Sunny Delight

They first released an advert that was a national phenomenon and it sold lots of bottles. Sunny D claimed it tasted as good as Coke but also a healthy alternative that would clench the thirst of children. The advert was so powerful that it became the nation's 3rd bestselling drink in 3 months of being released and in 1 999; it sold 200 million bottles in the year, leading to large supermarkets doubling and tripling their orders.The reason it was so good was because it claimed it was fresh and fresh means healthy so parents anted to buy them for their kids because they wanted drinks to be healthy and good for their kids and that is what it seemed. However, people started reading the labels and telling other people to read the label which lead to lots Of people finding bad things about Sunny Delight. People started finding out that Sunny D had only 5% juice and the other 95% was things like water, food coloring and other dodgy things. There was also a high amount of sugar which parents didn't want. After finding this out, parents started buying alternatives.One day a 4 year old girl from Wales who drank a litter and a half f Sunny D a day woke up one day and found her skin had turned orange and got sent to hospital. By the time 2001 came around, their sales have halved and they went from 3rd in the UK to 42nd in the space of 3 years. Sales have never recovered from it. If Sunny Delight were to release another advert, they would need to change their company to become healthier; they also need to not put as much sugar in each bottle. They need to be patient, to slowly get their customers trust back again. Their adverts should be truthful and not claim to be something they're not.

Guns on Campus

Guns on College Campus Should guns be allowed on college campus? Kenton L. McGowen Abstract This paper will determine whether guns have a place on college, and school campuses. The conclusion that the paper reaches is that students who have guns will be tempted to use them, especially at universities and colleges that are full of drug use, stress, and anxiety. The mixture of guns into a formula like that is simply not conducive to a safe environment.This paper will take evidence from experts, as well as state rulings to show the two sides of gun control in regards to school campuses in order to answer the question: Should guns be allowed on college campuses? The constitution of the United States guarantees our right to bear arms in order to defend ourselves, but where does the line fall where it is ok and not okay to carry weapons? The debate has shifted from restaurants, to stores, and now to schools.It is recently that the question has come up, should college campus students be all owed to have guns? The question is a safety issue and mostly centers around a need for the preservation of life on these campuses, and whether or not the guns are absolutely necessary to have. It has been spurred on by the recent slew of school shootings that have hit areas of the country, most notably Virginia Tech in 2006. There are valid argumentative points to both sides, however.As previously mentioned, the constitution of the United States guarantees the right to bear arms and also that no laws should be made abridging that freedom, so while some cry for safety and moderation, others simply say that it is unlawful to prevent guns from being anywhere at any time. Of course, it is unlawful as well to murder with those guns, and the penalties tied to that are seen as a deterrent in themselves to gun violence. The crimes committed with guns are already a violation of gun laws in themselves, so it is beneficial, in some thought to carry guns on campus to protect and deter against s uch crime.This is especially true when you consider the amount of school shootings that occur on campus’s in modern times. That is where the question stems from in the first place. It is, however, conducive to gun violence to have guns around. Many of liberally biased media and their followers argue that guns have no place on college campuses. They dispute that these campuses are meant to be institutions of higher learning and not places to harbor fears of being shot by someone.Someone who is going to commit a crime with a gun has no respect for gun laws to begin with (which say that you cannot commit a crime with a gun and therefore we cannot expect them to abide by societal norms and not commit crimes with guns). This is especially true on college campuses because campuses are meant to be learning institutes and thus guns do not have a place in them or are a necessity at them. Also, it is my opinion that fighting crime should not be dealt with by the average citizen and tha t that is why we have police that we pay taxes for.The citizens should not have to engage in a shootout, when there are trained policemen to deal with that issue and that should be utilized in such situations. Society does not need to take it upon them to deal with a deranged minority, and should have their tax dollars utilized to do so, as it should be. Also, when you consider the low amount of shootings that do occur at schools nationally, it almost comes off as illogical to allow gun carry to happen on campuses when the need for them is miniscule.An entire policy shift is not needed to deal with a deranged minority, but in order is a possible restructuring of policy to make campuses less vulnerable to the possibility of an attack occurring. Alternatives exist to controlling gun violence that does not include allowing a completely armed society or student body to deal with it. A completely new policy is not what is needed to stop gun violence from occurring on campus’s, but a strengthening of the old policies is definitely needed in order to prevent future attacks on student bodies, as we’ve seen in recent years.Gun Massacres do have an end to them but the steps to end them must be taken before we can say that we will have come close to eradicating the problems that cause gun violence to occur in the first place. Perhaps new policy could include keeping police stationed at strategic points on campus to better respond to threats right when they are called in, or arming security guards better, or perhaps doing random gun sweeps to make sure that no guns are on campus. These things would be more effective than arming, or allowing, an entire student body that could use he guns for anything. However, those opposed may see this as an infringement against gun rights, as Colorado found it recently to be in violation of state law. There is no evidence that says a well armed society is a polite society sans a quote popular amongst right wingers, and in t his case it makes no sense to arm a society that would possibly not react in the way that is foreseen, especially if the consequences could be a lot worse than is intended. On the contrary, schools are generally safe areas, as evidenced by the isolated incidents of school shootings. Rubino, 2012) When the sheer number of schools in the United States is brought into account, and how few gun violence incidents there are, it makes sense not to arm a student body against a threat that likely will never occur within 50 miles of them, an overwhelming likeliness. A gun free campus is preferred to one with an abundance of guns and an atmosphere of paranoia that would follow suit in the case of it. The absence of guns on a school campus, or university campus would generally render a safer atmosphere, as well as one bereft of paranoia and anxiety from those who so choose not to carry guns with them.Additionally, forcing guns into places where drinking and drug use is common may increase victi ms to gun violence, as alcohol impairs judgment and may not be the safest thing to have weapons around. (Brady Campaign, 2012) The policy that protects students should be changed, but as far as allowing guns to be everywhere, it may be too much to ask that an army of students be at the disposal of a school that likely will never in its existence see an incident in which guns are used against the student boy from a deranged lunatic bent on absolute chaos on the campus.Proponents of gun laws for schools that would allow open carry to be an acceptable practice on school campuses cite that schools violate state laws, in some cases, when they do not allow students or faculty to concealed carry while on campus’s. This was the reason for the decision from the state of Colorado recently to allow guns to be carried by students and faculty on campuses, as long as they have a concealed weapons license.The law previously did not extend to the University of Colorado, and the court recentl y ruled that it is unlawful that it does not. (Coffman, 2012) That raises the question of whether guns should be allowed on campuses in every state with laws allowing for concealed carry practices. Is it unlawful to deny those the right with a concealed weapon license to be able to carry guns on campus’s, regardless of their intention? It seems that the law could have some holes in it, notably it would if the licenses to concealed carry were not checked.If concealed carry became a norm, how would anyone be able to tell the difference between those with a concealed weapon license and those without who brought the guns to commit less than noble acts upon a student body or a faculty member? The line easily could be blurred between who is there with honest intentions and who is there without. It could be, due to open concealed carry on campus’s, that one would be ‘undercover’ through a norm of concealment, in which they too brought a concealed weapon and it wa s not thought anything of due to others around having concealed weapons.In this scenario, no one would question the legality of the weapon and it would then become a matter of guessing who was there with a license and who was not. This kind of guessing game is dangerous, and if weapons were forbidden on campus’s, or only allowed to faculty members, it would then be easier for law enforcement, the student body, and faculty to determine who was there with the wrong intentions. All they would need to do would be to look for the gun. School shootings have been in the news in recent times, especially the massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) which claimed over 30 lives.The question was raised â€Å"should students be allowed to have guns in order to prevent attacks like this from happening? † some said that if someone would have been armed that the attacker would have been subdued and many lives would have been saved. The argument is made, essentially, that a well armed society would be able to engage in a shootout on an attacker that was committing gun violence and that it may deter the attack from happening in the first place.Recently, 13 states are considering legislation that is aimed at creating concealed carry laws on college campuses. (Smalley, 2008) As of current, Arizona is trying to pass a bill to allow concealed carry on campuses, and Utah is the only one that does allow. (Edwards, 2011) This may not be entirely true, however, as someone committed to gun violence is going to commit the act anyway, and lives will still be lost. As a college student, the thought of someone going crazy with a gun is scary to me and is something that I worry about from time to time.It is naive to think that there are no guns on college campus’s right now, and their legalization may just give law enforcement one less thing to worry about so they can focus on who is a threat with weapons and who is not. Additionally, school shootings h ave been stopped before due to teachers carrying guns, and it may be useful to allow them to continue to do so. (Hanford, 2008) However, as was pointed out earlier, it does not necessarily mean that everyone should have a gun.A college