Thank goodness for spokeo... I now know that my deceased wife was actually a male...
This site would be quite funny... except for the fact that people will do look ups on this site and assume that it is correct. I'm just happy to know that even though I live in a below average neighborhood... my home is worth more than $1,000,000!!!! WooHoo!!!
This just happened to me. My mother passed away last month. She was extremely active in genealogy research and was therefore very active on-line. Fortunately, before she passed away I knew her passwords for her computer (... well I built it and she never changed that one). I also knew most of her on-line passwords... or was able to guess it.
The only password that gave me fits was her churches financials which she kept on her computer. Of course the congregation wanted their giveing reports for last year. That one was fun.
I used her address book to notify some of her most frequest E-Mailing buddies of her passing and I still check her E-Mail on a regular basis to see if there and any more genealogical contacts that come through.
Even though my mother was far less computer literate than the typical slashdotter...it was amazing how much she had in the on-line world. Had I not known her passwords, much would have been lost or unknown.
Learning from this, I am planning on making sure that I can pass on my locked information to the appropriate people.... and no, I have no pr0n to pass on to my children.
If computers are treated as the baby sitters, then I could see where the article is correct.
We have 9 computers in our household. My oldest daughter who is in highschool just scored in the 98th percentile on a standardized test, my second daughter scores straight A's, my youngest son in first grade is doing well in school (grades are kinda worthless at that age level).
They are all accomplished musicians for their ages, they have multiple interests, they all read (sometimes four or five books at once), my girls compete in Bible quizzing competitions through our church denomination and usually finish 'in the money' at the national competitions, they each have their own chores to take care of around the house and they are very well mannered (in public and private).
And yes we enjoy playing networked games where the five of us beat up on each other at times (AOE and bzflag are the household favs).
It's not the computers that are at fault. It is the parents and the structure laid down in the home that makes the difference.
Well I'm 45 miles outside of St. Louis so I have a similar issue (yep I drive in every day). We use the local phone company only for having minimal connection to the wired world if necessary. Most of my phone time is spent on my cell phone while in St. Louis (my cell wont even work where I live ). For Internet access I am using Starband with WinProxy as the gateway for my home network of ten PCs (yep our family has LAN gaming parties every once in a while).
This is far from an ideal setup, but is all that is available. It is the small price that I pay for being able to live on my own littel piece of paradise away from the noise and congestion of civilization... the nearest Walmart is over 20 miles away.)
Good luck. If you get cell service okay where you live, I would just go with that and a satelite connection.
Without repeating the details already posted, go the college route. I do have a slightly different twist on things however. if you are really good at computers, DON'T go the CS route.
In my opinion computers are just tools. I would learn the details of another field that you are interested in and then use your computing prowess to solve problems in that industry that your peers will be clueless in.
I started my own consulting company almost a decade ago, however in college I think that I only had one CS course. My undergrad was in Physics and I grabbed two Masters (MBA & Master of Info. Management). These degrees have openned doors to upper level management and given me an understanding of the thinking processes in business that has allowed me to go places that my network/programing skills would never have done.
Contrary to popoular opinion, you don't really go to college to learn details... you can get that out of books. What you learn is thinking processes and learn alternate points of view from your own. The parchment then is extremely valuable for kicking off your carreer.
As for your question concerning certifications. I used to teach certification classes for IBM.... which brings up an entirely different tangent that we will stay away from.
Certifications are great for proving to people who do not know you, that you know 'something'. I have not seriously chased after a certification for about six years. Since I now have a track record, my clients that know me couldn't care less if I had a piece of paper saying that I know something. I'll still perform problem determination on new environments faster than most new paper techies. (Being fair, once the issue/problem is found they can probably fix it faster than I can research the fix).
So, yes, go to college, but if you already know computers and are comfortable with them learn another discipline (since most of the technology that you learn in CS will be toast in a few years) and get a certification to prove that you in fact spell PC, TCP/IP, and LAN.
I've been a Starband user for over a year. Given that I bought some acreage out in the middle of no man's land a couple of years ago, this was the only solution outside of dial-up.
Like any option, this has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. For me the benfits were pretty simple. 1) It allowed me to avoid some terrible dial-up options. 2) It has allowed me to place my home 'network' on the Internet with out much difficulty, 3) there is a Proxy/Firewall (WinProxy) that is affordable and reasonably functional and keeps my kids off of content that I want them to avoid.
There have been two 'modems' that have been used with this service. The first was the 180 model that I actually liked. It allowed me to throw a Linksys router in the loop to get my network on the net. With the newer 360, the only option (for me) is to have it connected to a Windows box that is pretty well dedicated to that function. All of my other boxes router through there. I was just about ready to drop the service after my horrible experience upgrading from a well functioning model 180 to the 360. After fighting with it for two months (almost a year ago) the system is now reliable.
