Picking the pictures of produce isn't neccesarily easier-- I use the self checkouts at Walmart and a lot of times my particular produce isn't listed. (They also have some weird catagory system; sometimes it is listed but impossible to find. [Tomatoes-- vegetable? fruit? misc.?] ) This happens to me so much that now I just pick some random item of similar price, and weigh my navel oranges as eggplant.
Not only are those systems that complain about weight mismatches irritating, I don't understand the point at all. The only people they actually impede are honest customers, since the guy stealing some item is hardly going to be stupid enough to stick it right on the conveyor belt-- that's what pockets are for!
Aniviel
@Aniviel
Best posts made by Aniviel
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RE: Supermarket Self-Checkout
Latest posts made by Aniviel
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IBM's Watson and the Jeopardy! challenge
Watson's [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html]Nova special[/url]
Watson is a Jeopardy-playing system developed by IBM over the past four years or so. If you haven't heard about this I'm telling you now, it's worth watching. IBM is debuting Watson in a three-day Jeopardy game that is being aired February 14-16. I've been grinning all day since seeing it spar against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter this afternoon.
The future is very cool. -
RE: Imitating a potential employer's product?
Thanks for the reassurances! I'm definitely not marketing it or making any profit; I was just worried because it is out there on a real site (not simply my portfolio.)
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Imitating a potential employer's product?
Hello all!
I usually lurk, but I'm coming out of the woodwork to ask for some advice from all of you lovely software professionals.
I am a college student and I'm applying to summer internships. I have an upcoming interview with Facebook. One of the things that I threw on my resume was a website that I wrote for my extended family, reasoning that even though it was more of a personal project than a professional one, it showcased my web development skills-- I added lots of features like a discussion board, an interactive family tree, and a photo album, [i]complete with an image tagging system similar to that of Facebook's[/i].
It only now occurs to me that Facebook might not appreciate me ripping off their great idea, even though this is a rarely-visited personal website. What do you guys think? Am I overreacting? Is it laughable for me to assume they would care about my tiny personal site using their idea? Or is it completely tactless for me to have included such a thing? How should I handle the topic if it comes up in the interview? I note that they have even put in a [url=http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20080091723.PGNR.&OS=dn/20080091723&RS=DN/20080091723]patent application[/url] for image tagging.
Thanks in advance for your feedback! -
RE: Plz send teh spam codez
@bardofspoons42 said:
@Smitty said:
I worked in a research lab one summer whose director was not a native English speaker. I was very confused when the other students in the lab welcomed me after I settled in and eagerly asked me if I had gotten my "P-L-S come" yet. It turns out that whenever the director wanted to see someone in his office he would send them an instant message reading simply "pls come." It was so consistent that it had become a phrase around the lab: "Dang, I just got a P-L-S, I'll be back later."What is it with people using 'pls' instead of 'please' when asking for teh codez? Even if they spell out all other words in the message, it's very often 'pls'.
What I find even odder, is it seems most of the abusers are non-native English speakers, which makes even less sense. Is there an ESL school somewhere that teaches textspeak/13yo-AOLer?
Let me disclaim that his lab did fine work and I don't think his colloquial spelling is at all indicative of his intelligence/professionalism. But I agree, where is this chatspeak ESL school? -
RE: "How is this preparing us for the real world?"
@Outlaw Programmer said:
I realize this is probably an early Data Structures class with 500+ students, but most of the time professors will listen to the students and make changes accordingly. Or, if he won't, just write your own Graph implementation, use it, then deal with the professor later.
Yep, this is Data Structures and Algorithms; comes straight after CS I and II.This was to be written during class, so time was an issue as we discovered that rewriting the structure would have been easier than trying to modify the given. In retrospect, that is exactly what we should have done. The grading is all done by TA's, and we are given the freedom to choose languages and modify or rewrite whatever is given to us. It's just that to a recently-woken mind, ;) the path of least resistance is to not re-invent the wheel. (Of course, your mistake is soon evident when you look down and discover two cubes stuck to your axle.)