or university is meant to be a place of learning and it is no place for guns to be had at by the students, unless their intention is to cause problems with them. What is the point of having guns there, anyway? To me, it makes no sense to have one on a college campus and any reason that one would have one besides being law enforcement is completely invalid. As was stated earlier, if guns were banned on campuses across the country, it would be easy to determine who was there with the intention to act as an assailant against a student body, and who was not.A good balance between these though may be allowing staff members to have one in the classroom just in case a Virginia tech incident were to occur again, but arming the student population is not necess ary at this time nor will it accomplish anything that would see fruitful results for a country with a relatively low amount of school shootings when compared with the amount of schools there are in the country. It will lead to more gun violence and make the campus’s a much less safe place than it was before the days of students being allowed to have guns on them freely.In conclusion, guns have no place in the school environment and there are plenty of opportunities to defend students before another disaster strikes the campus’s like happened at Virginia tech or other schools in the past. The alternatives that exist are possibly arming the staff which would make campuses safer by acting as a deterrent to any armed attacks that might occur, but a learning facility is just that, for learning, and it should not incorporate the allowed carry or use of guns on them.A school should remain a school, and it should not be a place that others fear getting shot at or being attacke d, and if guns are allowed then the likelihood just goes up for that kind of senseless attack to occur on a campus, so it is in the best interest of everyone if guns are not allowed on campus’s. Though it is an abridgement of the second amendment, sometimes things must be abridged in order to achieve safety for all. Personally, I feel rights should sometimes be subverted in the interest of public safety.The benefits of allowing guns on university campus’s are only that of stopping a potential attack, but those come up only once in a blue moon and entire policy should not be changed to accommodate it. The debate will always rage, as long as the constitution says that gun rights extend to everyone. There will never be a final solution to this problem, but the track record of safety for schools so far must be taken into account and for the most part they are safe. Whole new policy is not needed, but an understanding that sometimes shooters fall through the cracks.It is an understanding of humanity and its side effects of existing that will plague us for as long as the species of humans is around. Humans are by no means perfect, and neither will their shooting track records, but human life is invaluable and a restructuring of policy to better protect it is something that could be in order very soon. Works Cited Coffman, Keith. â€Å"Colorado court says students can carry guns on campus. † Reuters. Reuters News Agency, 5 Mar. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2012. . Edwards, D. (2008, January 17). After Tucson shootings, Ariz.Republicans push for guns on school campuses | The Raw Story. The Raw Story | America's #1 completely independent news and politics source. Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www. rawstory. com/rs/2011/01/17/shootings-ariz-republicans-guns-school-campuses/ Hanford, D. J. (n. d. ). Does Concealed Carry Make Sense In Schools And On Campus? – Facilities Management Educational Facilities Feature. Facilities Management Cost-Savin g Ideas, Jobs, Experts, Technologies, Products, Articles, News, Education and more for Industry Professionals.Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www. facilitiesnet. com/educationalfacilities/article/Does-Concealed-Carry-Make-Sense-In-Schools-And-On-Campus–10070 Rubino, T. (2012, February 19). Should guns be allowed on school campuses? – CBS 5 – KPHO . CBS 5 – KPHO – CBS 5 AZ KPHO | Phoenix, Arizona, breaking news, weather,channel. Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www. kpho. com/story/16955378/should-guns-be-allowed-on-school-campuses Smalley, S. (2008, February 14). More Guns on Campus? The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www. thedailybeast. com/newsweek/2008/02/14/more-guns-on-campus. html Woods, J. (2011, March 27). Allowing guns on campus won't make schools safer – Houston Chronicle. Houston News, Sports, Business, and Entertainment – The Houston Chronicle at Chron. com – Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 29, 2012, from http://www. chron. com/opinion/outlook/article/Allowing-guns-on-campus-won-t-make-schools-safer-1690745. php Guns on Campus It is obvious all across America that I can handgun is by far one of the most deadly weapons out there. It is also obvious that a high percent of college students have a drug and or alcohol problem and every student is exposed to both. What happens when you combine both of them? Violence is what happens. We have organizations of uneducated students and adults, such as the SCCC (Students for concealed carry on Campus), that are ignorant because they believe a handgun will make them more safe. However, they are very mistaken.The fact of the matter is a gun can’t save somebody from another gun. People argue that in situations such as 2007 Virginia Tech a student could have taken the shooters out. However, that is not the case. The shooters were taken the first step. They already had their weapons drawn and would have took out anyone out in their way. In most cases if a student is armed they will take them out first. This isn’t even accounting for students and or faculty th at could get hit in the crossfire. We can’t turn a school into a battlefield.College students are associated with drugs and alcohol. That is a fact. All of a sudden you allow guns on campus and you have students taking them to parties and wielding them while under the influence. Even good Samaritans get impaired while using any substance. Not only does this put students and faculty in danger but it puts police and security units in danger as well. Above all, society is in danger. There are children and families that live within the community that don’t need drunk and high students running around with weapons.Intimidation: Is another reason why handguns shouldn’t be allowed in the school area. Imagine being in a teacher shoes and having a student who you heard or seen carry a firearm to your classroom. What if you have a fear of handguns? Would you be compelled to give him a better grade out of fear? Would you be scared to confront him? We need to take account fo r all the people who get involved for one person bring a gun to school and the people involved is everyone. Imagine being another student and having to sit next to a student who is known to be carrying or you have even seen carrying.Possibly you have the same fear as the teacher scenario. This kind of situation needs government intervention for the physical and mental protection of others. Another key fact is that the college scenario is big for racial violence and gang violence environment. Also, that is immaturity related. Our country already has enough racial and gang related violence that we don’t need to influence in the college environment. In the big picture allowing concealed weapons on campus will increase violence

Careercup Top 150 Questions

Cracking the Technical Interview by Gayle Laakmann, CareerCup. com 150 Technical Interview Questions and Solutions, written by experts. PLUS:  »  »  » Behind the scenes look at Google Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo interviews. Interview War Stories: the view from the other side. Advice on how to approach 24 types of interview questions. Copyright Information Copyright 2009 by Gayle Laakmann All rights reserved exclusively for [email  protected] google. com www. careercup. com Table of Contents Introduction Practice Interviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Microsoft Interview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Amazon Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Google Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Yahoo Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Interview War Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Interview Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Applied Mathematics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Arrays & Hash Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Bit Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Brain Teasers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 C / C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Counting and Combinatorics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Debugging Existing Code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Java. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Large Scale & Memory Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Linked Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Low Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Matrix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 4  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Table of ContentsChapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Object Oriented Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Probability and Randomness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Software and System Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Sorting and Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Stacks and Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Threads And Locks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Trees and Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69  © 20 09 CAREERCUP 5 Practice Interviews Studying helps, but nothing can prepare you like the real thing. Each CareerCup interviewer has given over a hundred interviews at Google, Microsoft, or Amazon. To nail your interview, sit down with a trained interviewer and get their experienced feedback. See www. careercup. om/interview for more details. One Hour Interview with Real Interviewers Our interviewers will give you a real interview, just like you’d get at Google, Microsoft or Amazon. We’ll test you on the same types of questions that they do. We’ll grade you the same way they do. How can we do this? We’ve done over 100 interviews each for these companies. We’ve screened resumes. We’ve been part of their hiring committees. We know what they want. We’ll Also Give You†¦  »  »  »  »  » An . mp3 recording of your interview. Feedback on where you shined and where you struggled. Specific suggestions on how to improve.Instructions on how to approach tough problems Lessons on what interviewers look for in your code. A Typical Interview A typical interview includes a brief discussion of your resume and one or more technical questions. Each interview will do coding via a shared document. When the interview is completed, we’ll give you immediate feedback on how you did while it’s still fresh in your mind. Later that day, you’ll receive an mp3 of the interview to refresh your memory. Schedule Your Interview Today! See http://www. careercup. com/interview for pricing and details! 