See what happens when you mix tequila benders and cheesy movies like Independence Day?
Because, you know, twenty million years ago when ET sent that virus radio signal, they just knew we'd be using Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with a graphics rendering engine vulnerability that would allow them to gain full remote code execution access if they merely exploited the distributed internet computing Seti-at-Home program. With this brilliant forsight, the ETs decided to cause widespread computing mayhem and thereby distrupt Christmas internet sales and harm the economy of an as yet non-existant species on a planet in the ass end of the galaxy twenty million years hence.
Gasoline weighs 6.35 lbs per gallon and costs ~$3 USD Aluminum coil to achieve the same distance (3x according to their own estimate) weighs 19.05 lbs and, at current COMEX Aluminum price is $0.87/lb, thus costs $16.57 per gallon of gas equivalent.
Why would the Greeks want labor saving devices? If you mechanized production, what would you do with all the slaves?
I'm quite serious actually. Modern economic theory clearly describes the link between labor productivity and increased total economic output. The ancient world was devoid of such theory. To them, mechanized production was a threat to the foundations of their economy.
If you increase output per slave, demand for slaves collapses. Owners capital, in the form of slaves, is diminished. This is not a good thing. Additionally, idle slaves make for disorder. This is what they understood and they were correct.
To understand the larger implications of increased labor productivity would require Macro Economics which would take millenia to formulate. Oeconomics in the Greek and Roman eras was what we would understand today as strictly "home economics" (how to run a self-sufficient home or farm).
Schmedley
If you know your Roman history, Spartacus is the funniest movie ever made.
I was both shocked and disappointed to find that you've allied yourself with the big money interests in Hollywood, namely the RIAA and MPAA, in support of the "Broadcast Flag".
I find myself sickened to think that you've abandoned our district in favor of big out-of-state corporate interests. It's as if, dare I say it, you're a fellow traveller of the Rove/DeLay crowd!
The Broadcast Flag was struck down by the courts for very good reason. The courts ruled in the interest of the public. I urge you to follow suit.
I had a house fire last winter that destroyed all my CDs and mp3s. My insurance company reimbursed me for the losses but I refuse to give the RIAA a freakin penny so I haven't bought a single disc or download (nor have I "liberated" any toons). Each month I get income from the insurance settlement too. So I'm getting paid to F the RIAA, woohoo!
Sad thing is I'm sure it wont be long before they pass a law requiring insurance loss reimbursements for music be spent on new music or forfeited to the RIAA. Hell, with the legislative fire sale going on in DeeCee it wont take but a few weeks for them to buy a hoard of rethuglican lawmakers and make their wildest dreams come true.
Compassionate Conservatism = government by the highest bidder.
Human error has for years been the ghost in my metrics, not hardware or software failures. Sure, hardware and software goes bad, but the really big hits I've experienced in the past 15 years were because:
* An employee's four year old pushed the big red data center button that spelled his mothers ultimate career doom. * Our CEO refused to release the capital needed to replace the UPS batteries. Boom! Sure, grid power was available, at least until the fire captain ordered the power cut. * A new sysadmin hit the rack power switch instead of the server. * An application administrator (SAP) with temporary root access learned that with power comes responsibility and that responsibility requires competence! * For every action under the raised tile there is a cubed reaction. That pots cable was connected to the OC3 fiber.
My complete disgust at the avalance of positive news stories regarding Teller's life cannot begin to erode my absolute GLEE at his demise.
Teller was, to quote former Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos collegues of his, "a very, very bad/evil man."
I heard first-hand Teller explain at a small dinner party when I was but a child, his life mission:
"I was put here on Earth", Teller explained, "to bring about Armageddon and the second coming of Christ." He went on, and on, and on, to the horror of the other weapons engineers and the living nightmare of their present children ( self included ). He wanted to bring about THE END, it was his life mission. He was not talking like the Nazis did at Wansee about plans to exterminate an entire people, Teller wanted to exterminate ALL people, ALL species. He dreamed of the destruction of Earth to fulfill his demented fanatical religious fantasy.
