Our last IT director changed my title from Systems Administrator to Senior Network Engineer when it became apparent I was focusing on, and highly skilled at, routing, switching and all the rest of it - and moving away from all the Windows stuff in favor of Unix and Linux. I found the title very beneficial when he was sacked during a merger and the new IT director met the 'old' crew.
My counterpart in another office, same company, has the title Network Engineer, and told me it's about worthless without the Senior tacked onto the front of it. Yes, he got his title during the same raise / promotion period as I, and hasn't been with the company as long, and didn't work in the same office as the IT director. I think the title would fit him, and be a benefit within his office situation. But I recognize that there are things I've done that qualify me as Senior to him on the network team and enjoy the recognition the title gives.
The IT director who was sacked hired a fucktard to be a Sys Admin - his nephew-in-law. He did not get Junior or Assistant or anything tacked onto his title, and knew absolute dick about the job. I've got digital pictures of him slumped over his gut at his desk, asleep in the middle of the day, and his uncle in law couldn't have cared less.
I'll stop venting and get back to my point --
How do people feel about the little extra perky things glued to the usual titles? If there isn't a relative point - if there aren't juniors and seniors and vanillas, do they matter?
And what is more common or the better term - Systems Admin, or System Admin? Techies tend to shorten it to SysAdmin or BofH, but when writing it or choosing a business card...
I work for a software company with five offices in the U.S., one which is about to close, and a single office left outside the states in London (we closed Cambridge and Calgary).
My title is Senior Network Engineer out of Texas, but I work for any and every one of the offices requiring attention to their network gear (mainly Cisco) or Unix systems (mainly Sun, with some IBM and HP). For example, at the moment I'm tracking problems across a matrix of eight Catalyst 2950's in London, trying to identify a trend in the significant CRC and frame errors.
As others have mentioned, this type of work has a significant hurdle - a physical presence is required at some point for work like this. Each office has staff that can perform the physical work as specified by me, and I do travel several times a year. The people I work with make a kick ass team, and I enjoy the job more because of them.
I was not hired into this position, however. The office I've worked in for many years is closing, and staff not relocating are given severence and sent on their way -- except for myself, because of my expertise. This is probably as rare a situation as you'll ever run across, and took some wrangling with management goons to make them understand I really don't need an entire office to keep doing everything I've been doing for every other office.
In short, I wasn't hired into a telecommuting job - the job mutated into a remote situation. I'm not sure jobs like this are even offered to new hires.
this is a bit off-topic, but i'm genuinely curious -
is qmail controversial ?
perhaps i'm coming into the game a bit late and don't know the entire history. i've used qmail, and thought it was simple and cool. didn't know what the feelings of the community were.
Why is 400mhz so bad for desktop systems ? What are your users' needs ? Must every system be upgraded to a 'blazing' Ghz+ processor ?
Cobbling together parts saves cash initially, but what about technical support and part replacement ? Do you call each vendor for each component when something fails ? How do you prove you bought the part and deserve support ?
Example: buy an OEM system - say, a Dell, and you call them when anything breaks that came in the box. Hard drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. Are you now going to keep track of Viewsonic, Maxtor, Microsoft (periphs), Xircom, Intel, 3com, Logitech, Samsung, Sony, etc etc etc! support contracts ??
So basically I'm curious as to two things -
Why the need for a processor upgrade across the board, which is what I'm understanding this to be ? You're keeping everything else from the original systems, right ?
Do you have a system to manage proving you deserve support to a dozen vendors ? Will you no longer have support from the original OEMs who built the systems you're canabalizing ?
don't take out the battery. hold the power button in for 6 seconds (give or take 3) and the ATX powered motherboard will do what it's supposed to do -- turn the system off.
I worked for Dell, specifically in the Latitude Home / Small Business division, back in 1998 and was shown all the different models on the market released by various OEMs. Then I was given a spreadsheet with system specs which included a column for 'manufacturer' - Quanta and a couple of other names were listed.