6  © 2009 CAREERCUP xclusively for [email  protected] google. com The Microsoft Interview Microsoft wants smart people. Geeks. People who are passionate about technology. You probably won’t be tested on the ins and outs of C++ APIs, but you will be expected to write code on the board. In a typical interview, you’ll show up at Microsoft at some time in the morning and fill out initial paper work. Youà ¢â‚¬â„¢ll have a short interview with a recruiter where he or she will give you a sample question. Be nice to your recruiters; while they may not evaluate your technical skills in depth, they can fight for you to be hired – or not.Throughout the day, you’ll move around from interviewer to interviewer, visiting each one in their office. Use this time to look around and get a feel for what the team culture. Interviewers are not allowed to share their feedback on you with other interviewers, due to concerns of bias. Nonetheless, many sources indicate that some feedback is shared. When you complete your interviews with a team, you might speak with a hiring manager. If so, that’s a great sign! It likely means that you passed the interviews with a particular team. It’s now down to the hiring manDefinitely Prepare: ager’s decision.You might get a decision that day, or it might be a week. After one week of no word from HR, send them a friendly email asking for a status update. â€Å"Why do you want to work for Microsoft? † In this question, Microsoft wants to see that you’re passionate about technology. A great answer might be, â€Å"I’ve been using Microsoft software as long as I can remember, and I’m really impressed at how Microsoft creates manages to create a product that is universally excellent. For example, I’ve been using Visual Studio recently to learn game programming, and it’s APIs are excellent. † Note how this shows a passion for technology!What’s Unique: You’ll only reach the hiring manager if you’ve done well, but if you do, that’s a great sign! [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 7 The Amazon Interview Amazon’s recruiting process usually begins with one or two phone screens in which you interview with a specific team. The engineer who interviews you will usually ask you to write simple code and read it aloud on the pho ne. They will ask a broad set of questions to explore what areas of technology you’re familiar with. Next, you fly to Seattle for four or five interviews with one or two teams which have selected you based on your resume and phone interviews.You will have to code on a whiteboard, and some interviewers will stress other skills. Interviewers are each assigned a specific area to probe and may seem very different from each other. They can not see other feedback until they have submitted their own and they are discouraged from discussing it until the hiring meeting. Amazon’s â€Å"bar raiser† interviewer is charged with keeping the interview bar high. They attend special training and will interview candidates outside their group in order to balance out the group itself.If one interview seems significantly harder and different, that’s most likely the bar raiser. This person has both significant experience with interviews Definitely Prepare: and veto power in th e hiring decision. You Amazon is a web-based company, and will meet with your recruiter at the end of the day. that means that they care about scale. Once your interviewers have entered their feedback, they will meet to discuss it. They will be the people making the hiring decision. While Amazon’s recruiters are excellent at following up with candidates, occasionally there are delays.If you haven’t heard from Amazon within a week, we recommend a friendly email. Make sure you prepare questions in â€Å"Large Scale. † You don’t need a background in distributed systems to answer these questions. Just answer the question for one system and then think, how does your solution change with multiple computers? Additionally, Amazon tends to ask a lot of questions that are based in mathematics and randomness. What’s Unique: The Bar Raiser, who is brought in from a different team to keep the bar high. 8  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com The Google InterviewThere are many scary stories floating around about Google interviews, but it’s mostly just that: stories. The interview is not terribly different from Microsoft’s or Amazon’s. However, because Google HR can be a little disorganized, we recommend being proactive in communication. A Google engineer performs the first phone screen, so expect tough technical questions. On your onsite interview, you’ll interview with four to six people, one of whom will be a lunch interviewer. Interviewer feedback is kept confidential from the other interviewers, so you can be assured that you enter each interview with blank slate.Your lunch interviewer doesn’t submit feedback, so this is a great opportunity to ask honest questions. Written feedback is submitted to a hiring committee of engineers to make a hire/no-hire recommendation. Feedback is typically broken down into four categories (Analytical Ability, Coding, Experience and Commun ication) and you are given a score from 1. 0 to 4. 0 overall. The hiring committee understands that you can’t be expected to excel in every interview, but if multiple people raise the same red flag (arrogance, poor coding skills, etc), that can disqualify you.A hiring committee typically wants to see one interviewer who is an â€Å"enthusiastic endorser. † In other words, a packet with scores of 3. 6, 3. 1, 3. 1 and 2. 6 is better than all 3. 1’s. Your phone screen is usually not a factor in the final decision. The Google hiring process can be slow. If you don’t hear back within one week, politely ask your recruiter for an update. A lack of response says nothing about your performance. Definitely Prepare: As a web-based company, Google cares about how to design scalable system. So, make sure you prepare question from â€Å"Large Scale. Additionally, many Google interviewers will ask questions involving bit shifting and Bit Manipulation, so please brush u p on these questions. What’s Different: Your interviewers do not make the hiring decision. Rather, they enter feedback which is passed to a hiring committee. The hiring committee recommends a decision which can be—though rarely is—rejected by Google executives. [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 9 The Yahoo Interview Resume Selection & Screening: While Yahoo tends to only recruit at the top 10 – 20 schools, other candidates can still get interviewed throughYahoo’s job board (or – better yet – if they can get an internal referral). If you’re one of the lucky ones selected, your interview process will start off with a phone screen. Your phone screen will be with a senior employee (tech lead, manager, etc). Onsite Interview: You will typically interview with 6 – 7 people on the same team for 45 minutes each. Each interviewer will have an area of focus. For example, one interviewer might focus on databases, while another interviewer might focus on your understanding of computer architecture.Interviews will often be composed as follows: 5 minutes: General conversation. Tell me about yourself, your projects, etc. 20 minutes: Coding question. For example, implement merge sort. 20 minutes: System design. For example, design a large distributed cache. These questions will often focus on an area from your past experience or on something your interviewer is curDefinitely Prepare: rently working on. Decision: At the end of the day, you will likely meet with a Program Manager or someone else for a general conversation (product demos, concerns about the company, your competing offers, etc).Meanwhile, your interviewers will discuss your performance and attempt to come to a decision. The hiring manager has the ultimate say and will weigh the positive feedback against the negative. If you have done well, you will often get a decision that day, but this is not always the case. There can be many rea sons that you might not be told for several days – for example, the team may feel it needs to interview several other people. Yahoo, almost as a rule, asks questions about system design, so make sure you prepare that. They want to know that you can not only write code, but that you can design software.Don’t worry if you don’t have a background in this – you can still reason your way through it! What’s Unique: Your phone interview will likely be performed by someone with more influence, such as a hiring manager. Yahoo is also unusual in that it often gives a decision (if you’re hired) on the same day. Your interviewers will discuss your performance while you meet with a final interviewer. 10  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories The View from the Other Side of the Front, by Peter BaileyFor the eager candidate getting ready for a big job interview, Cracking the Technical Interview is an inva luable reference, containing excellent coaching and practice material that gives you an inside edge on the interview process. However, as you go over your old data structures textbook and drill yourself with homemade discrete math flash cards, don’t make the mistake of thinking of the interview as a kind of high-pressure game show – that if you just give all the right answers to the tech questions, you too can win a shiny new career (this week, on Who Wants to be a Software Engineer? While the technical questions on computer science obviously are very important, the most important interview question is not covered in this guidebook. In fact, it’s often the single most important question in your interviewers’ minds as they grill you in that little room. Despite the questions on polymorphism and heaps and virtual machines, the question they really want an answer to is †¦ Would I have a beer with this guy? Don’t look at me like that, I’m s erious! Well, I may be embellishing a little, but hear me out.The point I’m trying to make is that interviewers, especially those that you might work with, are probably just as anxious as you are. Nonsense, you say, as a nervous young professional, checking your pants for lint while you bite your fingernails, waiting for the interview team to show up in the front lobby. After all, this is the big leagues, and these guys are just waiting for you to slip up so they can rip you apart, laugh at your shriveled corpse, and grind your career dreams to dust beneath the heels of their boots. Right? Just like pledge week, back in freshman year?Right? Hmmm? Nothing could be further from the truth. The team of developers and managers interviewing you have their own tasks and projects waiting for them, back at their own desks. Believe me, they’re hoping that every interview is going to be the last one. They’d rather be doing anything else. There might be a batch of upcoming projects looming on their calendar, and they need more manpower if they’re going to even have a prayer of making their deadline. But the last guy the agency sent over was a complete flake who railed about Microsoft’s evil for half an hour.And the one before that couldn’t code his way out of a wet paper bag without using copy-and-paste. Sheesh, they think, where is HR getting these guys? How hard can it be to hire one lousy person? While they may not literally be asking themselves â€Å"Would I have a beer with this guy (or gal)†, they are looking to see how well you would fit in with the team, and how you would affect team chemistry. If they hire you, you’re all going to be spending a lot of time together for 11  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories he next few months or years, and they want to know that they can rely on you – and maybe even come to consider you a friend and colleague. The y want to know that they can depend on you. And as tempting as it might be to them to just settle and hire the next person who comes along, they know better. In many companies, particularly large U. S. companies, it’s harder to fire somebody than it is to hire somebody. (Welcome to the US: Land of Lawsuits! ) If they hire a dud, they’re stuck with them. That person might be unproductive or, even worse, a drain on the team’s productivity.So they keep interviewing, until they find the right person. They know that it’s better to reject a good candidate than hire a bad one. Some of those interviews are real doozies. Once you’ve interviewed long enough, you build up a repertoire of horror stories. War stories, of candidates who looked promising on paper until the interviews went terribly, terribly wrong. These war stories are not only humorous – they’re also instructive. Names have been changed to protect the innocent – or downright ridiculous. