As others have said, the argument really boils down to skilled IT staff, what employers are willing to pay and what these skilled IT workers are willing to accept.
If you can buy cheaper skilled IT workers from abroad, it makes the employers happy but will ultimately lower the value of these roles making them less attractive to new workers. Rather than being self-serving, it's a short term strategy that ultimately is self-defeating. As a responsible employer that realizes they're only one small cog in the national machinery, they need to realize what this impact will have.
We also have a lack of skilled IT workers coming out of the universities, largely because universities in the Western countries are focussed on number of students and number of degrees awarded. They are driven by income and results, not by the quality of their teaching. Again, this is self-defeating as we, the nation, now pay more for tuition that adds less value to ourselves. So we're spending more and gaining less. Nationally, this is a slippery slope that leads only downhill.
Personally, what we are prepared to accept as a wage is the final part of the problem. Our acceptable wage is largely driven by our expectations of what we want and our living costs. As living costs rise, we expect our income to keep pace. If we're also led to believe that we're chasing an American dream of a white picket fence, wife, 2.4 kids, dog and a pickup then we expect a little more money. After all, isn't that why we're working in this country. Didn't you sell that idea to us? If we can't achieve that dream, we'll go somewhere else.
As a professor and former technology CEO, I'd question whether Vivek Wadwha understands the labor pool in the USA. It's a complex arrangement of personal and corporate expectations mixed in with some realities, aspirations and a need for us to exist in the real world. If you want us to live near you in Silicon Valley, you need to make sure we can live nearby. Wisconsin salaries don't work in California.
I'm a 38 year old freelance computer consultant with no degree, no longer living in the country I was born in and started work in. My skills were honed from experience and were all gained outside of any classroom. I have struggled to find skilled IT workers, struggled to find work myself and been on both sides of the fence arguing for IT staff to be paid more and also trying to keep costs down. There is no soundbite that can solve this problem.
I see H1Bs helping to solve the lack of teaching within universities and its disassociation from industry but this has to be a short-term fix or the country will suffer. Devaluing IT jobs, will only bring fewer CS students so you really need to turn this around by championing more technology universities that focus on quality, not income or results. If anything only 75% of students should pass each year, if you get more you need to make it harder. Life is hard, we pass and we fail in every aspect of our lives. Death is the ultimate failing grade.
Don't bring in H1Bs without fixing the real problem.
Firstly, backing the right horse comes with time and experience. The more people you have to feed into that decision, the more likely you'll get the right horse. This makes it easier for larger IT shops than small businesses.
However, larger enterprises also plan their IT investments. We provide strategic outlooks for key technologies over 5 years but also ensure everything goes through a Technical Architect. I have 20 years of technical experience in every aspect of IT and would like to think that I've never put any client on the wrong horse.
If Gartner says it's good, Forrester says it's good and the storage, network, database and server people says it's good we'll go with it. Otherwise, it's a risk and that is factored into the decision-making process.
If you do back the wrong horse and it's not heading in the right direction, jump off. The longer you leave it, the more painful it will be. All you should be thinking about now is damage limitation.
So try to plan, to be strategic and think about the long-term viability and sustainability. Review your decisions frequently and decide when to transition. You shouldn't wake up one day to find your decision was completely wrong, it takes time for these things to become apparent, review them when the first hiccup appears. It will save you a lot of grief and may even save your job, if you're the line manager.
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
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Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
Ethics in IT, is the same was ethics in any other walk of life, in my opinion. When you place anybody is a position of power and authority, they inevitably abuse that position. We see this with prison officers, police officers or specific financial traders such as Nick Leeson and Jerome Kerviel.
Without the necessary checks and balances in place, human beings will always find a way to exploit their situation to their own advantage. We can't really be blamed for it, as it's how we're programmed to survive.
Ethics in business is an artificial problem that we're just not genetically pre-disposed to deal with but we're slowly improving. The only practical way of ensuring ethical practice is to impose policy, procedure and monitoring. If we are going to continue to employ human beings we have to make sure we have procedures in place to deal with their imperfections.
I've seen countless numbers of technical support staff that read the CEO's email, or they read the email that gets blocked at the inbound filter. They also trawl through the file system, checking people's personal files, collecting their MP3s and JPGs. I've also seen people that take old laptops, writing them off and then selling them to their friends on the cheap. There was also one instance with somebody inflating the price of network cabling jobs and splitting the difference with the networking guy. Eventually, all of these things are discovered and policies are changed to stop them happening again.
