I'm a Sysadmin that graduated about 2 years ago, and I have a Management BS w/ IT minor, and am almost an MCSA (one test left). From my limited experience, certifications are a good way to certify your knowledge. If you're looking at a career in IT based on experience alone, you should probably be able to pass at least the CompTIA A+ and MS exam 70-270, Windows XP, without needing to study (no OS wars, please...most businesses use XP and you know it). And probably Network+ too, although I'd forgive you for failing anything involving the archaic questions on coax cabling/connectors and non-ethernet networks.
The BS definately helped me land the job though (and my starting salary). Most places look at you differently when they know you've put the time in for the degree.
Taking those tests will cost some cash, but it's not too bad. Nothing like my fat student loan. And it's great to put on your resume in lieu of experience. As many other posters have said, once you have the experience, that will probably land you many more jobs than a degree or cert.
Also something that weasled me out of the helpdesk quicker was my hardware knowledge. I've saved them quite a bit of cash because I'm a hardware junkie, and I know what model of Xeon can best what model of Opteron by a rough percentage without even looking it up, or the advantages of RAID 50 versus RAID 10, etc. Apparently good hardware people are hard to find...it's why places like CDW do so well...they handle that aspect for a lot of customers.
They can pay just fine most of the time, the problem is the occasional shitty weather year.
There are also some other things like crop insurance and whatnot that can help out. It's not all the government.
And it's the very small farmers that are affected the most. My family's considered small, but not tiny...we could handle a bad year on our own.
But yes there are some similarities to higher education. I have a nasty student loan that can't argue there. I also think it bears some resemblence to drug addiction...we're addicited to the high yields from the genetically modified crops and hybrids. But we're at a state now where modern society would be in a world of hurt without them.
I'm a geek that loves arguing as much as the next geek, but I really don't have the time to go over the details of organic vs. g-mod yeilds, germination, location of grain elevators that accept organic, organic fertilizers' production and availability, etc.
Organic is great for the niche market of folks that think it makes them healthier (I know what organic crops are fertilized with, I'll take the chems, thanks) but for large-scale production like we need here in the States and abroad, it is simply not feasible. You can take my word or not, I could care less.
They pay them large subsidies on BAD years. Bad year=bad weather, not low demand.
And the annoying thing about weather is, the midwest can have a poor year, but the plains have a good year, so the prices are still relatively low, or vise versa.
Some of the fancier crap is at $350 now, so $500 is quite feasible. I know what we paid for a bag of seed corn in the 90's, and it was right around $50-$75. If you're really that interested, I could dig in our old files and probably find some of the handwritten seed bills we have and scan them in for you.
But what about the millions that go to independent farmers who make less than $30-40k/yr that would go bankrupt after a bad year without these subsidies? That is the unfortunate reality with cost of seed and chemicals these days...companies like Monsanto jacking the prices to astronomical levels. In the 90's an average bag of seed corn was $50....it's expected that in the next two years, it will be $500. When you consider you need a couple dozen bags for a small 40-acre field, that adds up really quick. And when a bad year hits (we had a very dry summer this year, and last year spring was causing flooding), the yields can be extremely poor.
There has been, and always will be, some people who exploit government programs involving money handouts. You have to design the system to avoid that as much as possible, without hurting the people the system was designed to help. There are a lot of programs that are a much bigger waste of taxpayer money that should be looked at first.
It's one of the common apocalypse dates. It started with the Mayan calendar, but it also applies to some chinese fortune telling book, and one of the major Nostradamus types also predicted it as well. What's funny is there is a web crawler bot program used to predict stock market trends that also predicts this date, and supposedly this system predicted 9-11 90 days before it happened.
Not that I buy any of that bullshit..I was just poking fun.
You've got a very good point...and if I had information that was either that valuable or could get me into that much trouble, I would probably seriously consider a different approach.
Come to think of it, the security string on my Truecrypt volume I keep my tax records, paystub scans, and other personal info in has a long-ass security string that he wouldn't know. But he generally knows that stuff anyway...I just keep it that way just in case my PC ever got compromised.
