The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but why would 'while (i-- > 0)' loop forever?

i = 1, i-- = 0 (which is a valid unsigned int) 0 > 0 --> False -> loops stops

Maybe you meant 'while (i-- >= 0)' ? (which would loop forever is i is unsigned)

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
chubertdev:
Maternity leave by country
(food for thought)

Why, exactly, should companies be required to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).

Sometimes it's not their choice

Oh, this straw man again. Do you use that for abortion too?

chubertdev · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

asdf:
Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
chubertdev:
Maternity leave by country
(food for thought)

Why, exactly, should companies be required to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).

Sometimes it's not their choice
Oh, this straw man again. Do you use that for abortion too?

Your argument about that straw man is a straw man argument.

chubertdev · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

azerazreazerazerazer:
John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but why would 'while (i-- > 0)' loop forever?

i = 1, i-- = 0 (which is a valid unsigned int) 0 > 0 --> False -> loops stops

Maybe you meant 'while (i-- >= 0)' ? (which would loop forever is i is unsigned)

Random guess, but why do you think that the conditional is trying to compare 0 to i, and not the result of i--?

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
asdf:
Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
chubertdev:
Maternity leave by country
(food for thought)

Why, exactly, should companies be required to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).

Sometimes it's not their choice
Oh, this straw man again. Do you use that for abortion too?

Your argument about that straw man is a straw man argument.

So you think taking on abortion is an easy one to win? Good luck.

DrPepper · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
azerazreazerazerazer:
John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but why would 'while (i-- > 0)' loop forever?

i = 1, i-- = 0 (which is a valid unsigned int) 0 > 0 --> False -> loops stops

Maybe you meant 'while (i-- >= 0)' ? (which would loop forever is i is unsigned)

Random guess, but why do you think that the conditional is trying to compare 0 to i, and not the result of i--?

Because the -- in this case is postfix; which means that i is decremented AFTER the value of i is used in the expression.

i=1, 1 > 0 --> true i is then decremented

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Pitabred:
The purpose is to encourage/allow people to have children.

Yes, because there is such a severe shortage of people in the world that we really need to have subsidies to boost the supply.

chubertdev · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

asdf:
So you think taking on abortion is an easy one to win? Good luck.

No, I'm just trolling you since you have no substance other than "because I said so."

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
Why, exactly, should companies be *required* to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).
Sometimes it's not their choice

Woman leaves work, goes home, has dinner, notices there's no milk in the fridge, goes to grocery store for more, gets accosted in the parking lot and raped.

Who do we punish?

Her employer
The rapist

Explain how your choice fits into your definition of justice.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

DrPepper:
chubertdev:
azerazreazerazerazer:
John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but why would 'while (i-- > 0)' loop forever?

i = 1, i-- = 0 (which is a valid unsigned int) 0 > 0 --> False -> loops stops

Maybe you meant 'while (i-- >= 0)' ? (which would loop forever is i is unsigned)

Random guess, but why do you think that the conditional is trying to compare 0 to i, and not the result of i--?

Because the -- in this case is postfix; which means that i is decremented AFTER the value of i is used in the expression.

i=1, 1 > 0 --> true i is then decremented

And then on the next loop: i=0, 0 > 0 --> false i is then decremented, falling back to MAX_INT the loop then exits

chubertdev · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Which is still the result of i--, which is different than the result of --i.

Although, after getting some more caffeine in my system and running a quick test, I am also very intrigued as to why that guy thinks that "while(i-- > 0) { ... }" would cause an infinite loop.

chubertdev · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Pete:
Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
Why, exactly, should companies be *required* to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).
Sometimes it's not their choice
Woman leaves work, goes home, has dinner, notices there's no milk in the fridge, goes to grocery store for more, gets accosted in the parking lot and raped.
Who do we punish?

Her employer

The rapist

Explain how your choice fits into your definition of justice.