Meh. My intent was not to complain about being given crappy code, because I know what a reality that can be; better to take it in stride and gain experience puzzling out a WTF, right?
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"How is this preparing us for the real world?"
Thank you, thedailywtf.com, for being a constant reminder for me to not expect something miraculous from my future job.
I'm an undergrad studying CS, and Sir Lazy Professor once again graced us with an assignment to implement a few functions using some horribly written data structures.
Student: Wtf is up with this Graph class!?
TA: I dunno, even the professor said it was the worst graph implementation he'd ever seen.
Student: Why is he giving it to us, then? Who wrote it?
TA: Some Dutch guy.
After struggling with the code for awhile with no success, my frustrated classmate disgustedly turns to me and barks, "How is this in any way preparing us for the real world!? You're never going to have to be working with someone else's horrible code!"Haah.
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RE: Supermarket Self-Checkout
Picking the pictures of produce isn't neccesarily easier-- I use the self checkouts at Walmart and a lot of times my particular produce isn't listed. (They also have some weird catagory system; sometimes it is listed but impossible to find. [Tomatoes-- vegetable? fruit? misc.?] ) This happens to me so much that now I just pick some random item of similar price, and weigh my navel oranges as eggplant.
Not only are those systems that complain about weight mismatches irritating, I don't understand the point at all. The only people they actually impede are honest customers, since the guy stealing some item is hardly going to be stupid enough to stick it right on the conveyor belt-- that's what pockets are for! -
RE: You WILL submit this image in an inappropriate manner.
[Yah, now for some reason I can post in Sidebar. When I first visited, the "New Post" button was simply absent from the page. Meh.]
Now I'm sorry that I didn't include a photo-- It would have been amusing to use my webcam to take a picture, print it, take a photo on a wooden table, scan the photo, and finally stick it in a Word document. Bonus points if I could manage to get the Myspace "angles" and embellish it with some glittery text.
I don't know why they need a photo. It is optional, but why request one at all? I doubt the photos are used for student ID's-- they usually require you to take some standard photo or at least verify that the photo is appropriate. The app says that they "like to match a name to a face." I wonder how much of a tilt there is towards accepting the more attractive applicants? That sort of thing can simply be unconsious--why even risk that sort of bias in the admission process?
--
Yesterday I filled out the Common Application... [If you're unfamiliar: it's a general college app that many universities use-- thus you only have to fill out one set of info for however many colleges you happen to apply to.]
It was almost as bad a U Penn's. It was filled with really inappropriate drop down menus, like the ones you use to report SAT scores-- instead of typing in your score for a particular section, you select from a list of every number incresing by tens from 200 to 800.
And my "extracurricular activities," too. You can't type in anything specific. I'm sure colleges really value the info that I participate in three instances of "Other" for 1 hour a week.
Even the ones that actually fit into a catagory end up vague, misleading, and short-changing. For instance, my "Art activity/club" was actually a program affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, for which I was selected as one of eight in the Houston and surrounding area to receive a scholarship, which was based on a written statement of intent and a complete portfolio-- but I guess it's just as well they think I do arts and crafts with glue and pipe cleaners after school.
Not to mention the wtfery of the specificity of information that is required-- such as the gender of my father, the date [mm/yyyy] that my mother died, and the university attended and degree earned by my 14-year-old male sibling. -
You WILL submit this image in an inappropriate manner.
Waves Noob here, hi!
So I'm applying to the University of Pennsylvania at the moment. (Don't ever do this. After the hell that is their application, I am seriously reconsidering this school as a viable college option. There is wtfery all around. Vague instructions, mistakes, etc.)
There is a section where you can submit a photo of yourself. This is how the instructions go:Please insert your photo as a picture in a word document. Do not upload files of any other type. No JPG files, please.
I've heard of the less tech-savvy using MSWord's tools as a simple image editor, but why would you ever want thousands of applicants sending you images globbed up in .docs?
[Sorry if this isn't appropriate for General; I can't post in Sidebar, and I assume need to gain the proper status first?]
-Stacy