I would concetrate on doing more in the job you r in at the moment than worrying about certification.
Nobody is hired simply because of degrees that much any more. What matters is what you accomplished at your last job and your job references.
So concentrate on networking and expanding your responsibilities in leadership roles in the organization you are in now.
That is something I look for in a resume and I don't even look at the education sections anymore, at least for Senior positions.
Besides, increasingly education means you just have more money than the regular sod out there to sit around and go to class all day long, without having to work. School is great, but it is has no bearing if you have 20 years of IT experience and great references.
Try and do more with management and planning.
IT in general though in the US, along with computer technology jobs are going away, so long term if you do get a job, I would consider health care retraining.
We need nurses, and lots of them. We need even more doctors too. There are people, believe it or not going back to school to be a doctor at the age of 35...
There will always be sick people, and there won't be any cures, because managed care/drug companies frown on that sort of thing. (Hurts long term profits if you cure people rather than keep them doped up constantly.)
Do you think we should not have committed these acts?
What if the Nazi regime were permitted to conquor, unabated without resistance, because killing is wrong?
What happens when evil destroys all those who understand WHY killing and war is wrong? What then?
The light in the world, would have gone out, and mankind plunged into a darkness so evil, billions would be living in slavery and repression by a government that burns human beings without prejudice.
All war is evil, but evil doesn't respond to reason. It certainly doesn't respond to diplomacy or pleas for "Please don't shoot, if we just talk we can work it all out and things will be fine."
It was a shining moment in our history, where a world put aside its differences and united to drive the darkness back into the shadows where it rightfully belongs.
It is a test, ultimately of what our species is.
Don't like it? Move to a different Universe.
Either we will embrace the darkness that was the Nazi regime and enslave ourselves, or we will be ready to destroy the darkness when it comes again as those who understand WAR is evil.
Come again it shall, and we will triumph again or we shall all die and the light will go out.
Whole worlds may perish the next time it comes, and the destruction in World War II was a pitence compared to the tests that lay ahead and perhaps all technological civilizations who come of age.
Is it any wonder many don't make it and destroy themselves.
Poor SETI, spent what a billion dollars how many decades now? No signal yet.
It won't make a damn bit of difference in the long run what I plan on doing with the next Microsoft infested company I get a job with.
I will begin by pulling out all of Microsoft server products based on open standards, then once all the servers are BYE BYE, the desktops will be next!
So go right ahead Microsoft and study LINUX all you want, and incorporate development models and source into your products....I can get for nothing, which your propose to sell to...
It has already been pointed out that American IT functions are too expensive in this country.
I suggest as many have, that the reason for this is because the Information Technology Markets in the US are very ill, or unhealthy.
Primarily due to one company, and that is Microsoft corporate proper and too corporate culture in IT in the US, more on that in a moment.
Why?
When infrastructure and many of the people I talk with say "Oh, but Microsoft is the standard, and besides it costs too much to switch as we are entrenched."
Really? Think of how many jobs have been lost because IT in the US is so expensive.
There is sort of a paradoxical view here, I am not sure if most IT managers are just stupid, or do not understand business or simple cost economics.
If you are entrenched with a technology and it is so expensive you are considering moving operations over seas, which in itself has been show to be incredibly risky, and no panacea for basically, BAD TECHNOLOGY, cutting the cost of human beings to keep the cost of bad technology doesn't make sense in IT.
After all, skilled human beings are required to operate technology, and an important point too remember is CREATE and MAINTAIN technology.
The problem is bigger than most people realize.
Consider this: If you are a Microsoft shop and you buy into the idea of shrink wrap software, the only thing you can do as an IT manager is buy more software to fix existing problems, or wait for manufacturers to fix them...usually at $300 an incident.
Contrast the above with an Open Source shop.
If you are stuck with a high maintance piece of software you can do a design review and change it if required. If there are problems you can fix it.
The typical response I get from IT managers, is "We are not a software development house."
I reply, well, you do not have to be. You can outsource the job to the lowest qualified bidder, at a fixed cost, and have them write the software.
Fixed costs should be a BIG MOUNTAIN on the RADAR screen point in what direction to go in building manageable budgets.
Contrast that with closed source software, where if you lack functions in the software or need a fix, good luck trying to get a company too listen to you who lives and dies by software closed licensing. Secondly, from year to year you cannot plan changes, the vendor does that so you cannot improve the software in any predictable way budget year to budget year!!
This fact Absolutely is a mystery to IT managers. I think, probably due to the fact if you can't make a decision, it is a non decision. (i.e. closed source shops can't even consider this as a possibility in a budget cycle.)
The other reply I get from managers, when I talk to them about entrenchment, is: "We would have to retrain our staff."
My biggest contention about this statement is what I have been telling my colleagues for years now since Linux came onto the scene: "We are a nation based on closed source, with IT managers that can't do anything beyond just push OK or CANCEL."
Quite frankly when I was CIO in my past life, I made sure anyone I hired understood that as an IT person, you have a REPSONSIBILITY to daily learn new things and CREATE YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE around open standards and CONTRIBUTE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY who wrote those standards.
I don't care if it is a new administrative idea about managing Linux machines or a new piece of software you wrote, that you feel is unique.
I made it clear that if you work in my IT department as a Network Administrator for example, you are going to be spending a lot of your time writing software, creating new infrastructure and doing lots of prototyping and reading AND contrinuting to open standards projects.
Why?
Probably because I feel, unlike many IT people I talk to as a consultant, that every day is a JOB to LEARN and CREATE and you better DO IT.
Linux is moving WAY TOO FAST to invest 5K in certification, to learn a PRODUCT.
Look at a persons resume, and identify WHAT they have done with Linux, and what was accomplished.
I can't repeat this enough. Certification is almost worthless. The industry moves so fast, that competency in a PRODUCT won't cut the mustard.
Next to check is REFERENCES. Dial dial dial talk talk talk to coworkers, bosses, even customers if you can get a hold of them.
Ultimately a person is reviewed by his peers, not by tiny sheets of paper that are relevant for about 3 days, before the entire distro is republished on sourceforge.
Finally, let them demonstrate if they wish.
I bring a projector and my Laptop with me to interviews, and I show my interviewers the nasty Oracle databases I built, my amanda backup scenarios, a couple of custom kernels I built myself to add P4 support, DRI support to give OpenGL a boost for example, I configure it and let it build in a window while I show them my Java ECLIPSE and CVS development environment...etc.
So in general.
Certifications suck, people who lots of nice things on thier resumes who have references and come to an interview ready to rock, are good.
I build my firewalls with either CD-ROM drives or read only NFS mount points.
None of my firewalls first of all have any hard disks in them or floppy drives.
Only CD-ROM drives or no drives at all.
This is to insure that should a fault occur, the attacker is totally king of a read only file system.