Working with the latest laptops, hardware still in beta testing, helped me understand the relationship Dell had with the Taiwanese manufacturer. Dell engineers worked very closely with the engineers on the other side of the world, and we changed specifications when necessary. This is, of course, to be expected - hopefully an OEM doesn't just buy a few hundred thousand laptops without testing them first:)
One item we changed comes to mind immediately - the rubber feet on Inspiron 7000's were originally made of a material that marked nearly every surface we set them down on. Many people had multiple black spots and marks where the systems sat on their desk. Ick.
Another important matter is support - some people might know that the same company makes systems for multiple OEMs and might even release systems under their own name with the same specifications, but I'll take the system with OEM hardware support that rocks - every support system might have glitches, but after working in Dell's support division, and using them in my current position for three years, I'd prefer to stick with them. I won't say no one is better, or dell never screws up, but they support their product well, very well, in my opinion. Overnight parts when available, Complete Care for LCD breakage and spills that can turn in a system into a paperweight very quickly.
And as far as OEM designs go, the Latitude base framework is hard to beat - there are perhaps a dozen models with interchangeable batteries, optical drives, floppies, power supplies, etc. Supporting them in the office is pretty simple - even if you've been buying the newest models for three years you can use the same spare parts for each as parts wear out. Every office has the same stack of power supplies - sales dorks always leave home without them. Support staff in each office has a very common experience. I don't know of another OEM, perhaps Sony, with such similarity between models. If there are, hey, hit reply.
i was working for dell at 19, and at 21 i'm working for an international software company, with great stock options, benefits, and a good beginning salary of 42k a year.
college can't train as well as the real world does, every day i'm here.
... mentioned in the article is going to be on what OS ?
think about that. moderate it down for not saying linux is god, but they still can't show a device being plugged into a USB port, detected, and a driver / module install or configuration process initiated.
and that doesn't make the OS less stable, less usable, actually it makes it very transparent, and very usable.
today i plugged the 'jumpshot' USB adpater for my nikon digital camera's Lexar memory card into my Win 2k pro box, and it asked for a driver, i pointed it to the recent download from lexar, and in a matter of seconds it all works.
i want linux to do this. linux can't do this.
so i don't use it as my major platform. i've hacked and hacked and played with my linux systems to provide music to my entire house, to run tape back up at work, to provide encrypted connections for local telnet to remote consultants..
it's great. i run it. but where's the intelligent, non-hack hardware support ? i can do it -- i just have better things to do with my time than hack my system just to USE IT.
Perhaps these could help with describing to future people, what devices we used to read data, and how that data is formatted and stored.
If they are expecting this analog technology to help side step the limits of aging and disapearing digital and mechanical technologies, shouldn't we write a few of them down in the meantime ?
I can only think of two API's, or specs, if you will, that microsoft has found reason to make non-interopable
Java, and this -
Are there more examples of protocols, specifications, API's, whatever, that had standards for interoperability, but the Windows or Microsoft implementation fails to meet them ?
Not that I doubt there are, I've just never really looked into it.
I walk in some time between 8:30 and 9:00, take an hour lunch, and leave promptly at 4:30.
So, I might work somewhere between 30 and 35 hours a week, really. And a lot of that time is spent reading, researching, and not actually applying skills directly to the needs of the company - because things *work* and I don't have to run around fixing them all day.
But when crunch time hits, it's whatever, whenever. Need me at midnight? Need me to drive to an office to install all the Cisco hardware for the new T-1 and LAN?
While daily tasks might not be that demanding, the crunch time can be a killer. I get the feeling most of the time I and the other IT people are waiting for something to break, and we are payed well to be available, and very accessible, when something breaks.
When you start clocking a chip around 1Ghz, you need L2 cache with latency of 2ns, instead of 3+ns. This depends a lot on the clock ratio you want to set the cache to. L2 cache that can handle 1Ghz is either way too expensive for anyone to afford, or doesn't exist yet.
AMD has to invest quite a lot in the material needed for 2 nanosecond L2 cache, and it can't possibly run at full chip speed.
