I recently bought a new Nokia 9300 with a mobile contract in the UK. I had the 9110 and the 9210 communicators in the past and I love the format.
The thumb keyboard is very good, and it can easily cope with SMS, emails, documents, etc. I also have a version of PuTTY installed to ssh to servers.
Okay, so the battery life isn't anywhere near as long as your old RIM950, but then almost nothing does these days. You certainly won't need a PDA if you have a 9300, it does everything in a very nice format, and at last a reasonable size that can be carried around everywhere. The 9500 is identical, but has a camera and wi-fi, but for me the additional bulk is far too much to pay for the limited additional functionality that I would rarely use.
In fact, I welcome the lack of a camera on the 9300, as a contractor I need to be aware that in future I may receive work at locations that object to you bringing a camera onsite, which would cause all worlds of pain with any camera phone...
I was in the same situation as yourself a year ago and I took a position as a consultant and I haven't looked back since.
Sorry - I think you misunderstood, I was not describing a situation I was in, merely giving some advice. For the record I have moved into consulting myself, and I am finding it enjoyable and rewarding. I would recommend it to people who have the appropriate experience, and know exactly what they want to do - however as you said, they must be prepared to travel more.
Also consulting is best for people who are prepared to take the uncertainty that goes with the job, and who are willing to perpetually job-hunt. I've been a little lazy on the job hunting front myself, but a little bit of networking and careful placement of my CV has been bringing a few recruiters and head-hunters to my door. I will start to seriously look soon though as my current contract is coming to an end, and I'd rather keep my options open than to blindly renew it.
I think you should be very careful - I can't imagine many companies wanting to hire a fresh graduate into a Senior position, there are a lot of experienced professionals out there looking for work, and all the graduates are generally looking to step into a junior software developer positions.
If you aim for unrealistic goals, then you must be prepared to fail, if you do want to go for the senior positions on the off-chance you hit lucky, make sure you also apply for the junior positions elsewhere.
To be honest, just working in a corporate environment should be a challenging learning experience for most graduates, it's completely different to how you will have worked in college. Once you have mastered the basic work-place skills and proven your worth then you will be in a position to move on to more challenging roles.
I would agree that it is best to find a job that you will learn in and be challenged, but the way to do this is to have a lot of applications out there, a number of offers in the bag after interviews, then you choose the most interesting/challenging one. Don't be afraid of accepting positions as they come in, and then "resigning" them before starting if you get a better offer from another company. the companies are pretty strict on making sure they have the right candidate out of many, and if you get the opportunity then you should make sure you pick the best company out of many.
Get your first foot on the ladder, then set your own pace for progression - be on the lookout for stagnation though, if you find yourself getting bogged down in a position, bored and unchallenged, go shopping for a new job.
Keep in mind that the UK gallon (Imperial?) is larger than the US gallon.
Good point, but I used Google to translate litres to gallons and it returned the value in US gallons. So the quoted price of $6/gallon stands with US gallons. In Imperial gallons it is around $7.20/gallon.
In my eyes, you certainly aren't paying the environmental costs (ie the approximated costs of restoring the destruction you've caused) of burning the fuel you use (I've seen calculations in the 2-3 per liter range - would be around $15 per gallon, I think). Even you aren't from the US as I think, but a co-european of mine, you certainly aren't paying those gas prices
Yup - at the moment I think the price for petrol in the UK equates to around $6/gallon.
Purge your cookies and see how it's fixed again.:)
Thanks, I had to do it a couple of times, because if I just tried to log in with my profile, it would try the UK version again and get broken again, but once I went back through the process of setting up the page it worked fine!
Okay - replying to myself...but now I've just tried the.com version again, and I'm getitng the same issue. Maybe this is just me. Doh. Also if I try and sign-in, the page just times out.
And replying to myself yet again, I can now say it's certainly broken, both the.co.uk site and the.com site. It worked the first time I went to the pages, but now it's all broken. If you have had it working, purge your cookies and see just how broken it is now.
It seems to send the page into a loop...in IE you will just receive continuous warnings that you are being redirected to an nonsecure page.
