We have lobbied in our town quite a while ago to make sure that public schools do not allow vulgar T-shirts to be worn. The school board agreed with us and T-shirts which glorify alchohol, sex and violence or contain obscene words.
While I don't agree with this, I can see the point in the school trying to foster a learning enviornment.
We are now attempting to get the same ruling for the public malls in our area. So if these T-shirts were deemed obscene, people could be forced to take them off (or turn them inside out).
You just proved why those of us who believe in Liberty fight so hard for the little things, because if you're given an inch you'll try to take a mile.
What right do you have to apply your standards to a public place?
After I hung up on them they even called me right back
Ha, I remember a few years back the entreprenurial chimney sweeps called, it went something like this:
(ring) Person on phone: Hi, Mr Jawonokowitz? Me: It's Jankowski Person on phone: I'm from "Fly By Night" chimney sweeps and... Me: Not interested (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later... (ring) Person on phone: Oh hi again Mr Jankowitz, I just wanted to let you know that... Me: Look, I'm very busy, I'm not frigging interested. (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring) Person on phone: Hey, you could at least talk to me with respect, I'm not... Me: Hey you FUCKING ASSHOLE, stop calling me! (hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring) Person on phone: How dare you talk to me that way? What gives you the... Me: Call me back again and I'm calling the police you stupid minimum wage piece of shit! (hang up)
And that did it. See it's not hard, I guess that telemarketing company didn't have much experience in dealing with us pleasant-mannered New Jersey people;)
I remember when I first saw this one in the early nineties, and it's a gem even to this day.
I dug up an old copy and sent it along to the mailing list of an IRC channel I go to, making it clear in the email that it was a joke.
I just popped into the channel, and got a "Hey, how come you're not offline for the Internet cleaning?", so I replied "Um, I have a packet filter set up, I'm not affected".
Needless to say, the channel cleared out, they are leaving in droves.
Go get yourself a Motorola whatever, from whatever service providers. Unlike the Nokia phones, these things really are indestructible.
This is sort of true. I've had both Nokia and Motorola Phones. The first Nokia phone's display would keep fading out, even though the batteries were completely charged. If you smacked the phone against the palm of your hand it would come back for a while then fade away again.
My second and third Nokia phones were rendered completely inoperable by simply falling out of my jacket onto the street when I got out of my car. All of these Nokias had that fancy padded leather case too.
Once I dumped AT&T as a provider and went to Omnipoint, I got a cheap Motorola (g520) which has been indestructable. It doesn't have a leather case, and has survived a few really hard drops.
One time I was carrying a bunch of things, and the phone slipped out of my hand. I used to play "Hackey-Sack" when I was a kid, and I tried to kick the phone back up and try to catch it. All I wound up doing was kicking the phone about 10 feet away onto a set of brick steps, and it bounced back down. It got scratched up pretty good, but it still works.
A service provider is just as important as a phone too. I've used Sprint, AT&T (local NYC and One Rate), and Omnipoint.
Hands down AT&T is the worst provider out there, I think about 2 out of 10 calls would go through in the NY Metro Area. I had their One Rate, as I travelled a lot, and most cities would have bad connects or no coverage at all. The only city I think AT&T worked well was Atlanta, where our Engineering HQ was who made the decision to go with AT&T. Whenever the Atlanta guys came up here they always bitched about AT&T not working.
Sprint was pretty bad too, unless you were far away from New York, Jersey City, Newark, or another built-up area. The only place my Sprint phone seemed to work was at the shore:)
Omnipoint so far has been great. I've had them since August, and use the phone a few times a day usually. I only had two bad connects, and one was during Hurricane Floyd, so that probably doesn't count.:)
Do you put valuables out of sight when you leave your car parked in public?
Yes, it's called keeping a LOW PROFILE. There is no security in dealing with cars, anyone can come along and smash a window or torch through the trunk.
Let's take your analogy and express it in a little more realistic scenario: The black hats want an object that is in your car, and they're going to make every attempt to steal that object when your car is parked.
Security through obscurity: Hide the object under a seat or in the trunk. I'd give a professional car stripper (hey I live in New Jersey:) 10 minutes before your car is apart and the object is stolen.
or
Good security: Attack dogs inside the car, the object in a safe that is welded to the frame, armed guards surrounding the car.
Which is more secure? I even told you where the object is in the second situation...
Do you have a hidden key for your house/car, and if you really believe that obscurity doesn't work, why is it hidden?