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA [email  protected] google. comkjlslen 0987654321+_=-)(*&^%$#@! ~[]{};’:†,. /? ABCDEZYXW abcdeyxw asdsasdFGJwRXGs75rpqR3oFWHMJHp-RQ. L–LqJ. H-rsdkktNNsasdf [email  protected] google. com [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 12 Interview War Stories Pop Divas Need Not Apply Leonard was a very promising C++ coder, three years out of college, with a solid work history and an impressive skill set. He proved on the phone screen that he was above-average technically, and so he was invited in for an interview. We needed a savvy C++ person to work on a piece of middleware that interfaced with our database, and Leonard seemed like a sure fit.However, once we started talking to him, things went south in a hurry. He spent most of the interview criticizing every tool and platform that we questioned him on. We used SQL Server as our database? Puhleease. We were planning to switch to Oracle s oon, right? What’s that? Our team used Tool A to do all our coding in? Unacceptable. He used Tool B, and only Tool B, and after he was hired, we’d all have to switch to Tool B. And we’d have to switch to Java, because he really wanted to work with Java, despite the fact that 75 percent of the codebase would have to be rewritten.We’d thank him later. And oh, by the way, he wouldn’t be making any meetings before ten o’clock. Needless to say, we encouraged Leonard to seek opportunities elsewhere. It wasn’t that his ideas were bad – in fact, he was â€Å"technically† right about many things, and his (strong) opinions were all backed with solid fact and sound reason (except for the ten o’clock thing – we think he may have just been making a â€Å"power play†. ) But it was obvious that, if hired, Leonard wasn’t going to play well with others – he would have been toxic kryptonite for team chem istry.He actually managed to offend two of the team members during the forty-five minutes of his interview. Leonard also made the mistake of assuming that Code Purity and Algorithm Beauty were always more important than a business deadline. In the real world, there are always compromises to be made, and knowing how to work with the business analysts is just as important as knowing how to refactor a blob of code. If Leonard would not have gotten along with other IT people, he definitely wouldn’t have gotten along with the business folks. Maybe you can get away ith hiring a Leonard if he’s one of the best ten coders in the world (he wasn’t). But he was the classic failure example for the â€Å"Would you have a beer with this guy? † test. 13  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories What We Have Here is Failure to Communicate Trisha was a mid-level Java developer with a solid history of middleware and JSP work on her resume. Since she was local, we invited her in for an interview without a phone screen. When we started asking her questions, it quickly became obvious that Trisha was a woman of few words.Her answers were short and often composed of â€Å"yes/no† responses, even to questions that were meant to start a dialog. Once she did start opening up, I still wasn’t sure she was actually talking. I saw her lips moving, and heard mumbling sounds coming out, but it wasn’t anything that sounded like English. I’m not sure if Trisha was nervous or just shy, but either way, I had to ask her numerous times to repeat herself. Now I was the one getting nervous! I didn’t want to be the guy who â€Å"ruined† the interview, so I pulled back on my questions. The other folks in the room and I exchanged uneasy glances.We felt like we were on a Seinfeld episode. It was almost impossible to understand Trisha, and when she did speak up, her halting, uncertain, c onfused speech patterns made us feel more like code breakers than interviewers. I am not exaggerating to say that I did not understand a single answer she gave during the interview. Knowing, alone, isn’t good enough. You’re going to be talking with other technical people, and you’re going to be talking to customers, and sales reps, and Betty from Marketing. You will write something eventually, whether it’s documentation, or a project plan, or a requirements document.The word processor might correct your spelling, but it won’t correct your lousy writing. The ability to communicate thoughts and ideas, in a clear, concise manner, is an absolutely invaluable skill that employers seek. The same goes for verbal communication. I used to work with a co-worker who doubled the length of every meeting he was in, because he could not answer a question in less than ten minutes. â€Å"Hey, Dennis, what time is it? † â€Å"Well, that’s kind of inte resting, because I just happened to be reading an article on cesium clocks and leap seconds and the history of the Gregorian Calendar and †¦ I’ll spare you the rest. [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 14 Interview War Stories You Can Count on Me, Just Not Until Early Afternoon Ahhh, 1999. The crest of the dot-com bubble, and the tightest labor market in history. Our company was racing to expand its development team, and we would have hired a German Shepherd if it knew HTML. Instead, we wound up hiring Ian. We should’ve hired the dog. Ian was a cheerful, friendly guy who had a gift of natural charisma. He got along fantastically with all of the interviewers, and seemed very intelligent.Skillwise, he was adequate. He hadn’t written a single line of computer code outside of his college courses, and didn’t even have his own e-mail address. When we gave Ian the chance to ask us questions at the end of the interview, he asked about flexib le work hours, and how soon he could take vacation time. Instead of showing an interest in the career opportunities, or in company’s growth prospects, he asked whether he could take the all-you-could-drink break room soda home with him. The questions grew more bizarre from there. Ian was very interested in our Legal Assistance benefit.He wanted to know if it covered the cost of filing lawsuits, if it covered him if he got sued himself, if it applied to any lawsuits he currently was involved in, and if he could â€Å"theoretically† use it to sue the company itself. He also asked us if he could use it to help him â€Å"fix† some unpaid speeding tickets. In any other year, that should have been it for Ian right there. But, in 1999, we were hiring anybody who was even remotely competent. Ian collected paychecks from us for eighteen months, and he was about as productive as a traffic cone.He usually sauntered into the office around ten-thirty with some sort of lame e xcuse (by my count, he had to wait for the cable guy sixteen times in a six-month period). He usually killed the morning by answering e-mail and playing ping-pong, before breaking for a two-hour lunch. After lunch, it was more pingpong, and maybe an hour of writing bad code, before bolting the office sometime around three. He was the dictionary definition of unreliable. Remember, your potential future team members need to know that they can rely on you. And they need to know that you won’t need constant supervision and hand-holding.They need to know that you’re able to figure things out on your own. One of the most important messages that you, as a candidate, can convey in your interview is hiring me will make your lives easier. In fact, this is a large part of the reason for the famously difficult interview questions at places like Amazon and Google; if you can handle that kind of unpredictable pressure in an interview, then you stand a good chance of being useful to them on real projects. To cite a more subtle example, once I was on a four person team that was desperately trying to recruit new members to help work on an old pile of software.It was a real mess; we’d inherited a nasty ball of spaghetti, and we needed people who could jump in, figure things out, and be part of the solution. There was one very smart fellow, Terry, who would have been a great asset for our team – 15  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview War Stories but we didn’t hire him, despite his excellent technical and personal skills. It was because he insisted on meticulous written instructions for every step of the coding process.He wasn’t going to make a suggestion or take any initiative – or blow his nose, for that matter – without a mile-long audit trail and a dozen signatures. While he insisted that he worked that way for reasons of quality (a defensible point), we got the impression that it had more to do with butt-covering, and we simply didn’t have the time for that kind of bureaucracy. Terry would have been an excellent fit in a government or aerospace IT department, something that required ISO 9000 procedures. But he would have never fit into our team; he would have been a burden, not an asset.[email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 16 Interview War Stories My Spider Senses are Tingling I can think of lots of interviews that just fell into the general category of weird and uncomfortable:  »  »  »  »  »  » The Java coder who apparently considered hygiene optional, and had the interview room smelling like week-old blue cheese within ten minutes (my eyes were watering). The young fresh-out-of-college graduate with a tongue piercing that kept tick-tick-ticking against his teeth as he talked (after half an hour, it was like Chinese water torture).The girl who wore an iPod through her interview, with the volume turned loud enough that s he actually had to ask the interviewers to repeat themselves a few times. The poor, hyper-nervous fellow who was sweating like a marathon runner for half an hour. The girl who wore a T-shirt with an obscene political slogan to her interview. The guy who asked (seriously) at the end of his interview, â€Å"So, are there any hot chicks in our department? † Those are the interviews where we politely thank the people for their time, shake their hand (except for the sweaty guy), then turn to each other after the door closes and ask – did that really just happen?Nobody is saying that you have to be a bland, boring robot in a Brooks Brothers suit and tie. Remember, the interview team wants you to be â€Å"the one†, but they’re also very worried about the possibility that you’re going to be more of a distraction than an asset. Don’t talk or behave in a way that will set off their early warning radar. Whether or not somebody bothers to behave profess ionally during an interview is often a very good indicator of what kind of teammate they’re going to be. Rudimentary social skills are part of the answer to â€Å"Would I have a beer with this guy? , or at least, â€Å"Will I mind working next to this guy for six months? † From the interviewer’s point of view, they’re picking a neighbor that they’re going to live and work with 200 hours per week for foreseeable future. Would you really want a neighbor that smelled like a hog rendering plant? 