Her employer
The rapist
The grocery store
The rapist's family
The rapist's employer

Because think of the children!

SD123 · 2014-05-06 Reply Admin

azerazreazerazerazer:
John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

I feel like I'm missing something obvious but why would 'while (i-- > 0)' loop forever?

i = 1, i-- = 0 (which is a valid unsigned int) 0 > 0 --> False -> loops stops

Maybe you meant 'while (i-- >= 0)' ? (which would loop forever is i is unsigned)

I suspect John Appleseed meant to type your correction. This will suffice..

unsigned i=UINT_MAX; while (i) printf("%u\n",i--) ; printf("%u\n",i);

..because.. while (i-- > 0) printf("%u\n",i+1) ; ..may not be as efficient but more importantly could fail at runtime. ie: wrong processor architecture could raise a hardware exception/NaN when zero tries to "roll back" to minus one. You won't see this in a modern <limits.h>.. #define UINT_MAX (-1)

More likely you'll see the unsigned definition written out in full or possibly.. #define UINT_MAX (INT_MAX * 2U + 1)

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Pete:
Muzzman:
TenshiNo:
Why, exactly, should companies be *required* to pay women for maternity leave? It was their choice to get pregnant (or at least to engage in the activity that got them pregnant).
Sometimes it's not their choice
Woman leaves work, goes home, has dinner, notices there's no milk in the fridge, goes to grocery store for more, gets accosted in the parking lot and raped.
Who do we punish?

Her employer

The rapist

Explain how your choice fits into your definition of justice.

What was she wearing? Did she take proper precautions in the dark?

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

This is exactly why Saudi Arabia has law requiring male escorts for any woman in public. Not a bad system, now that I think about it.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

SD123:
I suspect John Appleseed meant to type your correction. This will suffice..
unsigned i=UINT_MAX; while (i-- > 0) printf("%u\n",i+1) ; ..may not be as efficient but more importantly could fail at runtime. ie: wrong processor architecture could raise a hardware exception/NaN when zero tries to "roll back" to minus one. You won't see this in a modern <limits.h>.. #define UINT_MAX (-1)

More likely you'll see the unsigned definition written out in full or possibly.. #define UINT_MAX (INT_MAX * 2U + 1)

Hi Billy! Still throwing around technobabble, I see ...

(For the rest of you, don't worry. The C language guarantees wrap-around for unsigned ints. Though I'd really like to have one of Billy's integer NaNs ...)

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

John Appleseed:
- looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

And why not, since it's correct. (Provided you make it a do-while loop, otherwise you miss the first number; or the last one (0) if you put in another "+1" like Billy above did.)

I've asked that loop question over 100 times. Maybe 5 people have got it right first time. 5. [sigh]

Reminds me of that old joke: "Darling, on the radio they say there's a wrong-way driver on this highway." - "One? Thousands!"

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

I was about to give you a sarcastic answer, but nevermind - most likely you are from the US and never travelled out of the US, not even to Canada. All over Europe you and your employer would pay a contribution determined by law to the National Health System for universal healthcare and for the national Social Security services - unemployment benefits, pensions, etc. Depending on how well the country is ran, these services work better or worse and in some of them where needed employers that care about their employees would offer a separate private medical insurance. This private insurance doesn't necessarily offer you much better medical services, but will take you off the waiting list in the National Health System and give you extra care with the auxiliary services.

So, in these countries, when you get sick, unemployed or you will give birth, the state will pay you the benefits from these funds while you are on your leave. Your company should plan anyway so that anyone missing from a team shouldn't be a show stopper for a project so from this perspective maternity leave shouldn't be an issue. A women getting pregnant is no different the someone getting sick or missing work for some other reasons. Also, in most of these countries part of the so-called maternity leave can be allocated to either the man or the woman in the couple.

I'll give you the example of Portugal, not a particularly rich country.