I'm not saying my 'strategy' is the way to go. It just works well enough for me and may work well enough for the OP.
I'm relatively young, so I haven't put a lot of thought into this, but my best friend knows all the personal account names and passwords I use for everything. He would be able to get into any of my accounts with a few guesses. I don't have a comprehensive list of everything, but the main stuff would get worked out.
And before you security nuts go crazy about telling other people your passwords, keep in mind this is a person I trust above anyone else...even my own close relatives. If I can't trust him, then I must live a truely miserable life of denial full of people who dislike me. I also don't tell him any of the admin passwords at work, as A) other people have acces to those, and B) They aren't my passwords to give out, even though I know he would do no harm (hell he'd probably manage the network better than half our admins...)
Oh, I also know pretty much all his passwords too...so...yeah, he better not try anything:-)
"Microsoft wooed Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Acer and many other companies into making its browser the default choice on Windows desktops."
Or rather, they just didn't install a second browser at all, since the only browser kinda HAS to be the default. I really doubt much wooing was involved.
Haha, you think most Americans care about their own history. That's cute. You really have no idea how stupid people can be around here. They're fat, dumb, and happy thinking they know everything and actually knowing nothing.
Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).
To be fair, where they live affects their perception of the world. Being in rural areas you stay isolated, so everyone around you generally shares your values, religion, etc. There is usually no noticable pollution (other than the occasional manure smell:-), employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, you have an overwhelming amount of pollution to people who aren't used to it (ie me), jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more. You see more foriegners and foriegn ways, or generally just people and things with values different from your own.
The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.
To be fair to Microsoft (And a disclaimer, I primarily use Opera myself):
-I don't find the interface any more or less intuitive than FF3 or Opera. I am used to Opera, so I know it better. I've never really had to hunt for an option in any of them...everything is all generally in a logical spot.
-IE7 is definately a standard-ignoring bastard. And assuming you're an FF advocate, remember it didnt pass Acid2 until FF3. And IE8 is shipping in a standard-complaint mode by default, which should help all browsers out.
-Sluggish...compared to FF3 and Opera. But it was faster than FF2 for several different langages...so then FF2 was also sluggish, by your standards.
-Bloated? How? I really don't see any bloat compared to other browsers.
-What features do you expect from it out of the box? Seems to do about the same as the others, plus or minus some minor stuff.
(Yes, I know I am going to get voted down for attempting to defend IE in any capacity...they should really just add -1 Disagree and be done with it)
The original photo on the left is a lower quality version than the actual original that was edited. The one on the right is an obvious 'shop job. It's not like they were trying to hide anything at all, they just wanted the photo to look a little cleaner. They probably didn't have one of her in front of a background like a proper portraite, so they added in a flag behind her to make the pic look more clean.
Based on the headline, I am assuming someone wanted us to immediately think that the Army was trying to cover something up, because hating and mistrusting the armed forces is the cool thing to do nowadays. But what really happened is someone made a simple mistake with no decietful intentions and the AP has a zero tolerance policy on altered photos.
Well, when you compare the technologies available that time, is it much worse? They had a good chance of getting sunk in a storm. Their navigation capabilities were far from accurate. Information on the new world was sparse. Getting there and ensuring you could produce the necessary amount of food and shelter to live was far from a guarantee. I really think they're pretty close to the same.
When you do play it, it may see somewhat unspectacular now (but you should still find it plenty interesting)...you have to remember what FPSs of that time were like:
Kill monsters with mediore to bad AI, find blue key, open door, go to next level. Next level involed the same thing, except there is also a red key.
Half-Life had a continual story, no real level breaks, talking characters, and some of the AI (Marines) was particularly intelligent and worked together. It laid the groundwork for the modern FPS. Many of the things we consider standard in FPSs now are because of Half-Life.
No, the difference is that Nigerian scams never payout. Casinos always have a chance to pay out. And, in many US states, lottery and casino money often go to some of the better causes, like education.
Also, remember you don't have to give your money to either of them. Stupid people will always find stupid ways to waste their money. Nothing you can do will protect them.
I never said they were far right or far left. I just said that having a better balance helps quash the far left/right ideas/legislation that get thrown around.