Okay - replying to myself...but now I've just tried the.com version again, and I'm getitng the same issue. Maybe this is just me. Doh. Also if I try and sign-in, the page just times out.
The classic example is the Ouija board. There are two kinds of people when it comes to using a Ouija board as a group: the people saying "look! it's spelling something!", and the one guy who's gently pushing the pointer around and saying "I'm not pushing it!" like everyone else. I've always been the guy pushing the pointer around, myself...
Heh - I was the one near the second lightswitch to the room that everyone had forgotten about, and flickered the lights at just the right moment to freak everyone out...maybe even the person doing the pushing.;)
I picked the MBA-TM. I will be done at the end of this year.
From your information you don't seem to be based in the UK, so I'm guessing you didn't do the Open University MBA-TM (of course, I may be wrong!). All the same, what was your perception of the workload of the course? Is it something that's pretty tough to keep up with whilst working, and maintaining some level of social life, or is it something that I should count on sucking my time completely over the next three years?
Of course, I am willing to put in the effort, but I also have to be realistic about meeting the demands - I don't want to put that much cash on that table with a possibility of dropping out due to workload...
This story has come at a good time for me, as I was pondering the exact same issue, I am considering studying an MBA with the Open University, and the course starts in May so I need to move fast...
They have two MBAs that I'd consider as options though - and I'm somewhat undecided about which to go for:
I am a process engineer and process manager, involved in process control and improvement, particularly ITIL, ISO9000, and Business Continuity related disciplines. I also own my own consultancy company, and would like to take some big steps forward over the next 10 years or so. I'm not sure really which of the two would benefit me most, they're both quite expensive, so I want to make sure I get the most value from the course. I'm still 29 now, which I think is probably a good age to be thinking about an MBA - old enough to have some experience of business, but still young enough that I haven't completely forgotten how to study yet...
Anyone out there have experience of these courses, or any ideas on what the benefits of each are?
ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library, and defines an IT Service Management structure that can be applied to IT Operations as an effective framework. There are two main areas within ITIL, Service Delivery and Service Support.
Service Delivery includes:
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Availability Management
Financial Management
IT Service Continuity
Service Support includes:
Service Desk
Incident Management
Problem Management
Change Management
Release Management
Configuration Management (arguablely also part of Service Delivery)
If you apply an ITIL methodology throught IT Operations you will find that the IT operational projects are run more smoothly in a well controlled environment. You can google for a lot more information on ITIL, but I recommend certification, at least to Foundation level for anyone seriously interested in implementation. See also BS15000, the British Standard associated with ITIL which is expected to become an ISO (International Standard) in the future.
Out of that, I recieved 15 interviews and one job offer- all on either the applications for fast food jobs, or on the 2 page resumes.
In the UK almost everyone seems to say that a CV (UK terminology for resume) shouldn't be over two pages, and I was surprised to find that in Belgium anything over one page is deemed excessive for most people.
Of course, I took the advice I had received to heart, and tried to cram as much as possible into a two page document - this was used with little effect for the occasional job application for one to two years. Then a recruitment agency contacted me with a position they thought I could apply for, and asked me to flesh out my CV to include more detail on certain areas - length no issue (I extended it to about three pages)...
I got an interview, and very quickly (within a day) a job offer. I also used the CV to apply for another job that also interested me - again netting an interview (and maybe an even better offer - still waiting).
Don't restrict yourself too much to the length of a CV, it is not the be-all and end-all of your application. If you need more space to demonstrate your skills and experience then use it. I know that I wouldn't immediately bin a CV for being over two pages in length - as long as the content justified the length.
Of course, try and make sure it is readable - use a good sized readable font, well spaced. Don't cramp the text and do ask friends for their opinion on the style and presentation.
There is a lot of information out there on writing the "perfect" CV, but some of it does conflict - do your research but go with what feels right for you and your situation.
SorcererX (818515)
Well, I'm pretty sure that if a person downloaded nmap to a compromised host that person most likely visited the nmap website some time.
The easiest way of getting the exact url to download is to check it directly on the site yourself. Even if the link was found from elsewhere on the net, the person doing the download would have probably checked that the link was valid in advance.
