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miguelpais

170 karma · joined February 10, 2009

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miguelpais··on Interviewing programmers: coding test results.
Wasn't the big discussion all about how easy the task was, and how unable were the perfect-CV people to complete it?
miguelpais··on Karōshi, death by overwork
Also check out this video about the situation in Japan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C_roXUPYbs

But the thing is certainly happening in other countries too, like the recent situation in France where in a couple of months there were 24 high skilled workers from the same telephone company committing suicide.

miguelpais··on M.I.A.'s album "/\/\/\Y/\" is ungoogleable
It should be googleable on this version of google though:

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker

miguelpais··on Ocean fish could disappear in 40 years
In my country for long there were no such problems because the government imposed the proihibition of fisherman to go out to get some kinds of species during their mating and growing time. That way fish was allowed to reproduce and grow. Every time the fish you're eating has eggs a few dozens of new fishes could have been spared if the reproduction was allowed to take place. Also sometimes the nets used to catch the fish are too tight not allowing baby fishes to get out.

The problem with the law was that it was in reality imposing a time of starvation every year to the fishermans and their families, while the same species could be bought at the markets imported from other countries. The measure was one of the first to be abandoned when the political regime changed.

I don't really know what is the possibility of fishing companies to cycle between the fishing species during the year to let the other species grow, but that still seems like an alternative to me.

I also think that a fish diet is much more healthy than a meat diet, so a danger like the possible extinction of fishing species shouldn't be taken lightly just because we can get the proteins somewhere else.

miguelpais··on Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
I think the system is being overrated both in the article and in your comments. I'm from Portugal (but that doesn't mean I'm an authority on the reality of my country, as I haven't been involved in this kind of situations and didn't experience the system working) but I just think the whole thing just comes down to "you're not punished for having it".

But that doesn't mean that there exist government production sites or distribution stores. So there isn't any advantage for the goverment such as incoming tax money from the drugs or increse in job positions.

Also there is no mistaken belief that the goverment supports the drugs perceived by the youth because actually all the system does is not arresting you, the goverment doesn't provide the availability of drugs.

If the system ends up helping the addicted individuals or not, that is something that I don't know. Though it seems obvious that arresting someone is not the wisest first step for treatment, I end up figuring how does the system reaches the addicts then (I don't think getting help by themselves is something they would do without a great external help).

miguelpais··on 'I was falsely branded a paedophile'
Gotta love de virtual credit cards I use to buy stuff online (since I don't have a credit card, that's the only way I can buy online).
miguelpais··on Google AI Challenge
I'm also trying Ruby on Mac OS X and I can't run any java simulations. Always throws a Bad Version number in .class file exception. I think I have the JDK, but anyway the most recent version on the Sun's website is not available for Mac OS X...
miguelpais··on Digg’s MySpace Problem -- And What It’s Doing About It
Am I the only one to think that "social news" websites, from the perspective of the content publisher only work when the site is small enough?

I mean, the quantity of information being submitted to Digg, and maybe Reddit, is so huge it roughly gives a new story about 5 minutes of exposure in the first page of the New Stories section, and only in the specific feed, not the global one...

It makes me think that somehow, spreading something over Twitter, using our friends to do it, might achieve a better result...

miguelpais··on China bugs and burgles Britain
Don't you just think these news about hacks from China are getting way to frequent?

The attack on Google was said to be a way to get access to the accounts of free rights activists, but they also attacked several other US companies. The reason must be to steal the companies' know how.

Would you be surprised if a few years from now a Chinese Google was announced and similar and maybe better products in other industries?

And I think these actions are all supported by the Chinese goverment which knows getting chinese competitors in some key fields is the only way of exponentially develop its economy.

miguelpais··on On the Blankness of Google
I think Yahoo knows it can't compete with Google in search results, so why creating a page where the only thing you can do is experience crappy search results and nothing else?

At least this way they're attracting a niche of people who do like a more portal like search engine. And in some places that niche is the majority of the population, like in Japan, where Yahoo seems to be very successful.

If the users just want a search box they have http://search.yahoo.com/. I don't know if they can customize that do be the default.

So the thing "Yahoo don't quite get it" doesn't seem right to me.

miguelpais··on Personal Phone Numbers For Business, Yeah That Was A Mistake...
I'm not really into what Google Voice can do, but I've been wishing for so long that SIM cards could just aggregate n phone numbers, each one being like a separate inbox. And then you could just apply filters to turn off certain phone numbers based on day or hour...

If google voice does that... it would be nice.

miguelpais··on Google won't make search recommendations for "Islam is"
This is rather disturbing. I didn't live through a dictatorial government in my country, but 30 years or so one that was ruling for about 50 years was put down. The worst thing about a dictatorship is not the censorship itself that will cut the parts that they don't want to be read from a text or a poem, it is when the author himself limits its expressiveness and freewill to the walls built by the fear of the censorship, and will instead write the version of his feelings that he thinks it will not get cut.

Google is doing the same... actively self-censoring, the worst form of censorship.

miguelpais··on Ruby on Rails: Secure Mass Assignment
Also checkout this screencast by Railcasts. It may show you how the vulnerability can be exploited a bit more clearly to those of you who are possibly thinking "how the hell can they pass more parameters than the ones I have in my form".

http://railscasts.com/episodes/26-hackers-love-mass-assignme...

miguelpais··on O'Reilly's "The Ruby Language" for $9.99 (limited time)
For that price you can usually just buy the real book brand new from the new & used section of amazon.com. I've been saving some good money with that. If you just be careful with the feedback ratings and not really trust the lowest price you will probably get a real new book as advertised and save some good money.
miguelpais··on Sales figures for the #2 iPhone app
Unbelievable the difference between the 6500 downloads a day that guarantee the second place on the rank and the 30 downloads a day that a guy in a blog post shared on HN a couple of months ago said was making is app stay the top30: http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the-incredible-app-store...
miguelpais··on Nobody Hates Software More Than Software Developers
Clearly the main issue of the post is the answer to the interview question. Although I think it's a very good answer and that to me it would probably mean I would be hiring a guy which is humble, which always views his knowledge has something that still could be better and has a view of his own code has something imperfect, and so he tries very hard to always know more and improve, and that would mean in the end he is just one of the best choices to hire, I think that in most companies that guy would never be hired.