I would put the general Democratic consensus *slightly* closer to the middle than Republicans. But calling them left center is not exactly accurate, because they let too much far left nonsense get through. Also, calling an entire group of people wrong about a variety of issues makes you look no more intelligent than they are.
And what mess are you referring to exactly? There are a lot of them, and most of his solutions seem piss poor to me.
Middle east? That's the fault of both parties for not sending the 400k troops originally requested by military leadership to get the job done right and in a timely fashion. Now that it's such a mess, I really don't care what we do. We can stay until it's stable, or pull out and let them have a civil war. I could care less at this point. I don't think either option will help out public opinion....we can't get into negative numbers, can we?
Economy? First major factor: Clinton asking and getting changes in the Community Reinvestment act basically forcing banks to take on high-risk lenders. Second major factor: Bush seeing signs of this and sitting around with his thumbs up his ass. But really both of those combined only attribute 50% of the problem...it was a lot of small things that accumulated into one colossal fuckup.
Illegal Immigration? Fault of both parties for doing jack shit and trying to milk votes out of them.
Energy? Not really anyone's fault...incentives have been around for a while, it just takes time to develop and implement 'greener' sources of power that are also *COST EFFECTIVE*. I suppose if you want, we could blame the Dems for not letting us build more nuclear plants...nuclear waste storage is plenty safe and secure, and nuclear power is far, far, cleaner than coal, and not as environmentally impactful as hydroelectric dams. And if we expand this into oil supply shortages, we could also knock the Dems for making environmental regulations so strict we haven't had a new refinery since the 70's, or for not letting us poke a hole in a few acres of a massive wildlife refuge in Alaska.
Global Warming? I'm still on the fence. Warming is happening, that's for certain, but every time I start to think that we may or may not be the cause (anthropological vs natural), a new study comes out debunking what I thought I knew. I think it'll be some time before we're really certain what is causing it (and if it's not going to just revert to a mild ice age in another couple hundred years like some geologists think). Fault? Both parties for getting emotional about the issue and distorting the facts with what they feel reality should be.
Gay marrige? Fault of Republicans for missing the little part that says "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE". Give everyone, straight and gay, a civil union license with equal benefits and let the churches sort 'em out.
Abortion? Fault of Republicans for above reason, Fault of Dems for thinking that the mother has the right to kill a newborn. Use whatever scans necessary, CT, etc., get a concensus on roughly when a fetus starts having a developed enough brain for cognitive thought, make a firm day into pregnancy to apply to all fetuses, and grant it basic civil rights at that point.
What else? I could go on all day.
My point is, I don't think either party comes up with solutions fair to the majority of citizens. But they get lured in to vote for these phonies by emotional propaganda and false promises.
You think cheap labor is the only benefit of places like China? Liability, environmental, tax, and other regulations are major factors as well.
Not all regulations are bad. But there are too many arbitrary regulations enforced on businesses that are not necessary. You should only regulate where absolutely criticial, and incentivize when not.
And as soon as a spot opens, you don't think Obama will try and stack it either?
I dislike both the Democratic and Republican parties...If left to their own devices, each would destroy this country in a different way, either by overregulating it untill all the businesses leave or by being arrogant and pissing the entire rest of the world off. With the significant majorities in the House and Senate, the Supreme Court may be the only thing that stops this country from completely fucking itself up. They need eachother to kill off the stupid far left and far right ideas, so we get the moderate view that benefits most of the country.
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I'm a Sysadmin that graduated about 2 years ago, and I have a Management BS w/ IT minor, and am almost an MCSA (one test left). From my limited experience, certifications are a good way to certify your knowledge. If you're looking at a career in IT based on experience alone, you should probably be able to pass at least the CompTIA A+ and MS exam 70-270, Windows XP, without needing to study (no OS wars, please...most businesses use XP and you know it). And probably Network+ too, although I'd forgive you for failing anything involving the archaic questions on coax cabling/connectors and non-ethernet networks.
The BS definately helped me land the job though (and my starting salary). Most places look at you differently when they know you've put the time in for the degree.