Which effectively makes my compromised firewall a kingdom of....nothing.
Not only that, I just flip the power button.
I have a small ram disk, enough to run the ipchains command from a small bash prompt so I can make modifications to the firewall shuold I need to.
But they all disapear as soon as I hit the reset button. This is a good thing, or bad thing, depending on how you like to do things.
I store the entire image iso in a SQL based file system, so I have many types of firewalls, each with annotated sql table fields describing what they do, with documentation.
That way, I can just do a simple:
select description, iso from firewalls where description='H323' AND description='NAT';
In essence I ask the database to cough up a ISO should one already exists that handles NAT and video conferencing.
If nothing is returned, I build one, write a description, and put it in the database.
I do this with everything, even my infrastructure.
I do not believe in writing reports, or looking at pretty graphics, so I use SQL commands to ASK my infrastructure questions...
In my infrastructure database, I have over 1000 SNMP data point histories on server status, etc.
It would be really simple to write a front end for my stuff, which is what I have been doing.
I could have used something off the shelf, but most of the O.S. projects rely too much on the fact you have to HAVE TIME to read reports, and look at the pretty pictures.
That is worthless too me, I need a SQL command line and a database that is structured so I can ask it questions interactively, or through scripts (i.e. Java servlets).
Half the products Microsoft produces are not patched at all and when 2000/XP are found to be lost causes to Microsoft's multiple security initiatives over the past years, products are just decommisioned.
Yeah, they patched all the holes in Win98 permenantly this year because it is no longer supported and end of lifed.
I still have patches comming in for my Linux 2.0.xx kernel!!!
-Hack
PS: Bill your doin serious weed man, you should stop that.
Since when does API changes in the software industry in the US have anything to do with practical market forces?
Regardless, of paranoia, there is considerable history that suggests companies using the old way of making money (shrink wrap licenses) will invoke all sorts of strange legal machinations to protect their markets as open source reshapes the landscape.
Microsoft will squash your little mono project like a grape along with the fools who contribute to it if it gets anywhere near an alternative to the real thing.
I cannot believe after all of the crap everyone here on slashdot has seen with respect to the SCO case that you think this guy is paranoid.
Wake up, HELLLLOOOOOO.
There is only one reason why Microsoft is being friendly to you, and that is because of the GNOME desktop project.
Mono is a nice diversion, that buys them time. It allows them more time to manuver as you divert precious resources away from the GNOME desktop to devote to MONO, while providing Microsoft with legal means to shut you down should that fail.
As long as MONO keeps just ONE programmer away from the GNOME desktop project, Microsoft considers it a success. A little bit of confusion over what is important is also something Microsoft considers good, as I see here. Everyone is confused and decieved about so called value of a published C# EMCA "standards" and the Java Community Process.
I would take the Java Community Process ANY DAY over a company that publishes a open standard, provides no source code, with a known track record of shutting down competitors.
At least SUN provides the source code for Java if you are serious about porting it. In fact it is very easy to get the source code for Java, and many people in the GNU community are using thier experience from the Blackdown project to do great things with gcc, using it.
Microsoft will keep feeding you little bones until you bury yourself in skeleton pile scary enough to spook even RMS himself this halloween.
You are a sucker guy and your killing the GNOME desktop project by diverting resources that it deperately needs to catch up with KDE.
Everyone will loose with MONO, not just those who want a decent GNOME desktop now, but those who use MONO to build anything with and are counting on Microsoft's good graces.
What I would like, is some sort of plugin directory tree for Eclipse, in part of the 2.7 Kernel Tree that allows one to auotmagically build the make environment, and kernel switches required for a variety of kernel testing activities such as:
1) Performance Testing 2) Video Driver Development 3) Sound Driver Development 4) Storage/RAID Driver development 5) USB Peripheral Development 6) Firewire Development 7) Removable HotPLUG PCI device development
All of these in a directory included with the 2.7 series which anyone can just drop these plugins in ECLIPSE and they automagically setup the environment to start debugging the kernel.
Kernel debugging is incredibly complex. It is also complicated by the fact many times you need two machines to do the debugging.
Finally, another IDE plugin could be developed that allows code completion/KERNEL API completion.
This would link into a database somewhere, say on kernel.org, perhaps an XML service, that the IDE would download when it started up, or download just the changes since last debugging session.
Idea is to alert you of API changes to the kernel, so you are at the latest API, and don't end up getting depricated.
Sort of Like yacc. Anyone remember yacc? (Yet Another Compiler Compiler)
Great for building compiler parsers, or any sort of parser, because you had to build them so often.
Sort of like Microsoft, it has to build Yet Another Secure Security program.
yass anyone?
Maybe Microsoft should make something like yacc, that way it can turn out a new yass every year with minimal effort.:-)
Damn. I would hate to see the state machine for that puppy.
Although truly, implementing a state machine for a secure computing inititive is probably what they should do.
God knows, Microsoft has so many PhD's there that I am sure this has come up.
However, why Microsoft turns out the worst products, with so many "qualified" PhD's under employment is surely a mystery.
Probably the due to the fact I have never seen any evidence that links code quality to degree earned in the Information Technology field.
The only qualified link I have yet seen that suggests code quality is how many accomplishments (hours experience) on a resume.
Basically people I can call, references. If a person has a running track record, he is usually a good bet. Usually...because when you start combining groups of people to write code....it gets REALLY INTERESTING.
All bets are off then. Its a crap shoot.:-)
I think this is going to have a big impact on our field, though.
Writing software is going to become a licensed trade after the first successful lawsuit against Microsoft.
What I mean by that, it won't matter what sort of degree you have, you will not be able to write software unless you have a license, and have been sent through a proper journeyman training program.
Sort of like carpenters and electricians. You work for about 2-4 years as a journeyman with people with many years of experience before you can write code for public consumption.
They key here is that you learn in the public sector, under "Masters" people in the field 10 years or more, solving real world problems, with minimal class work.
It is no wonder you can pull a guy out of a Tattoo parlor, employ him right next to the PhD you hired and he ends up out coding, out designing, and pissing off far fewer customers with his code, than the PhD guy. I mean everything too, theory and practice. Blew the PhD's pants off. ( I swear I seen it happen, no lie. )
Anyone think this prediction is going to come true with the pending lawsuit against Microsoft or am I making too many generalizations?
My point is, I think you missed it, that Computer Science as an institution might end up like our MBA friends.
I know Universities support a lot of the development work. That is why I point to dogma as a key, because a lot of that support comes from people in an age group that do not have PhD's.
I didn't say all PhD's turn out the crap we see in Microsoft products.
Know people with PhD's? Yes, I do, and not all of them are bad, I didnt say that.
I had a fine University experience, in fact I am returning to the University Wisconsin soon.
Ethics is going down the tubes. An example, I think was the investment community in the U.S.
