourself, and maybe write drivers for your old sound card..."
P.S. I would underline those book titles if I could figure out how :(
Saturday, May 2, 2009
[OTHER] Post Tags
In an effort to better organize my blog for different types of viewers, I'm experimenting with subject tags before the post title. For example:
[CODE] Java Interview Questions
[PROF] My Interview Experiences
[OTHER] I love dogs!
And so forth. I'm not sure whether this will make things look messier, but I'll give it a shot. Everything is editable afterward anyway.
Rubric so far (subject to change):
CODE- programming related
PROF- professional subjects such as interviews
PERS- personal stuff I would like to share
OTHER- miscellaneous stuff
[CODE] Java Interview Questions
[PROF] My Interview Experiences
[OTHER] I love dogs!
And so forth. I'm not sure whether this will make things look messier, but I'll give it a shot. Everything is editable afterward anyway.
Rubric so far (subject to change):
CODE- programming related
PROF- professional subjects such as interviews
PERS- personal stuff I would like to share
OTHER- miscellaneous stuff
Linked In
I finally gave in and signed up for LinkedIn, and have started the process of adding the people that I know or have known. I see LinkedIn as the professional network- what you use to see how former coworkers are doing, look for new job opportunities and find people that you already know are very good at their jobs.
That's in contrast to Facebook, which I use for personal contacts and keeping up with friends and family. It's not that there is anything I couldn't show an employer on my Facebook page, it's that there isn't anything that I'd want to show them. Nothing relevant to my skills or qualifications is on my Facebook page. There's also the awkward social component of inviting people who know you only from your workplace to view your personal interests, photos and friends, but a good argument could be made that nothing with your name on it on the Internet should ever be the kind of thing that you would feel uncomfortable about showing to strangers.
My public LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn
That's in contrast to Facebook, which I use for personal contacts and keeping up with friends and family. It's not that there is anything I couldn't show an employer on my Facebook page, it's that there isn't anything that I'd want to show them. Nothing relevant to my skills or qualifications is on my Facebook page. There's also the awkward social component of inviting people who know you only from your workplace to view your personal interests, photos and friends, but a good argument could be made that nothing with your name on it on the Internet should ever be the kind of thing that you would feel uncomfortable about showing to strangers.
My public LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn
Weblogic trivia
One of the web servers I work with is BEA Weblogic. It's an extremely popular webservice provider, especially among major companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebLogic
It's Oracle Weblogic now, after they bought BEA (big deal a while ago). One of my IS professors actually used to work in BEA directly under the CTO there, and he said that the company CEO's public line was that they'd never sell. Interesting how that turned out.
Digression aside, I learned a few days ago that the way to access the weblogic console (where you configure your web server and such) is to type in the address followed by "console". For example, http://localhost:7001/console.
A cool application of this is that you can go to random websites of major companies and see if they use weblogic. Try:
http://www.thomsonreuters.com/console
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebLogic
It's Oracle Weblogic now, after they bought BEA (big deal a while ago). One of my IS professors actually used to work in BEA directly under the CTO there, and he said that the company CEO's public line was that they'd never sell. Interesting how that turned out.
Digression aside, I learned a few days ago that the way to access the weblogic console (where you configure your web server and such) is to type in the address followed by "console". For example, http://localhost:7001/console.
A cool application of this is that you can go to random websites of major companies and see if they use weblogic. Try:
http://www.thomsonreuters.com/console
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