My advice is to have an execution attitude. In other words, get things done. Your boss will love you if he knows that he can give you something and know that it will get done.
I am a fan of the practice of alluding to other well know literature. I think it is a great way to communicate complex ideas efficiently and capture big thoughts and ideas easily. Who doesn't know what 30 pieces of silver signifies? I love the statement "we are standing on the shoulders of giants". Such devices make progress in literature much more possible. Those are well known samples. It is good to give credit but not always necessary. Otherwise credit should be given. If it is not it is plagiarism.
What you are looking for is controls that keeps your sysadmin from doing anything bad to your company, data, network, etc. One control is to have them onsite. But how many employees have caused the harm you describe while onsite? You need to look at different types of controls than proximity. What does your contract with the outsourcer say? Are their employees subject to your company policies? Do you have company policies? Has the sys admin read them and signed something saying that he agrees to abide by them? Have you run a background check on your sysadmin? These are all things you should have thought of a long time ago.
The real question is what do you want to do? You might not have a good idea yet. Thus you ask thousands of slashdot readers you have never met.
I got a Mech. Engineering degree but got my first job as a staff consultant at Price Waterhouse, before it was PWC. That is a good way to go if you are not sure what you want to do. Consultants, especially entry level ones, end up doing whatever the client needs them to do. I wrote requirements, test plans, reports, did testing, maintained code, programmed, presented to clients. Just about everything. It was a great experience.
You may also want to try to become a business analyst. If you can understand the business guys and translate their needs to programming specifications. You may also want to look at business process management tools. Check out www.intalio.com. With understanding of BPMS you can take business requirements and weave them into high level executable processes.
I did it through a big multi-national consulting firm. It was a great experience and looked great on my resume. My wife hated it because she tagged along and there wasn't a whole lot for her. But that's a different discussion.
In my experience, English is the defacto language of technology. Almost everyone in Germany spoke English. Half the people in Japan spoke English. The other half know and speak most technical terms in English. I speak Japanese, so I was able to handle either situation fairly well.
I would love to see a boss walk into a room where the sysadmin are using this. The conversation would be too funny.
I wonder what movies we'll see this in the future.
But seriously, can you extend this paradigm into all aspects of system administration? E.g. setting up cron jobs, new users, installing software, etc. If so I might just make the move from programmer to sysadm.
All these benchmarks have done for me is question the integrity of both Microsoft and Mindcraft.
From now on I will take all claims made by Microsoft with a bigger grain of salt.
Microsoft will survive this debacle, but I'm sure that Mindcraft will take a serious blow. With their integrity questioned, who will take their tests seriously? I don't think that they'll be getting too many customers now.
Here is a suggestion for the Linux community: Someone should start a Linux hardware benchmarking and testing project. The role of this project would be to provide tips for tuning different configurations of computers for different purposes. Maybe they could get VAResearch to loan some hardware for the tests. The project team could challenge people at Microsoft to beat their results in head to head competition with impartial judges.
Linux having no "central point of control" is considered a problem? Couldn't you say the same about Democracy? Is that worse than a dictatorship?
With Linux, what the people want, the people build. I think what Bill means is that there is alot of duplicated effort (e.g. Gnome and KDE). However, when profit is not your main motivating factor, duplicating effort is not a problem. As long as people get what suits their needs.
I was greatly suprised by the tone of your article. Linux's Doomsday? I'm not exactly sure that I see that. The only concrete example that you gave of the doom of Linux was that RedHat's slipping release schedule. What makes this the harbinger of doom? RedHat is not the only distribution of Linux. Or of Open Source software. If users don't like this release schedule, they can try another distribution.
This is also what will make it so difficult for Venture Capitalists to grab control of Linux. There is no monopoly on Linux. No handle for anyone to grab hold of. If anything, VC interest will be a boon to the Linux community. There are other ways to make money off of software than just selling the software. VC interest in Linux and OS will open the door for service companies, consulting, custom software development.
Lastly, I am suprised that you are against making software that will ease the transition of people to Open Source software. You seem to have spent a great deal of time working with open source software. Now, you treat the use of OS software like some kind of club where everyone should devote the same amount of effort as you. I thought the goal was to make software as accessible as possible to everyone. That getting involved in OS development projects is a means helping everyone. Not just the technically elite.
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Many good and many funny comments.
My advice is to have an execution attitude. In other words, get things done. Your boss will love you if he knows that he can give you something and know that it will get done.