Taking those tests will cost some cash, but it's not too bad. Nothing like my fat student loan. And it's great to put on your resume in lieu of experience. As many other posters have said, once you have the experience, that will probably land you many more jobs than a degree or cert.
Also something that weasled me out of the helpdesk quicker was my hardware knowledge. I've saved them quite a bit of cash because I'm a hardware junkie, and I know what model of Xeon can best what model of Opteron by a rough percentage without even looking it up, or the advantages of RAID 50 versus RAID 10, etc. Apparently good hardware people are hard to find...it's why places like CDW do so well...they handle that aspect for a lot of customers.
They can pay just fine most of the time, the problem is the occasional shitty weather year.
There are also some other things like crop insurance and whatnot that can help out. It's not all the government.
And it's the very small farmers that are affected the most. My family's considered small, but not tiny...we could handle a bad year on our own.
But yes there are some similarities to higher education. I have a nasty student loan that can't argue there. I also think it bears some resemblence to drug addiction...we're addicited to the high yields from the genetically modified crops and hybrids. But we're at a state now where modern society would be in a world of hurt without them.
I'm a geek that loves arguing as much as the next geek, but I really don't have the time to go over the details of organic vs. g-mod yeilds, germination, location of grain elevators that accept organic, organic fertilizers' production and availability, etc.
Organic is great for the niche market of folks that think it makes them healthier (I know what organic crops are fertilized with, I'll take the chems, thanks) but for large-scale production like we need here in the States and abroad, it is simply not feasible. You can take my word or not, I could care less.
They pay them large subsidies on BAD years. Bad year=bad weather, not low demand.
And the annoying thing about weather is, the midwest can have a poor year, but the plains have a good year, so the prices are still relatively low, or vise versa.
http://farmindustrynews.com/seed/0904_seed_university_prices/
Some of the fancier crap is at $350 now, so $500 is quite feasible. I know what we paid for a bag of seed corn in the 90's, and it was right around $50-$75. If you're really that interested, I could dig in our old files and probably find some of the handwritten seed bills we have and scan them in for you.
But what about the millions that go to independent farmers who make less than $30-40k/yr that would go bankrupt after a bad year without these subsidies? That is the unfortunate reality with cost of seed and chemicals these days...companies like Monsanto jacking the prices to astronomical levels. In the 90's an average bag of seed corn was $50....it's expected that in the next two years, it will be $500. When you consider you need a couple dozen bags for a small 40-acre field, that adds up really quick. And when a bad year hits (we had a very dry summer this year, and last year spring was causing flooding), the yields can be extremely poor.
There has been, and always will be, some people who exploit government programs involving money handouts. You have to design the system to avoid that as much as possible, without hurting the people the system was designed to help. There are a lot of programs that are a much bigger waste of taxpayer money that should be looked at first.
It's one of the common apocalypse dates. It started with the Mayan calendar, but it also applies to some chinese fortune telling book, and one of the major Nostradamus types also predicted it as well. What's funny is there is a web crawler bot program used to predict stock market trends that also predicts this date, and supposedly this system predicted 9-11 90 days before it happened.
Not that I buy any of that bullshit..I was just poking fun.
I bet the first time it is actually used in a full power experiment will be December 21, 2012.
You've got a very good point...and if I had information that was either that valuable or could get me into that much trouble, I would probably seriously consider a different approach.
Come to think of it, the security string on my Truecrypt volume I keep my tax records, paystub scans, and other personal info in has a long-ass security string that he wouldn't know. But he generally knows that stuff anyway...I just keep it that way just in case my PC ever got compromised.
I'm not saying my 'strategy' is the way to go. It just works well enough for me and may work well enough for the OP.
I'm relatively young, so I haven't put a lot of thought into this, but my best friend knows all the personal account names and passwords I use for everything. He would be able to get into any of my accounts with a few guesses. I don't have a comprehensive list of everything, but the main stuff would get worked out.