In my experience, it's far easier to assume that all human beings are skimming in some way and to some degree. You have to know what the big stuff is, detect it and stop it but let the little stuff go. Does it really matter if one guy steals a pack of post-it notes once a month? Does it matter if somebody spends their own time copying user's MP3 files? Ultimately, what is the impact to the business of some of these actions?
I'm a web developer by profession, and I must say IE6 and 7 are a frustrating pair of browsers to develop for. Agreed. I've found that it's easier to design to Firefox and then test every browser thereafter and IE6 is always last because it's the worst. IE7 is much improved but it's only better because it caught up, it didn't advance the web development cause.
However, I don't honestly believe it's in Microsoft's interests to make a better IE. If IE8 arrived tomorrow with better standards support and better performance, wouldn't we all be able to make use of those "web 2.0" (yuk!) sites. We'd then be able to support a much richer user experience online and in less time. However, this would just give the community developers a way of delivering software that would compete with Office.
Microsoft chose to lessen its support for HTML-based email because it wanted it to render more accurately in Word. Microsoft decided that so much email went through Outlook/Exchange that it was better to use Word as a rendering engine rather than IE. Why on Earth would Microsoft deliver a browser that allowed rich applications to be delivered across the Internet, essentially creating competition for them?
Microsoft will keep delaying IE updates for years to come, always trailing behind the standards-based browsers but they know that as long as the majority of enterprises and businesses keep rolling out Office and sticking with the Microsoft stack, they can delay the inevitable for a long time. It's a very similar tactic that every monopolistic computer company has used and every time it's failed.
In the meantime, I'll carry on promoting Firefox and others so that eventually IE becomes the NS4 of the browser world and I can stop dealing with a minority product.
I can send an email to my mobile phone and it's received as a text message. I use this for web server monitoring.
I'm assuming by you posting on Slashdot that you have a computer, so you could have a custom application that counts down every hour. Every hour it requires you to press a button within a period of time, say five minutes. If you don't press the button, it sends the email.
Whilst not perfect I think it would be effective and you could always add options to reset the counter at any point, say 15 minutes before a shower, or six hours before you go to bed at night. Or just turn it off when you leave the house.
I think you also need to look at a deep solution though such as getting a cellphone for yourself that is always charged so people can call you if they do receive a false alert. Don't activate the voicemail feature though. You should also have a card like somebody else suggested explaining what condition your child has and how they should be cared for in the event of your sudden death.
I think all this article demonstrates is how out of touch the BCS is with the modern IT world.
As I don't have a degree I've only just become eligible for membership this year as I've reached the minimum age of 35. If I'm a really good boy, they may let me become a member. However, they have no credibility in the British computing arena as it's simply a gentleman's club that achieves very little, other than patting each other on the back and saying "Jolly good show old bean" to one another.
I've been around computers since I was 10, writing Z80 assembly at 14, contract game programming at 17 and working in the industry professionally from 19. I was an IT Manager at 22 and I've been a freelance consultant for the last 9 years. I'm a web developer (PHP, MySQL), a software developer (VB), a networking specialist (CNE, MCSE, CCNA, CCDA) but mostly a technical architect (VCP) and have project management qualifications too (PRINCE2 and Project+). But the BCS hasn't represented me or other colleagues I've worked with during the past 16 years. Therefore, how do you represent an industry that you actively discourage from being a part of your organisation.
I think this article just flies further in the face of the real world. OSS is here to stay, it's too quick and too powerful to ignore. If OSS is so unattractive, why has it become so prominent, why are mainstream players looking at using this community approach more and more? Why are OSS solutions becoming more commonplace within organisations?
We live in a capitalist world, where demand exists, supply exists. People want OSS so IT managers need to exploit this area of our world, not try and ignore it. It's this short-sighted approach that has always damaged corporations, I just find it amazing that people that work in IT can be so averse to change. We work in the fastest changing business sector, if people can't stand the heat I hope they're not stupid enough to hit their head on the way out of the kitchen.
I'm in the UK, don't have a degree and have worked as a freelance contractor for the last 9 years. Without certifications I wouldn't get short-listed or interviewed. They're invaluable for getting in front of people, particularly in the contracting marketplace.
I've lost count of how many certification exams I've sat but I think I'm up to 24. Three CNE's, half an MCNE, MCSE, CCDA, CCNA, VCP, PRINCE2, PROJECT+ but there are more I could add quite easily; PHP, MySQL, Dreamweaver, MCSD, MCDBA. However, it all becomes overkill and then recruiters start to think you're just good at passing tests.