If you, dear reader, happen to agree with his sick dream, I must also state that beyond this black hole in his soul, Teller was also a vicious boss and a scientific tyrant. He also destroyed a wide array of very succcessful alternative energy programs in order to sweep up the engineers for his non-viable SDI/StarWars program that he sold Reagan on.
Many years later, when I saw Dr. Strangelove, it was obvious who the title character was modeled after. Unfortunately, even Peter Sellers brilliant acting didn't come close to the horror of the man that was Teller.
Teller was extremely intelligent and probably even a genius. The fact that he won the genetic brain lottery does not in any way excuse what he did and, worse, what he wanted to do.
Teller was a deeply evil soul. I cannot begin to describe my relief that he is finally dead.
Seems the MIT verified SCO claim is about as reliable as a "factual" statement from Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly.
"Chris Sontag told me that [they] had a group of mathemeticians 'who were at MIT' working on this,"
"To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
"at least one of the groups was a link to MIT"
What's next? "Well, all humans are decended from 'Eve', this has been scientifically verified, and there are thousands of living MIT mathemeticians, so therefore our team has thousands of links to MIT."
Or perhaps "Well, one of our team members attended a conference at MIT once, so clearly there is a link. Okay, so it was open-mic night at the student union and he played acoustic guitar, but still, there's a clear link!"
But it completely fails to tax the damage a vehicle does to the roadways.
Two factors are involved with the cost of providing roads: lanes ( for volume ) and maintenance. This "solution" only charges for volume provided.
A 8600 pound H2 Hummer would pay the same tax as a Civic despite causing four times as much damage to the roadbed.
Mind you, I'm not a stinking hippie by any stretch. Taxes should be neutral IMHO ( not provide incentives OR disincentives ). As such, the only effective method of charging for road use is gas tax.
EX: CIVIC: 2400lbs, 40mpg H2: 8600lbs, 10mpg
The H2 would pay 4x the tax as the Civic. Due to it's weight, however, it's damaging the roadways 4x more as well.
The problem is that the H2 isn't paying for the damage done to the air quality. According to the WSJ, the H2 puts out 6x more air pollution than the average sedan...
The gas tax is a perfectly accurate levy based on use. If you drive little, you pay little. If you drive a lot, you pay a lot.
If you drive a lil' Civic, you pay a little JUSTLY: Damage to roads is proportionate to the weight of the vehicle. If you drive a 8600lb Hummer (GVWR) that gets 10 MPG, well, by gosh, you pay 3-4 times as much in gas tax.
Also, by giving the SUVs a free ride for on the road damage side of the equation, this moronic idea they have would negate the incentive to buy a fuel efficient, lighter, hybrid car. Because that's just what Oregon needs, more polluting vehicles on the road.
Didja know that the new Hummer H2 not only gets the worst gas milage of any production vehicle on earth but that, due to it's obesity, it is EXEMPT from gas guzzler tax? As a "mid-duty" truck, it also is able to pollute 6 times more than other SUVs. Egad.
Anyone up for a bet that GM is behind this legislation?
San Franciscan Anonymous Coward are you? Perhaps a throw-back to the Roman Empire?
What you're arguing, if I understand you correctly, is that the poor are ENTITLED to DVD players.
Come on Anon, the lack of a luxury item does not equate to deprivation anywhere on the planet outside S.F.
You do realize that John D Rockefeller and Howard Hughes did not even own a VCR much less a DVD. Does that mean they were poverty stricken and suffered from technological deprivation? Bah!
Oh, and since the SS can now interrogate your librarian under the misnamed "Patriot Act", DIVX style dial-ins would allow Goebels ( aka As*croft, you know, the facist who lost the election to a DEAD guy ) to review your viewing habits for "un-american" or suspicious activity.
Watching any 'Star Wars' films could get you on the "person of interest" blacklist in a flash. ( Guess what group Lucas fingered as the inspiration for the Empire )
Between the RIAA/MPAA and Goebels, no constitution loving American will buy into the ultimate revised new DVD format. It's a goner.
Wow, I can't even recall the last time I used the VHS player to actually play recorded media.