And before you security nuts go crazy about telling other people your passwords, keep in mind this is a person I trust above anyone else...even my own close relatives. If I can't trust him, then I must live a truely miserable life of denial full of people who dislike me. I also don't tell him any of the admin passwords at work, as A) other people have acces to those, and B) They aren't my passwords to give out, even though I know he would do no harm (hell he'd probably manage the network better than half our admins...)
Oh, I also know pretty much all his passwords too...so...yeah, he better not try anything :-)
Geico would pay good money for the authenticity.
"Microsoft wooed Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Acer and many other companies into making its browser the default choice on Windows desktops."
Or rather, they just didn't install a second browser at all, since the only browser kinda HAS to be the default. I really doubt much wooing was involved.
Haha, you think most Americans care about their own history. That's cute. You really have no idea how stupid people can be around here. They're fat, dumb, and happy thinking they know everything and actually knowing nothing.
Where I live, a rural area of Ohio, people are generally Republican because they are ignorant of the outside world and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to anything that contradicts their personal values or way of life (abortion, gay marrige, oil, Iraq, etc). People in larger urban areas are generally Democratic and have knee-jerk emotional reactions to the BS spewed by the media every day. (global warming, Iraq, etc).
To be fair, where they live affects their perception of the world. Being in rural areas you stay isolated, so everyone around you generally shares your values, religion, etc. There is usually no noticable pollution (other than the occasional manure smell :-), employment rates are higher because manufacturing companies like to locate in rural areas to keep labor costs down, etc. In cities, you have an overwhelming amount of pollution to people who aren't used to it (ie me), jobless rates are higher because cost of living keeps wages high which causes companies to outsource and automate more. You see more foriegners and foriegn ways, or generally just people and things with values different from your own.
The bottom line is, the majority of this country is full of morons who don't think things through. Even if they think they do, but are really just going on crap they heard somewhere and never bothered to scrutinize or verify it for themselves.
To be fair to Microsoft (And a disclaimer, I primarily use Opera myself):
-I don't find the interface any more or less intuitive than FF3 or Opera. I am used to Opera, so I know it better. I've never really had to hunt for an option in any of them...everything is all generally in a logical spot.
-IE7 is definately a standard-ignoring bastard. And assuming you're an FF advocate, remember it didnt pass Acid2 until FF3. And IE8 is shipping in a standard-complaint mode by default, which should help all browsers out.
-Sluggish...compared to FF3 and Opera. But it was faster than FF2 for several different langages...so then FF2 was also sluggish, by your standards.
-Bloated? How? I really don't see any bloat compared to other browsers.
-What features do you expect from it out of the box? Seems to do about the same as the others, plus or minus some minor stuff.
(Yes, I know I am going to get voted down for attempting to defend IE in any capacity...they should really just add -1 Disagree and be done with it)
The original photo on the left is a lower quality version than the actual original that was edited. The one on the right is an obvious 'shop job. It's not like they were trying to hide anything at all, they just wanted the photo to look a little cleaner. They probably didn't have one of her in front of a background like a proper portraite, so they added in a flag behind her to make the pic look more clean.
Based on the headline, I am assuming someone wanted us to immediately think that the Army was trying to cover something up, because hating and mistrusting the armed forces is the cool thing to do nowadays. But what really happened is someone made a simple mistake with no decietful intentions and the AP has a zero tolerance policy on altered photos.
Well, when you compare the technologies available that time, is it much worse? They had a good chance of getting sunk in a storm. Their navigation capabilities were far from accurate. Information on the new world was sparse. Getting there and ensuring you could produce the necessary amount of food and shelter to live was far from a guarantee. I really think they're pretty close to the same.
When you do play it, it may see somewhat unspectacular now (but you should still find it plenty interesting)...you have to remember what FPSs of that time were like:
Kill monsters with mediore to bad AI, find blue key, open door, go to next level. Next level involed the same thing, except there is also a red key.
Half-Life had a continual story, no real level breaks, talking characters, and some of the AI (Marines) was particularly intelligent and worked together. It laid the groundwork for the modern FPS. Many of the things we consider standard in FPSs now are because of Half-Life.
If you had taken basic high school chemistry you would have recognized it.
I think I heard that Evian was developing a Martian rover capable of bottling ice from the icecaps.
