Totally believable that Universities have been moving their systems off campus. Our local State University uses gmail, google apps, and a Cisco phone network provisioned and run by a local telco. This I believe. However, the wheel fall off the wagon with some some dumb statements like, "IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path."
Yeah, I want to meet that manager.
Whatever. The career path is dermined by the industry's needs, not what Mitch the IT Guy wants. I can imagine the "IT Manager" who made that statement for the article.
Boy, this post speaks the truth. Good IT Managers are extremely rare, most don't cut it. Ours is actually pretty awesome and actually has a technical background, but he's the first decent one I've every had (been working in the field for 15 years.) It all falls apart if the group isn't being led right and upper management's clueless.
Overally, Ubuntu 12.10 is the perfect distro for me and I use it for work and play. It's also nice that Steam installs quite well on it and I can even play some Team Fortress 2 and CounterStrike on it. However, DO run "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping" on it first thing after install. NASTY feature.
No, you're in the same universe. The same universe where MS products seem to be able to install okay and are even better at requiring a reimage every six months.
. . . they can start by developing a network operating system that doesn't fall on its face every four days. For that matter, after 15 years they still haven't figure out a way to patch their servers without requiring a reboot. I patch my Ubuntu server twice a day via cron and I can't remember the last time it was restarted.
A lot of games released on consoles today are priced 60 dollars on day one, deritive titles with stale formulas - the kinds that force publishers to shut down. Often these games find a second life during a Steam sale.
Figure out what your pruduct should cost after seeing people's reaction to it. If people think it's a fair price, they'll be much less likely to bother prirating and just just click the paypal button instead.
Agreed, 2013's SimCity is a tedious experience with no payoff. In about a month people will realize that a huge fuss was made over a game that's not really worth anyone's time.
Guys, don't you remember the Five 9s Microsoft marketing?! Yeah, that's what I thought. How quickly we forget how the real world works, this stuff just don't happen on Windows servers. Not possible.
I guess when Microsoft was screaming about Five 9s, they were referring to how often their platform would be down, not up.
Video game web sites basically do two things; 1) they spend money to generate their own content, and 2) they scan other sites for news and then post it themselved. I have to chuckle whenever I go through Flipboard and see the same article posted 40 times by every outlet. A video game review site's key diferentiator, for example, used to be video game reviews (written and/or in video) and now you can find these kinds of reviews on Youtube where they tend to be better written and produced (and you're likely to find a critic who is more inline with your tastes so that the review scores actually have meaning.) And anyhow, for better or worse, Metacritic is the go-to source now for gaming reviews (and I understand the arguments against, I'm just saying.)
The ad space model is easy to do, everyone does it, and so the business model can't support all of these sites anymore. And, frankly, it's just as well. Most of these sites really aren't providing anything special - mostly they're composed of "articles" posted by "journalists" and then have links pointed to forums to help build a community. Anybody can do that and so everyone does.
The real winners, by a country mile, are the webmasters and DBAs who cut their teeth supporting these sites since now they have a marketable skillset on a production web site and can parley that experience to other roles in the field.
The acceptance and use of self-service checkins is not evidence that people don't want to talk to other humans. I can speak with some actual professional experience as a call center programmer that people are only interested in the straightest line betwen points A and B. That's it. If that means using self check in - great. If you have a severe problem, resolving that problem would very likely mean speaking with an actual person as quickly and easily as humanly possible - kiosks are not an appropriate mechanism for a complicated issue and a person in need needs an assurance from another human being that their problem has been addressed fully and promptly.
It's so bizzarre what people will say to pass the time. If Apple decides to produce a buggy whip, that decision alone doesn't translate to billions even if most Apple users were robots, desperate for another feel-good purchase. WHO WEARS A WATCH?! Every devices these days has time on it, do you really want to put one back on your wrist when you already have it in your pocket? Or your backpack? Or your music player?!
Yeah, Apple's kind of lost its way ever since . . . well, you know . . .
Few people look at the full picture when they look at Valve's org structure. Valve is very particular about the people they hire and when you hire talented, motivated people who are compelled by personal accomplishment, the best thing to do is get out of their way so that they can work. They don't want to have meetings about the meeting schedule, they don't appreciate being "volunteered" to be part of workplace committees, and they hate red tape and drama. These kinds of people can work at a place like Valve. But these kinds of folks are also gems, the kind of people who prop up society. It wouldn't work in every organization.