If you watch the media, you have this over all impression, well, Enron was just a fluke, they had poor accounting.
But if you read the papers, this fluke, is being practiced by 100's of companies, all screwing over their investors like cheap whores on a Dutch street corner.
I hate to point this out, but these Ivy league trained people were taught and are taught that this is just ducky. How can it not be with so many companies screwing you on a daily basis.
It can't be a fluke when everyone is doing it.
Fluke? I think not, but you decide.
It has become ethical to do business unethically and it is proudly taught that way in our so called finest Universities.
If anyone has any money in US retirement investment funds, when they retire 30-40 years from now, I will be really amazed.
If you are an investor, and you are investing in US companies for retirement, you my friend are a sucker.
Same thing is happening here. Microsoft is not an innovative company, it buys companies.
They do not write good software and if you are stupid enough to buy Microsoft Press books written by PhD's who claim they even have a clue about good Software Engineering principles, you are just another duped "investor".
I would like to point out that Microsoft is one of the largest employers of Computer Science PhD's in the country.
As an example, one must ask this question after looking at these Software Engineering practices books that Microsoft Press publishes as oxymoronic.
My reasoning is as follows:
Exhibit A: Microsoft hires more PhD computer scientists than even IBM has to work on the secure initiative for 2000 and XP. Building and rebuilding the entire OS 2000, and then again with XP, from scratch, at a estimated cost of 2.8 billion dollars.
Exhibit B: A 18 year old in Minnesota, a 16 year old in Malaysia, and a 21 year old in Russia. All with WAY too much time on their hands, with NO source code, find more security holes in 2000, XP than you can possibly say "Code 'in'-Complete" in that past 14 months.
Exhibit C: A University student, in Finland builds a new operating system kernel called Linux, and in just 8 years it is being worked on by almost no PhD's and many testors and code contributors are in their early 20's or teens, and is far more capable than windows, 1.8 billion dollars later.
Is Linux just another Enron? Fluke?
My point is that the way we are being taught code in this country is not the way code should be written. Even if you have a PhD, its business as usual dogma, just like our MBA friends.
Is it a fluke that the best code being written is not through institutionalized learning in this country?
What do these exhibits tell us about our country in general, with regards to ethics?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here.
You better not let prevent us from taking over your markets of 3 Billion people, or we won't allow you access to our 400 Million....
Errr...yeah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhht.
Fact is, like it or not, China could build its own products, and all of its own technology, and completely shut the West out and make one hell of a killing.
They do not need us.
If you ask any Chinese technology business over there, they do not like the fact American companies think they can't do anything worth while in computing, space, science...etc unless western companies invade their markets.
I think during the next 10 years we are going to have one hell of a surprise in store for ourselves as China tells us where to stick our computers and our software.
The news is diverse, and it makes an excellent UP TO DATE news and research tool.
Please spare US your OUT OF DATE book based research in your personal academic library and spare us your OUT OF DATE opinions.
You obviously do not have have any money invested personally in those markets. I have.
I get dividends, do you? Probably not if you have invested in any American company. The EM areas very much push dividends. In fact over 80% of the EME companies PAY DIVIDENDS, regardless of stock price.
As for Asia not growing, you are out of your mind. Everything is made in Asia, including your semiconductors in your computer guy. For the past 40 years, it has grown tremendously.
You have a very bad way of making examples as well. A $12,000 dollar salary for a Chinese city worker, is fine, as long as you don't pay $3.00 for a Latte like you do here in the US and pay more like $0.80 cents.
Goods are DRASTICALLY CHEAPER for a Chinese city worker, you just happened to neglect mentioning that. Perhaps you should use google more and stop consulting your 40 year old book on your desk.
Wow, perhaps you could actually take a trip to China and do some field work! Can't leave your classroom eh? Awe...TOO BAD.
I point these price costing issues out because using their own motherboards, and RedFlag Linux, China is going to start producing Pentium class computers for about $80 bucks a piece, complete with monitor.
Even I could buy a computer with $80 bucks if I made $12000 a year in the US!
Without Microsoft on their ass, Chinese PC manufacturers are going to take computing prices on hardware to all time lows. They have to, because as you so noted, the average person doesn't make much.
No, patents haven't lead to stagnating anything.
Your are a poor economist. Don't quit your day teaching job guy.
Patents have held back many products and markets in high tech goods. I mention drugs because you see it ALL THE TIME.
Judge installs injunction for SO AND SO because of patent infringement.
Even the Wall Street Journal or Fox Financial News has stories on how drug companies are constantly in a legal battle over drugs stuck in the quagmire of US IP and Copyright law.
Perhaps you should read/watch those publications/news shows more often.
It isn't google either, try it, you might like it, and you do not have to leave your class room or office either! How about that.
But your idea that patents are not holding back American business, for the worse, obviously never had to live through the early days of Ecommerce in this country.
RSA held back the US for many years, charging outrageous fees for that HTTPS url. Europe didn't have that problem, and they moved much more quickly to take advantage of the economic benefits of doing business online.
But then of course, everything is business as usual. The US patent laws and copyright laws are throwing people in Jail in their own countries, and people like you are suggesting everything is OK. BE happy.
Nothing to see here....move along.
You my friend, quoting a famous Rooster, "You are a nut case."
Well, to be frank, IP and Copyrights if left unchecked as they are in the US cause the following:
1) Incredibly high drug prices and stagnant research.
Nothing will hurt the poor more, than when you can't buy a statin drug for heart or the large number of other problems statins fix, than high medication prices.
2) IP and Copyright law on software specifically, is shipping jobs for US workers over seas.
Why? Well, if you can design software in countries that do not recognize software or copyright patents, and sell into yet like markets, you make a killing.
The US tech sector is a desert now, with unemployment reaching 7.2% for this year so far.
It is only going to increase.
3) IP and Copyright law has sealed the fate of the US computer industry to a very gloomy future.
Why? Well the answer is very complex, but I will try and make it short and sweet, without soundling like an Economist.
Everyone who has bought a computer in the US has already bought one and the price of the computer now has hit rock bottom. Not because computers can't get still cheaper, it is because Microsoft's OS keeps getting more expensive.
Everyone agrees, that the far east is the next boom market. Billions of Chinese will need a computer one day, a Cell Phone, PDA..etc.
Thanks to senators like Hatch in Utah, and other politically ($$$) bought power players in Washington, no country in their right mind would buy US tech products.
Primarily because Hatch advocated remote control, blowing up any electronic device that downloads Copyrighted material.
Well, that and the CIA and NSA have approached Microsoft in a not so private way advocating backdoors into Windows products sold in foreign countries.