The key word here is "most" - sure if someone is really really really careful to cover every track they could possibly leave, then maybe they won't have directly visited the site. Most people would have done though. Of course the difficult part is determining when.
I tend to use 6-8 characters.
Numbers, upper and lower case letters.
I tend to use uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation. An example might look like: s1mhm$tM-BIdc! (just off the top of my head, and memorable to me)
Most people do have horrific password security though...
Apache on these boxes was set not to log any IP addresses in the access logs, see the discussions on the IMC Tech list if you want to know more about this.
You can also see Yeb's comments (Yeb is Jebba, the guy associated with Indymedia who has the contract with Rackspace) on this exact issue in a slashdot comment he made once upon a time...
I don't know, they weren't THAT much different at times, if you read the article:
It was the custom for every one to say "good morning" and then sign off his or her call letters, when we got out of bed, and "good night" before retiring. Some of the operators kept scandalous hours. In fact, some said "GN" after our early risers had said "GM" for the next day. So you see, some of the night hawks were constantly a day behind themselves. New Year's night was always great on this. We would hear some fellow going to bed at 8:00 a.m. next morning, after we had heard our other early risers say "GM" at 5:00 a.m. I always kept my instrument cut in, and thought nothing of hearing my pal, Milo White, say "GN" three o'clock in the morning.
What exciting times they lived in...anyway, now it is time for me to say "GN"...
A few days after this most beautiful call down that we had received, I was surprised to hear a continuous roar in my phones from Cannon's spark. I sat there fully ten minutes listening to it, and never a let up. Pretty soon, in walked Cannon, and said he had had a little argument with 42 Broadway, so he left a book on his key when he came out. He didn't seem to worry about it, and before he got back and took the book off, one hour and twenty minutes had elapsed. I am sure no one got much through, as when we listened in, it was as quiet as a graveyard. The navy yard did manage to get up courage then and asked him "what he meant by such actions", to which I seem to recall a reply telling him "to mind his own business and shut up".
People can talk about the September that never ended, but it goes to show that people misbehaving "online" due to anoniminity is nothing new...
This part of the story really rings a bell when you look at the behaviour of some of the kiddies online, particularly in the days when winnuke ruled the channels on IRC...
I think you missed my point. You were using the results of the congestion charge to illustrate that surveillance cameras are not a bad thing. I'm asking if the effect would be any different if they had just implemented tolls instead of cameras, because I think the charge itself is the key element that makes the congestion charge work, not the process by which that charge is delivered.
I think we missed each other's point then - without the cameras it would have been completely unfeasible to launch such an initiative in London, there are simply too many routes in and out of the zone to set up any kind of toll system, and stopping traffic while payment (or verification of pre-payment) would defeat one of the objectives - of improving traffic flow.
The toll only applies (at the moment) the the very centre of London, and even further out there are still many many routes into the city - the UK road system is nothing like that of the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently bought a new Nokia 9300 with a mobile contract in the UK. I had the 9110 and the 9210 communicators in the past and I love the format.
The thumb keyboard is very good, and it can easily cope with SMS, emails, documents, etc. I also have a version of PuTTY installed to ssh to servers.
Okay, so the battery life isn't anywhere near as long as your old RIM950, but then almost nothing does these days. You certainly won't need a PDA if you have a 9300, it does everything in a very nice format, and at last a reasonable size that can be carried around everywhere. The 9500 is identical, but has a camera and wi-fi, but for me the additional bulk is far too much to pay for the limited additional functionality that I would rarely use.
In fact, I welcome the lack of a camera on the 9300, as a contractor I need to be aware that in future I may receive work at locations that object to you bringing a camera onsite, which would cause all worlds of pain with any camera phone...
-- Pete.
Sorry - I think you misunderstood, I was not describing a situation I was in, merely giving some advice. For the record I have moved into consulting myself, and I am finding it enjoyable and rewarding. I would recommend it to people who have the appropriate experience, and know exactly what they want to do - however as you said, they must be prepared to travel more.