This isn't SOA really either. This is like suggesting that even though I use Open Source operating systems, I'm using SOA because I don't give the root password out.
The security is with the lock I use at the door. I'd much rather use a lock that has been under a peer review and proven unpassable without the key than one which is "closed source" and unreviewed.
I am going to have a go at tracking down the authors of these quotes on the offchance they have been taken out of context; I am not familiar with the Strategy Partners, but I know many at Integralis Group would be horrified that they had given a press release / quote stating they believed in security though obscurity....
The bio of Clive Longbottom (one of the Open Source is less secure guys) is at:
http://www.strategy-partners.com/bios/clive.htm
Since he's a chemist, I wonder if he's in favor of knowing what active ingredients are in medications and drugs. After all, "close the source" of drugs and it's harder to abuse them!
Then why didn't you? Surely someone as smart as you must be aware that by obtaining an MSCE your average salary will increase by an average of $X. And for a mere $Y dollars, it certainly seems like a good deal to me! If the majority of/.'s could pass the test, they would for the money. Saying there smart enough for one but not smart enough to take "easy" money is insulting the intelligence of those that read slashdot.
A lot of people who read Slashdot aren't interested in working with Microsoft systems. I have 6 years production experience in HP-UX and Solaris, 5 years in Linux, and 5 years being forced to use NT.
When I go on job interviews I tell them flat out, I don't want to support anything Microsoft. If the job entails working with NT or supporting users (like RAS), then I won't take it.
So why would I, or others who have similar tastes, want to get certified with something that's going to rope us into supporting NT? Besides, the tests are trivial. I've taken a training course provided by an employer for NT certification, and I could have easily went along and passed the test afterwards. But, it's a joke, and those of us who have been in the industry know it.
MSCEs, or MCPs? I happen to know a few MCSEs myself, and they're definately no slouches.
I've worked for a few large global consulting organizations, and have had my share of projects. I probably met a hundred or so MCSEs in my time, possibly more. I can't say I've been impressed.
About half shouldn't even be in the industry at all, never mind touting Microsoft's highest certification. I'm being more than fair in that statement. 30% or so don't know a whole hell of a lot, and the rest might know what they're doing.
I've seen them not know how to set up printers, not know the difference between bits and bytes, but they know how many clicks it takes from the desktop to change the dialup networking properties. That's useful.:)
To tell you the truth, I know 5 guys who are world class NT people. One of them had 10 application servers online for over a year without a reboot, and they would have stayed up another year if it wasn't for Y2K testing.
Of those 5, not a single one is Microsoft certified, and every last one of them came from a UNIX background. Every single one knows more about NT than any MCSE I have ever met.
There's a reason for that, I'm sure, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on why they'd be paying so much for people with such a low skill level.
You sound like one of those Katherine Gibbs Business School ads that they play here in NYC. "Earn 40-50-60-70 thousand, without any computer experience!!"
I tell you, if you get an MCSE without any real world experience (which it appears you're doing) and you get a job paying that, and can hold it for more than a month, let us know about it. Because it'll be legendary.
On the other hand, most of us who work with UNIX and routers can get double or triple that amount. What an MCSE makes may seem like a lot to you if you're currently trying to get out of the fast-food industry, but UNIX people usually get paid more, if money's your motive.
"You have to get your key people certified on these operating systems," Daher said. "Our customers ask if we are, and certification gives our business more legitimacy. But look at it from our perspective: It's hard enough to find and keep talented IT people, and Red Hat is asking us not only to spend $5,000 a person, which eats heavily into our cost, but we also have to lose a $60,000 employee for two weeks, who after being certified, can move almost anywhere he wants, maybe even over to Red Hat. There aren't that many Linux-certified people out there."
Sounds like he just wants "paper engineers" to use as a marketing tool, and he's afraid that he won't be able to keep (often pronounced "don't want to pay") qualified people.
You can study for just about any certification wihout the full training run, however he'd rather send his people to a few-day course to learn the bare minimum as opposed to offering incentives to pass the test without expensive training.
He's got quit a dilemma here, though I'm not certified in anything, I hope Red Hat doesn't go the way of Microsoft and pass out valueless titles to people so these fly-by-night resellers can use them to "reassure" customers.
For god's sake, it's only 3/4 of a million dollars worth of parts.