No country in its right mind would buy those products. It doesn't even matter if they exist or not. The damage has been done:
a) China and a group of Nations representing what I call the "Far East Block" or the limbs of the "Dragon" as I call them, are building their own OS. I am almost 100% sure it will probably be a modified resold package based around "Red Flag" Linux.
b) These countries, are having a great deal of recent success in building their own motherboards and processors, with Red Flag Linux preloaded.
c) It is already a matter of public record the Chinese have mandated the use of Red Flag Linux in all matters of government starting in 2004, and are investing billions in eGovernment that is US tamper proof.
(i.e. They recently told Microsoft to go take a hike.)
Of course, the far east represents an enourmous market potential. Whatever country, or countries taps that markets consumer tech goods potential WILL hold the title "Super Power", make no mistake about it.
But those markets have vastly different ideas of what software is, and what IP and Copyrights are.
Thanksfully, they are much more sane than the US, and you won't read about Chinese going to jail for making backups of their DVD's, or for doing research on software related topics in computer security.
What this represents to the US and Europe are fading political power, a vastly reduced tax base, growth position, and of course.
MANY MANY more return pages in Kanjii, Chinese when you fire up Google...
If I was a Slashdot reader, I would start learning Chinese in earnest. I certainly am.
Our biggest problem in this country (US) right now:
1) We are raising and building infrastructure with
admins that do not understand the technology
they are using.
2) We are educating people to be administrators
that can only push OK or CANCEL. If they can't
they complain "Oh if I can't do that then
platform isn't mature, so we don't use it."
I give analogous representations of most hapless Windows administrators to being equivalent to people who choose not to learn calculas because it is "too hard" and therefore "too expensive" to use.
If I do use calculas I will loose productivity!
Fact is, Microsoft is trying to dumb down computing to the point every possible problem you could ever have is in a wizard or dialog box.
It will never happen, and the more decisions the software makes, without approval or human intervention beyond OK or CANCEL the easier Windows is going to be to crack.
No software is ever made more secure by adding more software to fix security leaks.
The only way you reduce software vulnerabilities, is by removing software.
As we all know, every release of Windows gets bigger, and of course so does Linux.
But with Linux I have a choice on what software I install. Windows, you have only two choices.
Essentially what have we got with patent laws on software?
A very very sick US software industry that is on life support, with very little innovation.
And what about the largest markets for software right now such as China? What do they think about our software IP system?
Obviously they do not think it is fair. China is taking steps to make sure they do not incorporate ANY western software technology into thier products, going as far as constructing thier own Microprocessors, Motherboards and version of Linux to avoid software IP controls.
No country with a expanding market would agree to the US version of IP or its restrictions.
In the end, what does that do for the US except lock us out of new markets by governments who recognize the American copyright and patent system for what it is: To prevent and exterminate competition, kill the idea of ownership of ANYTHING and create a legal system that allows any company with enough cash to set artificially high prices.
Everything about computing in the US has become cheaper outside of Microsoft's control, except software. Why is that?
Why MUST OS software cost more than half of the basic price of computer equipment, and continue to increase when every single solitary aspect of computing has followed a cheaper, faster route?
I will tell you why: American Software Patents, American Copyright Laws and crooked politicians who have been bought off and have tossed our Anti-trust laws out the window.
From that window they also tossed out future access to markets as companies and countries over seas see how sick the American information technology industry is and what it has become.
If you have been a reader to slashdot, you already know that many MANY products released over seas are far better than anything you could possibly buy here.
Why is that? Why is this increasingly becomming an issue that better PDA's, better Cell Phones, better software is increasingly NOT in the US and you cannot BUY it here either.
All we get is a new version of Windows to make it easier to use...
easier for Hackers, terrorists and foreigners to break into our corporate and government institutions, to use, I mean.
Europe should ask itself does it really want this sort of legal lunacy, where even if you wanted to FIX software under our copyright law, to prevent such breakins it would be illegal to do so?
Even if you bought it for Christ sake after signing a DMCA copyright EULA that says you cannot sue the company you bought the software from?
The US IP law and Copyright law as written is out of control, and it be rewritten to prevent our allies and far east block nations from viewing us and our software products with such suspicion.
In the end it locks us out of these markets and sends jobs over seas.
Is it any wonder? Software in the US is incredibly expensive, but not directly because of what we pay our programmers, but because software IS expensive in a market that has not competition.
American software companies can innovate, if they are forced to do so, when faced with cheap labor overseas.
But innovation is impossible in a market that patents ideas, copyrights information for 100 years at a time and allows companies like SCO to not produce anything innovative with thier OS except a legal summary against IBM.
Our very own laws are preventing us from competing effectively in all levels of maunfacturing software.
I hope Europe doesn't make the same mistake we have so at least they can participate in the enourmous software market opportunities in the far east to sell thier products thier, unlike the US which is basically a write off at this point.
It is always a better choice to use clusters of hardware, than a single box.
You have a variety of tools available on the open source market now to monitor, and automagically maintain your cluster, depending on what you choose...the most popular is PVM, and it comes with a ton of very nice management utils you can get off the net, too manage hundreds of machines in a blink of an eye. This is a very configurable cluster architecture.
There is also MOSIX, or open Mosix. A very nice computing facility as well, allowing you to use a single image machine from a large collection of machines tied together through a network.
Slashdot Mirror
I would concetrate on doing more in the job you r in at the moment than worrying about certification.
Nobody is hired simply because of degrees that much any more. What matters is what you accomplished at your last job and your job references.
So concentrate on networking and expanding your responsibilities in leadership roles in the organization you are in now.
That is something I look for in a resume and I don't even look at the education sections anymore, at least for Senior positions.
Besides, increasingly education means you just have more money than the regular sod out there to sit around and go to class all day long, without having to work. School is great, but it is has no bearing if you have 20 years of IT experience and great references.
Try and do more with management and planning.
IT in general though in the US, along with computer technology jobs are going away, so long term if you do get a job, I would consider health care retraining.
We need nurses, and lots of them. We need even more doctors too. There are people, believe it or not going back to school to be a doctor at the age of 35...
There will always be sick people, and there won't be any cures, because managed care/drug companies frown on that sort of thing. (Hurts long term profits if you cure people rather than keep them doped up constantly.)
-Hack
Yes, well...
Do you think we should not have committed these acts?
What if the Nazi regime were permitted to conquor, unabated without resistance, because killing is wrong?
What happens when evil destroys all those who understand WHY killing and war is wrong? What then?
The light in the world, would have gone out, and mankind plunged into a darkness so evil, billions would be living in slavery and repression by a government that burns human beings without prejudice.
All war is evil, but evil doesn't respond to reason. It certainly doesn't respond to diplomacy or pleas for "Please don't shoot, if we just talk we can work it all out and things will be fine."
It was a shining moment in our history, where a world put aside its differences and united to drive the darkness back into the shadows where it rightfully belongs.
It is a test, ultimately of what our species is.
Don't like it? Move to a different Universe.