I'm currently looking at moving to Canada and without a degree at 35 it's going to count against me. I'm hoping my certifications will help to gloss over this fact, realise I'm British and that our degrees are not the norm but I imagine I'll have to add a few more letters such as a couple of ITIL qualifications which are being scheduled in for September.
All of my certs were paid by myself and done via self study books, except VCP which required a course. I just hope they don't all go this way or I'll have to spend even more money to keep my certs up-to-date.
Milk is very good for you, but not in large quantities due to the fat in it. A Starbucks coffee is mostly whole milk with a shot of espresso in it. Milk is great for kids as the benefits outweigh the disadvantages but not for adults that generally don't need the Calcium as much.
Cream is loaded with saturated fat so large quantities are bad too.
Today we eat too much fat, saturated fat in particular, and therefore we have to cut back throughout our diets. Therefore, anything we can do to reduce our fat consumption helps, such as changing our milk habits.
These are the ingredients for Coffeemate: CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED CANOLA OIL, DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM CASEINATE**, TITANIUM DIOXIDE, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM ALUMINOSILICATE, SUGAR, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, ANNATTO COLOR. Not the most natural set of ingredients but if it stops you yearning for cream, go for it, as it's probably a better alternative.
You have to remember that up until 100 years ago the human digestive system didn't consume artifical ingredients. It hasn't adapted in 5 generations to cope with the amount of fat, salt and sugar we consume in processed foods today. The more natural, the better.
The diuretic effect of coffee isn't that great. It basically means that around one third of the water you drink in the cup of coffee is needed to deal with the caffeine but the other two thirds count towards your daily requirement for 3 litres of water.
If you're not suffering from any of the well-known symptoms of over indulgence in caffeine, I'd keep it up. I'd just cut back on the sugar, cream, whole milk and doughnuts (donuts) that may accompany the caffeine intake.
Reads just like one of those anti piracy adverts the MPAA forces us to watch at the movies, or that FACT in the UK put on their DVDs.
Piracy happens because technology happens. We pirate music because it's easy to copy and considerably less than buying it. We don't pirate books because it's frankly too expensive in photocopying charges but there's a whole collection of pirated PDFs out there, if you care to look.
Technology changes the world we live in. I don't recall the Horse & Cart Association of America (HCAA) suing people that moved to cars which put them out of business. I also don't recall the MPAA or RIAA suing Intel, IBM or Microsoft for giving us these tools that enable us to pirate music.
If piracy destroys the music business, so be it. Technology often destroys antiquated business models whether it's children cleaning chimneys, horse drawn carriages, coal mining or farming by hand. These people need to find a business model that works. An artist only makes around 5% from every track sold, the label and distributors cream off the rest. That's unfair, IMO.
Why do we also need to have movie distributors for every corner of the world bidding for the distribution rights? Are we not one global market?
I think it's about time that the movie and music industries were overhauled as they've had way too much power and too much of a monopoly for too long. After all, we're not killing people here with this technology, we're just changing lives. We're just hurting the profit margins, I thought this is what happened in a capitalist and democratic society. Why do we in the Western world create these societies with freedom to innovate and freedom to make money but then try to shackle them when it starts to backfire?
Bring on the technology, lets keep changing the world!!!
I find the whole Copyright debate laughable. Copyright is a commerical protection, that is its sole purpose so that originality is rewarded by stopping others plagiarising work and making money from stealing ideas, rather than creating them. If we all stole, we'd never innovate as there'd be little incentive.
However, these days Copyright is often used as a means of being greedy. It isn't a protective means any more but a empire building, ring fencing approach. The recent extensions granted to Disney are the obvious example. After 70 years of protecting their works, haven't they had enough time to make enough money? Or will the US introduce a persistent copyright for Disney in a few years time?
I can't find the exact dates but I seem to recall that the US only introduced Copyright legislation in the mid 1900s after they've already plagiarised European works with the excuse of "having to educate a nation". Therefore, it's an excuse that any under-developed nation should be able to use. The only problem I see now is that the US has built itself up on such practices that they've now moved into an empire building, protectionist approach which is counter-productive. Now we have everything, we must protect it and stop others stealing our work. Hmmm... the Europeans were like that 80 years ago. So if the US sticks to this policy, we can expect China and other Asian countries to come to the fore by stealing and innovating and the power will shift from the US to Asia.
The Internet and the technologies surrounding it came to fruition due to the American ethos of freedom, and now that same country is trying to kill these off or shackle them. It's highly amusing from my point of view watching a country create a revolution and then try to stop it when it starts to harm them.
Countries should concentrate on innovation, creativity and the future, not the past and holding on to it. A man with his house and possessions on his back will never be as nimble as a man with just a backpack.