Although it sucks, nobody gives any value to humility anymore. They want the confident, "I'm an expert" kind of guy, so giving as answer that the worst code you've seen lately is your own, without any kind of explanation of why you think that (that you view your knowledge has something which as always a long way to go) would probably be a instant KO to the poor humble interviewee.

miguelpais··on Why I Removed AVG from my Computer: A tale of abusive anti-virus-ware
Yes! I was going to ask if anyone used it, and what did they think of it, because there's been a long time since I don't work on a windows machine on a daily basis, but at the time I did I used Avira.

I was just wondering if after the years that passed it had become less good or something...

miguelpais··on Your Rights Online: Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship
It marvels me how can psychologists get anything out of that. Most of the cards just look like butterflies.

Anyway, if the cards are public there is no reason for them not to be at wikipedia. I also didn't know the images were always the same.

miguelpais··on Men emerge from Mars experiment
I don't see a reason for these useless and throwing life away experiences if the purpose is just making the astronauts used to isolation. I kind of get it if it's to study something psychological, but we have so many prisoners in almost the same conditions...

After the moon, everything is just too far away to travel. We can study Mars very well with the robot approach. We're just throwing astronauts life away for our stupid need of putting Men in Mars, which I dare say is utterly pointless.

miguelpais··on How We Know Chrome OS Will Be A Hit: Steve Ballmer Doesn’t Think So
Oh please, just stop writing stuff about what is not known yet.

All these pseudo journalist are taking Google OS as a great success for granted and ridiculing someone who uses a safer and smarter approach of just not predicting the future.

miguelpais··on Twitter Suggested for Nobel Peace Prize
Err... That's ridiculous.

Although important, that's was not promoting peace, it was promoting a revolution. And why should the creator of the platform receive the credit for its user content? If it was not Twitter people would be doing the same over email. Should we award instead the creator of the the web, or the creator of the integrated circuit or ...

miguelpais··on The complete guide to Microsoft Office 2010
I think people are expecting so much more then what I think Google will in fact produce. I may be wrong, but I just expect Google Os to be something to be used in a pc with small hard drive, some good networking capabilities small disk and no graphics card with the os booting up in 10 seconds and with an UI with some giant buttons pointing you to the web and to the apps of google. In the meantime Google will certainly figure out some inovations like the way to store files which will certainly have a web based option, but nothing that will compete on the same market as the regular OS. It will be the return of terminals (but under the hat of cloud computing).

And if I'm right there will be a huge wave of disapointment.

miguelpais··on Chrome Now Available for Mac or Linux : Hackers Only
Why do I think this will fail on the Mac?
miguelpais··on Adium adds support for IRC and Twitter...
Go to file, mouse over the twitter account and "update tweets" It should open a group chat called Timeline.
miguelpais··on Adium adds support for IRC and Twitter...
I like the Twitter support! A lot really.... it integrates all the IM in one place. Tweeting gets more familiar and easy.

You can send direct messages by chating with that contact the same way you'd do in MSN/AIM. There is always a group chat called Timeline updating the tweets being sent, where you can RT, reply and tag as favorite.

I'm convinced and maybe will drop Twitterific...

miguelpais··on What Solitary Confinement Does to the Brain
This story made me thought not about the prisioners who obviously have reasons to get crazy, but rather on ourselves, so called hackers, who sometimes adopt by own choice a life style based on short human interaction. What can be the effects of that?

Even given the fact that we're usually very social beings in the virtual world, talking to a lot and developpping strong relationships over the web, what can be the affects of the lack of talking for example? Will we lose progressively our hability to express ideas by talking and getting stronger in the writing?

I think there aren't many studies on this kind of isolatio

miguelpais··on Wolfram Alpha Live
I was expecting it to be a little more encyclopedic than it seems to be. I mean, math stuff if awesome and although I can do it all (i think) in Mathematica it's very good for the world to have a free tool that does those kinds of things.

But when it comes to facts... well, they're facts... You only get as a return the uninteresting information.

I think Wolfram Alpha can succeed if they point their strategy into something which is rare on the web: certified knowledge. Being able to type a name of a country and instead of getting facts, getting real information about its history. Information that the users can trust as a bibliographic source.

Because facts are facts... they exist but they're so uninteresting.

miguelpais··on Universities in Europe and the Bologna process
In Portugal (hi CrLg, nice to see some portuguese around...) I guess its the opposite. At least in IT related courses.

Companies are eager to hire bachelors, which will do the job they want them to do exactly the same as a Master, but with the difference of paying them only a fraction.

miguelpais··on Why Firefox Has Jumped the Shark
I just know I never used Firefox again after Safari 4 Beta...
miguelpais··on Coding Horror: Has The Virtualization Future Arrived?
That's true, but when MS decided to make all versions of windows backward compatible, I think they were thinking more about companies than the home user. Companies are the ones who really need to be able run their programs on their machines, sometimes really old programs that no longer have support or alternatives they can choose from.
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