If you need the system for Interactive work (gaming, chats, etc.) then the service will annoy you to no end. If most of your work can be done in batched modes (off-line mail retrieval throughout the day while you are at clients, or large FTP dumps) then you will be happy.
My biggest suggestion is that during installation make sure you get someone who is testing the sat signal strength with some decent equipment while during the line-up. If they are doing it with line-of-site or just looking at meters off the web... run!!! Keep in mind that for the uplink to work your small dish is having to hit a spec in the sky many miles up. Most of the discussions that I have seen from disgruntalled users has been the result of poor installations.
Overall, when compared to my alternate choice this Starband is a no brainer. However, I do miss the response time of my 500K+ async DSL.... until I remember that it isn't everyone who can be hitting the Internet while sitting by a campfire and watching the stars overhead .
I have been surprised at how many people are saying Run from Notes and do only Apache/Linux while others are saying the exact opposite.
The fact of the matter is that Notes is GREAT at what it does well... which is quite a bit. The other side of the coin is that it is horrible at what it CAN'T do well.
One of my clients is a Fortune 500 firm with lots of Notes Servers and 2000+ clients.
I am responsible for the Intranet for one of the internal groups that supports the plants. We use the Notes Platform with its replication and web capabilities to assist with document management (using Domino.Doc) as well as collaborative activities. We also tie workflow through Notes and the E-Mail system. This works GREAT.
What I DO NOT use Notes/Domino for is the main web site. I use Apache for our main web server (unfortunately I also have IIS on a box for those stupid vertical apps that only run there... don't get me started). Most of our file distributions (FTP), on-line documentation (HTML based), and interfaces to legacy data (DB2 and UDB5) are done through pages served by Apache.
There is no way that I could have built the existing Notes functionality on Apache and I cringe to think what my life would have been like trying to run the main Intranet through Domino (I think the guys in white coats would have come to get me).
The fact is that they are both great at their respective jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank goodness for spokeo ... I now know that my deceased wife was actually a male ...
This site would be quite funny ... except for the fact that people will do look ups on this site and assume that it is correct. I'm just happy to know that even though I live in a below average neighborhood ... my home is worth more than $1,000,000!!!! WooHoo!!!
That. That. That. That. That. That. That. That.
There THAT should do it.
Um, I think it should have been Tuttle ... but we'll need to fix the air-conditioning first.
This just happened to me. My mother passed away last month. She was extremely active in genealogy research and was therefore very active on-line. Fortunately, before she passed away I knew her passwords for her computer (... well I built it and she never changed that one). I also knew most of her on-line passwords ... or was able to guess it.
... and no, I have no pr0n to pass on to my children.
The only password that gave me fits was her churches financials which she kept on her computer. Of course the congregation wanted their giveing reports for last year. That one was fun.
I used her address book to notify some of her most frequest E-Mailing buddies of her passing and I still check her E-Mail on a regular basis to see if there and any more genealogical contacts that come through.
Even though my mother was far less computer literate than the typical slashdotter...it was amazing how much she had in the on-line world. Had I not known her passwords, much would have been lost or unknown.
Learning from this, I am planning on making sure that I can pass on my locked information to the appropriate people.
If computers are treated as the baby sitters, then I could see where the article is correct.
We have 9 computers in our household. My oldest daughter who is in highschool just scored in the 98th percentile on a standardized test, my second daughter scores straight A's, my youngest son in first grade is doing well in school (grades are kinda worthless at that age level).
They are all accomplished musicians for their ages, they have multiple interests, they all read (sometimes four or five books at once), my girls compete in Bible quizzing competitions through our church denomination and usually finish 'in the money' at the national competitions, they each have their own chores to take care of around the house and they are very well mannered (in public and private).
And yes we enjoy playing networked games where the five of us beat up on each other at times (AOE and bzflag are the household favs).
It's not the computers that are at fault. It is the parents and the structure laid down in the home that makes the difference.
Just my two cents worth.
Well I'm 45 miles outside of St. Louis so I have a similar issue (yep I drive in every day). We use the local phone company only for having minimal connection to the wired world if necessary. Most of my phone time is spent on my cell phone while in St. Louis (my cell wont even work where I live ). For Internet access I am using Starband with WinProxy as the gateway for my home network of ten PCs (yep our family has LAN gaming parties every once in a while).
... the nearest Walmart is over 20 miles away.)