17  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Interview Questions Study hard, practice and good luck! How this Book is Organized The interview questions in this book are grouped into categories, with a page preceding each category offering advice and other information.Within each category, the questions are sorted by approximate level of difficulty. Solutions for all questions are at the back. How to Use this Book An effective intervi ew is not about memorizing interview questions, but rather, about applying an understanding of concepts and demonstrating your problem solving ability. Use these questions to find the gaps in your knowledge and to learn problem solving techniques that you can apply to new questions. Advice for Devs Your interview will be most likely not be conducted on a computer. Thus, when you practice the problems in this book, we recommend writing them down on paper first.Then, type your solution into the computer exactly as you wrote it and see how you did. Special Advice for SDETs Not only do SDETs have to be great testers, but they also have to be great coders. Thus, we recommend that you complete the coding problems in this book with an eye for testing them. Even when the question doesn’t specifically ask it, you should ask yourself, â€Å"how would I test this? † Remember: any problem can be an SDET problem. Suggestions and Corrections While we do our best to ensure that all t he solutions are correct, mistakes will be made. Moreover, sometimes there is no â€Å"right† answer.If you’d like to offer a suggestion or correction, please submit it at http:// xrl. us/ccbook [email  protected] google. com  © 2009 CAREERCUP 18 Applied Mathematics How to Approach: CHAPTER-1 Many of the so-called â€Å"Applied Mathematics† problems read as brain teasers at first, but can be worked through in a logical way. Just remember to rely on the rules of mathematics to develop an approach, and then to carefully translate that idea into code. Example: Given two numbers m and n, write a method to return the first number r that is divisible by both (e. g. , the least common multiple).The Approach: What does it mean for r to be divisible by m and n? It means that all the primes in m must go into r, and all primes in n must be in r. What if m and n have primes in common? For example, if m is divisible by 3^5 and n is divisible by 3^7, what does this mean a bout r? It means r must be divisible by 3^7. The Rule: For each prime p such that p^a m (e. g. , m is divisible by p^a) and p^b n, r must be divisible by p^max(a, b) The Algorithm: Define q to be 1. for each prime number p less than m and n: find the largest a and b such that p^a m and p^b n let q = q * p^max(a, b) return qThings to Watch Out For: 1. 2. Be careful with the difference in precision between floats vs. doubles. Don’t assume that a value (such as the slope of a line) is an int unless you’ve been told so. Prime Numbers 1. 2. Every number can be written as a product of primes. Example: 504 = 2^3 * 3^2 * 7 f x is divisible by y, then every prime factor in y must be found in x. Example: If 504 is divisible by y, then y could be 168 (2^3 * 3 * 7), or 21 (3 * 7), or 4 (2^2), or many other things. Y could not, however, be equal to 10 (5 * 2), since 5 is not found in x 19  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] oogle. com Applied Mathematics CH APTER-1 1. 1 Write a method to generate the nth Fibonacci number _______________________________________________________________________pg 69 1. 2 Write a method to count the number of 2’s between 0 and n. EXAMPLE input: 35 output: 14 [list of 2’s: 2, 12, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32] _______________________________________________________________________pg 70 1. 3 Given two lines on a Cartesian plane, determine whether the two lines would intersect. _______________________________________________________________________pg 74 1. Given two squares on a two dimensional plane, find a line that would cut these two squares in half. _______________________________________________________________________pg 75 1. 5 Write an algorithm which computes the number of trailing zeros in n factorial. EXAMPLE input: 11 output: 2 (11! = 39916800) _______________________________________________________________________pg 76 1. 6 Write a function that adds two numbers. You sh ould not use + or any arithmetic operators. _______________________________________________________________________pg 77 1. Write a method to implement *, – , / operations. You should use only the + operator. _______________________________________________________________________pg 79 1. 8 Design an algorithm to find the kth number such that the only prime factors are 3, 5, and 7. _______________________________________________________________________pg 81 1. 9 A circus is designing a tower routine consisting of people standing atop one another’s shoulders. For practical and aesthetic reasons, each person must be both shorter and lighter than the person below him or her.Given the heights and weights of each person in the circus, write a method to compute the largest possible number of people in such a tower. EXAMPLE: Input(ht, wt) : (65, 100) (70, 150) (56, 90) (75, 190) (60, 95) (68, 110) Output: The longest tower is length 6 and includes from top to bottom: (56,90) ( 60,95) (65,100) (68,110) (70,150) (75,190) _______________________________________________________________________pg 84 1. 10 Given a two dimensional graph with 6000 points on it, find a line which passes the most number of points. ______________________________________________________________________pg 86  © 2009 CAREERCUP 20 Arrays & Hash Tables How to Approach CHAPTER-2 While not all problem can be solved with a hash table, a shocking number of interview problems can be. Keeping track of which items you’ve already seen? Hash table. Needing a way to efficiently look up data? Hash table. The list goes on and on. You should become very extremely comfortable with hash tables: how to implement them and how to use them. Hash Tables A hash table is a data structure that associates keys with values for O(1) lookup.Hash tables are frequently, though not always, implemented with an array. A simple implementation of a hash table that hashes a string to a Person is as follows: class HashTable { Person[] data = new Person[MAX_HASH_KEY]; int getId(string s) { /* return a key for this string */ }; bool contains(string key) { int id = getId(key); if (data247) return true; return false; } void insert(string s, Person p) { data[getId(s)]; } Note: This implementation does not handle collision. Collisions can be handled by â€Å"chaining† (eg, using a linked list), or a variety of other ways. Vector (Dynamically Resizing Array):A vector, or a dynamically resizing array, is an array that resizes itself as needed while still providing O(1) access. A typical implementation is that when a vector is full, the array doubles in size. Each doubling takes a long time (O(n)), but happens so rarely that its asymptotic time is still O(1). 21  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Arrays CHAPTER-2 2. 1 Suppose we have an array a1, a2, †¦ , an, b1, b2, †¦ , bn. Implement an algorithm to change this array to a1, b1, a2, b2, †¦ , an , bn. _______________________________________________________________________pg 87 . 2 Design an algorithm and write code to remove the duplicate characters in a string without using any additional buffer. NOTE: One or two additional variables is fine. An extra copy of the array is not. FOLLOW UP Write the test cases for this method. _______________________________________________________________________pg 88 2. 3 You are given an array of integers (both positive and negative). Find the continuous sequence with the largest sum. Return the sum. EXAMPLE input: {2, -8, 3, -2, 4, -10} output: 5 [ eg, {3, -2, 4} ] _______________________________________________________________________pg 90 2. Design an algorithm to find all pairs of integers within an array which sum to a specified value. _______________________________________________________________________pg 91 2. 5 An array A[1†¦ n] contains all the integers from 0 to n except for one number which is missing. In this problem, we cannot access an entire integer in A with a single operation. The elements of A are represented in binary, and the only operation we can use to access them is â€Å"fetch the jth bit of A[i]†, which takes constant time. Write code to find the missing integer. Can you do it in O(n) time? ______________________________________________________________________pg 93  © 2009 CAREERCUP 22 Bit Manipulation How to Approach: CHAPTER-3 Bit manipulation can be a scary thing to many candidate, but it doesn’t need to be! If you’re shaky on bit manipulation, we recommend doing a couple arithmetic-like problems to boost your skills. Compute the following by hand: 1010 – 0001 1010 > 1 1010 + 0110 1001^1001 0xFF – 1 1100^1010 1001 & 1100 0xAB + 0x11 If you’re still uncomfortable, examine very careful what happens when you do subtraction, addition, etc in base 10. Can you repeat that work in base 2? Things to Watch Out For: It’s really easy to make m istakes on these problem so, be careful! When you’re writing code, stop and thinking about what you’re writing every couple lines. When you’re done, check through your entire code. If you’re bit shifting, what happens when the digits get shifted off the end? Make sure to think about this case to ensure that you’re handling it correctly. 1 & 0 = 0 1 | 0 = 1 1 ^ 0 = 1 0 & 1 = 0 0 | 1 = 1 0 ^ 1 = 1 1 & 1 = 1 1 | 1 = 1 1 ^ 1 = 0  » And (&): 0 & 0 = 0 Or (|): 0 | 0 = 0 Xor (^): 0 ^ 0 = 0 Left Shift: x > 2 = 00000110 00011001 >> 4 = 00000001 exclusively for [email  protected] oogle. com 23  © 2009 CAREERCUP Bit Manipulation CHAPTER-3 3. 1 Write a function int BitSwapReqd(int A, int B) to determine the number of bits required to convert integer A to integer B. EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 94 3. 2 If you were to write a program to swap odd and even bits in integer, what is the minimum number of in structions required? (eg, bit 0 and bit 1 are swapped, bit 2 and bit 3 are swapped, etc). EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 95 3. 3 Write a method which finds the maximum of two numbers.You should not use if-else or any other comparison operator. EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 96 3. 4 Given a (decimal – e. g. 3. 72) number that is passed in as a string, print the binary representation. If the number can not be represented accurately in binary, print â€Å"ERROR† _______________________________________________________________________pg 97 3. 5 You are given two 32-bit numbers, N and M, and a two bit positions, i and j. Write a method to set all bits between i and j in N equal to M (eg, M becomes a substring of N located at i and starting j).EXAMPLE: _______________________________________________________________________pg 99 3. 6 Write a function to swap a number in plac e without temporary variables. ______________________________________________________________________pg 100 3. 