For me, installing Steam on Ubuntu has been an extremely straightforward experience on my non-gaming Dell laptops, but for whatever reason I had not been able to get Ubuntu running on my gaming rig. I woke up this morning, a man on a mission, to find out how I could make this happen. Took three hours of sweat, Google, and forums - finally got it figured out. Apparently Ubuntu's included graphics drivers (including the proprietary ones) just don't do the trick for a GeForce GTX 580. After a separate driver download from Nvidia and installing the kernel headers from repositories I was able to finally make it happen (and I've had this gaming rig for exactly a year to this day).
There are still plenty of folks out there who need to go through some trouble to get Ubuntu to work on their rigs, but it's much better than it used to be and it is so worth it. I'm impressed with how well TF2 and Counter Strike: Source run on Linux and am hoping a large Valve console install base will encourage all developers to port their games over to Ubuntu.
So, now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go look into this "Defender's Quest".
"The language used in the introductory course of the college he will be attending this fall."
I'm sorry, I must disagree completely. You shouldn't leave it to the school you're attending to figure out which language is best for you, quite often educational institutons are the least in-touch with what drives the market or an industry. Ask programmers and professionals which language has the most value in the current market and industry. The school's opinion should almost rate dead last, not first. Every college graduate I know has agreed that there is practically no link between what's learned in school and how the real world works.
Python is considered by many to be a great entry-level language and it's also very popular in the real world. There are many good books on the subject, so it might make for a great self-taught experience.
Yeah, I agree. It's a mess because, realistically, this is the only way FB can make money when they provide a "free" product. Personally, I think FB is a "tie-over" platform until someone does it properly, a system will eventually come along that's instead incentivised to protect user privacy.
Why on Earth would anyone post anything of value on Facebook? A few years ago whent the stories of Facebook's security and privacy concerns began to surface - THIS wasn't a clue? I honestly don't understand how this is news. People who didn't care about it years ago aren't going to care about their privacy now, and those who DO care fall into two categories;
1) They don't use Facebook at all
2) When they do, they post bogus information or omit information entirely because they don't trust the network.
Soooooo, how is any of this news again?!
Hi 12_West,
I work as a Network Engineer and have influence in our department's hiring decisions, so I think I might be able to offer some helpful advice.
Higher age, in my oppinion, is a positive thing. IT Departments need, and frequently can't find, reliable technical people. Every 40, 50, and 60 year old I've worked with were better at their jobs than the younger ones. Technical skills are important, but they can be taught or self-taught. Maturity and the capacity to follow through on commitments is very hard to find in younger engineers. So, age is not such a huge barrier in my oppinion. Experience is a bigger problem, so if you're planning on transitioning to a new career in 4 years, you should decide what you would like to do and start working towards it. System Administration is pretty typical, and frankly it's the easiest field to get work in. It may be worth your time to volunteer somewhere in the evenings or weekends to gain experience and maybe make friends with someone who works in the field so that they can show you the ropes. If you do well in that line of work, there are definitely oppurtunities for reliable, sharp people.
Cerification is "okay" (and I speak as someone who has quite a few of them), so since it looks good on a resume getting a couple couldn't hurt. But, in the end, people are hired to solve problems not hang their certificates on walls. If you can help people, they'll be interested in you.
Nothing meaningful has happened in the Star Wars universe or its characters since Return of the Jedi. Thank God, now the franchise can be put to good use.
And, before you say anything; the novels and comics and kids books and lunch boxes and video games - ALL filler until the prequels (which were aweful).
This is a tough thing to talk about, I think most technology workers kind of do this too but sometimes I get a weird look like, "didn't you wear that yesterday?!". I have three pairs of pants and shirts, I grab them and put them on and go to work. They all match with each other, but I think even THAT is going too far. I like Job's approach - same style every day. Maybe I'll get 10 ninja suits or something, that should cover me.
Is it possible a staff member got bored and installed it on their own PC to try it out? I've never heard of a take-over-PC-and-install-a-real-OS attack.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally believable that Universities have been moving their systems off campus. Our local State University uses gmail, google apps, and a Cisco phone network provisioned and run by a local telco. This I believe. However, the wheel fall off the wagon with some some dumb statements like, "IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path."