Since I bought a DVD player, it's just been the TV tuner.
As for the "new formats", *YAWN*. By the time the RIAA and MPAA get through with them, they'll require biometrics and a telephone jacked into the UberMegaCorp's databases. Remeber DIVX?
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA/RIAA facists change the law they wrote to label anyone they believe has misuesd their copyrights as an enemy combatant.
So, Burton get's the bill he was bribed to write... Oops, let me try that again: The bill the people he represents want him to write. BUT, through the universal law of unintended consequences, Berman would give us all carte blanche to crack the movie and music execs home PCs at will!
HOW:
All any of us have to do is copyright a song ( mine's going to be a 20 second diddy called 'Berman's a big fat crooked pinhead' ) and then we too are entitled to crack any and all PCs out there using P2P nets, INCLUDING film and music executives! Why? They might have illegal copies of my copyrighted pinhead song!
So what if I happen to find emails detailing their box-office accounting practices, you know, the ones that make Enron's accounting appear clean and conservative in comparison. Or how about evidence of their insider trading activities? Proclivities for obscene material, ooh, that'd look great on the evening news.
It's open season if this passes. A single copyrited song or movie clip would be a license to crack.
Kudos to Berman and his financial backers for a fine piece of corrupt legislation. If they make it a law, their PC's data is ours!!!
Interviewing tip: Fess up if you don't know the answer. You'll score major points for your honesty. Nobody is born with IT knowledge. How interested you are and how quickly you learn are the things your potential new boss want to know about you. Lie and the manager or Senior SA that's questioning you will show you the door in a heartbeat.
Such an honest and eloquently stated question I feel I must respond in kind.
First, what I do. I am a 32 year old N.American manager of datacenters ( w/ many years as a UNIX SE and Unix manager ). I lead a team of a couple dozen gloriously competent SA's and SE's of diverse ages and backgrounds. As my co. is a financial/energy one, the team is on the high end of the compensation scale ( with skillsets to match ) I can't speak for IT managers in general, but I can share my views and experiences.
I have a history degree and half a dozen minors, none of them technical. The greater portion of my staff have non-technical degrees ranging from psyche to economics. The tech-background folks range from IEEE (electrical engineer) to ex-military technical specialists w/o college.
I started in the IT biz after college pulling cable and fibre at a temp job for a contractor at Motorola ( it was '93, a recession, and I refused to leave Austin ). Other folks in my team started at, of all places, a mega-electronics retailer doing PC upgrades, college tech departments ( unpaid ), entry-level desktop support ( mac/NT ) etc etc. Several were hired after interning during Summer breaks their junior/senior years, and of course the ex-mils. Many started as I did, doing temp work from the part-number answer guy at Compaq ( now the sr network architect ) to temp callcenters at IBM or Dell.
I know and have worked with nearly a hundred Unix SA/SEs on two coasts and I must say, sadly, that I can't think of more than two that started IT directly as UNIX SAs ( they graduated with CS' from a top-5 on the planet CS college ). All of us took low-level or even brute level IT jobs to start and worked our way up.
Not that doing so takes all that much time. From PC upgrader at a mega-retailer to financial systems UNIX admin in two years ( at 19 y/o I might add ). Quadruple the pay in two years? That doesn't suck.
Some switched careers from finance, construction ( I know a great PERL programmer/SA who was a sub-sea welder ), teaching, retail sales dude etc, etc. Age is not a factor ( nor country of origin etc ), knowledge and experience most certainly is. My team ranges from 21-63 and is a cross section of humanity.
As for certs, they can help get past the HR goons and perhaps help land an interview. Windows certs are literally worthless and not worth the time nor money ( and no, this isn't a religious OS belief ). In other words, they can help open doors but aren't guarenteed to help as much as, say, Cisco certs help networking folks.
The reasons for this are simple. OS level certs have no relation to trouble-shooting skills. All they prove is that you can build a box, big whup.
YOUR CASE:
Since you're an educator now, your best bet is to leverage your experience and seriously consider combining the two.