When I was in the Marine Corps. somone lost a pair of Night Vision Goggles in the field. These were old Army hand-me-downs that were probably only worth a few thousand bucks brand new.
Once they realized they were lost they made the entire company (~250 men) go back out on the weekend and cover about 15 miles of terrain looking for them.
We eventually found them in a muddy-mire by having us all get in a line and going through it on our hands searching.
If these Boeing and NASA Engineers (I'm an engineer now too, BTW) want to piss away my tax money, they should have a seargeant there putting his jungle boot up their ass to find it.
If this guy's replys (which is nothing more than "why I'm right" rebuttals) are going to continue to make Slashdot, is there going to be a way to filter it off in the "Customize Homepage" section?
Personally I think this guy wrote a very poor technical article, and he gets rebuttal after rebuttal posted as a headline instead of following up in the discussion threads.
If he's got all the points down and we're all wrong, why didn't he just include this information in his original article?
I like the reference to his consulting business in the response as well, his next rebuttal is going to sell banner space.
Well, what are you doing about it? Personally, I've given away probably 20 Linux CDs to friends and coworkers who were interested in Linux but didn't know where to start off. They're cheap, 99 cents on LinuxMall, 20 or so bucks ain't going to break me.
I've helped most of them install and configure the OS, and told them that if they liked it, they probably should toss a few bucks to the FSF or buy a boxed set, but that was completely optional.
I think Linux is extremely attractive to employers since they don't have to pay a per seat license. Wait until you work for a company that has thousands of NT 3.51 boxes because the costs are phenomoinal to upgrade to 4.0 or worse yet, 2000. They're ripping hundreds of fileservers out and putting in a Linux/Samba mix. Also looking at SAP R/3 on Linux for sandboxes to our HP-UX N-Class production boxes.
Buy Linux once, and you can install it as much as you want. Compare $99 with a half a million dollars. Unless you're working for a large company which has a few hundred million in technology, I think you're just rambling on a topic without much real world experience.
Editors might change the story around, but they usually give it back to the author to make sure their changes didn't affect anything major.
He's claiming to be technical, would you allow an editor to change a major point on "Why Linux GUIs suck" from configuring a display resultion to resizing icons? Come on.
Also, in the conclusion on his link he says something along the lines of "If you're technical or willing to learn, Linux is a good choice", the "edited" (sarcastic quotes) version lacks that point, leaving a negative light to Linux in the conclusion.
I'd have never let them done that to an article I wrote. If you look at his origional story on LinuxToday, most of the flames were for the stupid icon statement and the negative spin. I think he doctored up the article, blaming the editors, and then sent along his little sob story to/.
And yes you can get a distro from cheapbytes for $3.00 (or $1.99) but they also range all the way up to $86) Like I said I'm already well aware of the facts/arguments.
If you're aware of the cheaper ways to acquire Linux (Cheapbytes, LinuxMall, etc) why are you making such an issue out of the price? You said the "Lemmings" are the ones out there paying full price, you seem to be clued in to the alternatives, but you still are bellyaching about the cost of the boxed sets.
Get yourself a copy of whatever distro you want online, and stop worrying about what choice the Lemmings (your analogy) have the the Best-Buy.
For example NASA might buy a bunch of new laptops with Linux installed. Where will they be used, how will they be used, will they stay in the default configuration, are these for managers;programmers;engineers;techsupport,was it simply a cheaper way for purchasing, or was it a linux advocate simply pushing his own personal choices. Rumor and speculation abound "oh they could be used on the shuttles, wahoo!"
Umm, Linux has been going up in the Shuttle for *years* now. Where have you been?:)
The "second story" the author provided is not the same as the one that was published
The author doctored out the outright dumb comment about resizing icons in the link he provided to the second story, and some other points were modified as well..
Here's the real article that was published and which drew the flames. I think it's unprofessional for a journalist to write an article critical of the Linux community's flaming and not provide a link to the real article which was published.
I certainly don't agree with the flaming, but there's trolls in all aspects of discussion, take a look at the talk.* heirarchy;)
To classify the actions of a few idiots as the norm is ignorance at its finest.
Boy, I'd hate to be one of *their* test subjects. When these guys actually did get to sleep, the VA probably accidentally amputated their legs and then lost the medical records.
The things I've seen at the VA Medical Center East Orange NJ, it wouldn't suprise me!
I just saw a little clip the other night on TV how Microsoft and Maytag are teaming up to make "smart appliances", though I can't seem to find any mention of it on the Web anywhere.