Either we will embrace the darkness that was the Nazi regime and enslave ourselves, or we will be ready to destroy the darkness when it comes again as those who understand WAR is evil.
Come again it shall, and we will triumph again or we shall all die and the light will go out.
Whole worlds may perish the next time it comes, and the destruction in World War II was a pitence compared to the tests that lay ahead and perhaps all technological civilizations who come of age.
Is it any wonder many don't make it and destroy themselves.
Poor SETI, spent what a billion dollars how many decades now? No signal yet.
They won't find one either.
-Hack
They can "study" Linux all they want.
...
It won't make a damn bit of difference in the long run what I plan on doing with the next Microsoft infested company I get a job with.
I will begin by pulling out all of Microsoft server products based on open standards, then once all the servers are BYE BYE, the desktops will be next!
So go right ahead Microsoft and study LINUX all you want, and incorporate development models and source into your products....I can get for nothing, which your propose to sell to
hopefully my competitors.
-Hack
It has already been pointed out that American IT functions are too expensive in this country.
I suggest as many have, that the reason for this is because the Information Technology Markets in the US are very ill, or unhealthy.
Primarily due to one company, and that is Microsoft corporate proper and too corporate culture in IT in the US, more on that in a moment.
Why?
When infrastructure and many of the people I talk with say "Oh, but Microsoft is the standard, and besides it costs too much to switch as we are entrenched."
Really? Think of how many jobs have been lost because IT in the US is so expensive.
There is sort of a paradoxical view here, I am not sure if most IT managers are just stupid, or do not understand business or simple cost economics.
If you are entrenched with a technology and it is so expensive you are considering moving operations over seas, which in itself has been show to be incredibly risky, and no panacea for basically, BAD TECHNOLOGY, cutting the cost of human beings to keep the cost of bad technology doesn't make sense in IT.
After all, skilled human beings are required to operate technology, and an important point too remember is CREATE and MAINTAIN technology.
The problem is bigger than most people realize.
Consider this: If you are a Microsoft shop and you buy into the idea of shrink wrap software, the only thing you can do as an IT manager is buy more software to fix existing problems, or wait for manufacturers to fix them...usually at $300 an incident.
Contrast the above with an Open Source shop.
If you are stuck with a high maintance piece of software you can do a design review and change it if required. If there are problems you can fix it.
The typical response I get from IT managers, is "We are not a software development house."
I reply, well, you do not have to be. You can outsource the job to the lowest qualified bidder, at a fixed cost, and have them write the software.
Fixed costs should be a BIG MOUNTAIN on the RADAR screen point in what direction to go in building manageable budgets.
Contrast that with closed source software, where if you lack functions in the software or need a fix, good luck trying to get a company too listen to you who lives and dies by software closed licensing. Secondly, from year to year you cannot plan changes, the vendor does that so you cannot improve the software in any predictable way budget year to budget year!!
This fact Absolutely is a mystery to IT managers. I think, probably due to the fact if you can't make a decision, it is a non decision. (i.e. closed source shops can't even consider this as a possibility in a budget cycle.)
The other reply I get from managers, when I talk to them about entrenchment, is: "We would have to retrain our staff."
My biggest contention about this statement is what I have been telling my colleagues for years now since Linux came onto the scene: "We are a nation based on closed source, with IT managers that can't do anything beyond just push OK or CANCEL."
Quite frankly when I was CIO in my past life, I made sure anyone I hired understood that as an IT person, you have a REPSONSIBILITY to daily learn new things and CREATE YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE around open standards and CONTRIBUTE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY who wrote those standards.
I don't care if it is a new administrative idea about managing Linux machines or a new piece of software you wrote, that you feel is unique.
I made it clear that if you work in my IT department as a Network Administrator for example, you are going to be spending a lot of your time writing software, creating new infrastructure and doing lots of prototyping and reading AND contrinuting to open standards projects.
Why?
Probably because I feel, unlike many IT people I talk to as a consultant, that every day is a JOB to LEARN and CREATE and you better DO IT.
Why is this a big problem? Well, first
while Microsoft says See you in court real soon.
That driver is a closed binary and is subject to the DMCA act as well as Federal and State copyright laws.
You put that binary on a CD guy and your asking for it, and besides, it isn't in keeping with GNU distro's recognition of existing copyright law.
GNU license fully recognizes copyright and IP laws in most countries, no matter how draconian they are. (i.e. specifically the US)
-Hack
Pray Tell...
How will catching viruse writers improve the defects or the bottom line?
-Hackus
"up and running Linux" in a few days...
Right.
Not MY linux boxes he wouldn't be running in a few days, perhaps in a FEW MONTHS, but not in a few days, by any means.
First of all, you couldn't install those many Linux boxes in "just a few days", that I currently administrate.
I also think Linux spans a solution domain far wider and much richer than what UNIX was 10 years ago.
Your reply therefore goes into my LAME ASS folder.
-Hack
Certifications mean nothing.
.
I mean it.
Linux is moving WAY TOO FAST to invest 5K in certification, to learn a PRODUCT.
Look at a persons resume, and identify WHAT they have done with Linux, and what was accomplished.
I can't repeat this enough. Certification is almost worthless. The industry moves so fast, that competency in a PRODUCT won't cut the mustard
Next to check is REFERENCES. Dial dial dial talk talk talk to coworkers, bosses, even customers if you can get a hold of them.
Ultimately a person is reviewed by his peers, not by tiny sheets of paper that are relevant for about 3 days, before the entire distro is republished on sourceforge.
Finally, let them demonstrate if they wish.
I bring a projector and my Laptop with me to interviews, and I show my interviewers the nasty Oracle databases I built, my amanda backup scenarios, a couple of custom kernels I built myself to add P4 support, DRI support to give OpenGL a boost for example, I configure it and let it build in a window while I show them my Java ECLIPSE and CVS development environment...etc.
So in general.
Certifications suck, people who lots of nice things on thier resumes who have references and come to an interview ready to rock, are good.
-Hack
Yes, but Hard Disks are not cheap, plus they spin down, and fail. You cannot reboot either once that happens.
CD-ROMS, coupled with a small Ram Disk, don't have that problem.
You can also usually enable read only in the BIOS of the DISK as well.
There are all sorts of ways to secure the console.
-Hack
No thanks, keep the lawyers out of my Linux box please.
Taking Windows drivers and loading them on a Linux box will open a Intellectual Property Rights can O worms, which is not worth it.
The reason to even write a new OS instead of using Windows, is to have the source code to fix things.
Now you are telling me you are going to binary my drivers?
Why not just use Windows?
Really OPEN means OPEN. I do not want a closed OS. I want the source code for my drivers, so I can fix problems, or others can fix it for me.
I do not want to wait after 15 or 20 reboots a day for the next 3 months till a company gets around to fixing its crappy software.