Leverage: One quick way in that would also buy you a pay raise immediately is to get a job designing tech training coursework. This allows you to use your course development skills AND learn the technical side ( my wife took this route ). From there you could quickly gain tech certs and begin teaching apps or OSs ( BIG BUCKS BTW, esp when combined with tech experience, $80K-300K ).
A very good alternative is to take advantage of the Summer/Winter breaks to to entry-level temp work. The money would be irrelevent b/c you'd still have your teaching salary, and you could quickly amass skills and experience. This goes for college folks out there too. Temp work isn't attractive, I know, but temp-to-hire is VERY common. It lets us IT manglers see if you're any good without the risks and troubles associated with perm-hire. Temp-to-hire is even common on the high-end tech side ( although these folks prefer the term "consultant" ).
BTW, your coding and fooling around on home machines is a BIG plus in an interview. If they don't ask, DEFINITELY mention it. The best IT folks are rarely the best formally educated. This is why I always question prospective employees about their home computing environment. The best of all UNIX, NT, Network, DBAs and coders are all self-taught. It's the passion that makes you great at any job. If you love it, you'll rock!
The recession may make it take longer to break in, but don't let that dissuade you. Budget cutting gives the advantage to the less experienced. There's time to train them and they don't cost a pile of money ( yet! )
So, to sum up:
1) You're DEFINITELY not to old. Great IT folks and age have no correlation. It's never too late.
2) You can absolutely leverage your teaching experience to transition into IT without taking a pay cut.
3) You can take advantage of the semester breaks to gain experience and resume material doing temp work.
4) Certs can help on the UNIX and DBA side, and they open doors on the Cisco side. They're great for technical educators.
I think this argument is something of a red herring. Compulsory licensing already exists in the music industry (radio and jukebox play, as well as public performance of music composed by another--with caveats such as those that allowed Olivia Newton-John to enjoin further release of revCo's "let's get physical")--what's going to kill napster is not the musicians balking at including their stuff in the database but users balking at paying subscription fees to trade MP3s.
Tasini doesn't apply because there was permission to publish in the first place. The Times was given permission to distribute the writings, just not in the form it was distributing them--that is, secondary databases. Napster does not distribute works it has the right to distribute--that is, it did not enter into agreements with either the artists or their licensed distributors to further distribute the works.
I was presented with a very similar situation last December. My former boss was resigned by our CIO due to a personality conflict. I was ordered to take his place as Open Systems Manager.
Not only did I like my job the way it was, I also respected and liked my resigned boss. Ahh, what to do two weeks before Y2K?
I spoke at length to my resigned boss and his response was take it or get the hell outta there. Refusing the promotion and not quitting outright would be careericide. Accepting would also be dangerous due to the vastly less secure and highly political nature of an IT management position.
I accepted and was promoted, and promoted again six months later to N.Am Open Systems' manager for our multi-billion dollar company.
Was it a wise choice? Hmm... the jury is still out on that one. I both enjoy and despise the position. I like the IT strategic planning, systems integration and technical leadership roles. I despise the meetings, paperwork and especiailly the waning technical skills that result from management labors.
One thing I've done that has greatly helped my psyche is to insist on continuing in the on-call rotation. This forces me to keep up technically and keep my fingers delightfully dirty in the bits and kernels.
Sure, the money is better and I've greater respect from my family. I enjoy the personal challenge and new skills I must use as well.
However, I continue to envy the hell out of the folks in my team that get to focus on pure technology implementation and needn't worry about political jockeying, executive fragging, juggling meeting schedules and flying to corporate exec pow-wows and other monumental wastes of time.
I suppose I'll give it another year or two and see how it goes. So far, though, it's been a pretty cool ride. The sweet house and paid off new car don't hurt either.
- Schmedley
Slashdot Mirror
See what happens when you mix tequila benders and cheesy movies like Independence Day?
Because, you know, twenty million years ago when ET sent that virus radio signal, they just knew we'd be using Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with a graphics rendering engine vulnerability that would allow them to gain full remote code execution access if they merely exploited the distributed internet computing Seti-at-Home program. With this brilliant forsight, the ETs decided to cause widespread computing mayhem and thereby distrupt Christmas internet sales and harm the economy of an as yet non-existant species on a planet in the ass end of the galaxy twenty million years hence.