Also consulting is best for people who are prepared to take the uncertainty that goes with the job, and who are willing to perpetually job-hunt. I've been a little lazy on the job hunting front myself, but a little bit of networking and careful placement of my CV has been bringing a few recruiters and head-hunters to my door. I will start to seriously look soon though as my current contract is coming to an end, and I'd rather keep my options open than to blindly renew it.
-- Pete.
I think you should be very careful - I can't imagine many companies wanting to hire a fresh graduate into a Senior position, there are a lot of experienced professionals out there looking for work, and all the graduates are generally looking to step into a junior software developer positions.
If you aim for unrealistic goals, then you must be prepared to fail, if you do want to go for the senior positions on the off-chance you hit lucky, make sure you also apply for the junior positions elsewhere.
To be honest, just working in a corporate environment should be a challenging learning experience for most graduates, it's completely different to how you will have worked in college. Once you have mastered the basic work-place skills and proven your worth then you will be in a position to move on to more challenging roles.
I would agree that it is best to find a job that you will learn in and be challenged, but the way to do this is to have a lot of applications out there, a number of offers in the bag after interviews, then you choose the most interesting/challenging one. Don't be afraid of accepting positions as they come in, and then "resigning" them before starting if you get a better offer from another company. the companies are pretty strict on making sure they have the right candidate out of many, and if you get the opportunity then you should make sure you pick the best company out of many.
Get your first foot on the ladder, then set your own pace for progression - be on the lookout for stagnation though, if you find yourself getting bogged down in a position, bored and unchallenged, go shopping for a new job.
Hope that helps!
-- Pete.
You think that's bad, check out this:& spn=20.385598,52.207031&hl=en
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=51.179343,5.097656
-- Pete.
Good point, but I used Google to translate litres to gallons and it returned the value in US gallons. So the quoted price of $6/gallon stands with US gallons. In Imperial gallons it is around $7.20/gallon.
-- Pete.
Yup - at the moment I think the price for petrol in the UK equates to around $6/gallon.
-- Pete.
Thanks, I had to do it a couple of times, because if I just tried to log in with my profile, it would try the UK version again and get broken again, but once I went back through the process of setting up the page it worked fine!
Cheers,
-- Pete.
And replying to myself yet again, I can now say it's certainly broken, both the .co.uk site and the .com site. It worked the first time I went to the pages, but now it's all broken. If you have had it working, purge your cookies and see just how broken it is now.
Maybe we slashdotted google? ;)
-- Pete.
Okay - replying to myself...but now I've just tried the .com version again, and I'm getitng the same issue. Maybe this is just me. Doh. Also if I try and sign-in, the page just times out.
I might try rebooting, then try again...
-- Pete.
If you go to http://www.google.co.uk/ig/customize then try to set and save your settings, you'll find that it's pretty broken...
It seems to send the page into a loop...in IE you will just receive continuous warnings that you are being redirected to an nonsecure page.
-- Pete.
Heh - I was the one near the second lightswitch to the room that everyone had forgotten about, and flickered the lights at just the right moment to freak everyone out...maybe even the person doing the pushing. ;)
-- Pete.
From your information you don't seem to be based in the UK, so I'm guessing you didn't do the Open University MBA-TM (of course, I may be wrong!). All the same, what was your perception of the workload of the course? Is it something that's pretty tough to keep up with whilst working, and maintaining some level of social life, or is it something that I should count on sucking my time completely over the next three years?
Of course, I am willing to put in the effort, but I also have to be realistic about meeting the demands - I don't want to put that much cash on that table with a possibility of dropping out due to workload...
Cheers,
-- Pete.
This story has come at a good time for me, as I was pondering the exact same issue, I am considering studying an MBA with the Open University, and the course starts in May so I need to move fast...
They have two MBAs that I'd consider as options though - and I'm somewhat undecided about which to go for:
I am a process engineer and process manager, involved in process control and improvement, particularly ITIL, ISO9000, and Business Continuity related disciplines. I also own my own consultancy company, and would like to take some big steps forward over the next 10 years or so. I'm not sure really which of the two would benefit me most, they're both quite expensive, so I want to make sure I get the most value from the course. I'm still 29 now, which I think is probably a good age to be thinking about an MBA - old enough to have some experience of business, but still young enough that I haven't completely forgotten how to study yet...