If you want to do compatibility with Windows at the user or application layer, fine, I do not care.
But don't SCREW WITH MY OPEN SOURCE OS KERNEL GUYS.
-Hack
I build my firewalls with either CD-ROM drives or read only NFS mount points.
None of my firewalls first of all have any hard disks in them or floppy drives.
Only CD-ROM drives or no drives at all.
This is to insure that should a fault occur, the attacker is totally king of a read only file system.
Which effectively makes my compromised firewall a kingdom of....nothing.
Not only that, I just flip the power button.
I have a small ram disk, enough to run the ipchains command from a small bash prompt so I can make modifications to the firewall shuold I need to.
But they all disapear as soon as I hit the reset button. This is a good thing, or bad thing, depending on how you like to do things.
I store the entire image iso in a SQL based file system, so I have many types of firewalls, each with annotated sql table fields describing what they do, with documentation.
That way, I can just do a simple:
select description, iso from firewalls where description='H323' AND description='NAT';
In essence I ask the database to cough up a ISO should one already exists that handles NAT and video conferencing.
If nothing is returned, I build one, write a description, and put it in the database.
I do this with everything, even my infrastructure.
I do not believe in writing reports, or looking at pretty graphics, so I use SQL commands to ASK my infrastructure questions...
In my infrastructure database, I have over 1000 SNMP data point histories on server status, etc.
It would be really simple to write a front end for my stuff, which is what I have been doing.
I could have used something off the shelf, but most of the O.S. projects rely too much on the fact you have to HAVE TIME to read reports, and look at the pretty pictures.
That is worthless too me, I need a SQL command line and a database that is structured so I can ask it questions interactively, or through scripts (i.e. Java servlets).
-Hack
The man is smokin crack.
Half the products Microsoft produces are not patched at all and when 2000/XP are found to be lost causes to Microsoft's multiple security initiatives over the past years, products are just decommisioned.
Yeah, they patched all the holes in Win98 permenantly this year because it is no longer supported and end of lifed.
I still have patches comming in for my Linux 2.0.xx kernel!!!
-Hack
PS: Bill your doin serious weed man, you should stop that.
Ditto for that.
:-)
I also congratulate the Chinese people for having the vision and the know how, to finish what the west cannot.
I also wish the Chinese people luck with their newly found Dragon processor and Linux distribution.
It is my sincere hopes that you kick the worlds but in computer technology, and provide every single chinese with a computer...
running Linux of course!
I think everyone in the Linux community hopes that the Chinese people send the Penguin to the moon!
-hack
Miguel,
Since when does API changes in the software industry in the US have anything to do with practical market forces?
Regardless, of paranoia, there is considerable history that suggests companies using the old way of making money (shrink wrap licenses) will invoke all sorts of strange legal machinations to protect their markets as open source reshapes the landscape.
Microsoft will squash your little mono project like a grape along with the fools who contribute to it if it gets anywhere near an alternative to the real thing.
I cannot believe after all of the crap everyone here on slashdot has seen with respect to the SCO case that you think this guy is paranoid.
Wake up, HELLLLOOOOOO.
There is only one reason why Microsoft is being friendly to you, and that is because of the GNOME desktop project.
Mono is a nice diversion, that buys them time. It allows them more time to manuver as you divert precious resources away from the GNOME desktop to devote to MONO, while providing Microsoft with legal means to shut you down should that fail.
As long as MONO keeps just ONE programmer away from the GNOME desktop project, Microsoft considers it a success. A little bit of confusion over what is important is also something Microsoft considers good, as I see here. Everyone is confused and decieved about so called value of a published C# EMCA "standards" and the Java Community Process.
I would take the Java Community Process ANY DAY over a company that publishes a open standard, provides no source code, with a known track record of shutting down competitors.
At least SUN provides the source code for Java if you are serious about porting it. In fact it is very easy to get the source code for Java, and many people in the GNU community are using thier experience from the Blackdown project to do great things with gcc, using it.
Microsoft will keep feeding you little bones until you bury yourself in skeleton pile scary enough to spook even RMS himself this halloween.
You are a sucker guy and your killing the GNOME desktop project by diverting resources that it deperately needs to catch up with KDE.
Everyone will loose with MONO, not just those who want a decent GNOME desktop now, but those who use MONO to build anything with and are counting on Microsoft's good graces.
Sucker.
-Hack
What I would like, is some sort of plugin directory tree for Eclipse, in part of the 2.7 Kernel Tree that allows one to auotmagically build the make environment, and kernel switches required for a variety of kernel testing activities such as:
1) Performance Testing
2) Video Driver Development
3) Sound Driver Development
4) Storage/RAID Driver development
5) USB Peripheral Development
6) Firewire Development
7) Removable HotPLUG PCI device development
All of these in a directory included with the 2.7 series which anyone can just drop these plugins in ECLIPSE and they automagically setup the environment to start debugging the kernel.
Kernel debugging is incredibly complex. It is also complicated by the fact many times you need two machines to do the debugging.
Finally, another IDE plugin could be developed that allows code completion/KERNEL API completion.
This would link into a database somewhere, say on kernel.org, perhaps an XML service, that the IDE would download when it started up, or download just the changes since last debugging session.
Idea is to alert you of API changes to the kernel, so you are at the latest API, and don't end up getting depricated.
Anyone think this is too way out there?
-Hack
Should really be called....
:-)
:-)
Yet Another Secure Security program
Sort of Like yacc. Anyone remember yacc? (Yet Another Compiler Compiler)
Great for building compiler parsers, or any sort of parser, because you had to build them so often.
Sort of like Microsoft, it has to build Yet Another Secure Security program.
yass anyone?
Maybe Microsoft should make something like yacc, that way it can turn out a new yass every year with minimal effort.
Damn. I would hate to see the state machine for that puppy.
Although truly, implementing a state machine for a secure computing inititive is probably what they should do.
God knows, Microsoft has so many PhD's there that I am sure this has come up.
However, why Microsoft turns out the worst products, with so many "qualified" PhD's under employment is surely a mystery.
Probably the due to the fact I have never seen any evidence that links code quality to degree earned in the Information Technology field.
The only qualified link I have yet seen that suggests code quality is how many accomplishments (hours experience) on a resume.
Basically people I can call, references. If a person has a running track record, he is usually a good bet. Usually...because when you start combining groups of people to write code....it gets REALLY INTERESTING.
All bets are off then. Its a crap shoot.
I think this is going to have a big impact on our field, though.
Writing software is going to become a licensed trade after the first successful lawsuit against Microsoft.
What I mean by that, it won't matter what sort of degree you have, you will not be able to write software unless you have a license, and have been sent through a proper journeyman training program.
Sort of like carpenters and electricians. You work for about 2-4 years as a journeyman with people with many years of experience before you can write code for public consumption.