7 Given an integer, print the next smallest and next largest number that have the same number of 1 bits in their binary representation. ______________________________________________________________________pg 101 input: N = 10000000000, M = 10101, i = 2, j = 6 output: N = 10001010100 Input: 5, 10 Output: 10 Input: 10001010 Output: 01000101 Input: 31, 14 Output: 2 2009 CAREERCUP 24 Brain Teasers Do companies really ask brain teasers? CHAPTER-4 While many companies, including Google and Microsoft, have policies banning brain teasers, interviews still sometimes ask these tricky questions. Advice on Approaching Brain Teasers Don’t panic when you get a brain teaser. Interviewers want to see how you tackle a problem; they don’t expect you to immediately know the answer. Start talking, and show the interviewer how you approach a problem. In many cases, you will also find that the brain teasers have some connection back to fundamental laws or theories of computer science.If you’re stuck, we recommend simplifying the problem. Solve it for a small number of items or a special case, and then see if you can generalize it. Example: You are trying to cook an egg for exactly 15 minutes, but instead of a timer, you are given two ropes which burn for exactly 1 hour each. The ropes, however, are of uneven densities – eg, half the rope length-wise might take only 2 minutes to burn. The approach: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. What is important? Numbers usually have a meaning behind them. The fifteen minutes and two ropes were picked for a reason. Simplify!You can easily time one hour (burn just one rope). Now, can you time 30 minutes? That’s half the time it takes to burn one rope. Can you burn the rope twice as fast? Yes! (Light the rope at both ends. ) You’ve now learned: (1) You can time 30 minutes. (2) You can burn a rope that takes X minutes in just X/2 minutes by lighting both ends. Work backwards: if you had a rope of burn-length 30 minutes, that would let you time 15 minutes. Can you remove 30 minutes of burn-time from a rope? You can remove 30 min of burn-time from Rope #2 by lighting Rope #1 at both ends and Rope #2 at one end.Now that you have Rope #2 at burn-length 30 min, start cooking the egg and light rope #2 at the other end. When Rope #2 burns up, your egg is done! 25  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Brain Teasers CHAPTER-4 4. 1 Add arithmetic operators (plus, minus, times, divide) to make the following expression true: 3 1 3 6 = 8. You can use any parentheses you’d like. ______________________________________________________________________pg 103 4. 2 You have a 5 quart jug and 3 quart jug, and an unlimited supply of water (but no measuring cups). How would you come up with exactly four quarts of water?NOTE: The jugs are oddly shaped, such that filling up exactly ‘half’ of the jug would be impossible. ______________________________________________________________________pg 104 4. 3 There is a building of 100 floors. If an egg drops from the Nth floor or above it will break. If it’s dropped from any floor below, it will not break. You’re given 2 eggs. Find N, while minimizing the number of drops for the worse case. ______________________________________________________________________pg 105 4. 4 A bunch of men are on an island. A genie comes down and gathers everyone together and places a magical hat on some people’s heads (e. . , at least one). The hat is magical: it can be seen by other people, but not by the wearer of the hat himself. To remove the hat, you must dunk yourself underwater at exactly midnight. If there are n people and c hats, how long does it take the men remove the crowns? The men cannot tell each other (in any way) that they have a hat. FOLLOW UP Prove that your solution is correct . ______________________________________________________________________pg 106 4. 5 There are 100 closed lockers in a hallway. A man begins by opening all the 100 lockers. Next, he closes every second locker.Then he goes to every third locker and closes it if it is open or opens it if it is closed (eg, he toggles every third locker). After his 100th pass in the hallway, in which he toggles only locker number 100, how many lockers are open? ______________________________________________________________________pg 108  © 2009 CAREERCUP 26 C / C++ How To Approach: CHAPTER-5 A good interviewer won’t demand that you code in a language you don’t profess to know. Hopefully, if you’re asked to code in C++, it’s listed on your resume. If you don’t remember all the APIs, don’t worry—your interviewer probably doesn’t either!We do recommend, however, studying up on basic C++ syntax. Pointer Syntax int p = v = Foo int *p; // Defines pointe r. &q; // Sets p to address of q. *p; // Set v to value of q. *f = new Foo(); // Initializes f. k = f->x; // Sets k equal to the value of f’s member variable. C++ Class Syntax class MyClass { private: double var; public: MyClass(double v) {var = v; } ~MyClass() {}; double Update(double v); }; double Complex::Update(double v) { var = v; return v; } C++ vs Java: A very common answer in an interview is â€Å"describe the differences between C++ and Java. If you aren’t comfortable with any of these concepts, we recommend reading up on them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Java runs in a virtual machine. C++ natively supports unsigned arithmetic. In Java, parameters are always passed by value (or with objects, their references are passed by value). In C++, parameters can be passed by value, pointer, or by reference. Java has built-in garbage collection. C++ allows operator overloading. C++ allows multiple inheritance of classes. Thought: Which of these might be considered strengths or w eaknesses of C++ or Java? Why? In what cases might you choose one language over the other? 7  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com C / C++ CHAPTER-5 5. 1 What is the difference between a struct and a class? Where would you use each? ______________________________________________________________________pg 109 5. 2 Write a method to print the last ten lines of an input file using C. ______________________________________________________________________pg 110 5. 3 Compare and contrast a hash table vs. an STL map. How is a hash table implemented? If the number of inputs are small, what data structure options can be used instead of a hash table? _____________________________________________________________________pg 111 5. 4 How do a virtual functions work in C++? ______________________________________________________________________pg 112 5. 5 What is the difference between deep copy and shallow copy? Explain how you would use each. _______________________ _______________________________________________pg 113 5. 6 In a class, the ‘new’ operator is used for allocating memory for new objects. Can this be done using malloc? If yes, how? If no, why not? Are there any restrictions associated with the use of malloc in place of new? _____________________________________________________________________pg 114 5. 7 What is the significance of the keyword â€Å"volatile† in C? ______________________________________________________________________pg 115 5. 8 What is name hiding in C++? ______________________________________________________________________pg 116 5. 9 Why does a destructor in base class need to be declared virtual? ______________________________________________________________________pg 117 5. 10 Write a method that takes a pointer to a Node structure as a parameter and returns a complete copy of the passed-in data structure.The Node structure contains two pointers to other Node structures. For example, the meth od signature could look like so: Node* Copy(Node* root); Note: Do not make any assumptions about the data structure – it could be a tree, linked list, graph etc. Feel free to choose the language you are most comfortable with (C# or C++ are preferred) In addition to the function code, write a complete suite of unit tests for this problem. ______________________________________________________________________pg 119 5. 11 Write a smart pointer (smart_ptr) class. _____________________________________________________________________pg 120  © 2009 CAREERCUP 28 Counting and Combinatorics How to Approach: CHAPTER-6 While some problems in this chapter are simply coding problems, understanding the mathematical solution will help you â€Å"sanity check† your solution. For example, if you know how many subsets there are of a set, you can check to make sure that your algorithm to print all subsets will give you the correct number of subsets. When computing the number of ways of d oing something, think about doing it step by step. The following two examples will illustrate this technique.How many ways can you pick k elements from n elements, if order matters and elements are not replaced? Eg – if we pick 5 different letters, â€Å"abcde† is considered to be different from â€Å"edcba†. The Approach: We have n choices for the first draw. For the second draw, we only have n-1 since one is removed. Then n-2, †¦. When we draw k times, we get down to n-k+1 choices on the last draw. So, n * (n-1) * (n-2)*†¦ * (n-k+1) The Solution: n! / (n-k)! How many ways can you pick k elements from n elements, if order does not matter and elements are not replaced? We’re now just throwing letters into a bucket. Picking â€Å"a, b† is the same thing as â€Å"b, a†.The Approach: If you compare this problem to the previous one, we’ve essentially double (or triple, quadruple, etc) counted items. That is, â€Å"abc†, à ¢â‚¬Å"acb†, â€Å"bac†, â€Å"bca†, â€Å"cab†, â€Å"cba† were all considered unique in the previous solution but now they’re considered the same. Just how many times has â€Å"abc† been included (in its other forms)? 3! times, since there are 3! ways of rearranging â€Å"abc†. In fact, every item has been included 3! times, when it should have been included just once! So, we divide our previous answer by 3! (or, more generally, k! ). We now get n! / (k! * (n-k)! ). This solution is often written as n-choose-k or nCk. 9  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Counting and Combinatorics CHAPTER-6 6. 1 In how many different ways can a cube be painted by using three different colors of paint? ______________________________________________________________________pg 121 6. 2 Imagine a robot sitting on the upper left hand corner of an NxN grid. The robot can only move in two directions: right and down. Ho w many possible paths are there for the robot? FOLLOW-UP Imagine certain squares are â€Å"off limits†, such that the robot can not step on them. Design an algorithm to print all possible paths for the robot. _____________________________________________________________________pg 122 6. 3 Write a method to compute all permutations of a string. ______________________________________________________________________pg 123 6. 4 Implement an algorithm to print all valid (eg, properly opened and closed) combinations of n-pairs of parentheses. EXAMPLE: input: 3 (eg, 3 pairs of parentheses) output: ()()(), ()(()), (())(), ((())) ______________________________________________________________________pg 124 6. 5 Write a method that returns all subsets of a set. ______________________________________________________________________pg 125 2009 CAREERCUP 30 Database How to Approach: CHAPTER-7 You could be asked about databases in a variety of ways: write a SQL query, design a database to h old certain data, or to design a large database. We’ll go through the latter two types here. Small Database Design Imagine you are asked to design a system to represent a school’s registrar: course information, departments, course enrollment, teachers, etc. What are the key objects? Student. Professor. Course. Department. How do they relate to each other? *NOTE: I’m going to make some assumptions here for the purposes of writing up this explanation.In your interview, don’t make assumptions! Ask your interviewer instead. Many-to-Many:  » A course can belong to multiple departments, and each department can have multiple courses. So, create a separate table DepartmentCourse that acts as a â€Å"pairing† of the two. DepartmentCourse has just a department_id field and a course_id field. A student can be in multiple courses, a course can have multiple students. So, do the same as above and create a StudentCourse table. A course only has one professor. A professor can teach multiple courses. So, add a field professor_id to the Courses table.  » One-to-Many:  »Large Database Design When designing a large, scalable database, joins (which are required in the above examples), are generally very slow. Thus, you must denormalize your data. Think carefully about what when data will be used—you’ll probably need to duplicate it in multiple tables. 