My wife got pregnant, so since I had the private medical insurance offered by the company, I used it to have her monitored in a private clinic while she was pregnant. Since we were expecting the baby early (he was born in the 30th week of pregnancy), the doctor recommended us to have the birth done in the public hospital, since they were better prepared for unusual cases - a private hospital (we had that option too) would only invest in what brings some profit and extreme cases that require special training and equipment are not the case.

So when her water broke, we went to the public hospital, she had there a C-section and our son was born. Then, by law, I had the right to 1 month of paternity leave (mandatory), fully paid, of which the first two weeks are mandatory to be used immediately after birth - you cannot legally go back to work. Then I could have taken within the first 6 months an additional month of leave paid at 80% of my paycheck - but I opted out.

All this - medical care, paternity leave - was paid from these funds where I contribute every month. Sure, some people use them more than others, few never take advantage, but generally the system works decently well and it gives you a very good safety net for when you get sick or unemployed. Some people game the system, it differs from country to country, etc, etc, but you get the idea.

Also, there are 20 work days of paid vacations, mandatory by law - your company just takes that into account whenever they size their workforce and that's it and it sizes also the paychecks as such.

There's more to explain, but that's how it works basically - I know some folks in the US would call this socialism, others communism, I call it common sense - in the end it works better for the society as a whole.

And yes, I've been in the US and was able to compare.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

RandomDude:
I was about to give you a sarcastic answer, but nevermind - most likely you are from the US and never travelled out of the US, not even to Canada. All over Europe you and your employer would pay a contribution determined by law to the National Health System for universal healthcare and for the national Social Security services - unemployment benefits, pensions, etc.

You collected benefits while traveling to Europe?

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

John Appleseed:
Question 2 is generally to ask them to print out all the unsigned integers from the highest possible down to 0.

I'm curious: which way would you rather see them code the starting value?

    UNSIGNED_INT_MAX
    ((unsigned int)((int)(-1)))
    ((unsigned int)(0xffffffff))
    ((unsigned int)((((long)(1)) << (8 * sizeof(int))) - 1))

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Javelin:
John Appleseed:
Question 2 is generally to ask them to print out all the unsigned integers from the highest possible down to 0.

I'm curious: which way would you rather see them code the starting value?
    UNSIGNED_INT_MAX
    ((unsigned int)((int)(-1)))
    ((unsigned int)(0xffffffff))
    ((unsigned int)((((long)(1)) << (8 * sizeof(int))) - 1))

Actually, quite a nice screening question (if you're testing for low-level C knowledge). Given those 4 choices, the only correct answer is 2:

It's called UINT_MAX.
Redundant cast (-1 is already int) and some redundant parentheses, otherwise ok.
Platform-dependent (unsigned int may be smaller or larger than 32 bit)
Platform-dependent (long doesn't need to be larger than int)

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Wrong. UINT_MAX must be usable in the preprocessor, so there must not be a cast.

I don't understand why the headers always use 4294967295U instead of 0xffffffffU though.

The nasty one is INT_MIN, which (on a 32-bit system) cannot be written -2147483648, since the magnitude - overflows an int instead it's (-1 - INT_MAX)

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

I am from Europe, I was just commenting that the original poster had the view I have seen with many people that never go outside their country (not necessarily US) - that the whole world must be functioning more or less like their own country.

So, this gentleman asked why the company should pay for the maternity leave and I explained that the system is such that the state pays for it, not the company.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
Javelin:
John Appleseed:
Question 2 is generally to ask them to print out all the unsigned integers from the highest possible down to 0.

I'm curious: which way would you rather see them code the starting value?
    UNSIGNED_INT_MAX
    ((unsigned int)((int)(-1)))
    ((unsigned int)(0xffffffff))
    ((unsigned int)((((long)(1)) << (8 * sizeof(int))) - 1))
Actually, quite a nice screening question (if you're testing for low-level C knowledge). Given those 4 choices, the only correct answer is 2:

It's called UINT_MAX.