They key here is that you learn in the public sector, under "Masters" people in the field 10 years or more, solving real world problems, with minimal class work.
It is no wonder you can pull a guy out of a Tattoo parlor, employ him right next to the PhD you hired and he ends up out coding, out designing, and pissing off far fewer customers with his code, than the PhD guy. I mean everything too, theory and practice. Blew the PhD's pants off. ( I swear I seen it happen, no lie. )
Anyone think this prediction is going to come true with the pending lawsuit against Microsoft or am I making too many generalizations?
-Hack
My point is, I think you missed it, that Computer Science as an institution might end up like our MBA friends.
I know Universities support a lot of the development work. That is why I point to dogma as a key, because a lot of that support comes from people in an age group that do not have PhD's.
I didn't say all PhD's turn out the crap we see in Microsoft products.
Know people with PhD's? Yes, I do, and not all of them are bad, I didnt say that.
I had a fine University experience, in fact I am returning to the University Wisconsin soon.
-Hack
I hate to be a rant...but I can't help myself. :-)
Ethics is going down the tubes. An example, I think was the investment community in the U.S.
If you watch the media, you have this over all impression, well, Enron was just a fluke, they had poor accounting.
But if you read the papers, this fluke, is being practiced by 100's of companies, all screwing over their investors like cheap whores on a Dutch street corner.
I hate to point this out, but these Ivy league trained people were taught and are taught that this is just ducky. How can it not be with so many companies screwing you on a daily basis.
It can't be a fluke when everyone is doing it.
Fluke? I think not, but you decide.
It has become ethical to do business unethically and it is proudly taught that way in our so called finest Universities.
If anyone has any money in US retirement investment funds, when they retire 30-40 years from now, I will be really amazed.
If you are an investor, and you are investing in US companies for retirement, you my friend are a sucker.
Same thing is happening here. Microsoft is not an innovative company, it buys companies.
They do not write good software and if you are stupid enough to buy Microsoft Press books written by PhD's who claim they even have a clue about good Software Engineering principles, you are just another duped "investor".
I would like to point out that Microsoft is one of the largest employers of Computer Science PhD's in the country.
As an example, one must ask this question after looking at these Software Engineering practices books that Microsoft Press publishes as oxymoronic.
My reasoning is as follows:
Exhibit A: Microsoft hires more PhD computer scientists than even IBM has to work on the secure initiative for 2000 and XP. Building and rebuilding the entire OS 2000, and then again with XP, from scratch, at a estimated cost of 2.8 billion dollars.
Exhibit B: A 18 year old in Minnesota, a 16 year old in Malaysia, and a 21 year old in Russia. All with WAY too much time on their hands, with NO source code, find more security holes in 2000, XP than you can possibly say "Code 'in'-Complete" in that past 14 months.
Exhibit C: A University student, in Finland builds a new operating system kernel called Linux, and in just 8 years it is being worked on by almost no PhD's and many testors and code contributors are in their early 20's or teens, and is far more capable than windows, 1.8 billion dollars later.
Is Linux just another Enron? Fluke?
My point is that the way we are being taught code in this country is not the way code should be written. Even if you have a PhD, its business as usual dogma, just like our MBA friends.
Is it a fluke that the best code being written is not through institutionalized learning in this country?
What do these exhibits tell us about our country in general, with regards to ethics?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here.
Fluke?
I think not, but you decide.
-Hack
Oh Gee...
You better not let prevent us from taking over your markets of 3 Billion people, or we won't allow you access to our 400 Million....
Errr...yeah riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhht.
Fact is, like it or not, China could build its own products, and all of its own technology, and completely shut the West out and make one hell of a killing.
They do not need us.
If you ask any Chinese technology business over there, they do not like the fact American companies think they can't do anything worth while in computing, space, science...etc unless western companies invade their markets.
I think during the next 10 years we are going to have one hell of a surprise in store for ourselves as China tells us where to stick our computers and our software.
-gc
First of all, their is nothing wrong with Google.
The news is diverse, and it makes an excellent UP TO DATE news and research tool.
Please spare US your OUT OF DATE book based research in your personal academic library and spare us your OUT OF DATE opinions.
You obviously do not have have any money invested personally in those markets. I have.
I get dividends, do you? Probably not if you have invested in any American company. The EM areas very much push dividends. In fact over 80% of the EME companies PAY DIVIDENDS, regardless of stock price.
As for Asia not growing, you are out of your mind.
Everything is made in Asia, including your semiconductors in your computer guy. For the past 40 years, it has grown tremendously.
You have a very bad way of making examples as well. A $12,000 dollar salary for a Chinese city worker, is fine, as long as you don't pay $3.00 for a Latte like you do here in the US and pay more like $0.80 cents.
Goods are DRASTICALLY CHEAPER for a Chinese city worker, you just happened to neglect mentioning that. Perhaps you should use google more and stop consulting your 40 year old book on your desk.
Wow, perhaps you could actually take a trip to China and do some field work! Can't leave your classroom eh? Awe...TOO BAD.
I point these price costing issues out because using their own motherboards, and RedFlag Linux, China is going to start producing Pentium class computers for about $80 bucks a piece, complete with monitor.
Even I could buy a computer with $80 bucks if I made $12000 a year in the US!
Without Microsoft on their ass, Chinese PC manufacturers are going to take computing prices on hardware to all time lows. They have to, because as you so noted, the average person doesn't make much.
No, patents haven't lead to stagnating anything.
Your are a poor economist. Don't quit your day teaching job guy.
Patents have held back many products and markets in high tech goods. I mention drugs because you see it ALL THE TIME.
Judge installs injunction for SO AND SO because of patent infringement.
Even the Wall Street Journal or Fox Financial News has stories on how drug companies are constantly in a legal battle over drugs stuck in the quagmire of US IP and Copyright law.
Perhaps you should read/watch those publications/news shows more often.
It isn't google either, try it, you might like it, and you do not have to leave your class room or office either! How about that.
But your idea that patents are not holding back American business, for the worse, obviously never had to live through the early days of Ecommerce in this country.
RSA held back the US for many years, charging outrageous fees for that HTTPS url. Europe didn't have that problem, and they moved much more quickly to take advantage of the economic benefits of doing business online.
But then of course, everything is business as usual. The US patent laws and copyright laws are throwing people in Jail in their own countries, and people like you are suggesting everything is OK. BE happy.
Nothing to see here....move along.
You my friend, quoting a famous Rooster, "You are a nut case."
-Hack
Well, to be frank, IP and Copyrights if left unchecked as they are in the US cause the following:
1) Incredibly high drug prices and stagnant research.
Nothing will hurt the poor more, than when you can't buy a statin drug for heart or the large number of other problems statins fix, than high medication prices.
2) IP and Copyright law on software specifically, is shipping jobs for US workers over seas.