Yeah, I want to meet that manager.
Whatever. The career path is dermined by the industry's needs, not what Mitch the IT Guy wants. I can imagine the "IT Manager" who made that statement for the article.
Boy, this post speaks the truth. Good IT Managers are extremely rare, most don't cut it. Ours is actually pretty awesome and actually has a technical background, but he's the first decent one I've every had (been working in the field for 15 years.) It all falls apart if the group isn't being led right and upper management's clueless.
Just "sold". Was looking for a good book on this.
Overally, Ubuntu 12.10 is the perfect distro for me and I use it for work and play. It's also nice that Steam installs quite well on it and I can even play some Team Fortress 2 and CounterStrike on it. However, DO run "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping" on it first thing after install. NASTY feature.
No, you're in the same universe. The same universe where MS products seem to be able to install okay and are even better at requiring a reimage every six months.
. . . they can start by developing a network operating system that doesn't fall on its face every four days. For that matter, after 15 years they still haven't figure out a way to patch their servers without requiring a reboot. I patch my Ubuntu server twice a day via cron and I can't remember the last time it was restarted.
A lot of games released on consoles today are priced 60 dollars on day one, deritive titles with stale formulas - the kinds that force publishers to shut down. Often these games find a second life during a Steam sale. Figure out what your pruduct should cost after seeing people's reaction to it. If people think it's a fair price, they'll be much less likely to bother prirating and just just click the paypal button instead.
Agreed, 2013's SimCity is a tedious experience with no payoff. In about a month people will realize that a huge fuss was made over a game that's not really worth anyone's time.
Guys, don't you remember the Five 9s Microsoft marketing?! Yeah, that's what I thought. How quickly we forget how the real world works, this stuff just don't happen on Windows servers. Not possible.
I guess when Microsoft was screaming about Five 9s, they were referring to how often their platform would be down, not up.
Thank god. I was worried we'd never get around to building Skynet.
Video game web sites basically do two things; 1) they spend money to generate their own content, and 2) they scan other sites for news and then post it themselved. I have to chuckle whenever I go through Flipboard and see the same article posted 40 times by every outlet. A video game review site's key diferentiator, for example, used to be video game reviews (written and/or in video) and now you can find these kinds of reviews on Youtube where they tend to be better written and produced (and you're likely to find a critic who is more inline with your tastes so that the review scores actually have meaning.) And anyhow, for better or worse, Metacritic is the go-to source now for gaming reviews (and I understand the arguments against, I'm just saying.)
The ad space model is easy to do, everyone does it, and so the business model can't support all of these sites anymore. And, frankly, it's just as well. Most of these sites really aren't providing anything special - mostly they're composed of "articles" posted by "journalists" and then have links pointed to forums to help build a community. Anybody can do that and so everyone does.
The real winners, by a country mile, are the webmasters and DBAs who cut their teeth supporting these sites since now they have a marketable skillset on a production web site and can parley that experience to other roles in the field.
The acceptance and use of self-service checkins is not evidence that people don't want to talk to other humans. I can speak with some actual professional experience as a call center programmer that people are only interested in the straightest line betwen points A and B. That's it. If that means using self check in - great. If you have a severe problem, resolving that problem would very likely mean speaking with an actual person as quickly and easily as humanly possible - kiosks are not an appropriate mechanism for a complicated issue and a person in need needs an assurance from another human being that their problem has been addressed fully and promptly.
It's so bizzarre what people will say to pass the time. If Apple decides to produce a buggy whip, that decision alone doesn't translate to billions even if most Apple users were robots, desperate for another feel-good purchase. WHO WEARS A WATCH?! Every devices these days has time on it, do you really want to put one back on your wrist when you already have it in your pocket? Or your backpack? Or your music player?!
Yeah, Apple's kind of lost its way ever since . . . well, you know . . .
Few people look at the full picture when they look at Valve's org structure. Valve is very particular about the people they hire and when you hire talented, motivated people who are compelled by personal accomplishment, the best thing to do is get out of their way so that they can work. They don't want to have meetings about the meeting schedule, they don't appreciate being "volunteered" to be part of workplace committees, and they hate red tape and drama. These kinds of people can work at a place like Valve. But these kinds of folks are also gems, the kind of people who prop up society. It wouldn't work in every organization.
