I feel that with THAT much experience under your belt already, you really should not be all that concerned. However, to prevent that resume from being immediately tossed aside, there are some things you should do. You mentioned you are senior system engineer (whatever that is). This leads me to believe to some extent that you are a project manager. Get a certification in project management. Similarly, get certs in whatever you do most. Yeah, theyre not worth much, but an employer is going to be really shady about considering you unless you have completed at least some sort of benchmark that says you can do something. They are also alot cheaper than a degree, and if you pursue them in your areas of expertise, they shouldnt be that hard either. If you have the time, dedication, and money, you really can not beat a real, actual degree. If that is not possible, you may wish to pursue an "advanced degree certificate" that many schools are now offering as night programs. they are generally about a year long, and are used by professionals who have a degree in one area, but are looking to get proficiency in another. The most common route is a techie getting a business certificate, but second to that from what I have seen, is Computer certificate. I dont know where you are located, but good examples can be found here at hofstra's site http://www.hofstra.edu/Admissions/adm_gradprograms.cfm
I think it is important to realize that MP3 technology languished for many years before it all of a sudden mushroomed into the juggernaut is today (in fact I believe the original technology originated in 1988, but you would have to check me on that). Why? 1.) Mp3's are most commonly played in the background, while doing other things on a computer. For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II. 2.) Cd burners-- CD burners made it effortless to get an exact duplicate of the music, and MP3's did not take off until burners became prevalent and everyone had one, or at least knew someone that did. 3.) Hard drive space. Back in the day of 1 gig hard drives, it was very easy to fill up your disk w/ a menial number of songs, and buying more disk space to house music files just wasnt cost effective. 4.) THE BIGGIE--BANDWIDTH. Until cable modems came around, and college kids had lan/t1 access, no one wanted to wait 8 hours to listen to a 3 minute song. Ok, now what is the point of this exercise? Replace all of the words MP3 and song, with DVD and MOVIE. We are in a similar position w/ dvd/movies that we were in with mp3/songs right before they ballooned in popularity. For movies to become as pirated as music, we are going to need huge bandwidth upgrades, which I do not see happening any time soon. However, Hard disk space, DVD burners, and Processor speeds are improving every day, and I bet you the age of movie pirating will soon be upon us. -Kevin
It depends on how you define, "out of control." Today's machines throw off tons of heat, and conventional coolers use a fight fire with fire method, expending power in the case to move fan blades ever faster to remove heat. A PC these days usually has 4 fans in it, more if you cool your hard drives, or want to double up. Water Cooling is an order of magnitude better at heat removal for the power consumed, and doing it quietly. And while about 6 months to a year ago it was a crude, voodoo art, companies are producing high end products that make it viable. It is a meer matter of time before the products start trickling down into cheaper less effective price ranges for those who want to just cool their processor, graphics card, etc, with a water based system. There are many sites that will allow you to do it on the cheap, and if youre building a system, and opt to use water instead of the conventional fans, you wont be spending much more money and youll have a quieter system. So, as you see, this isnt a matter of necessary, this is a matter of a better way to cool. I think in a few years, this stuff could be used in OEM PC's. -K
Considering the trouble PC makers are in right now, and that analysts now consider the PC market to be "saturated," I really can not see how they can predict a billion more machines to be sold in as little as 6 years. Also, consider that microprocessor technology has now leapfrogged ahead of software developers, and we no longer need the latest multighz processors to do what we do on a normal basis. Back when I purchased my first 100mhz pentium system, right out of the box I wished I had the smoking 166, because almost EVERY application would be more responsive run on it. Now, I have a 2 year old 700 mhz athlon, which I am every bit as happy with now as I was when I first put the system together. I forsee this system lasting much longer than my first system, since my first system at two years old was almost unbearably sluggish. I really doubt that the current "saturation point" we are at can sustain the required 166 MILLION PCS SOLD PER YEAR required to meet the next billion mark. And if this is sustainable, let me go invest in some DELL stock. -k
It is true that Macs are not PC's. If we break out our history books, we remember that IBM came out with the PC, which was a brand, not a type. The name has since been dilluted to be a type (somewhat similar to how we now Xerox things on a Xerox machine, regardless of what brand the copier is). Until Macs can run windows software right out of the box, they are not IBM PC compatible, and therefore not PC's. Of course, under the new dilluted use of the term, they are. -k
It seems to me that using a product like Norton's Ghost http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/pr oducts.cfm?productID=3 is what you need. You set up one computer, and then via the network you can install that image, all the user has to do is reboot. It has worked very well for many LARGE entities. -kevin
As previously mentioned, the original pledge did not even have the line "one nation, under God" in it. This was added by a legislative order in 1954 (And I wonder how bored lawmakers were at the time that they had nothing better to do than ammend a line of a patriotic verse). The court is not saying the pledge can not be recited, but just that the phrase "one nation, under God" should be removed. Now think about this. the flow of the verse is not affected that much. The pledge is in its original form. This is not that big of a deal, and it promotes one of the key principles of our country, the SEPERATION of church and state. Now, it may seem a bit silly to worry about the church having an undue influence on politics, but at our nations founding this was a very real problem, and as Islamic terrorists have shown us, mixing church and politics is a very BAD thing(tm) even today. So really, the court is right. Its right in the constitution. this is not a gray area.