Gasoline weighs 6.35 lbs per gallon and costs ~$3 USD
Aluminum coil to achieve the same distance (3x according to their own estimate) weighs 19.05 lbs and, at current COMEX Aluminum price is $0.87/lb, thus costs $16.57 per gallon of gas equivalent.
Wow, sign me up!
Why would the Greeks want labor saving devices? If you mechanized production, what would you do with all the slaves?
I'm quite serious actually. Modern economic theory clearly describes the link between labor productivity and increased total economic output. The ancient world was devoid of such theory. To them, mechanized production was a threat to the foundations of their economy.
If you increase output per slave, demand for slaves collapses. Owners capital, in the form of slaves, is diminished. This is not a good thing. Additionally, idle slaves make for disorder. This is what they understood and they were correct.
To understand the larger implications of increased labor productivity would require Macro Economics which would take millenia to formulate. Oeconomics in the Greek and Roman eras was what we would understand today as strictly "home economics" (how to run a self-sufficient home or farm).
Schmedley
If you know your Roman history, Spartacus is the funniest movie ever made.
Congressman Wynn,
RE: Broadcast Flag
I was both shocked and disappointed to find that you've allied yourself with the big money interests in Hollywood, namely the RIAA and MPAA, in support of the "Broadcast Flag".
I find myself sickened to think that you've abandoned our district in favor of big out-of-state corporate interests. It's as if, dare I say it, you're a fellow traveller of the Rove/DeLay crowd!
The Broadcast Flag was struck down by the courts for very good reason. The courts ruled in the interest of the public. I urge you to follow suit.
Or better yet, a year!
I had a house fire last winter that destroyed all my CDs and mp3s. My insurance company reimbursed me for the losses but I refuse to give the RIAA a freakin penny so I haven't bought a single disc or download (nor have I "liberated" any toons). Each month I get income from the insurance settlement too. So I'm getting paid to F the RIAA, woohoo!
Sad thing is I'm sure it wont be long before they pass a law requiring insurance loss reimbursements for music be spent on new music or forfeited to the RIAA. Hell, with the legislative fire sale going on in DeeCee it wont take but a few weeks for them to buy a hoard of rethuglican lawmakers and make their wildest dreams come true.
Compassionate Conservatism = government by the highest bidder.
Human error has for years been the ghost in my metrics, not hardware or software failures. Sure, hardware and software goes bad, but the really big hits I've experienced in the past 15 years were because:
* An employee's four year old pushed the big red data center button that spelled his mothers ultimate career doom.
* Our CEO refused to release the capital needed to replace the UPS batteries. Boom! Sure, grid power was available, at least until the fire captain ordered the power cut.
* A new sysadmin hit the rack power switch instead of the server.
* An application administrator (SAP) with temporary root access learned that with power comes responsibility and that responsibility requires competence!
* For every action under the raised tile there is a cubed reaction. That pots cable was connected to the OC3 fiber.
And that's just five!
The rest of us dance with glee!
My complete disgust at the avalance of positive news stories regarding Teller's life cannot begin to erode my absolute GLEE at his demise.
Teller was, to quote former Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos collegues of his, "a very, very bad/evil man."
I heard first-hand Teller explain at a small dinner party when I was but a child, his life mission:
"I was put here on Earth", Teller explained, "to bring about Armageddon and the second coming of Christ." He went on, and on, and on, to the horror of the other weapons engineers and the living nightmare of their present children ( self included ). He wanted to bring about THE END, it was his life mission. He was not talking like the Nazis did at Wansee about plans to exterminate an entire people, Teller wanted to exterminate ALL people, ALL species. He dreamed of the destruction of Earth to fulfill his demented fanatical religious fantasy.
If you, dear reader, happen to agree with his sick dream, I must also state that beyond this black hole in his soul, Teller was also a vicious boss and a scientific tyrant. He also destroyed a wide array of very succcessful alternative energy programs in order to sweep up the engineers for his non-viable SDI/StarWars program that he sold Reagan on.