31  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Database CHAPTER-7 7. 1 Write a method to find the number of employees in each department when we have the following tables: ______________________________________________________________________pg 126 7. 2 What are the different types of joins?Please explain how they differ and why certain types are better in certain situations. ______________________________________________________________________pg 127 7. 3 What is normalization? Explain the pros and cons. _________________________________________________ _____________________pg 128 7. 4 Draw a entity-relationship diagram for a database with companies, people, and professionals (people who work for companies). ______________________________________________________________________pg 129 7. 5 You have to design a database that can store terabytes of data. It should support efficient range queries. How would you do it? _____________________________________________________________________pg 130 Employees containing: Emp_ID, Emp_Name and Dept_ID (Primary key) Departments containing: Dept_Name and Dept_ID (foreign key)  © 2009 CAREERCUP 32 Debugging Existing Code How to Approach CHAPTER-8 Sometimes, in an interview, an interviewer asks you to look at a piece of code and identify the mistakes. We recommend the following approach: 1. 2. 3. Examine the code and understand what it’s expected to do. Ask your interviewer what types of data it’s expected to handle, where it’ll be used, etc. Look for syntax errors: does ever ything type check? s the class declaration correct? Look for â€Å"hot spots†:  »  »  »  »  » 4.  »  » 5. If you see float and doubles, check for precision errors If you see division, check for rounding errors If you see memory allocation, check for memory leaks If you see unsigned ints, check to see if the int might ever be negative If you see bit manipulation, check for correctness The â€Å"normal† case The boundary cases (null, 0, 1, MAX, etc) Run through the code with a few examples: Does it do everything it’s expect to? For example, if the code is supposed to return everyone in a database under 21, does it only look for students?Maybe it should be looking for teach-ers as well? Does it handle unexpected cases? What if it takes in a list and it has a loop? 6. Further Advice 1. 2. Look at the space and time complexity—can you improve it? Correct the mistakes in the code. But do so carefully! Don’t simply make changes until it work s. Deeply understand the issues and then correct them. 33  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Debugging Existing Code 8. 1 Explain what the following code does: ((n & (n-1)) == 0) CHAPTER-8 ______________________________________________________________________pg 131 8. Find the mistake(s) in the following code: unsigned int i; for (i = 100; i ::Other { int foo() { printf(â€Å"here we are †); }; }; main() { typedef Foo typedef Derived Derived_inst; Derived_inst ii; ii. foo(); } ______________________________________________________________________pg 133  © 2009 CAREERCUP 34 Games How To Approach: CHAPTER-9 Sometimes interviewers ask these problems simply because they’re â€Å"fun,† but often, it’s also because â€Å"game† problems are heavy on object oriented design. Gaming problems tend to be more â€Å"free form† and thus they give you the chance to demonstrate how you really code.Define Data Structures W hen implementing something so free form, ask yourself, â€Å"Where can I define a class or a struct? † When in doubt, define a new class or struct. It tells the interviewer that you care about the maintainability of your code. Validate Your Assumptions Be careful about making assumptions. Suppose you’re asked to implement the word game Scrabble. Don’t assume that the dictionary will be in English—or even in that character set. It could be in any language! Ask your interviewer lots and lots of questions so that you know what to implement. Are you solving this problem once, or many times?Sometimes the solution will change depending on whether or not your code will be called multiple times. For example, suppose you’re asked to find all anagrams of a word. If you’re calling this code just once, it may be fastest just to rearrange the letters and check if they’re in the dictionary. But, if you’re going to call the code multiple time s, it’s now fastest to precompute data by iterating through all the words in the dictionary. Can you generalize your code, or part of it? If you really want to go above and beyond, try writing your code as though it were a more generalized case.For example, if you’re trying to figure out if a tic-tac-toe board has a winner, you might suggest to your interviewer solving it for the more general NxN case. If you go down this path though, be warned—sometimes problems are trickier than they appear. Also, make sure you discuss this with your interviewer so he/she knows what you’re doing. 35  © 2009 CAREERCUP exclusively for [email  protected] google. com Games CHAPTER-9 9. 1 Design an algorithm to figure out if someone has won in a game of tic-tac-toe. ______________________________________________________________________pg 135 9. The Game of Master Mind is played as follows: – The computer has four slots containing balls that are red (R), yellow (Y) , green (G) or blue (B). For example, the computer might have RGGB (eg, Slot #1 is red, Slots #2 and #3 are green, #4 is blue). – You, the user, are trying to guess the solution. You might, for example, guess YRGB. – When you guess right color for the right slot, you get a â€Å"hit†. If you guess a color that exists but is in the wrong slot, you get a â€Å"psuedo-hit†. For example, the guess YRGB has 2 hits and one pseudo-hit. For each guess, you are told the number of hits and pseudo hits.Write a method that, given a guess and a solution, returns the number of hits and pseudo hits. ______________________________________________________________________pg 137 9. 3 There is an 8Ãâ€"8 chess board in which two diagonally opposite corners have been cut off. You are given 31 dominos in which a single domino can cover exactly two squares. Can you use the 31 dominos to cover the entire board? Prove your answer (by providing an example, or showing why itâ€℠¢s impossible). ______________________________________________________________________pg 138 9. Find a way to arrange 8 queens on a chess board so that none of them share the same row, column or diagonal. ______________________________________________________________________pg 139 9. 5 Othello is played as follows: Each Othello piece is white on one side and black on the other. On your turn, you place a piece on the board so that your color is facing up. You must pick a spot such that your opponent’s pieces are either on the left and the right, or on the top and the bottom. All of your opponent’s pieces on the line between two of yours are then turned over, to become yours. Your goal is to own the most pieces.Design the game Othello. Write a method to check whether someone has won the game. ______________________________________________________________________pg 141  © 2009 CAREERCUP 36 Java How to Approach: CHAPTER-10 While Java related questions are found throughou t this book, this chapter deals with questions about the language and syntax. You generally will not find many questions like this at the larger software companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc), which tend to avoid ‘trivia’ based questions, but these questions are very common at many smaller companies. What do you do when you don’t know the answer?If you don’t know the answer to a question about the Java language, try to figure it out by doing the following: (1) Think about what other languages do. (2) Create an example of the scenario. (3) Ask yourself how you would handle the scenario if you were designing the language. Your interviewer will likely be equally—or more—impressed if you

VACCINES Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

VACCINES - Assignment Example Flanders (2000), states the two examples of childs deaths which are connected with vaccination and non-vaccination. According to her article, one of the girls died of Hepatitis B, which kills about 5,000 thousand people in the US each year, and the other died after being vaccinated against polio. At the same time, according to the Allens article, the compensation program provides financial assistance to families to care for children injured by vaccines and helps those families who have lost a child to a severe side effect. But it should be remembered, that the mentioned system is designed as non-fault, which means that it is no need in defining whether vaccine has been defective or the doctor didnt have enough medical skills to prevent side effects. In case no other specific medical reasons for childs death are found, it is supposed that the vaccine has caused it. But it should also be remembered, that if the injury or cause of death is not one of a list of known vaccine side effects , the families must provide proof that the ailment was caused by the vaccine. (OMeara, 2013) . There often appears a question, which makes the positive effect of vaccination less, for the account of possible positive influence of hygiene and sanitation on the significant decrease of most infections. But at the same time, it is stated, that vaccines have had the direct impact on the actual incidence of infections in the last century. There is a possibility for the child to catch the disease from the vaccine itself, as it is usually presented in the form of live viruses, which stimulate the childs immune system. But this is probable only in case the childs immune system is severely damaged, which may happen when the child has got AIDS or HIV, or was getting a cancer treatment (radiation), or have got the transplant and thus was taking anti-rejection drugs. In any other cases

Thermodynamic and Fluids Report Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Thermodynamic and Fluids Report - Coursework Example In the second part we shall use a pitot static tube to determine the behavior of air flow. The basic principle of both the pitot, static and pitot static tube is that the pressure of a flowing fluid will increase if it is brought to rest at a point of stagnation of the probe. If an assumption is made that if the flow in the fluid is similar to that of a gas, the velocity of the fluid will be much smaller as compared to the speed of sound such that the changes in the density may be overlooked (Bertin, 2002). Therefore, the fluid basically behaves like an incompressible fluid. The point of stagnation can be located on the system and the streamlines can be bent past the body of the aircraft. The pressure experienced at the point of stagnation is referred to as the stagnation pressure. If the viscous effects experienced by the body are negligible, the difference between the stagnation pressure and the static pressure is usually related to the dynamic pressure which is then related to the square of the velocity (Panton, 2005). Therefore, the velocity information is then conver ted to a pressure difference which can e measured by a measuring device for pressure such as the manometer (von Kà ¡rmà ¡n, 2000). The static tube is composed of a cross section surface with tubes and a manometer. The air flows across the cross section into the manometer where the density of air can be determined. The manometer allows for the determination of the static pressure, the dynamic pressure and the stagnation pressure of the fluid. The pitot static tube is a combination of the static and pitot tube. In this tube, the flow in the tube is axi-symmetric and within the vicinity of the nose. The pitot tube is then connected to one limb of a U tube manometer while the other limb of the manometer is connected to a tap made on the tube wall. Both the tap and the nose of the tube approximately on the same planes. An