How long before the script kiddies are able to freeze over my produce drawer and defrost my freezer?
# kitchen_killa -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -> connecting to oven -> turning on burners -> connecting to fridge -> programming icemaker (infinite l00p) -> done! -> gr33tz out to Babba Booey and the former h4ck3rz at KitchenAid.
I heard the super of my building chased a LinuxOne employee out of my lobby. He was taking those AOL cd packages that are too big to go in the mailbox, so they get stuck in between the trim and the wall by the mailman.
Keep your eyes open for a Win32 AOL client by LinuxOne. With 100 FREE HOURS!!;)
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a toy datacenter with toy sitting in a mini ergo-chair, child's voice cries "Kim, we lost the print spooler, I say again, print services are OFFLINE! Perform a reboot!"
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a childs hand holding Dan and knocking over toy computers, the child cries out "Take that you hard to use and expensive Sun servers! Microsoft clustering can deliver the same performance for 1/3 the price!"
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a closeup of Nate, a child shreiks, "Oh my Kim, the UNIX Admins are installing Linux, what do we do?!"
Girls voice "They're too smart to attack directly, they know Computer Science and all of that other bits and bytes stuff. Wait!!! There's their managers, ready the FUD Cannon!"
Cheezy electric recorded voice, "Windows is a robust solution for your enterprise...."
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Generic anouncer "Collect Dan, Kim, and their fearless MSCE+Internet leader Nate, the MCP Action figures by Wham-O! FUD Cannon and Clue-Stick sold separately!"
Without implying that either of you are wrong, in roystgnr's defense: He has worked in multiple metro areas (including Houston and Albuquerque) and is extremely intelligent and enlightened. Why don't you point out specifically what's wrong with his argument and why, instead of slinging ad hominem attacks? I'm sure the humor was not intended to be a personal slam, but rather a reminder that this issue is, in fact, easily stereotyped and polarized and requires careful, elaborated, and specific argument.
I'm not sure how to repond to what's wrong with his argument, since he completely didn't understand the issue, and instead of just moving on (like most people do when not familiar with an issue) chose to use humor in a personal slam.
Therefore is shows his ignorance on this issue, he could be the most intelligent person in the world, but he's ignorant on this issue, and immature in his response.
I can't see how he was trying to give us a 'reminder that this issue is, in fact, easily stereotyped and polarized...', since he was insinuating that I'm some foreigner hating redneck, which is far from the truth.
I've seen abuses on both sides when it comes to immigration of skilled workers. This involves ppl that should have been granted work visas or permanent immigration status, and the lowering of work conditions by the importation of cheaper labor.
Exactly. I've seen people months away from getting their citizenship being forced to work 60-70 hour weeks, with the employer's attitude being "What are you going to quit and start your immigration all over again?"
I've been in the computer industry for a while in the New York City area, and I'd say that 80% of all people once they get citizenship bail out of their jobs because they were mistreated and underpaid.
"roystgnr" shows the ignorance that a lot of people in technology have to this issue, instead of reading the Website I linked to, or better yet, even understanding the issue before trying to be cute, he chose to insinuate I'm sort of foreigner hating hillbilly, which did nothing but demonstrate his ignorance.
If he held a job in a major metro area, I'm sure he'd be more enlightened.
Damn straight! Everybody knows them immigants can't write good code like Honest God-Fearing Americans! Why, the next thing you know there'll be a horde of swarthy green card holders here working on their cheap Leenooks and slandering the quality of the US and our Windows software!
I think you're a little ignorant about your argument. Some of the best software in the world is written by non-Americans. The point I'm making is that corporations, if work visa restrictions are lifted, will degrade the quality of working enviornments for *all* their employees who are affected by these visas.
What happened at the end of the cold war when we cut defense spending and wound up with too many engineers? Think they all kept their jobs?
Why would they need to pay you, when they can have their development done overseas by people willing to work for 1/3 your salary? Why provide a decent work enviornemnt if they *do* need you? Why provide a decent work enviornment to the developers overseas?
If you think that overloading the market with workers (regardless of nationality)is going to actually help growth, you probably don't have much experience in corporate America.
Hey great, we just elected ourselves an "Internet Savvy" President, or is "President in the pockets of large tech corporations" a better description?
The article didn't say where they stood on dramatically increasing foreign work visas, which McCain supports. Which I think is a bigger "geek issue" than taxing Internet commerce.