Many years later, when I saw Dr. Strangelove, it was obvious who the title character was modeled after. Unfortunately, even Peter Sellers brilliant acting didn't come close to the horror of the man that was Teller.
Teller was extremely intelligent and probably even a genius. The fact that he won the genetic brain lottery does not in any way excuse what he did and, worse, what he wanted to do.
Teller was a deeply evil soul. I cannot begin to describe my relief that he is finally dead.
Long live planet Earth,
Schmedley
Seems the MIT verified SCO claim is about as reliable as a "factual" statement from Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly.
"Chris Sontag told me that [they] had a group of mathemeticians 'who were at MIT' working on this,"
"To clarify, the individuals reviewing the code had been involved with MIT labs in the past, but are not currently at MIT. Unfortunately, due to contractual obligations, we cannot specifically name the individuals."
"at least one of the groups was a link to MIT"
What's next? "Well, all humans are decended from 'Eve', this has been scientifically verified, and there are thousands of living MIT mathemeticians, so therefore our team has thousands of links to MIT."
Or perhaps "Well, one of our team members attended a conference at MIT once, so clearly there is a link. Okay, so it was open-mic night at the student union and he played acoustic guitar, but still, there's a clear link!"
Schmedley
But it completely fails to tax the damage a vehicle does to the roadways.
Two factors are involved with the cost of providing roads: lanes ( for volume ) and maintenance. This "solution" only charges for volume provided.
A 8600 pound H2 Hummer would pay the same tax as a Civic despite causing four times as much damage to the roadbed.
Mind you, I'm not a stinking hippie by any stretch. Taxes should be neutral IMHO ( not provide incentives OR disincentives ). As such, the only effective method of charging for road use is gas tax.
EX:
CIVIC: 2400lbs, 40mpg
H2: 8600lbs, 10mpg
The H2 would pay 4x the tax as the Civic. Due to it's weight, however, it's damaging the roadways 4x more as well.
The problem is that the H2 isn't paying for the damage done to the air quality. According to the WSJ, the H2 puts out 6x more air pollution than the average sedan...
The gas tax is a perfectly accurate levy based on use. If you drive little, you pay little. If you drive a lot, you pay a lot.
If you drive a lil' Civic, you pay a little JUSTLY: Damage to roads is proportionate to the weight of the vehicle. If you drive a 8600lb Hummer (GVWR) that gets 10 MPG, well, by gosh, you pay 3-4 times as much in gas tax.
Also, by giving the SUVs a free ride for on the road damage side of the equation, this moronic idea they have would negate the incentive to buy a fuel efficient, lighter, hybrid car. Because that's just what Oregon needs, more polluting vehicles on the road.
Didja know that the new Hummer H2 not only gets the worst gas milage of any production vehicle on earth but that, due to it's obesity, it is EXEMPT from gas guzzler tax? As a "mid-duty" truck, it also is able to pollute 6 times more than other SUVs. Egad.
Anyone up for a bet that GM is behind this legislation?
Oh pah-leeze!
San Franciscan Anonymous Coward are you? Perhaps a throw-back to the Roman Empire?
What you're arguing, if I understand you correctly, is that the poor are ENTITLED to DVD players.
Come on Anon, the lack of a luxury item does not equate to deprivation anywhere on the planet outside S.F.
You do realize that John D Rockefeller and Howard Hughes did not even own a VCR much less a DVD. Does that mean they were poverty stricken and suffered from technological deprivation? Bah!
Hot Tubs, Saunas and DVD players for everyone!
Quick Rant:
Oh, and since the SS can now interrogate your librarian under the misnamed "Patriot Act", DIVX style dial-ins would allow Goebels ( aka As*croft, you know, the facist who lost the election to a DEAD guy ) to review your viewing habits for "un-american" or suspicious activity.
Watching any 'Star Wars' films could get you on the "person of interest" blacklist in a flash. ( Guess what group Lucas fingered as the inspiration for the Empire )
Between the RIAA/MPAA and Goebels, no constitution loving American will buy into the ultimate revised new DVD format. It's a goner.