Redundant cast (-1 is already int) and some redundant parentheses, otherwise ok.

Platform-dependent (unsigned int may be smaller or larger than 32 bit)

Platform-dependent (long doesn't need to be larger than int)

Just out of curiosity, what would be wrong with a simple "(unsigned int)~0"?

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Fred:
True story: after the interviews we all agreed that one candidate was clearly more qualified. Even though the team was all male no one ever commented on the fact that she was female. We offered her the job and she accepted. We sent our thank-yous and condolences to the others. You know, although we were impressed blah blah we selected someone we felt had better qualifications.
The Friday before her Monday start date, she called to tell us she had gotten pregnant and decided not to start the job.

OK, now what? Do we start the interview process over? (If you've been through this from the hiring side, you know you'd rather have a tooth pulled without pain meds.) Or do we call up one of those other candidates "yeah we didn't like you so much but will you come muck through our code anyway"? They will forever know that you set them aside for someone else.

Yes, call the other qualified candidates. They ALREADY know that you set them aside for someone else. They don't know if the someone else was more qualified technically or more qualified politically, but they already know what you did. If they're qualified and they still want the job, let them decide. If you whittle out all the qualified people from the set of applicants you'll consider in a new iteration of interview process, you'll lock yourself into WTF applicants.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

John Appleseed:
Question 2 is generally to ask them to print out all the unsigned integers from the highest possible down to 0. Some things that go wrong here: [...] - looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is *very* common

Maybe the interviewer needs testing too? You can test yourself relatively quickly by using an unsigned char (on "most" machines) instead of unsigned int. After you figure out why it doesn't loop infinitely, you can figure out what you need to do just before the loop.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Moo Cow:
QJo:
TRWTF is why Judith has not been dismissed from her position for breaking every single possible anti-discrimination law in the book. Or is TRWTF that Chris didn't act as the dessperately-needed whistleblower?
That's not even whistleblowing. We're talking about informing her supervisor that she is creating potential, expensive legal trouble for the company. That should get them listening.

No, that would get Chris fired, and would get bad references every time a potential future employer asks if he's eligible for rehire.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Black Bart:
8B -> 73 -> 69 -> 72 -> 66
(Linked list, 8B is 2's complement of the least significant BYTE )

No, 8C is the 2's complement of the least significant byte. 8B is the 1's complement.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Maternity leave by country
(food for thought)

I think my pregnant co-workers returned to work after about 4 weeks rather than 14. Though these were at companies that didn't conform to Japanese conventions because they didn't force female employees to quit when getting married.

Maybe this is a good time to comment on the famous article "Linux Developer Gets Laid". You all thought it was fake, it couldn't really happen. But it did. To prove it, I tried to take a photo of one of co-workers when she was 9 months pregnant, but the Linux screen behind her didn't show up well in the photo.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

not Muphry's comment:
Sicne when does a TDWTF comment constitute a scholarly article?

Help, I'm stuck in a trap.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
Maybe this is a good time to comment on the famous article "Linux Developer Gets Laid". You all thought it was fake, it couldn't really happen. But it did. To prove it, I tried to take a photo of one of co-workers when she was 9 months pregnant, but the Linux screen behind her didn't show up well in the photo.

Just because she was pregnant, doesn't mean she got laid. She could have just borrowed a turkey baster and bought some sperm off of craigslist.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

o11c:
Wrong. UINT_MAX must be usable in the preprocessor, so there must *not* be a cast.

Huh? Where did I (or Javelin) claim that UINT_MAX should be a cast? He suggested (as one option) to use this macro (as is), and I just pointed out that he misspelled it.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Apeiron:
Just out of curiosity, what would be wrong with a simple "(unsigned int)~0"?

0 is an int represented by all 0 bits, ~ complements them, yielding an int with all 1 bits (x), which is then cast to unsigned int.

Two's complement system: x == -1, cast to unsigned wraps around, all is fine.