Slashdot Mirror
I feel that with THAT much experience under your belt already, you really should not be all that concerned. However, to prevent that resume from being immediately tossed aside, there are some things you should do. You mentioned you are senior system engineer (whatever that is). This leads me to believe to some extent that you are a project manager. Get a certification in project management. Similarly, get certs in whatever you do most. Yeah, theyre not worth much, but an employer is going to be really shady about considering you unless you have completed at least some sort of benchmark that says you can do something. They are also alot cheaper than a degree, and if you pursue them in your areas of expertise, they shouldnt be that hard either. If you have the time, dedication, and money, you really can not beat a real, actual degree. If that is not possible, you may wish to pursue an "advanced degree certificate" that many schools are now offering as night programs. they are generally about a year long, and are used by professionals who have a degree in one area, but are looking to get proficiency in another. The most common route is a techie getting a business certificate, but second to that from what I have seen, is Computer certificate. I dont know where you are located, but good examples can be found here at hofstra's site http://www.hofstra.edu/Admissions/adm_gradprograms .cfm
-kevin
I think it is important to realize that MP3 technology languished for many years before it all of a sudden mushroomed into the juggernaut is today (in fact I believe the original technology originated in 1988, but you would have to check me on that). Why? 1.) Mp3's are most commonly played in the background, while doing other things on a computer. For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II. 2.) Cd burners-- CD burners made it effortless to get an exact duplicate of the music, and MP3's did not take off until burners became prevalent and everyone had one, or at least knew someone that did. 3.) Hard drive space. Back in the day of 1 gig hard drives, it was very easy to fill up your disk w/ a menial number of songs, and buying more disk space to house music files just wasnt cost effective. 4.) THE BIGGIE--BANDWIDTH. Until cable modems came around, and college kids had lan/t1 access, no one wanted to wait 8 hours to listen to a 3 minute song. Ok, now what is the point of this exercise? Replace all of the words MP3 and song, with DVD and MOVIE. We are in a similar position w/ dvd/movies that we were in with mp3/songs right before they ballooned in popularity. For movies to become as pirated as music, we are going to need huge bandwidth upgrades, which I do not see happening any time soon. However, Hard disk space, DVD burners, and Processor speeds are improving every day, and I bet you the age of movie pirating will soon be upon us.
-Kevin
It depends on how you define, "out of control." Today's machines throw off tons of heat, and conventional coolers use a fight fire with fire method, expending power in the case to move fan blades ever faster to remove heat. A PC these days usually has 4 fans in it, more if you cool your hard drives, or want to double up. Water Cooling is an order of magnitude better at heat removal for the power consumed, and doing it quietly. And while about 6 months to a year ago it was a crude, voodoo art, companies are producing high end products that make it viable. It is a meer matter of time before the products start trickling down into cheaper less effective price ranges for those who want to just cool their processor, graphics card, etc, with a water based system. There are many sites that will allow you to do it on the cheap, and if youre building a system, and opt to use water instead of the conventional fans, you wont be spending much more money and youll have a quieter system. So, as you see, this isnt a matter of necessary, this is a matter of a better way to cool. I think in a few years, this stuff could be used in OEM PC's.
-K
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/s ubmersion/submersion.html
Considering the trouble PC makers are in right now, and that analysts now consider the PC market to be "saturated," I really can not see how they can predict a billion more machines to be sold in as little as 6 years. Also, consider that microprocessor technology has now leapfrogged ahead of software developers, and we no longer need the latest multighz processors to do what we do on a normal basis. Back when I purchased my first 100mhz pentium system, right out of the box I wished I had the smoking 166, because almost EVERY application would be more responsive run on it. Now, I have a 2 year old 700 mhz athlon, which I am every bit as happy with now as I was when I first put the system together. I forsee this system lasting much longer than my first system, since my first system at two years old was almost unbearably sluggish. I really doubt that the current "saturation point" we are at can sustain the required 166 MILLION PCS SOLD PER YEAR required to meet the next billion mark. And if this is sustainable, let me go invest in some DELL stock.
-k
It is true that Macs are not PC's. If we break out our history books, we remember that IBM came out with the PC, which was a brand, not a type. The name has since been dilluted to be a type (somewhat similar to how we now Xerox things on a Xerox machine, regardless of what brand the copier is). Until Macs can run windows software right out of the box, they are not IBM PC compatible, and therefore not PC's. Of course, under the new dilluted use of the term, they are.
-k
Seems to Be /.ed 4 FTLkC: www.xentex.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Google Cache Link
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:v1jL4n
Not as Impressive as I thought. it still seems to be pretty close to standard monitors
It seems to me that using a product like Norton's Ghost http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/pr oducts.cfm?productID=3 is what you need. You set up one computer, and then via the network you can install that image, all the user has to do is reboot. It has worked very well for many LARGE entities.
-kevin
As previously mentioned, the original pledge did not even have the line "one nation, under God" in it. This was added by a legislative order in 1954 (And I wonder how bored lawmakers were at the time that they had nothing better to do than ammend a line of a patriotic verse). The court is not saying the pledge can not be recited, but just that the phrase "one nation, under God" should be removed. Now think about this. the flow of the verse is not affected that much. The pledge is in its original form. This is not that big of a deal, and it promotes one of the key principles of our country, the SEPERATION of church and state. Now, it may seem a bit silly to worry about the church having an undue influence on politics, but at our nations founding this was a very real problem, and as Islamic terrorists have shown us, mixing church and politics is a very BAD thing(tm) even today. So really, the court is right. Its right in the constitution. this is not a gray area.