Intel ran into a similar problem with the Pentium Pro - that's why the clock speeds stopped at 200mhz, the L2 cache wasn't reliable much past that (don't bother to say you can OC your Pro to 233, so can i). Intel released the p2 with half-chip-speed L2 cache to address this.
AMD is releasing Athlons with 1/3, 5/8, and some goofy ratios to maintain the reliability of their chips.
I emailed SpectraDisc, asking very simply why they wanted to pollute with a throw away product, and here is the response:
From: "Info" info@spectra-science.com Thanks for your comments. We have been sharing your frustration as the press has failed to report this product will be a recyclable. Just a drop in the bucket next to the butter container and milk bottle. - and by the way, avoid the pollution of a car trip back to the store.
In the article, the reason for this is listed as check-out stand displays for impulse buys, or mail-outs like AOL CDs.
Sure you can only read the disc once, or twice, but if you can copy the DVD (no DeCSS required) isn't this going to provoke the pirates ?
Go to Wal-Mart, spend $3 bucks and make a copy you can watch over and over again. Essentially the same as going to Blockbuster, renting the DVD for $5 and doing the same.
Are the manufacturing costs of DVDs low enough to warrant selling throw away discs ?
Is there a way we can boycott, ignore or otherwise stop this ?
Slashdot Mirror
bingo.
dead on.
we had to made UIDs to tell jon katz what electricity is.
Our last IT director changed my title from Systems Administrator to Senior Network Engineer when it became apparent I was focusing on, and highly skilled at, routing, switching and all the rest of it - and moving away from all the Windows stuff in favor of Unix and Linux. I found the title very beneficial when he was sacked during a merger and the new IT director met the 'old' crew.
My counterpart in another office, same company, has the title Network Engineer, and told me it's about worthless without the Senior tacked onto the front of it. Yes, he got his title during the same raise / promotion period as I, and hasn't been with the company as long, and didn't work in the same office as the IT director. I think the title would fit him, and be a benefit within his office situation. But I recognize that there are things I've done that qualify me as Senior to him on the network team and enjoy the recognition the title gives.
The IT director who was sacked hired a fucktard to be a Sys Admin - his nephew-in-law. He did not get Junior or Assistant or anything tacked onto his title, and knew absolute dick about the job. I've got digital pictures of him slumped over his gut at his desk, asleep in the middle of the day, and his uncle in law couldn't have cared less.
I'll stop venting and get back to my point --
How do people feel about the little extra perky things glued to the usual titles? If there isn't a relative point - if there aren't juniors and seniors and vanillas, do they matter?
And what is more common or the better term - Systems Admin, or System Admin? Techies tend to shorten it to SysAdmin or BofH, but when writing it or choosing a business card...
Now that's pretty funny.
Thanks for the chuckle.
I work for a software company with five offices in the U.S., one which is about to close, and a single office left outside the states in London (we closed Cambridge and Calgary).
My title is Senior Network Engineer out of Texas, but I work for any and every one of the offices requiring attention to their network gear (mainly Cisco) or Unix systems (mainly Sun, with some IBM and HP). For example, at the moment I'm tracking problems across a matrix of eight Catalyst 2950's in London, trying to identify a trend in the significant CRC and frame errors.
As others have mentioned, this type of work has a significant hurdle - a physical presence is required at some point for work like this. Each office has staff that can perform the physical work as specified by me, and I do travel several times a year. The people I work with make a kick ass team, and I enjoy the job more because of them.
I was not hired into this position, however. The office I've worked in for many years is closing, and staff not relocating are given severence and sent on their way -- except for myself, because of my expertise. This is probably as rare a situation as you'll ever run across, and took some wrangling with management goons to make them understand I really don't need an entire office to keep doing everything I've been doing for every other office.
In short, I wasn't hired into a telecommuting job - the job mutated into a remote situation. I'm not sure jobs like this are even offered to new hires.