One's complement system: x == 0, cast yields 0!

Sign-magnitude system: x == -INT_MAX. Cast wraps to UINT_MAX+1-INT_MAX.

No really, that's how it works. The C language actually supports those kinds of systems, though it may be a bit hard to actually find one of the latter two.

OTOH, ~(unsigned int)0 is safe because the complement operates on an unsigned int.

Coyne · 2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Apeiron:
Just out of curiosity, what would be wrong with a simple "(unsigned int)~0"?

Machine dependent: Assumes the machine is binary. If the machine works on another base (base 10, shudder) it breaks.

See "Programming Hacks" (HAKMEM) item #154 (Gosper) for more insight into the problem with this kind of assumption.

Actually, the only valid, universal method is the UINT_MAX constant. Assuming there is one.

beginner_ · 2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Melnorme:
Women hate hiring more beautiful women, news at 11.

fixed

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

foo AKA fooo:
Apeiron:
Just out of curiosity, what would be wrong with a simple "(unsigned int)~0"?
0 is an int represented by all 0 bits, ~ complements them, yielding an int with all 1 bits (x), which is then cast to unsigned int.
Two's complement system: x == -1, cast to unsigned wraps around, all is fine.

One's complement system: x == 0, cast yields 0!

Sign-magnitude system: x == -INT_MAX. Cast wraps to UINT_MAX+1-INT_MAX.

No really, that's how it works. The C language actually supports those kinds of systems, though it may be a bit hard to actually find one of the latter two.

OTOH, ~(unsigned int)0 is safe because the complement operates on an unsigned int.

Actually the standard kind of broke the ability of a C implementation to use 1's complement. The standard tried to allow 1's complement and signed magnitude, but something like sprintf with the %c format made it impractical.

Besides, the standard intentionally allows most integer types to have more holes than a void megaminx. [image]

The standard also intentionally ruled out decimal because Knuth's style mixed them up too much.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Jack:
s73v3r:
What the hell is there to learn about? How is that situation any different than someone accepting the job, and then before they start, call you up and say they've accepted a better job? That happens all the time.
I had that happen to me once! Now, I make it a point never to offer a job to someone who could possibly get hired elsewhere.

...like, the best candidates?

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Calli Arcale:
Their employers are required to not fire them for being gone for twelve weeks, but going without pay that long is seldom practical.

Wait, so they bring the baby with them to work then? Or is breast-feeding not practiced in the US?

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

anonymous:
John Appleseed:
rekcuf rehtom uoy siht esrever:
TRWTF is that I was actually asked to reverse a string in a job interview once - because that comes up some often in real world programming.

I always ask candidates to reverse a string. It's normally the first technical question I ask, and the questions get progressively more difficult, but about a quarter of the people I interview can't perform this trivial task, and it's a good way to terminate that interview early.

Question 2 is generally to ask them to print out all the unsigned integers from the highest possible down to 0. Some things that go wrong here:

the loop increments rather than decrements (!)

getting the step wrong, normally by having 2 decrements per loop, I just don't...

using an int not an unsigned int

starting from some arbitrary value (eg: 100) - apparently higher numbers don't exist ?

looping infinitely because they just used while(i-- > 0). This is very common

I'm not anal about whiteboard code. I don't care if you use printf() without #including stdio.h I don't care if you miss a semicolon at the end of a line. I do care if you use an int when I asked for unsigned ints though because your code's logical structure doesn't do what I asked.

I've asked that loop question over 100 times. Maybe 5 people have got it right first time. 5. [sigh]

To be fair, using while (i-- > 0) is something that could trip up even an experienced programmer now and then. Especially if they're not allowed to test-run their code. Getting it exactly right on the first try is a steep requirement.