And you thought $3/bottle was expensive.....
Joke-----> ~~~~*
Your head-> O
No, the difference is that Nigerian scams never payout. Casinos always have a chance to pay out. And, in many US states, lottery and casino money often go to some of the better causes, like education.
Also, remember you don't have to give your money to either of them. Stupid people will always find stupid ways to waste their money. Nothing you can do will protect them.
I never said they were far right or far left. I just said that having a better balance helps quash the far left/right ideas/legislation that get thrown around.
I would put the general Democratic consensus *slightly* closer to the middle than Republicans. But calling them left center is not exactly accurate, because they let too much far left nonsense get through. Also, calling an entire group of people wrong about a variety of issues makes you look no more intelligent than they are.
And what mess are you referring to exactly? There are a lot of them, and most of his solutions seem piss poor to me.
Middle east? That's the fault of both parties for not sending the 400k troops originally requested by military leadership to get the job done right and in a timely fashion. Now that it's such a mess, I really don't care what we do. We can stay until it's stable, or pull out and let them have a civil war. I could care less at this point. I don't think either option will help out public opinion....we can't get into negative numbers, can we?
Economy? First major factor: Clinton asking and getting changes in the Community Reinvestment act basically forcing banks to take on high-risk lenders. Second major factor: Bush seeing signs of this and sitting around with his thumbs up his ass. But really both of those combined only attribute 50% of the problem...it was a lot of small things that accumulated into one colossal fuckup.
Illegal Immigration? Fault of both parties for doing jack shit and trying to milk votes out of them.
Energy? Not really anyone's fault...incentives have been around for a while, it just takes time to develop and implement 'greener' sources of power that are also *COST EFFECTIVE*. I suppose if you want, we could blame the Dems for not letting us build more nuclear plants...nuclear waste storage is plenty safe and secure, and nuclear power is far, far, cleaner than coal, and not as environmentally impactful as hydroelectric dams. And if we expand this into oil supply shortages, we could also knock the Dems for making environmental regulations so strict we haven't had a new refinery since the 70's, or for not letting us poke a hole in a few acres of a massive wildlife refuge in Alaska.
Global Warming? I'm still on the fence. Warming is happening, that's for certain, but every time I start to think that we may or may not be the cause (anthropological vs natural), a new study comes out debunking what I thought I knew. I think it'll be some time before we're really certain what is causing it (and if it's not going to just revert to a mild ice age in another couple hundred years like some geologists think). Fault? Both parties for getting emotional about the issue and distorting the facts with what they feel reality should be.
Gay marrige? Fault of Republicans for missing the little part that says "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE". Give everyone, straight and gay, a civil union license with equal benefits and let the churches sort 'em out.
Abortion? Fault of Republicans for above reason, Fault of Dems for thinking that the mother has the right to kill a newborn. Use whatever scans necessary, CT, etc., get a concensus on roughly when a fetus starts having a developed enough brain for cognitive thought, make a firm day into pregnancy to apply to all fetuses, and grant it basic civil rights at that point.
What else? I could go on all day.
My point is, I don't think either party comes up with solutions fair to the majority of citizens. But they get lured in to vote for these phonies by emotional propaganda and false promises.
Damn straight.
You think cheap labor is the only benefit of places like China? Liability, environmental, tax, and other regulations are major factors as well.
Not all regulations are bad. But there are too many arbitrary regulations enforced on businesses that are not necessary. You should only regulate where absolutely criticial, and incentivize when not.
5 to 4 is stacked?!?!
And as soon as a spot opens, you don't think Obama will try and stack it either?
I dislike both the Democratic and Republican parties...If left to their own devices, each would destroy this country in a different way, either by overregulating it untill all the businesses leave or by being arrogant and pissing the entire rest of the world off. With the significant majorities in the House and Senate, the Supreme Court may be the only thing that stops this country from completely fucking itself up. They need eachother to kill off the stupid far left and far right ideas, so we get the moderate view that benefits most of the country.
I agree. Even as a kid, the offbrands didn't feel as sturdy as lego bricks. And their set variety sucked and was not as interesting.