Good Luck!
this is a bit off-topic, but i'm genuinely curious -
is qmail controversial ?
perhaps i'm coming into the game a bit late and don't know the entire history. i've used qmail, and thought it was simple and cool. didn't know what the feelings of the community were.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/28/attack.carnivore. reut/
good, bad, i'm the guy with the gun
Why is 400mhz so bad for desktop systems ? What are your users' needs ? Must every system be upgraded to a 'blazing' Ghz+ processor ?
Cobbling together parts saves cash initially, but what about technical support and part replacement ? Do you call each vendor for each component when something fails ? How do you prove you bought the part and deserve support ?
Example: buy an OEM system - say, a Dell, and you call them when anything breaks that came in the box. Hard drive, keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. Are you now going to keep track of Viewsonic, Maxtor, Microsoft (periphs), Xircom, Intel, 3com, Logitech, Samsung, Sony, etc etc etc! support contracts ??
So basically I'm curious as to two things -
Why the need for a processor upgrade across the board, which is what I'm understanding this to be ? You're keeping everything else from the original systems, right ?
Do you have a system to manage proving you deserve support to a dozen vendors ? Will you no longer have support from the original OEMs who built the systems you're canabalizing ?
__
don't take out the battery. hold the power button in for 6 seconds (give or take 3) and the ATX powered motherboard will do what it's supposed to do -- turn the system off.
I worked for Dell, specifically in the Latitude Home / Small Business division, back in 1998 and was shown all the different models on the market released by various OEMs. Then I was given a spreadsheet with system specs which included a column for 'manufacturer' - Quanta and a couple of other names were listed.
:)
Working with the latest laptops, hardware still in beta testing, helped me understand the relationship Dell had with the Taiwanese manufacturer. Dell engineers worked very closely with the engineers on the other side of the world, and we changed specifications when necessary. This is, of course, to be expected - hopefully an OEM doesn't just buy a few hundred thousand laptops without testing them first
One item we changed comes to mind immediately - the rubber feet on Inspiron 7000's were originally made of a material that marked nearly every surface we set them down on. Many people had multiple black spots and marks where the systems sat on their desk. Ick.
Another important matter is support - some people might know that the same company makes systems for multiple OEMs and might even release systems under their own name with the same specifications, but I'll take the system with OEM hardware support that rocks - every support system might have glitches, but after working in Dell's support division, and using them in my current position for three years, I'd prefer to stick with them. I won't say no one is better, or dell never screws up, but they support their product well, very well, in my opinion. Overnight parts when available, Complete Care for LCD breakage and spills that can turn in a system into a paperweight very quickly.
And as far as OEM designs go, the Latitude base framework is hard to beat - there are perhaps a dozen models with interchangeable batteries, optical drives, floppies, power supplies, etc. Supporting them in the office is pretty simple - even if you've been buying the newest models for three years you can use the same spare parts for each as parts wear out. Every office has the same stack of power supplies - sales dorks always leave home without them. Support staff in each office has a very common experience. I don't know of another OEM, perhaps Sony, with such similarity between models. If there are, hey, hit reply.
anyone else notice the last screenshot in the review shows a character whos design looks heavily influenced by the Protoss in starcraft ?
the knees and 'psi-blade' in particular...
Deathtrack.
and of course Abrams m1a1.
spent way too much time on my 286 playing those
Have you seen the guys who run this site ?
Have you been to a linux expo / tradeshow and met / walked by and laughed at these guys ?
They're geeks. They're DORKS. They don't have good haircuts, they don't shave, some might smell a little. Who doesn't ?
But -
That isn't to say they're not good people.
They are adults, but they aren't "grown ups" by a longshot.
Plutito
en espanol por favor
i was working for dell at 19, and at 21 i'm working for an international software company, with great stock options, benefits, and a good beginning salary of 42k a year.
college can't train as well as the real world does, every day i'm here.