Great Pyramids of Giza Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Great Pyramids of Giza - Essay Example ructures have also been a great wonder as no building has been known to maintain such good condition after a long period despite the harsh weather conditions that the desert has subjected them to. None of these pyramids are more spectacular than the Great Pyramids of Giza located in an archeological site based on the outskirts of Cairo. These are made up of three pyramids that are located in close proximity with one another and next to another architectural wonder known as The Great Sphinx. There are a number of cemeteries and they are one of the most admired archeological sites in the world (Lorenzi). The pyramids are located around 5 miles from the town of Giza and thus the origin of its name. It has served as a symbol of ancient Egyptian prowess and is the only remaining ancient world wonders in existence making it the oldest of them all. The great pyramids of Giza can be referred to as a complex due to the close proximity of the three pyramids although it should be noted that there are different pyramids belonging to three different people, each with its own uniqueness (Ask Aladdin). Despite how they may look from afar, the pyramids are actually different in size with Pyramid of Khufu, otherwise known as the Great Pyramid the largest in size followed by the Pyramid of Khafre and lastly the Pyramid of Menkaure, which can be said to be modest in comparison to others in terms of size (Shafer & Dieter 41). The pyramids are located within a few 100 miles from one another, but from afar that distance looks much smaller due to the size of the structures (Hawass). As a matter of fact, one might actually get the impression that they are quite close even up to a few centimeters apart if they are far enough from the archeological discoveries. The great sphinx is believed to belong to the pyramid of Khafres as the monument was supposedly erected in his honor. The pyramid of Khufu which is the largest of the three pyramids is a complex that included a valley temple

Plato's View of Democracy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Plato's View of Democracy - Essay Example Many people were wondering how the ideal state could come about. It was argued that it could be a democracy, and this 'idealized world,' could, in name exist. Plato doubted this however. Other people caught onto Plato's ideas about the Greek state quickly. They even adopted them for their own philosophies about the world. In fact, "Jews used Plato's myth [about the demiurge in Timaeus] to imagine how the world could have gotten so out of shape when it was God's wisdom that had planned it." (Mack, 1995) Plato was talking not only about democracy, but about the creation of a polis: "Well, then, said I, is not the city you are founding to be a Greek city" (Hamilton, 2005) Plato insisted that Greeks would run a democratic city in a better fashion than barbarians or non-Greeks, and insisted upon this point with some alacrity. "They will not, being Greeks, ravage Greek territory nor burn habitations, and they will not admit that in any city all the population are their enemies, men, women, and children, but will say that only a few at any time are their foes, those, namely, who are to blame for the quarrel." (Hamilton, 2005) Plato insisted that Greeks would not harm their own land if they were to fight for it and, would indeed not pillage the land. "And on all these considerations they will not be willing to lay waste the soil, since the majority are their friends, nor to destroy the houses, but will carry the conflict only to the point of compelling the guilty to do justice by the pressure of the suffering of the innocent." (Hamilton, 2005) Plato considered that it would be an injustice towards Greek countrymen if Greeks were to commit their own savage acts of war on their own country in pursuit of democracy, saying, "if either party... The Plato's View on Democracy The problems Plato had with democracy were that: there was a fake quality about this notion, and that in fact in Greece not all men were equipped to become faciliators of the state; men needed an oligarchic state because no man was an island capable of helping himself; and that a society in which there is a hierarchy avoids justice, and includes a state which would dissolve into a tyranny because people would not know what would be the right thing to do. "While Plato and Aristotle founded their schools, the Academy and the Lyceum, before the beginning of the Hellenistic period, the Epicureans and the Stoics first appeared in the early decades of that period." (Koester, 1995) Plato does have a way of describing events, but he does so in a mentally rigorous process. "When Plato describes the universe [and how ordered a democracy should be], "he does so in almost entirely mythological terms; so too in his many discussions of the nature and destiny of the soul (Phaedo, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic, Laws)." (Tarnas, 1991) In that period, not every man was deemed equal in Plato's eyes. "In the middle period dialogues (Phaedo, Symposium, Republic), Plato set out the character of the ideal society and speculated on the nature of true reality as such. Plato had a very narrow view on democracy, and he can’t be blamed for that seeing as how the people of his time were at times unreliable.

Torture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Torture - Essay Example But after a while we start to wonder what security can possibly mean, when so much of what people have struggled to secure in this country—the Constitution, basic human rights, and the rule of law—seems to be going out the window. Convention Against Torture (http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html) Article 3 1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. 2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. Article 4 1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature. Christopher Hitchens (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808?currentPage=2) Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. Our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual  sere  school for terrorists. Which returns us to my starting point, about the distinction between training  for something and training to resist it. One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience were the only way in which the words â€Å"waterboard† and â€Å"American† could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath. Michael Levin (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html) There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory. Moreover, these situations are moving from the realm of imagination to fact. Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless ... here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail. Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 a.m on the fateful day, but preferring death to failure, won't disclose where the bomb is. What do we do? If we follow due process, wait for his lawyer, arraign him, millions of people will die. If the only way to save those lives is to subject the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not doing so? I suggest there are none. In any case, I ask

A Heightened Agent Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

A Heightened Agent - Coursework Example After having supper, I lit up the cigarette, placed it between my lips, and tried to smoke right beside my mother. Understandably, I choked out because I had never smoked before and my lungs were not used to allowing the in-pour of smoke. My mother snatched the cigarette from me and tore it to pieces. To this day, I regret how upset I had made her. This shows that â€Å"errors in cultural performance committed by post-adolescents are generally seen as more serious and are more likely to arouse direct criticism, punishment, or other sanctions† (Hirschfeld 612). Back then, I perceived my parents, especially my mother as the foundation of our structure. My mother always has rules and principles that everyone must abide by. While many people experience a shift in the structure today, my structure is based on my parents even today. I think it is because of the fact that I have become more responsible, caring, and respectful toward my parents over the passage of time than I was as a child.

Conflict Between Research and Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Conflict Between Research and Ethics - Essay Example These are countered though by the Nuremberg Code, the Declaration of Helsinki and the acts of the American and other medical associations. The world has been beset and besieged by various viruses and ailments that up to now remedies and cures are not yet available despite medical interventions and researches. While scientists have yet to find a cure for cancer and AIDS, mutated and virulent strains of viruses have cropped up to claim numerous lives while helpless governments watch in desperation as their citizens fall prey to these esoteric diseases. In 1918, Swine Flu made its ghastly entrance in Fort Riley, USA and immediately worked to wipe out half a million people. It reappeared in Russia in 1933 and in 1976 went back to USA to annihilate more people. Medical researchers frenetically worked to find an immunization remedy for this and vaccinated by government edict, some 40 million Americans. But to their horror, a new strain of disease was generated as a side effect which caused serious neurological disorders. This was named Guillain-Barre Syndrome and victimized 1098 people, 25 of whom died (Orr,2007,pp.21,23). R esulting to manifold lawsuits, this was one case where medical research floundered. Meantime, the swine flu made its presence felt again in Mexico in April 2009 and in a new mutated form which is called A(H1N1) and quickly spread to 30 countries infecting 12,515 people, 91 of which succumbed to death (Reuters, http://http://h1n1virus.us). In most of these cases, governments, in their desire to contain the disease, forcibly vaccinate those afflicted with the antiviral drug Tamiflu or Relenza which medical researchers had come up with to fight the mutated swine flu disease (Reuters, http://h1n1virus.us). Other virulent viruses that made medical researchers work against time to halt them before they bring down more people were the Asian Flu which originated in China in 1957 and killed some 70,000 Americans and 2 million people globally (Orr,2007,p.21); the Ebola Virus which internal and external hemorrhagic symptoms were truly frightening but which was contained only within Zaire and Sudan where it wiped out 400 people (Williams & Wilkins,2008,p.1010); the Avian flu in 1997; SARS in 2003(Friedlander,2009,pp.111-7) and HIV/AIDS virus, first identified in 1981 but which up to now continues to rage and has already killed 2.1 million people while infecting 33.2 million people worldwide (UNAIDS,WHO,2007). The Role of Modern Medical Research Hereinabove, it is clear that medical research has to be maximized in order to save lives from all these virulent strains of viruses that threaten to wipe out humanity from the face of the earth. Only the efforts of medical researchers can save humanity from a life-threatening devastation of the magnitude of bubonic plague which once wiped out of existence 1/3 of Europe or 25 million people from 1346-50 alone. The pioneering efforts of medical researchers to discover drugs such as streptomycin, gentamicin, tetracyclines and chloramphenicol in order to put to stoppage the havoc of devastation inflicted by The Black Death all over the world from 542 to 1950, was