It depends how much you drink but you generally produce 300ml to 400ml of urine from a full bladder, which equates to 300g to 400g. Therefore, a daily intake of 2 litres of water, the healthy amount is going to lead to around 1.5 litres (you'll lose some water as sweat but also extract water from your food). 1.5 litres of urine is about 1.5Kg or 3.3 pounds.
The other problem that fighting forces have is carrying water, as any hiker will tell you. You will easily consume a litre or two of water hiking up and down a mountain but as each litre of water weighs 1Kg, it's a burden to lug around.
I believe there's a NASA process going on where they're recycling urine back into drinking water as they'd need something like that for a Mars mission to get there and live on the planet. If they could get that sort of technology into a portable solution, add a few sterilising tablets and you could lessen the burden for troops and also help them to avoid the psychological issues. Would you rather eat your dinner based on warm urine or water that has been cleaned and sterilised and looks more palatable? Personally, I'd still prefer a Big Mac Meal but there's a shortage of McDonalds in Bora Bora, allegedly.
I'm short-sighted, have been for 15 years (I'm 34 now). I'm only slightly short-sighted, i.e. -2.50 and -2.25 but I also wear contacts, particularly when I'm going out to bars and clubs as it just gives me more confidence.
I've never been tempted by laser eye surgery as you can see the slits in people's eyes close up. Although you'll probably only notice if it's your partner or lover, unless you make a habit of staring into peoples eyes close up. It's also not permanent and I didn't fancy going back every few years to have cut after cut.
My own short-sightedness is due to computer use, from sitting in front of TVs on a Spectrum through to monitors all day long. My eyesight is never going to stop deteriorating whilst I'm so heavily involved with computers so I just accept that it's easier to change my glasses every 2/3 years than it is to go and get my eyes slashed every 5 or 10 years.
You mean some European countries use the 802.11 2.4GHz frequency for military communications? Airport just sticks to the standards laid down in the IEEE standards. They didn't do a "Microsoft" and create their own standards.
BTW Which European countries, as there are a lot of devices that use this band now?
I hope not. Novell are an excellent networking company, not a database design specialist. MySQL has done very well all by itself and I would fear that Novell's involvement would help to kill it, rather than let it carry on building its own market share.
I think MySQL is part of any corporate strategy for anybody seriously considering an OSS/Linux setup. MySQL is the natural replacement for large, expensive Oracle installations as well as Microsoft's offering that is really just a workgroup database server. However, they don't need to buy it. I would have thought that Novell's purchase of other systems such as the Borland/WordPerfect suite years ago might have taught them to stick to what they do best.
I do agree that Novell's branding is atrocious. Even at the height of their supremacy nobody really knew Novell's name, their logo or what they did. It was like being Seagate, techies knew them, ordinary people didn't know and a lot of IT purchasing then and now is still done by people with limited technical knowledge. Just as it was "safe" to buy IBM in the 80s, it's now "safe" to buy Microsoft.
I've been around Netware for 12 years and CNE'd from v3 to v6. They set the standards for certification, which everybody else has now copied. You also needed to know your stuff to get the CNE, something that isn't necessary for MCSE. I know because I got my first MCSE (on NT) from reading books and never touching the OS.
There are, allegedly, millions of Netware users out there. Having been involved in large Netware and MS environments the idea of scaling AD to work across the world on a 30,000 user system frightens me to death. I know I can do it with NDS but the flexibility of AD isn't there and would be highly unstable and be far more support intensive. The kludges Microsoft use to get their software to work is a pain to support but it looks nice and has a setup wizard so people get sucked in.
Therefore, I see that Novell's move into Linux is a very good thing as it gives an option for these large global networks to move from Netware/Intel to Linux.
Most people in IT also except that Linux is going to arrive, one day. However, the supportability of Linux is the downside of any corporate installation. Now we have Novell's support infrastructure backing Linux, everything is perfectly positioned for Linux to enter the corporate marketplace. I, for one, intend to certify in the Linux direction so that I can ride the crest of this wave as I'm confident that Netware to Linux migrations will increase in popularity and that in a few years time we'll have AD/Win2003 to Linux migrations happening.
WordPerfect and Quattro Pro were only real competition in the DOS world. Their Windows equivalents never really stood a chance as Microsoft gained a head start on everybody and based their feature sets on these products.
Everybody was playing catch up with Microsoft until they finally accepted defeat.
DR-DOS is still alive today but then again, the market for DOS isn't exactly large any more.
I also think that Novell's move into application software was badly timed and made them take their eye off the ball with regard to Netware and their NOS. They've been battling ever since and done a pretty good job of standing up to the M$ Marketing Machine.