Corporations don't want to pay high salaries for their tech people, they only do because there's such a demand. If they can get the restriction on visas lifted, the market gets flooded, and salaries and quality drops.
The IEEE has done a pretty good job at fighting this, it should be an issue for anyone working in technology.
Data is fundamental to running a business. If a business loses data, it loses money. Since it is a given that systems will fail, backups are a requirement for businesses. Any business that cuts costs here will eventually learn why it's bad. If they're lucky, it will be a painful lesson; often the lesson is a fatal one.
If you're a system administrator and say that all of the companies you've worked for practiced good disaster recovery, then I'd say you've worked for a lot of good companies.
I've worked for companies where I took over production machines which were backed up with (non-GNU) tar, which might be fine for simple restores, but not a very good option if you have to perform a complete restore. A lot of these machines were being backed by by the cron, where a help-desk person would drop a tape in the drive, and pull it out the following morning.
No log checking, no verification, no nothing. Most of the backups were failures due to bad tape, tape capacity not sufficient, etc, but as long as there's not a major disaster, they could skim by.
Media (especially DLT) is expensive, and most companies reuse it to the point of it being worthless in the event of a failure, I've seen DLT drives not cleaned for years, and while I personally would never practice such shitty administration myself, I see it happen on other machines with other administrators and on machines which I assume responsibility for.
Which is probably the case of CIHost, they probably gave their admins such lousey hardware (Here's a DAT drive, do your backups) with little or no software, and expected them to backup terrabytes worth of data.
Good businesses will practice decent disaster recovery, but the majority of them won't, I guess what I meant to say that it *is* fundamental, but the majority of companies don't practice it.
However they aren't fundamental in running a business.
Businesses will always try to cut corners, unfortunately backups and high availability, which should be the cornerstone of this kind of "operation" are often overlooked.
Just today in fact I came into work and had a disk crashed on a Jamaica JBOD attached to a Hewlett-Packard K370. True, since it's not an array it took a while to recover everything, but being as it was a development database, I managed to restore it back to the state it was at 2am last night.
Without those backups I'm be typing my resume now instead of posting to Slashdot;)
But there's no excuse for a company like this to backup their customers' data, the technology is out there--StorageTek, ATL, they all have scalable solutions to back up terrabytes worth of data, but that costs money and apparently they didn't think providing a decent service to their paying customers was worth it.
If I had an account there, I'd most likely find another provider that knew about system backups and high availability, it is *your* business.
Slashdot Mirror
We have lobbied in our town quite a while ago to make sure that public schools do not allow vulgar T-shirts to be worn. The school board agreed with us and T-shirts which glorify alchohol, sex and violence or contain obscene words.
While I don't agree with this, I can see the point in the school trying to foster a learning enviornment.
We are now attempting to get the same ruling for the public malls in our area. So if these T-shirts were deemed obscene, people could be forced to take them off (or turn them inside out).
You just proved why those of us who believe in Liberty fight so hard for the little things, because if you're given an inch you'll try to take a mile.
What right do you have to apply your standards to a public place?
After I hung up on them they even called me right back
...
;)
Ha, I remember a few years back the entreprenurial chimney sweeps called, it went something like this:
(ring)
Person on phone: Hi, Mr Jawonokowitz?
Me: It's Jankowski
Person on phone: I'm from "Fly By Night" chimney sweeps and
Me: Not interested (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later...
(ring)
Person on phone: Oh hi again Mr Jankowitz, I just wanted to let you know that...
Me: Look, I'm very busy, I'm not frigging interested. (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring)
Person on phone: Hey, you could at least talk to me with respect, I'm not...
Me: Hey you FUCKING ASSHOLE, stop calling me! (hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring)
Person on phone: How dare you talk to me that way? What gives you the...
Me: Call me back again and I'm calling the police you stupid minimum wage piece of shit! (hang up)
And that did it. See it's not hard, I guess that telemarketing company didn't have much experience in dealing with us pleasant-mannered New Jersey people
I remember when I first saw this one in the early nineties, and it's a gem even to this day.
I dug up an old copy and sent it along to the mailing list of an IRC channel I go to, making it clear in the email that it was a joke.
I just popped into the channel, and got a "Hey, how come you're not offline for the Internet cleaning?", so I replied "Um, I have a packet filter set up, I'm not affected".
Needless to say, the channel cleared out, they are leaving in droves.
