Monday, August 18, 2008
Could you pass the Acid Test at Google or Microsoft?
The Pingdom website came up with this compilation of questions:
Questions by Google
How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?
How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?
In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?
Describe a chicken using a programming language.
Questions by Microsoft
You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?
Pairs of primes separated by a single number are called prime pairs. Examples are 17 and 19.
Prove that the number between a prime pair is always divisible by 6 (assuming both numbers in the pair are greater than 6). Now prove that there are no ‘prime triples.’
Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs?
How much does a 747 weigh?
Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Bill Gates flips his wig/orders cancellation of the XBox
The decision to jettison the XBox 360 was made after a heated meeting between the part-time executive/full-time philanthropist billionaire and the XBox "team."
"What the f*** are we doing here Robbie? All I ever hear from you a**holes is how fantastic the XBox is! How you're so much better than the PS/3 or the f***in' Wii! And look at this! We're f***ing hemorrhaging money on this g**damned thing and now you tell me it will cost ONE BILLION dollars to fix the f***ing things because you had to make it FASTER! You just had to make it the hottest thing and now the motherf***ing things are blowing up and catching on fire! S**t! What the f*** were you thinking, a**hole? Tell me when you're going to turn the corner on this! They make a profit on every f***ing Wii they sell! And they're kicking our asses all over Redmond. So what the f*** are you genuises going to do? How do you fix this? You know how many orphans I could immunize with the g**damned money you lose every single hour on this thing?! You better have an answer in the morning. And you tell Ballmer I'm going to kick his ass all over Medina the next chance I get. How do you think it looks for Microsoft to be getting its ass kicked like this!? Maybe you a**holes think that motherf***ing Zune is going to make up the difference? Take your f***ing Powerpoint and get the f*** out of here!"
Robert J. Bach, President, Microsoft Entertainment
& Devices Division in happier days
Sources say Microsoft will continue to support the XBox and XBox 360, mainly to prevent the flood of class action suits sure to follow the cancellation. All hardware development on the 360 has now been ended. Software titles still under development will be released, however, all game titles that have not reached an "alpha" stage may be cancelled. Some insiders told us that Microsoft is exploring porting 360 games under development, as well as top selling titles like Halo 2, to both the PS/3 and Wii platforms in a move similar to Sega's strategy when it pulled out of the hardware market.
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