I am a fan of the practice of alluding to other well know literature. I think it is a great way to communicate complex ideas efficiently and capture big thoughts and ideas easily. Who doesn't know what 30 pieces of silver signifies? I love the statement "we are standing on the shoulders of giants". Such devices make progress in literature much more possible.
Those are well known samples. It is good to give credit but not always necessary. Otherwise credit should be given. If it is not it is plagiarism.
What you are looking for is controls that keeps your sysadmin from doing anything bad to your company, data, network, etc. One control is to have them onsite. But how many employees have caused the harm you describe while onsite? You need to look at different types of controls than proximity. What does your contract with the outsourcer say? Are their employees subject to your company policies? Do you have company policies? Has the sys admin read them and signed something saying that he agrees to abide by them? Have you run a background check on your sysadmin? These are all things you should have thought of a long time ago.
There is also an Intalio Foundation that contributes user accounts to nonprofits.
http://itredux.com/2009/05/21/intalio-foundation/
Try Intalio|CRM. (http://www.intalio.com/products/crm/) It is a full featured CRM. It is free for up to two users. It has Outlook sync capabilities.
The real question is what do you want to do? You might not have a good idea yet. Thus you ask thousands of slashdot readers you have never met.
I got a Mech. Engineering degree but got my first job as a staff consultant at Price Waterhouse, before it was PWC. That is a good way to go if you are not sure what you want to do. Consultants, especially entry level ones, end up doing whatever the client needs them to do. I wrote requirements, test plans, reports, did testing, maintained code, programmed, presented to clients. Just about everything. It was a great experience.
You may also want to try to become a business analyst. If you can understand the business guys and translate their needs to programming specifications. You may also want to look at business process management tools. Check out www.intalio.com. With understanding of BPMS you can take business requirements and weave them into high level executable processes.
I did it through a big multi-national consulting firm. It was a great experience and looked great on my resume. My wife hated it because she tagged along and there wasn't a whole lot for her. But that's a different discussion. In my experience, English is the defacto language of technology. Almost everyone in Germany spoke English. Half the people in Japan spoke English. The other half know and speak most technical terms in English. I speak Japanese, so I was able to handle either situation fairly well.
I would love to see a boss walk into a room where the sysadmin are using this. The conversation would be too funny.
I wonder what movies we'll see this in the future.
But seriously, can you extend this paradigm into all aspects of system administration? E.g. setting up cron jobs, new users, installing software, etc. If so I might just make the move from programmer to sysadm.
All these benchmarks have done for me is question the integrity of both Microsoft and Mindcraft.
From now on I will take all claims made by Microsoft with a bigger grain of salt.
Microsoft will survive this debacle, but I'm sure that Mindcraft will take a serious blow. With their integrity questioned, who will take their tests seriously? I don't think that they'll be getting too many customers now.
Here is a suggestion for the Linux community: Someone should start a Linux hardware benchmarking and testing project. The role of this project would be to provide tips for tuning different configurations of computers for different purposes. Maybe they could get VAResearch to loan some hardware for the tests. The project team could challenge people at Microsoft to beat their results in head to head competition with impartial judges.
Linux having no "central point of control" is considered a problem? Couldn't you say the same about Democracy? Is that worse than a dictatorship?
With Linux, what the people want, the people build. I think what Bill means is that there is alot of duplicated effort (e.g. Gnome and KDE). However, when profit is not your main motivating factor, duplicating effort is not a problem. As long as people get what suits their needs.
Does anyone know whether PeopleSoft supports Linux or any other Unix?
I was greatly suprised by the tone of your article. Linux's Doomsday? I'm not exactly sure that I see that. The only concrete example that you gave of the doom of Linux was that RedHat's slipping release schedule. What makes this the harbinger of doom? RedHat is not the only distribution of Linux. Or of Open Source software. If users don't like this release schedule, they can try another distribution.
This is also what will make it so difficult for Venture Capitalists to grab control of Linux. There is no monopoly on Linux. No handle for anyone to grab hold of. If anything, VC interest will be a boon to the Linux community. There are other ways to make money off of software than just selling the software. VC interest in Linux and OS will open the door for service companies, consulting, custom software development.
Lastly, I am suprised that you are against making software that will ease the transition of people to Open Source software. You seem to have spent a great deal of time working with open source software. Now, you treat the use of OS software like some kind of club where everyone should devote the same amount of effort as you. I thought the goal was to make software as accessible as possible to everyone. That getting involved in OS development projects is a means helping everyone. Not just the technically elite.
But enough of my ranting.