Using while (i-- > 0) is a WTF all of its own. One of the first rules of programming is that if you know exactly how many iterations to make, you use a for loop.

for (unsigned int i := MAXINT; i > 0; i--) {

}

... or whatever the specific syntax would be for an unsigned int and a for loop in c (I'd look it up if I could be bothered -- I'm not a c-man.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

You're Boss:
cellocgw:
You're Boss:
Rudolf:
Andrew:
Judith being concerned about the woman getting married is hardly a WTF. A key developer going on leave for a year has the potential to destroy a project's viability.
Whether it sets off your PC sensitivities or not, the fact of the matter is that young, fertile women are much riskier hires than young, fertile men. Judith was just being brutally honest.

The real WTF is that due to PC oversensitivity, you're not even allowed to ask the question. In my view it's perfectly legitimate for an employer to ask 'are you planning on having kids soon?' (both to men and women), just as you can ask 'do you have any holidays already booked?'

(Hopefully the employee will realise that them taking 6-12 months leave will be inconvenient to the employer. If they don't care, then that shows something about the employee's attitude).

But, because you can't ask, it just means that ALL young women are 'silently' discriminated against - even if they have no intention of having kids, or even can't.

The discrimination may not be as overt as Judith's, but it is there.

There's an easy way to fix problems like this. Just pay women less in direct proportion to the statistical risk.

Only responding because I'm paranoid and think one of you might be serious...

How about instead mandating equal amounts of "new child" leave for both males and females? Yeah I fully recognize that a lot of employee "rights" will only be instated if either another round of bloody union battles (here in the USA) takes place or-- pipe dream -- our duly bribed Congresscritters get a sudden attack of moral reality and pass a bunch of employee-protection laws.

Well, a lot of time the women do not come back after leave...they just leave. And we're not allowed to ask about that either. So I see the risk of them having a child as equivalent to that of having to hire a permanent replacement anyway.

It is up to the employer to make the option of returning to work a more attractive option than staying at home to mind the baby. It is a person's choice whether to take up the option of returning to work or not. The employer has various ways of doing this, for example: a) ensuring that the work is enjoyable, b) ensuring that the remuneration is adequate, and c) offering the employee a flexible approach to their career.

It's really no different for a man or a woman, pregnancy or otherwise. If you want to keep any employee you need to ensure that staying in their employment is more attractive than not. Any possible hint of coercion to remain in such employment (in any form) is unacceptable. Increasing the person's remuneration is a totally acceptable technique for retaining your staff, and is also (if you think about it, it's pretty damn obvious) a far less expensive option than continually having to recruit replacements.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Fred:
True story: after the interviews we all agreed that one candidate was clearly more qualified. Even though the team was all male no one ever commented on the fact that she was female. We offered her the job and she accepted. We sent our thank-yous and condolences to the others. You know, although we were impressed blah blah we selected someone we felt had better qualifications.
The Friday before her Monday start date, she called to tell us she had gotten pregnant and decided not to start the job.

OK, now what? Do we start the interview process over? (If you've been through this from the hiring side, you know you'd rather have a tooth pulled without pain meds.) Or do we call up one of those other candidates "yeah we didn't like you so much but will you come muck through our code anyway"? They will forever know that you set them aside for someone else.

Now I appreciate that she didn't come in, suck up training resources for two months, qualify for benefits, and then leave. But still, how are we supposed to suppress the natural human instinct to learn from such an experience?

Standard operating procedure. This happens for all sorts of new employees, not just women getting pregnant. More than once I've sat there waiting for my new starter to arrive at the office, only to be told (usually sometime after lunch) that the person has changed their mind and won't be taking the job after all. You shrug, stroll on, refer this fact to the employment agency you got them from, suggesting that they add it to their database and that of all the other employment agencies they are in touch with, then get on the phone to the person at the top of the list of those you passed over for the no-show (and so on down until you either get someone you want or you run out of suitables).

This is why it is always a good idea, in any rejection letter, to suggest that they may still be in contention for some position in the company.