This is far from an ideal setup, but is all that is available. It is the small price that I pay for being able to live on my own littel piece of paradise away from the noise and congestion of civilization
Good luck. If you get cell service okay where you live, I would just go with that and a satelite connection.
I always thought that the insult was:
"Your mother wears army boots for ear-rings".
But what do I know. My mother was never in the army.
Without repeating the details already posted, go the college route. I do have a slightly different twist on things however. if you are really good at computers, DON'T go the CS route.
... you can get that out of books. What you learn is thinking processes and learn alternate points of view from your own. The parchment then is extremely valuable for kicking off your carreer.
... which brings up an entirely different tangent that we will stay away from.
In my opinion computers are just tools. I would learn the details of another field that you are interested in and then use your computing prowess to solve problems in that industry that your peers will be clueless in.
I started my own consulting company almost a decade ago, however in college I think that I only had one CS course. My undergrad was in Physics and I grabbed two Masters (MBA & Master of Info. Management). These degrees have openned doors to upper level management and given me an understanding of the thinking processes in business that has allowed me to go places that my network/programing skills would never have done.
Contrary to popoular opinion, you don't really go to college to learn details
As for your question concerning certifications. I used to teach certification classes for IBM.
Certifications are great for proving to people who do not know you, that you know 'something'. I have not seriously chased after a certification for about six years. Since I now have a track record, my clients that know me couldn't care less if I had a piece of paper saying that I know something. I'll still perform problem determination on new environments faster than most new paper techies. (Being fair, once the issue/problem is found they can probably fix it faster than I can research the fix).
So, yes, go to college, but if you already know computers and are comfortable with them learn another discipline (since most of the technology that you learn in CS will be toast in a few years) and get a certification to prove that you in fact spell PC, TCP/IP, and LAN.
Good luck. The world is yours!!
I've been a Starband user for over a year. Given that I bought some acreage out in the middle of no man's land a couple of years ago, this was the only solution outside of dial-up.
... run!!! Keep in mind that for the uplink to work your small dish is having to hit a spec in the sky many miles up. Most of the discussions that I have seen from disgruntalled users has been the result of poor installations.
.... until I remember that it isn't everyone who can be hitting the Internet while sitting by a campfire and watching the stars overhead .
Like any option, this has its benefits as well as its drawbacks. For me the benfits were pretty simple. 1) It allowed me to avoid some terrible dial-up options. 2) It has allowed me to place my home 'network' on the Internet with out much difficulty, 3) there is a Proxy/Firewall (WinProxy) that is affordable and reasonably functional and keeps my kids off of content that I want them to avoid.
There have been two 'modems' that have been used with this service. The first was the 180 model that I actually liked. It allowed me to throw a Linksys router in the loop to get my network on the net. With the newer 360, the only option (for me) is to have it connected to a Windows box that is pretty well dedicated to that function. All of my other boxes router through there. I was just about ready to drop the service after my horrible experience upgrading from a well functioning model 180 to the 360. After fighting with it for two months (almost a year ago) the system is now reliable.
If you need the system for Interactive work (gaming, chats, etc.) then the service will annoy you to no end. If most of your work can be done in batched modes (off-line mail retrieval throughout the day while you are at clients, or large FTP dumps) then you will be happy.
My biggest suggestion is that during installation make sure you get someone who is testing the sat signal strength with some decent equipment while during the line-up. If they are doing it with line-of-site or just looking at meters off the web
Overall, when compared to my alternate choice this Starband is a no brainer. However, I do miss the response time of my 500K+ async DSL
There are ads on /.? ;-)
I have been surprised at how many people are saying Run from Notes and do only Apache/Linux while others are saying the exact opposite.
The fact of the matter is that Notes is GREAT at what it does well ... which is quite a bit. The other side of the coin is that it is horrible at what it CAN'T do well.
One of my clients is a Fortune 500 firm with lots of Notes Servers and 2000+ clients.
I am responsible for the Intranet for one of the internal groups that supports the plants. We use the Notes Platform with its replication and web capabilities to assist with document management (using Domino.Doc) as well as collaborative activities. We also tie workflow through Notes and the E-Mail system. This works GREAT.
What I DO NOT use Notes/Domino for is the main web site. I use Apache for our main web server (unfortunately I also have IIS on a box for those stupid vertical apps that only run there ... don't get me started). Most of our file distributions (FTP), on-line documentation (HTML based), and interfaces to legacy data (DB2 and UDB5) are done through pages served by Apache.
There is no way that I could have built the existing Notes functionality on Apache and I cringe to think what my life would have been like trying to run the main Intranet through Domino (I think the guys in white coats would have come to get me).
The fact is that they are both great at their respective jobs.