Wow, I can't even recall the last time I used the VHS player to actually play recorded media.
Since I bought a DVD player, it's just been the TV tuner.
As for the "new formats", *YAWN*. By the time the RIAA and MPAA get through with them, they'll require biometrics and a telephone jacked into the UberMegaCorp's databases. Remeber DIVX?
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the MPAA/RIAA facists change the law they wrote to label anyone they believe has misuesd their copyrights as an enemy combatant.
This bill is too sweet for words!
So, Burton get's the bill he was bribed to write... Oops, let me try that again: The bill the people he represents want him to write. BUT, through the universal law of unintended consequences, Berman would give us all carte blanche to crack the movie and music execs home PCs at will!
HOW:
All any of us have to do is copyright a song ( mine's going to be a 20 second diddy called 'Berman's a big fat crooked pinhead' ) and then we too are entitled to crack any and all PCs out there using P2P nets, INCLUDING film and music executives! Why? They might have illegal copies of my copyrighted pinhead song!
So what if I happen to find emails detailing their box-office accounting practices, you know, the ones that make Enron's accounting appear clean and conservative in comparison. Or how about evidence of their insider trading activities? Proclivities for obscene material, ooh, that'd look great on the evening news.
It's open season if this passes. A single copyrited song or movie clip would be a license to crack.
Kudos to Berman and his financial backers for a fine piece of corrupt legislation. If they make it a law, their PC's data is ours!!!
Stocking up on Jolt for the ride,
Schemdley
Well put and dead on.
Love it and be honest.
Interviewing tip: Fess up if you don't know the answer. You'll score major points for your honesty. Nobody is born with IT knowledge. How interested you are and how quickly you learn are the things your potential new boss want to know about you. Lie and the manager or Senior SA that's questioning you will show you the door in a heartbeat.
Schmedley
IT Mangler
Xylix,
Such an honest and eloquently stated question I feel I must respond in kind.
First, what I do. I am a 32 year old N.American manager of datacenters ( w/ many years as a UNIX SE and Unix manager ). I lead a team of a couple dozen gloriously competent SA's and SE's of diverse ages and backgrounds. As my co. is a financial/energy one, the team is on the high end of the compensation scale ( with skillsets to match ) I can't speak for IT managers in general, but I can share my views and experiences.
I have a history degree and half a dozen minors, none of them technical. The greater portion of my staff have non-technical degrees ranging from psyche to economics. The tech-background folks range from IEEE (electrical engineer) to ex-military technical specialists w/o college.
I started in the IT biz after college pulling cable and fibre at a temp job for a contractor at Motorola ( it was '93, a recession, and I refused to leave Austin ). Other folks in my team started at, of all places, a mega-electronics retailer doing PC upgrades, college tech departments ( unpaid ), entry-level desktop support ( mac/NT ) etc etc. Several were hired after interning during Summer breaks their junior/senior years, and of course the ex-mils. Many started as I did, doing temp work from the part-number answer guy at Compaq ( now the sr network architect ) to temp callcenters at IBM or Dell.
I know and have worked with nearly a hundred Unix SA/SEs on two coasts and I must say, sadly, that I can't think of more than two that started IT directly as UNIX SAs ( they graduated with CS' from a top-5 on the planet CS college ). All of us took low-level or even brute level IT jobs to start and worked our way up.
Not that doing so takes all that much time. From PC upgrader at a mega-retailer to financial systems UNIX admin in two years ( at 19 y/o I might add ). Quadruple the pay in two years? That doesn't suck.
Some switched careers from finance, construction ( I know a great PERL programmer/SA who was a sub-sea welder ), teaching, retail sales dude etc, etc. Age is not a factor ( nor country of origin etc ), knowledge and experience most certainly is. My team ranges from 21-63 and is a cross section of humanity.
As for certs, they can help get past the HR goons and perhaps help land an interview. Windows certs are literally worthless and not worth the time nor money ( and no, this isn't a religious OS belief ). In other words, they can help open doors but aren't guarenteed to help as much as, say, Cisco certs help networking folks.