... mentioned in the article is going to be on what OS ?
think about that. moderate it down for not saying linux is god, but they still can't show a device being plugged into a USB port, detected, and a driver / module install or configuration process initiated.
and that doesn't make the OS less stable, less usable, actually it makes it very transparent, and very usable.
today i plugged the 'jumpshot' USB adpater for my nikon digital camera's Lexar memory card into my Win 2k pro box, and it asked for a driver, i pointed it to the recent download from lexar, and in a matter of seconds it all works.
i want linux to do this. linux can't do this.
so i don't use it as my major platform. i've hacked and hacked and played with my linux systems to provide music to my entire house, to run tape back up at work, to provide encrypted connections for local telnet to remote consultants..
it's great. i run it. but where's the intelligent, non-hack hardware support ? i can do it -- i just have better things to do with my time than hack my system just to USE IT.
thoughts ?
not your site, not your decision
and you lept upon it, didn't you ?
don't like it ? don't read the page. sheesh. don't tell people who run a website not to do with it, as they please.
Perhaps these could help with describing to future people, what devices we used to read data, and how that data is formatted and stored.
If they are expecting this analog technology to help side step the limits of aging and disapearing digital and mechanical technologies, shouldn't we write a few of them down in the meantime ?
I can only think of two API's, or specs, if you will, that microsoft has found reason to make non-interopable
Java, and this -
Are there more examples of protocols, specifications, API's, whatever, that had standards for interoperability, but the Windows or Microsoft implementation fails to meet them ?
Not that I doubt there are, I've just never really looked into it.
nuff said.
I'm twenty one. I'm a sysadmin. I have no degree.
I walk in some time between 8:30 and 9:00, take an hour lunch, and leave promptly at 4:30.
So, I might work somewhere between 30 and 35 hours a week, really. And a lot of that time is spent reading, researching, and not actually applying skills directly to the needs of the company - because things *work* and I don't have to run around fixing them all day.
But when crunch time hits, it's whatever, whenever. Need me at midnight? Need me to drive to an office to install all the Cisco hardware for the new T-1 and LAN?
While daily tasks might not be that demanding, the crunch time can be a killer. I get the feeling most of the time I and the other IT people are waiting for something to break, and we are payed well to be available, and very accessible, when something breaks.
We're the modern insurace policy.
year 2k:
A. Millennium
B. Millenium
C. Milenium
D. Milennium
thanks -
_jthm
When you start clocking a chip around 1Ghz, you need L2 cache with latency of 2ns, instead of 3+ns. This depends a lot on the clock ratio you want to set the cache to. L2 cache that can handle 1Ghz is either way too expensive for anyone to afford, or doesn't exist yet.
AMD has to invest quite a lot in the material needed for 2 nanosecond L2 cache, and it can't possibly run at full chip speed.
Intel ran into a similar problem with the Pentium Pro - that's why the clock speeds stopped at 200mhz, the L2 cache wasn't reliable much past that (don't bother to say you can OC your Pro to 233, so can i). Intel released the p2 with half-chip-speed L2 cache to address this.
AMD is releasing Athlons with 1/3, 5/8, and some goofy ratios to maintain the reliability of their chips.
i hope you read this soon
whoever that massive guy in the suit is backed up against the camera's view, kick him out of the way.
I emailed SpectraDisc, asking very simply why they wanted to pollute with a throw away product, and here is the response:
From: "Info" info@spectra-science.com
Thanks for your comments. We have been sharing your frustration
as the press has failed to report this product will be a
recyclable. Just a drop in the bucket next to the butter container
and milk bottle. - and by the way, avoid the pollution of a car trip
back to the store.
We appreciate your concern.
SpectraDisc
In the article, the reason for this is listed as check-out stand displays for impulse buys, or mail-outs like AOL CDs.
Sure you can only read the disc once, or twice, but if you can copy the DVD (no DeCSS required) isn't this going to provoke the pirates ?
Go to Wal-Mart, spend $3 bucks and make a copy you can watch over and over again. Essentially the same as going to Blockbuster, renting the DVD for $5 and doing the same.
Are the manufacturing costs of DVDs low enough to warrant selling throw away discs ?
Is there a way we can boycott, ignore or otherwise stop this ?