For me, installing Steam on Ubuntu has been an extremely straightforward experience on my non-gaming Dell laptops, but for whatever reason I had not been able to get Ubuntu running on my gaming rig. I woke up this morning, a man on a mission, to find out how I could make this happen. Took three hours of sweat, Google, and forums - finally got it figured out. Apparently Ubuntu's included graphics drivers (including the proprietary ones) just don't do the trick for a GeForce GTX 580. After a separate driver download from Nvidia and installing the kernel headers from repositories I was able to finally make it happen (and I've had this gaming rig for exactly a year to this day).
There are still plenty of folks out there who need to go through some trouble to get Ubuntu to work on their rigs, but it's much better than it used to be and it is so worth it. I'm impressed with how well TF2 and Counter Strike: Source run on Linux and am hoping a large Valve console install base will encourage all developers to port their games over to Ubuntu.
So, now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go look into this "Defender's Quest".
MS and Google are really in the same business, but I would submit this to you;
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/07/18/did-microsoft-change-the-architecture-of-skype-to-make-it-easier-to-snoop/
If you don't see the problem here, you're not thinking hard enough.
"The language used in the introductory course of the college he will be attending this fall."
I'm sorry, I must disagree completely. You shouldn't leave it to the school you're attending to figure out which language is best for you, quite often educational institutons are the least in-touch with what drives the market or an industry. Ask programmers and professionals which language has the most value in the current market and industry. The school's opinion should almost rate dead last, not first. Every college graduate I know has agreed that there is practically no link between what's learned in school and how the real world works.
Use Ubuntu. Am I'M NOT kidding. ;)
Python is considered by many to be a great entry-level language and it's also very popular in the real world. There are many good books on the subject, so it might make for a great self-taught experience.
Yeah, I agree. It's a mess because, realistically, this is the only way FB can make money when they provide a "free" product. Personally, I think FB is a "tie-over" platform until someone does it properly, a system will eventually come along that's instead incentivised to protect user privacy.
Why on Earth would anyone post anything of value on Facebook? A few years ago whent the stories of Facebook's security and privacy concerns began to surface - THIS wasn't a clue? I honestly don't understand how this is news. People who didn't care about it years ago aren't going to care about their privacy now, and those who DO care fall into two categories; 1) They don't use Facebook at all 2) When they do, they post bogus information or omit information entirely because they don't trust the network. Soooooo, how is any of this news again?!
Hi 12_West, I work as a Network Engineer and have influence in our department's hiring decisions, so I think I might be able to offer some helpful advice. Higher age, in my oppinion, is a positive thing. IT Departments need, and frequently can't find, reliable technical people. Every 40, 50, and 60 year old I've worked with were better at their jobs than the younger ones. Technical skills are important, but they can be taught or self-taught. Maturity and the capacity to follow through on commitments is very hard to find in younger engineers. So, age is not such a huge barrier in my oppinion. Experience is a bigger problem, so if you're planning on transitioning to a new career in 4 years, you should decide what you would like to do and start working towards it. System Administration is pretty typical, and frankly it's the easiest field to get work in. It may be worth your time to volunteer somewhere in the evenings or weekends to gain experience and maybe make friends with someone who works in the field so that they can show you the ropes. If you do well in that line of work, there are definitely oppurtunities for reliable, sharp people. Cerification is "okay" (and I speak as someone who has quite a few of them), so since it looks good on a resume getting a couple couldn't hurt. But, in the end, people are hired to solve problems not hang their certificates on walls. If you can help people, they'll be interested in you.
Nothing meaningful has happened in the Star Wars universe or its characters since Return of the Jedi. Thank God, now the franchise can be put to good use. And, before you say anything; the novels and comics and kids books and lunch boxes and video games - ALL filler until the prequels (which were aweful).
This is a tough thing to talk about, I think most technology workers kind of do this too but sometimes I get a weird look like, "didn't you wear that yesterday?!". I have three pairs of pants and shirts, I grab them and put them on and go to work. They all match with each other, but I think even THAT is going too far. I like Job's approach - same style every day. Maybe I'll get 10 ninja suits or something, that should cover me.
Is it possible a staff member got bored and installed it on their own PC to try it out? I've never heard of a take-over-PC-and-install-a-real-OS attack.