The reasons for this are simple. OS level certs have no relation to trouble-shooting skills. All they prove is that you can build a box, big whup.
YOUR CASE:
Since you're an educator now, your best bet is to leverage your experience and seriously consider combining the two.
Leverage: One quick way in that would also buy you a pay raise immediately is to get a job designing tech training coursework. This allows you to use your course development skills AND learn the technical side ( my wife took this route ). From there you could quickly gain tech certs and begin teaching apps or OSs ( BIG BUCKS BTW, esp when combined with tech experience, $80K-300K ).
A very good alternative is to take advantage of the Summer/Winter breaks to to entry-level temp work. The money would be irrelevent b/c you'd still have your teaching salary, and you could quickly amass skills and experience. This goes for college folks out there too. Temp work isn't attractive, I know, but temp-to-hire is VERY common. It lets us IT manglers see if you're any good without the risks and troubles associated with perm-hire. Temp-to-hire is even common on the high-end tech side ( although these folks prefer the term "consultant" ).
BTW, your coding and fooling around on home machines is a BIG plus in an interview. If they don't ask, DEFINITELY mention it. The best IT folks are rarely the best formally educated. This is why I always question prospective employees about their home computing environment. The best of all UNIX, NT, Network, DBAs and coders are all self-taught. It's the passion that makes you great at any job. If you love it, you'll rock!
The recession may make it take longer to break in, but don't let that dissuade you. Budget cutting gives the advantage to the less experienced. There's time to train them and they don't cost a pile of money ( yet! )
So, to sum up:
1) You're DEFINITELY not to old. Great IT folks and age have no correlation. It's never too late.
2) You can absolutely leverage your teaching experience to transition into IT without taking a pay cut.
3) You can take advantage of the semester breaks to gain experience and resume material doing temp work.
4) Certs can help on the UNIX and DBA side, and they open doors on the Cisco side. They're great for technical educators.
- Schmedley
I think this argument is something of a red herring. Compulsory licensing already exists in the music industry (radio and jukebox play, as well as public performance of music composed by another--with caveats such as those that allowed Olivia Newton-John to enjoin further release of revCo's "let's get physical")--what's going to kill napster is not the musicians balking at including their stuff in the database but users balking at paying subscription fees to trade MP3s. Tasini doesn't apply because there was permission to publish in the first place. The Times was given permission to distribute the writings, just not in the form it was distributing them--that is, secondary databases. Napster does not distribute works it has the right to distribute--that is, it did not enter into agreements with either the artists or their licensed distributors to further distribute the works.
I was presented with a very similar situation last December. My former boss was resigned by our CIO due to a personality conflict. I was ordered to take his place as Open Systems Manager. Not only did I like my job the way it was, I also respected and liked my resigned boss. Ahh, what to do two weeks before Y2K? I spoke at length to my resigned boss and his response was take it or get the hell outta there. Refusing the promotion and not quitting outright would be careericide. Accepting would also be dangerous due to the vastly less secure and highly political nature of an IT management position. I accepted and was promoted, and promoted again six months later to N.Am Open Systems' manager for our multi-billion dollar company. Was it a wise choice? Hmm... the jury is still out on that one. I both enjoy and despise the position. I like the IT strategic planning, systems integration and technical leadership roles. I despise the meetings, paperwork and especiailly the waning technical skills that result from management labors. One thing I've done that has greatly helped my psyche is to insist on continuing in the on-call rotation. This forces me to keep up technically and keep my fingers delightfully dirty in the bits and kernels. Sure, the money is better and I've greater respect from my family. I enjoy the personal challenge and new skills I must use as well. However, I continue to envy the hell out of the folks in my team that get to focus on pure technology implementation and needn't worry about political jockeying, executive fragging, juggling meeting schedules and flying to corporate exec pow-wows and other monumental wastes of time. I suppose I'll give it another year or two and see how it goes. So far, though, it's been a pretty cool ride. The sweet house and paid off new car don't hurt either. - Schmedley