Why? Well, if you can design software in countries that do not recognize software or copyright patents, and sell into yet like markets, you make a killing.
The US tech sector is a desert now, with unemployment reaching 7.2% for this year so far.
It is only going to increase.
3) IP and Copyright law has sealed the fate of the US computer industry to a very gloomy future.
Why? Well the answer is very complex, but I will try and make it short and sweet, without soundling like an Economist.
Everyone who has bought a computer in the US has already bought one and the price of the computer now has hit rock bottom. Not because computers can't get still cheaper, it is because Microsoft's OS keeps getting more expensive.
Everyone agrees, that the far east is the next boom market. Billions of Chinese will need a computer one day, a Cell Phone, PDA..etc.
Thanks to senators like Hatch in Utah, and other politically ($$$) bought power players in Washington, no country in their right mind would buy US tech products.
Primarily because Hatch advocated remote control, blowing up any electronic device that downloads Copyrighted material.
Well, that and the CIA and NSA have approached Microsoft in a not so private way advocating backdoors into Windows products sold in foreign countries.
No country in its right mind would buy those products. It doesn't even matter if they exist or not. The damage has been done:
a) China and a group of Nations representing what I call the "Far East Block" or the limbs of the "Dragon" as I call them, are building their own OS. I am almost 100% sure it will probably be a modified resold package based around "Red Flag" Linux.
b) These countries, are having a great deal of recent success in building their own motherboards and processors, with Red Flag Linux preloaded.
c) It is already a matter of public record the Chinese have mandated the use of Red Flag Linux in all matters of government starting in 2004, and are investing billions in eGovernment that is US tamper proof.
(i.e. They recently told Microsoft to go take a hike.)
Of course, the far east represents an enourmous market potential. Whatever country, or countries taps that markets consumer tech goods potential WILL hold the title "Super Power", make no mistake about it.
But those markets have vastly different ideas of what software is, and what IP and Copyrights are.
Thanksfully, they are much more sane than the US, and you won't read about Chinese going to jail for making backups of their DVD's, or for doing research on software related topics in computer security.
What this represents to the US and Europe are fading political power, a vastly reduced tax base, growth position, and of course.
MANY MANY more return pages in Kanjii, Chinese when you fire up Google...
If I was a Slashdot reader, I would start learning Chinese in earnest. I certainly am.
-Hack
Timothy!
Looked at the photos...
Good God man, sit up straight!
Tuck your shirt in!
Comb your hair!
Eat somethin, for the love of God, you look like your going to blow away in the wind!
I hope the trip didn't include a hunger strike.
At least you didn't mention one.
Other than that, good job!
-Hack
Our biggest problem in this country (US) right now:
1) We are raising and building infrastructure with
admins that do not understand the technology
they are using.
2) We are educating people to be administrators
that can only push OK or CANCEL. If they can't
they complain "Oh if I can't do that then
platform isn't mature, so we don't use it."
I give analogous representations of most hapless Windows administrators to being equivalent to people who choose not to learn calculas because it is "too hard" and therefore "too expensive" to use.
If I do use calculas I will loose productivity!
Fact is, Microsoft is trying to dumb down computing to the point every possible problem you could ever have is in a wizard or dialog box.
It will never happen, and the more decisions the software makes, without approval or human intervention beyond OK or CANCEL the easier Windows is going to be to crack.
No software is ever made more secure by adding more software to fix security leaks.
The only way you reduce software vulnerabilities, is by removing software.
As we all know, every release of Windows gets bigger, and of course so does Linux.
But with Linux I have a choice on what software I install. Windows, you have only two choices.
OK and CANCEL of course.
-Hack
Essentially what have we got with patent laws on software?
A very very sick US software industry that is on life support, with very little innovation.
And what about the largest markets for software right now such as China? What do they think about our software IP system?
Obviously they do not think it is fair. China is taking steps to make sure they do not incorporate ANY western software technology into thier products, going as far as constructing thier own Microprocessors, Motherboards and version of Linux to avoid software IP controls.
No country with a expanding market would agree to the US version of IP or its restrictions.
In the end, what does that do for the US except lock us out of new markets by governments who recognize the American copyright and patent system for what it is: To prevent and exterminate competition, kill the idea of ownership of ANYTHING and create a legal system that allows any company with enough cash to set artificially high prices.
Everything about computing in the US has become cheaper outside of Microsoft's control, except software. Why is that?
Why MUST OS software cost more than half of the basic price of computer equipment, and continue to increase when every single solitary aspect of computing has followed a cheaper, faster route?
I will tell you why: American Software Patents, American Copyright Laws and crooked politicians who have been bought off and have tossed our Anti-trust laws out the window.
From that window they also tossed out future access to markets as companies and countries over seas see how sick the American information technology industry is and what it has become.
If you have been a reader to slashdot, you already know that many MANY products released over seas are far better than anything you could possibly buy here.
Why is that? Why is this increasingly becomming an issue that better PDA's, better Cell Phones, better software is increasingly NOT in the US and you cannot BUY it here either.
All we get is a new version of Windows to make it easier to use...
easier for Hackers, terrorists and foreigners to break into our corporate and government institutions, to use, I mean.
Europe should ask itself does it really want this sort of legal lunacy, where even if you wanted to FIX software under our copyright law, to prevent such breakins it would be illegal to do so?
Even if you bought it for Christ sake after signing a DMCA copyright EULA that says you cannot sue the company you bought the software from?
The US IP law and Copyright law as written is out of control, and it be rewritten to prevent our allies and far east block nations from viewing us and our software products with such suspicion.
In the end it locks us out of these markets and sends jobs over seas.
Is it any wonder? Software in the US is incredibly expensive, but not directly because of what we pay our programmers, but because software IS expensive in a market that has not competition.
American software companies can innovate, if they are forced to do so, when faced with cheap labor overseas.
But innovation is impossible in a market that patents ideas, copyrights information for 100 years at a time and allows companies like SCO to not produce anything innovative with thier OS except a legal summary against IBM.
Our very own laws are preventing us from competing effectively in all levels of maunfacturing software.
I hope Europe doesn't make the same mistake we have so at least they can participate in the enourmous software market opportunities in the far east to sell thier products thier, unlike the US which is basically a write off at this point.
-Hack
I would have to agree.
It is always a better choice to use clusters of hardware, than a single box.
You have a variety of tools available on the open source market now to monitor, and automagically maintain your cluster, depending on what you choose...the most popular is PVM, and it comes with a ton of very nice management utils you can get off the net, too manage hundreds of machines in a blink of an eye. This is a very configurable cluster architecture.
There is also MOSIX, or open Mosix. A very nice computing facility as well, allowing you to use a single image machine from a large collection of machines tied together through a network.
Do a google on PVM or MOSIX.
-Hack