Last thing you'll ever read…again
Archive for August, 2009
ML
Aug 22nd
When last semester began I was offered some job working for a start-up company that was interested in having “university-ties”. I thought it would be a pretty good opportunity. It involved using web technologies and python. A month after the offer, I still didn’t hear of anything, I wasn’t too phased about it. The excuse was “investing company haven’t put through the project yet”. I went through 4 whole months of unemployment, living off youth allowance.
Thank god for youth allowance and the stimulus package. Don’t know how I would survive uni whilst maintaining some sort of social life. Most of it went towards the ski trip and it was also meant to pay off my old iphone contract (which for some reason they still haven’t charged me for).
I applied for another job through the same job agency for Intersect (a not-for-profit organisation). I blogged about it as well few posts back. I was pretty hopeful, the Director of Engineering and Senior Developer seemed to be pretty happy with my performance. I thought “Finally, I can make some money and actually buy things without having to worry about whether or not I can afford it”. I got pretty excited when I got told that I would be starting work on 5th August. I even bothered to go shopping at Tarocash and bought myself 4 shirts, pants and a belt. All up around $250 (last minute sale ftw). I was pretty damn excited.
Days came and gone with no response. The excuse this time was that the HR manager is apparently “sick”. Well, fair enough. It’s flu season after all. I even caught the cold the weekend before I was meant to be working. Since I didn’t get any responses I decided to call them up myself. Apparently the person that’s coordinating my job with the company is also sick. How convenient. I had to call up somebody else that said will try and get in contact with me with the situation.
Days later, I got a call from that person telling me that the CEO of the company decided to not go ahead with the recruitment. At the time I didn’t really feel anything. I didn’t really care, I can’t get emotional on the spot when it comes to these things.
A week later, I decided to contact Intersect. They told me that because I was referred by SydneyTalent they cannot hire me. I thought fair enough., I’ll contract SydneyTalent instead. So I did. I got a reply the next day saying that I’ll receive a follow up email. I didn’t. A week went by and I sent another email asking for the status of the situation. I got a reply within a few hours telling me the same things that I already knew, however with one extra piece of detail, they told me:
“As with all students you are free to look for work as and where you see fit – SydneyTalent is only one avenue available to you.”
So I got in contract with Intersect again explaining to them they shouldn’t have any problems with hiring me. The person on the other end doesn’t seem to know what to do, she told me that the positions have been filled up but told me that I would be considered for future roles. Bullshit. There will be no future roles and if there are I won’t be considered.
What annoys me is the fact that I wasted one whole month chasing this up to find out that NOBODY can help me. The people who wanted to recruit me couldn’t any more. The people who was trying to help me get recruited wasn’t considerate of my situation at all.
I guess there is one thing I’ve learnt from this experience. Don’t sit back and let these corporate dogs shit all over you. Chase things up if you don’t hear back for a few days. Get both sides of the story cause chances are it’ll save you from losing a job.
Why anti-virus programs are useless
Aug 1st
This is a rant about the uselessness of anti-virus programs. My argument is that having one installed is no different to not having one installed.
Anti-virus programs serve one purpose and one purpose only, to prevent viruses from entering your computer. But in order to do that you have to be regularly updated and you also have to trust the anti-virus program in distinguishing viruses from genuine applications. AVG has been notorious for crippling machines by deleting critical system files. Once a host is infected with a virus the anti-virus program becomes useless. It alerts you that you have a virus but is unable to eradicate it. In fact, eradicating viruses from a computer takes more effort than reformatting. It can take up to 3 hours to format a computer and bring it to it’s original state (assuming you have all the necessary tools available) but it can take days of research in getting rid of a particular virus.
I mentioned in my first point that you must be up-to-date before they serve any real purpose. The problem with the cat and mouse game is that the mouse will always be one step ahead. It doesn’t matter how great your detection rates are, it’s only takes that 1% of viruses that’s not detected to compromise your computer. And it’s only that 1% that’s out there, for the other 99% of viruses that can be detected don’t even exist in the wild. When was the last time you heard anybody being infected by the “blaster worm virus”? So if you’re only capable of being infected by that 1% of viruses out there what’s the point of having anti-virus? You’ll be infected nevertheless.
So what do you do when you are infected? The anti-virus program usually screams at you that you have a virus, it asks whether or not you want to “fix” the problem. You select “Fix it” and nothing happens. 5 seconds later the same dialogue box appears. There exists online support forums that try and help you fix your problem but the turnover rates are usually 72 hours. Big companies invest millions of dollars into anti-virus protection but whether or not do anything is another issue. At CISCO they use McAffe. I used to get a lot more complaints about system slowdowns and what not than I get about virus issues. The productivity lost due to slow pc performance would probably outweigh productivity lost due to virus infections. When a user is infected by a virus, usually it goes to the onsite support team in which they conduct a laptop refresh. Like I said, it’s easier formatting than it is removing viruses.
If you have any opposing arguments as to why anti-virus programs are useful, I would love to hear them.
I hate Spam
Aug 1st
I constantly get spam on my blog from bots that use “Cheap Viagra Online” as their username. I guess it’s a valid strategy. Because sooner or later guys will be old enough to have to use it right? Maybe I’ll keep one of the spam comments for future reference.
I read an article the other day about some researchers developing an algorithm of detecting spam before it even reaches your inbox. That would be useful if it has an 100% accuracy rating. Which I doubt it does. I’m still pretty happy about my current gmail inbox which doesn’t receive any spam. Even my hotmail inbox which I’ve had for like 8 years now averages 10 spam emails a week. I guess the spammers must be making some sort of money otherwise they simply wouldn’t waste time doing it.
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During the HCI lecture, Ronnie Taib suggested that we can come up with our own HCI projects. I’ve actually had one in mind, but have little idea on the actual design. It’s a relatively simple problem that doesn’t really require a solution. I was thinking about designing an iphone app that helps you navigate through the Uni on the iphone. It seems rather simple but there’s a couple of problems:
- I believe that the iphone SDK does not give you direct access to the maps api, the best you can do is launch Google Maps with trip information and building location
- Cross campus support will be tricky
- Buildings would need to be regularly updated (Some locations aren’t even at USYD)
- I DON’T HAVE A MAC
I guess I’ll see what happens then.
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I’ve also caught a cold. I still have no idea what the differences are between a cold/flu. People “think” they know and they “try” explaining but it makes no sense. I’ve even heard people say that “flu is a virus, a cold isn’t”. I just googled it and ninemsn gives a pretty good explanation. It even suggests drinking Honey water which is what I usually do anyway. I probably caught it from the daily interaction with students over the past week or so. At least I can rest over the weekend and hopefully be well enough to attend uni and also work (if that’s even going ahead) on Wednesday. What was ironic was that yesterday one of the people from Timetabling said “I can’t believe nobody has caught swine flu yet!”. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing these swine-flu remarks. Lucky we live in the modern era where pandemics can be controlled, certainly wouldn’t be laughing about it 50 years ago.
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I also just paid for my Uni fees for this semester. It gives the message:
Important: Please print and retain a copy of this page for your records.
You must close this web page and exit the browser application after printing your receipt
Fail system is fail.