Slashdot Mirror
...and next week I'll be giving the keys to my Porsche to my 12 year old son to look after.
As others have said, the argument really boils down to skilled IT staff, what employers are willing to pay and what these skilled IT workers are willing to accept.
If you can buy cheaper skilled IT workers from abroad, it makes the employers happy but will ultimately lower the value of these roles making them less attractive to new workers. Rather than being self-serving, it's a short term strategy that ultimately is self-defeating. As a responsible employer that realizes they're only one small cog in the national machinery, they need to realize what this impact will have.
We also have a lack of skilled IT workers coming out of the universities, largely because universities in the Western countries are focussed on number of students and number of degrees awarded. They are driven by income and results, not by the quality of their teaching. Again, this is self-defeating as we, the nation, now pay more for tuition that adds less value to ourselves. So we're spending more and gaining less. Nationally, this is a slippery slope that leads only downhill.
Personally, what we are prepared to accept as a wage is the final part of the problem. Our acceptable wage is largely driven by our expectations of what we want and our living costs. As living costs rise, we expect our income to keep pace. If we're also led to believe that we're chasing an American dream of a white picket fence, wife, 2.4 kids, dog and a pickup then we expect a little more money. After all, isn't that why we're working in this country. Didn't you sell that idea to us? If we can't achieve that dream, we'll go somewhere else.
As a professor and former technology CEO, I'd question whether Vivek Wadwha understands the labor pool in the USA. It's a complex arrangement of personal and corporate expectations mixed in with some realities, aspirations and a need for us to exist in the real world. If you want us to live near you in Silicon Valley, you need to make sure we can live nearby. Wisconsin salaries don't work in California.
I'm a 38 year old freelance computer consultant with no degree, no longer living in the country I was born in and started work in. My skills were honed from experience and were all gained outside of any classroom. I have struggled to find skilled IT workers, struggled to find work myself and been on both sides of the fence arguing for IT staff to be paid more and also trying to keep costs down. There is no soundbite that can solve this problem.
I see H1Bs helping to solve the lack of teaching within universities and its disassociation from industry but this has to be a short-term fix or the country will suffer. Devaluing IT jobs, will only bring fewer CS students so you really need to turn this around by championing more technology universities that focus on quality, not income or results. If anything only 75% of students should pass each year, if you get more you need to make it harder. Life is hard, we pass and we fail in every aspect of our lives. Death is the ultimate failing grade.
Don't bring in H1Bs without fixing the real problem.
Firstly, backing the right horse comes with time and experience. The more people you have to feed into that decision, the more likely you'll get the right horse. This makes it easier for larger IT shops than small businesses.
However, larger enterprises also plan their IT investments. We provide strategic outlooks for key technologies over 5 years but also ensure everything goes through a Technical Architect. I have 20 years of technical experience in every aspect of IT and would like to think that I've never put any client on the wrong horse.
If Gartner says it's good, Forrester says it's good and the storage, network, database and server people says it's good we'll go with it. Otherwise, it's a risk and that is factored into the decision-making process.
If you do back the wrong horse and it's not heading in the right direction, jump off. The longer you leave it, the more painful it will be. All you should be thinking about now is damage limitation.
So try to plan, to be strategic and think about the long-term viability and sustainability. Review your decisions frequently and decide when to transition. You shouldn't wake up one day to find your decision was completely wrong, it takes time for these things to become apparent, review them when the first hiccup appears. It will save you a lot of grief and may even save your job, if you're the line manager.
Ethics in IT, is the same was ethics in any other walk of life, in my opinion. When you place anybody is a position of power and authority, they inevitably abuse that position. We see this with prison officers, police officers or specific financial traders such as Nick Leeson and Jerome Kerviel.
Without the necessary checks and balances in place, human beings will always find a way to exploit their situation to their own advantage. We can't really be blamed for it, as it's how we're programmed to survive.
Ethics in business is an artificial problem that we're just not genetically pre-disposed to deal with but we're slowly improving. The only practical way of ensuring ethical practice is to impose policy, procedure and monitoring. If we are going to continue to employ human beings we have to make sure we have procedures in place to deal with their imperfections.
I've seen countless numbers of technical support staff that read the CEO's email, or they read the email that gets blocked at the inbound filter. They also trawl through the file system, checking people's personal files, collecting their MP3s and JPGs. I've also seen people that take old laptops, writing them off and then selling them to their friends on the cheap. There was also one instance with somebody inflating the price of network cabling jobs and splitting the difference with the networking guy. Eventually, all of these things are discovered and policies are changed to stop them happening again.