Go get yourself a Motorola whatever, from whatever service providers. Unlike the Nokia phones, these things really are indestructible.
:)
:)
This is sort of true. I've had both Nokia and Motorola Phones. The first Nokia phone's display would keep fading out, even though the batteries were completely charged. If you smacked the phone against the palm of your hand it would come back for a while then fade away again.
My second and third Nokia phones were rendered completely inoperable by simply falling out of my jacket onto the street when I got out of my car. All of these Nokias had that fancy padded leather case too.
Once I dumped AT&T as a provider and went to Omnipoint, I got a cheap Motorola (g520) which has been indestructable. It doesn't have a leather case, and has survived a few really hard drops.
One time I was carrying a bunch of things, and the phone slipped out of my hand. I used to play "Hackey-Sack" when I was a kid, and I tried to kick the phone back up and try to catch it. All I wound up doing was kicking the phone about 10 feet away onto a set of brick steps, and it bounced back down. It got scratched up pretty good, but it still works.
A service provider is just as important as a phone too. I've used Sprint, AT&T (local NYC and One Rate), and Omnipoint.
Hands down AT&T is the worst provider out there, I think about 2 out of 10 calls would go through in the NY Metro Area. I had their One Rate, as I travelled a lot, and most cities would have bad connects or no coverage at all. The only city I think AT&T worked well was Atlanta, where our Engineering HQ was who made the decision to go with AT&T. Whenever the Atlanta guys came up here they always bitched about AT&T not working.
Sprint was pretty bad too, unless you were far away from New York, Jersey City, Newark, or another built-up area. The only place my Sprint phone seemed to work was at the shore
Omnipoint so far has been great. I've had them since August, and use the phone a few times a day usually. I only had two bad connects, and one was during Hurricane Floyd, so that probably doesn't count.
Do you put valuables out of sight when you leave your car parked in public?
:) 10 minutes before your car is apart and the object is stolen.
Yes, it's called keeping a LOW PROFILE. There is no security in dealing with cars, anyone can come along and smash a window or torch through the trunk.
Let's take your analogy and express it in a little more realistic scenario: The black hats want an object that is in your car, and they're going to make every attempt to steal that object when your car is parked.
Security through obscurity: Hide the object under a seat or in the trunk. I'd give a professional car stripper (hey I live in New Jersey
or
Good security: Attack dogs inside the car, the object in a safe that is welded to the frame, armed guards surrounding the car.
Which is more secure? I even told you where the object is in the second situation...
Do you have a hidden key for your house/car, and if you really believe that obscurity doesn't work, why is it hidden?
This isn't SOA really either. This is like suggesting that even though I use Open Source operating systems, I'm using SOA because I don't give the root password out.
The security is with the lock I use at the door. I'd much rather use a lock that has been under a peer review and proven unpassable without the key than one which is "closed source" and unreviewed.
I am going to have a go at tracking down the authors of these quotes on the offchance they have been taken out of context; I am not familiar with the Strategy Partners, but I know many at Integralis Group would be horrified that they had given a press release / quote stating they believed in security though obscurity....
The bio of Clive Longbottom (one of the Open Source is less secure guys) is at:
http://www.strategy-partners.com/bios/clive.htm
Since he's a chemist, I wonder if he's in favor of knowing what active ingredients are in medications and drugs. After all, "close the source" of drugs and it's harder to abuse them!
Then why didn't you? Surely someone as smart as you must be aware that by obtaining an MSCE your
average salary will increase by an average of $X. And for a mere $Y dollars, it certainly seems like a good deal to me! If the majority of
A lot of people who read Slashdot aren't interested in working with Microsoft systems. I have 6 years production experience in HP-UX and Solaris, 5 years in Linux, and 5 years being forced to use NT.
When I go on job interviews I tell them flat out, I don't want to support anything Microsoft. If the job entails working with NT or supporting users (like RAS), then I won't take it.
So why would I, or others who have similar tastes, want to get certified with something that's going to rope us into supporting NT? Besides, the tests are trivial. I've taken a training course provided by an employer for NT certification, and I could have easily went along and passed the test afterwards. But, it's a joke, and those of us who have been in the industry know it.
MSCEs, or MCPs? I happen to know a few MCSEs myself, and they're definately no slouches.
I've worked for a few large global consulting organizations, and have had my share of projects. I probably met a hundred or so MCSEs in my time, possibly more. I can't say I've been impressed.