If it upsets the ego of the second-on-the-list person, then they are welcome to reject out of hand that offer, and quite frankly, I can do without such a drama-queen working for me in the first place.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

I_Get_It:
Serious question here: does a company have to provide recently-returned women "milk-breaks" where they get a private room 4 times daily to pump for their kids?

An enlightened company would allow them to breast-feed directly within the business building, as part of the free creche facilities that will be laid on by the employer.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Pitabred:
Then adopt, and take the leave then. The purpose is to encourage/allow people to have children. You know... the ones that will keep paying your Social Security after you check out of the work force.

Another big lie.

I am paying for my own social security. It comes out of the money that was taken from my pay packet during the years I work.

Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the people whose interest it is to devalue and/or discredit the welfare state, and to drive a wedge between generations: "I don't see why I should have to pay for the retirement of people who were too selfish to have children, whose sole purpose in life is to care for the bodily needs of their parents who lacked the good grace to kick the bucket after they became useless burdens on society."

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Melnorme:
Women hate hiring other women, news at 11.

Winner!

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

QJo:
I_Get_It:
Serious question here: does a company have to provide recently-returned women "milk-breaks" where they get a private room 4 times daily to pump for their kids?

An enlightened company would allow them to breast-feed directly within the business building, as part of the free creche facilities that will be laid on by the employer.

That's OK if you're a big corporation with thousands of employees. What if you're a company with a dozen employees?

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

TWTF...

The string of misogynistic, backwards thinking, stuck in the 50's idiots in comments here.

Perhaps they all forgot, or never knew, that the Information Technology industry was started by women, and for a while, programming was considered to be "Women's Work".

If men could get pregnant too, you bet no one would question maternity leave.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Jibble:
QJo:
I_Get_It:
Serious question here: does a company have to provide recently-returned women "milk-breaks" where they get a private room 4 times daily to pump for their kids?

An enlightened company would allow them to breast-feed directly within the business building, as part of the free creche facilities that will be laid on by the employer.

That's OK if you're a big corporation with thousands of employees. What if you're a company with a dozen employees?

Then you're appropriately accommodating to your female employees so that they are sufficiently comfortable in their position that they prefer to come to work than quite their job (for example, offering a stay-at-home package or subsidising their third-party childcare). If you fail to provide that level of courtesy, or you choose not to outlay the few thousand a year that this will cost you, then you should not be running a business in the first place.

If the profit margin on your employees is so tight that a few thousand a year is the difference between profit and loss, your business is in trouble and you're better off without that person (and in fact should never have employed them in the first place).

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Dude:
agbeladem:
new StringBuilder(string).reverse().toString();
Define "quick"

Oddly enough, StringBuilder also uses an array internally. Calling reverse on it does an in-place array reversal with some logic to handle multibyte utf-16.

You must be thinking handling utf-8 variable-width characters, which is a nightmare! utf-16 is fixed-with.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

Dang:
Dude:
agbeladem:
new StringBuilder(string).reverse().toString();
Define "quick"

Oddly enough, StringBuilder also uses an array internally. Calling reverse on it does an in-place array reversal with some logic to handle multibyte utf-16.

You must be thinking handling utf-8 variable-width characters, which is a nightmare! utf-16 is fixed-with.

Nope. UTF-32 is fixed width (and UCS-2 if you must). Welcome to the new millennium.

2014-05-07 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
s73v3r:
Ken:
cellocgw:
How about instead mandating equal amounts of "new child" leave for both males and females?
And what about those of us who choose not to have children? When do we get our six month paid vacation with guaranteed right to return to an equal or better job?
And can I take that vacation every 9-12 months, like a breeder?

Sure. Just have a medically debilitating event happen to you, or to a loved one.

Like getting kicked in the testes? Proven to be more painful than childbirth.

I'm sure it is, but one doesn't tend to get kicked in the balls for hour after hour, it tends to be a one off event.

Or at least, it is for me, you might get your kicks in a different way.

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