In my experience, it's far easier to assume that all human beings are skimming in some way and to some degree. You have to know what the big stuff is, detect it and stop it but let the little stuff go. Does it really matter if one guy steals a pack of post-it notes once a month? Does it matter if somebody spends their own time copying user's MP3 files? Ultimately, what is the impact to the business of some of these actions?
However, I don't honestly believe it's in Microsoft's interests to make a better IE. If IE8 arrived tomorrow with better standards support and better performance, wouldn't we all be able to make use of those "web 2.0" (yuk!) sites. We'd then be able to support a much richer user experience online and in less time. However, this would just give the community developers a way of delivering software that would compete with Office.
Microsoft chose to lessen its support for HTML-based email because it wanted it to render more accurately in Word. Microsoft decided that so much email went through Outlook/Exchange that it was better to use Word as a rendering engine rather than IE. Why on Earth would Microsoft deliver a browser that allowed rich applications to be delivered across the Internet, essentially creating competition for them?
Microsoft will keep delaying IE updates for years to come, always trailing behind the standards-based browsers but they know that as long as the majority of enterprises and businesses keep rolling out Office and sticking with the Microsoft stack, they can delay the inevitable for a long time. It's a very similar tactic that every monopolistic computer company has used and every time it's failed.
In the meantime, I'll carry on promoting Firefox and others so that eventually IE becomes the NS4 of the browser world and I can stop dealing with a minority product.
I can send an email to my mobile phone and it's received as a text message. I use this for web server monitoring. I'm assuming by you posting on Slashdot that you have a computer, so you could have a custom application that counts down every hour. Every hour it requires you to press a button within a period of time, say five minutes. If you don't press the button, it sends the email. Whilst not perfect I think it would be effective and you could always add options to reset the counter at any point, say 15 minutes before a shower, or six hours before you go to bed at night. Or just turn it off when you leave the house. I think you also need to look at a deep solution though such as getting a cellphone for yourself that is always charged so people can call you if they do receive a false alert. Don't activate the voicemail feature though. You should also have a card like somebody else suggested explaining what condition your child has and how they should be cared for in the event of your sudden death.
I think all this article demonstrates is how out of touch the BCS is with the modern IT world. As I don't have a degree I've only just become eligible for membership this year as I've reached the minimum age of 35. If I'm a really good boy, they may let me become a member. However, they have no credibility in the British computing arena as it's simply a gentleman's club that achieves very little, other than patting each other on the back and saying "Jolly good show old bean" to one another.
I've been around computers since I was 10, writing Z80 assembly at 14, contract game programming at 17 and working in the industry professionally from 19. I was an IT Manager at 22 and I've been a freelance consultant for the last 9 years. I'm a web developer (PHP, MySQL), a software developer (VB), a networking specialist (CNE, MCSE, CCNA, CCDA) but mostly a technical architect (VCP) and have project management qualifications too (PRINCE2 and Project+). But the BCS hasn't represented me or other colleagues I've worked with during the past 16 years. Therefore, how do you represent an industry that you actively discourage from being a part of your organisation.
I think this article just flies further in the face of the real world. OSS is here to stay, it's too quick and too powerful to ignore. If OSS is so unattractive, why has it become so prominent, why are mainstream players looking at using this community approach more and more? Why are OSS solutions becoming more commonplace within organisations?
We live in a capitalist world, where demand exists, supply exists. People want OSS so IT managers need to exploit this area of our world, not try and ignore it. It's this short-sighted approach that has always damaged corporations, I just find it amazing that people that work in IT can be so averse to change. We work in the fastest changing business sector, if people can't stand the heat I hope they're not stupid enough to hit their head on the way out of the kitchen.
I'm in the UK, don't have a degree and have worked as a freelance contractor for the last 9 years. Without certifications I wouldn't get short-listed or interviewed. They're invaluable for getting in front of people, particularly in the contracting marketplace.
I've lost count of how many certification exams I've sat but I think I'm up to 24. Three CNE's, half an MCNE, MCSE, CCDA, CCNA, VCP, PRINCE2, PROJECT+ but there are more I could add quite easily; PHP, MySQL, Dreamweaver, MCSD, MCDBA. However, it all becomes overkill and then recruiters start to think you're just good at passing tests.
I'm currently looking at moving to Canada and without a degree at 35 it's going to count against me. I'm hoping my certifications will help to gloss over this fact, realise I'm British and that our degrees are not the norm but I imagine I'll have to add a few more letters such as a couple of ITIL qualifications which are being scheduled in for September.