Anyone out there have experience of these courses, or any ideas on what the benefits of each are?
Cheers,
-- Pete.
ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library, and defines an IT Service Management structure that can be applied to IT Operations as an effective framework. There are two main areas within ITIL, Service Delivery and Service Support.
Service Delivery includes:
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Availability Management
Financial Management
IT Service Continuity
Service Support includes:
Service Desk
Incident Management
Problem Management
Change Management
Release Management
Configuration Management (arguablely also part of Service Delivery)
If you apply an ITIL methodology throught IT Operations you will find that the IT operational projects are run more smoothly in a well controlled environment. You can google for a lot more information on ITIL, but I recommend certification, at least to Foundation level for anyone seriously interested in implementation. See also BS15000, the British Standard associated with ITIL which is expected to become an ISO (International Standard) in the future.
-- Pete.
In the UK almost everyone seems to say that a CV (UK terminology for resume) shouldn't be over two pages, and I was surprised to find that in Belgium anything over one page is deemed excessive for most people.
Of course, I took the advice I had received to heart, and tried to cram as much as possible into a two page document - this was used with little effect for the occasional job application for one to two years. Then a recruitment agency contacted me with a position they thought I could apply for, and asked me to flesh out my CV to include more detail on certain areas - length no issue (I extended it to about three pages)...
I got an interview, and very quickly (within a day) a job offer. I also used the CV to apply for another job that also interested me - again netting an interview (and maybe an even better offer - still waiting).
Don't restrict yourself too much to the length of a CV, it is not the be-all and end-all of your application. If you need more space to demonstrate your skills and experience then use it. I know that I wouldn't immediately bin a CV for being over two pages in length - as long as the content justified the length.
Of course, try and make sure it is readable - use a good sized readable font, well spaced. Don't cramp the text and do ask friends for their opinion on the style and presentation.
There is a lot of information out there on writing the "perfect" CV, but some of it does conflict - do your research but go with what feels right for you and your situation.
-- Pete.
The easiest way of getting the exact url to download is to check it directly on the site yourself. Even if the link was found from elsewhere on the net, the person doing the download would have probably checked that the link was valid in advance.
The key word here is "most" - sure if someone is really really really careful to cover every track they could possibly leave, then maybe they won't have directly visited the site. Most people would have done though. Of course the difficult part is determining when.
-- Pete.
This month the UK "PC Pro" magazine has a review of the Scan White Cobra gaming machine.
This is a fine example of SLI running with jaw dropping performance...a quote from the review puts Doom 3 running at 98fps!
Now I know what I want for Christmas, just not a snowball's chance in hell of getting one! :)
-- Pete.
I tend to use uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation. An example might look like: s1mhm$tM-BIdc! (just off the top of my head, and memorable to me)
Most people do have horrific password security though...
-- Pete.
Well, BBSs aren't dead yet...even if you aren't running at 300bps! :)
-- Pete.
You can also see Yeb's comments (Yeb is Jebba, the guy associated with Indymedia who has the contract with Rackspace) on this exact issue in a slashdot comment he made once upon a time...
-- Pete.
I'm so terribly afraid that if all of Slashdot sent random stuff it would more likely be a !!!!! in there...
-- Pete.
Although I am not one, check out fruitarians...
-- Pete.
I don't know, they weren't THAT much different at times, if you read the article:
What exciting times they lived in...anyway, now it is time for me to say "GN"...
-- Pete.
People can talk about the September that never ended, but it goes to show that people misbehaving "online" due to anoniminity is nothing new...
This part of the story really rings a bell when you look at the behaviour of some of the kiddies online, particularly in the days when winnuke ruled the channels on IRC...
-- Pete.
I think we missed each other's point then - without the cameras it would have been completely unfeasible to launch such an initiative in London, there are simply too many routes in and out of the zone to set up any kind of toll system, and stopping traffic while payment (or verification of pre-payment) would defeat one of the objectives - of improving traffic flow.
The toll only applies (at the moment) the the very centre of London, and even further out there are still many many routes into the city - the UK road system is nothing like that of the USA.
-- Pete.