All of my certs were paid by myself and done via self study books, except VCP which required a course. I just hope they don't all go this way or I'll have to spend even more money to keep my certs up-to-date.
Milk is very good for you, but not in large quantities due to the fat in it. A Starbucks coffee is mostly whole milk with a shot of espresso in it. Milk is great for kids as the benefits outweigh the disadvantages but not for adults that generally don't need the Calcium as much.
Cream is loaded with saturated fat so large quantities are bad too.
Today we eat too much fat, saturated fat in particular, and therefore we have to cut back throughout our diets. Therefore, anything we can do to reduce our fat consumption helps, such as changing our milk habits.
These are the ingredients for Coffeemate: CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED CANOLA OIL, DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM CASEINATE**, TITANIUM DIOXIDE, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, SODIUM ALUMINOSILICATE, SUGAR, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, ANNATTO COLOR. Not the most natural set of ingredients but if it stops you yearning for cream, go for it, as it's probably a better alternative.
You have to remember that up until 100 years ago the human digestive system didn't consume artifical ingredients. It hasn't adapted in 5 generations to cope with the amount of fat, salt and sugar we consume in processed foods today. The more natural, the better.
The diuretic effect of coffee isn't that great. It basically means that around one third of the water you drink in the cup of coffee is needed to deal with the caffeine but the other two thirds count towards your daily requirement for 3 litres of water.
If you're not suffering from any of the well-known symptoms of over indulgence in caffeine, I'd keep it up. I'd just cut back on the sugar, cream, whole milk and doughnuts (donuts) that may accompany the caffeine intake.
Reads just like one of those anti piracy adverts the MPAA forces us to watch at the movies, or that FACT in the UK put on their DVDs.
Piracy happens because technology happens. We pirate music because it's easy to copy and considerably less than buying it. We don't pirate books because it's frankly too expensive in photocopying charges but there's a whole collection of pirated PDFs out there, if you care to look.
Technology changes the world we live in. I don't recall the Horse & Cart Association of America (HCAA) suing people that moved to cars which put them out of business. I also don't recall the MPAA or RIAA suing Intel, IBM or Microsoft for giving us these tools that enable us to pirate music.
If piracy destroys the music business, so be it. Technology often destroys antiquated business models whether it's children cleaning chimneys, horse drawn carriages, coal mining or farming by hand. These people need to find a business model that works. An artist only makes around 5% from every track sold, the label and distributors cream off the rest. That's unfair, IMO.
Why do we also need to have movie distributors for every corner of the world bidding for the distribution rights? Are we not one global market?
I think it's about time that the movie and music industries were overhauled as they've had way too much power and too much of a monopoly for too long. After all, we're not killing people here with this technology, we're just changing lives. We're just hurting the profit margins, I thought this is what happened in a capitalist and democratic society. Why do we in the Western world create these societies with freedom to innovate and freedom to make money but then try to shackle them when it starts to backfire?
Bring on the technology, lets keep changing the world!!!
I find the whole Copyright debate laughable. Copyright is a commerical protection, that is its sole purpose so that originality is rewarded by stopping others plagiarising work and making money from stealing ideas, rather than creating them. If we all stole, we'd never innovate as there'd be little incentive.
However, these days Copyright is often used as a means of being greedy. It isn't a protective means any more but a empire building, ring fencing approach. The recent extensions granted to Disney are the obvious example. After 70 years of protecting their works, haven't they had enough time to make enough money? Or will the US introduce a persistent copyright for Disney in a few years time?
I can't find the exact dates but I seem to recall that the US only introduced Copyright legislation in the mid 1900s after they've already plagiarised European works with the excuse of "having to educate a nation". Therefore, it's an excuse that any under-developed nation should be able to use. The only problem I see now is that the US has built itself up on such practices that they've now moved into an empire building, protectionist approach which is counter-productive. Now we have everything, we must protect it and stop others stealing our work. Hmmm... the Europeans were like that 80 years ago. So if the US sticks to this policy, we can expect China and other Asian countries to come to the fore by stealing and innovating and the power will shift from the US to Asia.
The Internet and the technologies surrounding it came to fruition due to the American ethos of freedom, and now that same country is trying to kill these off or shackle them. It's highly amusing from my point of view watching a country create a revolution and then try to stop it when it starts to harm them.
Countries should concentrate on innovation, creativity and the future, not the past and holding on to it. A man with his house and possessions on his back will never be as nimble as a man with just a backpack.
It depends how much you drink but you generally produce 300ml to 400ml of urine from a full bladder, which equates to 300g to 400g. Therefore, a daily intake of 2 litres of water, the healthy amount is going to lead to around 1.5 litres (you'll lose some water as sweat but also extract water from your food). 1.5 litres of urine is about 1.5Kg or 3.3 pounds.
The other problem that fighting forces have is carrying water, as any hiker will tell you. You will easily consume a litre or two of water hiking up and down a mountain but as each litre of water weighs 1Kg, it's a burden to lug around.
I believe there's a NASA process going on where they're recycling urine back into drinking water as they'd need something like that for a Mars mission to get there and live on the planet. If they could get that sort of technology into a portable solution, add a few sterilising tablets and you could lessen the burden for troops and also help them to avoid the psychological issues. Would you rather eat your dinner based on warm urine or water that has been cleaned and sterilised and looks more palatable? Personally, I'd still prefer a Big Mac Meal but there's a shortage of McDonalds in Bora Bora, allegedly.
I'm short-sighted, have been for 15 years (I'm 34 now). I'm only slightly short-sighted, i.e. -2.50 and -2.25 but I also wear contacts, particularly when I'm going out to bars and clubs as it just gives me more confidence.
:)
I've never been tempted by laser eye surgery as you can see the slits in people's eyes close up. Although you'll probably only notice if it's your partner or lover, unless you make a habit of staring into peoples eyes close up. It's also not permanent and I didn't fancy going back every few years to have cut after cut.
My own short-sightedness is due to computer use, from sitting in front of TVs on a Spectrum through to monitors all day long. My eyesight is never going to stop deteriorating whilst I'm so heavily involved with computers so I just accept that it's easier to change my glasses every 2/3 years than it is to go and get my eyes slashed every 5 or 10 years.
My $0.02 anyhow...
You mean some European countries use the 802.11 2.4GHz frequency for military communications? Airport just sticks to the standards laid down in the IEEE standards. They didn't do a "Microsoft" and create their own standards.
BTW Which European countries, as there are a lot of devices that use this band now?
Novell is going to buy MySQL.
I hope not. Novell are an excellent networking company, not a database design specialist. MySQL has done very well all by itself and I would fear that Novell's involvement would help to kill it, rather than let it carry on building its own market share.
I think MySQL is part of any corporate strategy for anybody seriously considering an OSS/Linux setup. MySQL is the natural replacement for large, expensive Oracle installations as well as Microsoft's offering that is really just a workgroup database server. However, they don't need to buy it. I would have thought that Novell's purchase of other systems such as the Borland/WordPerfect suite years ago might have taught them to stick to what they do best.
I do agree that Novell's branding is atrocious. Even at the height of their supremacy nobody really knew Novell's name, their logo or what they did. It was like being Seagate, techies knew them, ordinary people didn't know and a lot of IT purchasing then and now is still done by people with limited technical knowledge. Just as it was "safe" to buy IBM in the 80s, it's now "safe" to buy Microsoft.
I've been around Netware for 12 years and CNE'd from v3 to v6. They set the standards for certification, which everybody else has now copied. You also needed to know your stuff to get the CNE, something that isn't necessary for MCSE. I know because I got my first MCSE (on NT) from reading books and never touching the OS.
There are, allegedly, millions of Netware users out there. Having been involved in large Netware and MS environments the idea of scaling AD to work across the world on a 30,000 user system frightens me to death. I know I can do it with NDS but the flexibility of AD isn't there and would be highly unstable and be far more support intensive. The kludges Microsoft use to get their software to work is a pain to support but it looks nice and has a setup wizard so people get sucked in.
Therefore, I see that Novell's move into Linux is a very good thing as it gives an option for these large global networks to move from Netware/Intel to Linux.
Most people in IT also except that Linux is going to arrive, one day. However, the supportability of Linux is the downside of any corporate installation. Now we have Novell's support infrastructure backing Linux, everything is perfectly positioned for Linux to enter the corporate marketplace. I, for one, intend to certify in the Linux direction so that I can ride the crest of this wave as I'm confident that Netware to Linux migrations will increase in popularity and that in a few years time we'll have AD/Win2003 to Linux migrations happening.
WordPerfect and Quattro Pro were only real competition in the DOS world. Their Windows equivalents never really stood a chance as Microsoft gained a head start on everybody and based their feature sets on these products. Everybody was playing catch up with Microsoft until they finally accepted defeat. DR-DOS is still alive today but then again, the market for DOS isn't exactly large any more. I also think that Novell's move into application software was badly timed and made them take their eye off the ball with regard to Netware and their NOS. They've been battling ever since and done a pretty good job of standing up to the M$ Marketing Machine.