About half shouldn't even be in the industry at all, never mind touting Microsoft's highest certification. I'm being more than fair in that statement. 30% or so don't know a whole hell of a lot, and the rest might know what they're doing.
I've seen them not know how to set up printers, not know the difference between bits and bytes, but they know how many clicks it takes from the desktop to change the dialup networking properties. That's useful.
To tell you the truth, I know 5 guys who are world class NT people. One of them had 10 application servers online for over a year without a reboot, and they would have stayed up another year if it wasn't for Y2K testing.
Of those 5, not a single one is Microsoft certified, and every last one of them came from a UNIX background. Every single one knows more about NT than any MCSE I have ever met.
There's a reason for that, I'm sure, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on why they'd be paying so much for people with such a low skill level.
You sound like one of those Katherine Gibbs Business School ads that they play here in NYC. "Earn 40-50-60-70 thousand, without any computer experience!!"
I tell you, if you get an MCSE without any real world experience (which it appears you're doing) and you get a job paying that, and can hold it for more than a month, let us know about it. Because it'll be legendary.
On the other hand, most of us who work with UNIX and routers can get double or triple that amount.
What an MCSE makes may seem like a lot to you if you're currently trying to get out of the fast-food industry, but UNIX people usually get paid more, if money's your motive.
"You have to get your key people certified on these operating systems," Daher said. "Our customers ask if we are, and certification gives our business more legitimacy. But look at it from our perspective: It's hard enough to find and keep talented IT people, and Red Hat is asking us not only to spend $5,000 a person, which eats heavily into our cost, but we also have to lose a $60,000 employee for two weeks, who after being certified, can move almost anywhere he wants, maybe even over to Red Hat. There aren't that many Linux-certified people out there."
Sounds like he just wants "paper engineers" to use as a marketing tool, and he's afraid that he won't be able to keep (often pronounced "don't want to pay") qualified people.
You can study for just about any certification wihout the full training run, however he'd rather send his people to a few-day course to learn the bare minimum as opposed to offering incentives to pass the test without expensive training.
He's got quit a dilemma here, though I'm not certified in anything, I hope Red Hat doesn't go the way of Microsoft and pass out valueless titles to people so these fly-by-night resellers can use them to "reassure" customers.
For god's sake, it's only 3/4 of a million dollars worth of parts.
.02 ;)
When I was in the Marine Corps. somone lost a pair of Night Vision Goggles in the field. These were old Army hand-me-downs that were probably only worth a few thousand bucks brand new.
Once they realized they were lost they made the entire company (~250 men) go back out on the weekend and cover about 15 miles of terrain looking for them.
We eventually found them in a muddy-mire by having us all get in a line and going through it on our hands searching.
If these Boeing and NASA Engineers (I'm an engineer now too, BTW) want to piss away my tax money, they should have a seargeant there putting his jungle boot up their ass to find it.
Just my
If this guy's replys (which is nothing more than "why I'm right" rebuttals) are going to continue to make Slashdot, is there going to be a way to filter it off in the "Customize Homepage" section?
Personally I think this guy wrote a very poor technical article, and he gets rebuttal after rebuttal posted as a headline instead of following up in the discussion threads.
If he's got all the points down and we're all wrong, why didn't he just include this information in his original article?
I like the reference to his consulting business in the response as well, his next rebuttal is going to sell banner space.
Come on Slashdot, you're reaching.
Well, what are you doing about it? Personally, I've given away probably 20 Linux CDs to friends and coworkers who were interested in Linux but didn't know where to start off. They're cheap, 99 cents on LinuxMall, 20 or so bucks ain't going to break me.
I've helped most of them install and configure the OS, and told them that if they liked it, they probably should toss a few bucks to the FSF or buy a boxed set, but that was completely optional.
I think Linux is extremely attractive to employers since they don't have to pay a per seat license. Wait until you work for a company that has thousands of NT 3.51 boxes because the costs are phenomoinal to upgrade to 4.0 or worse yet, 2000.
They're ripping hundreds of fileservers out and putting in a Linux/Samba mix. Also looking at SAP R/3 on Linux for sandboxes to our HP-UX N-Class production boxes.
Buy Linux once, and you can install it as much as you want. Compare $99 with a half a million dollars. Unless you're working for a large company which has a few hundred million in technology, I think you're just rambling on a topic without much real world experience.
Editors might change the story around, but they usually give it back to the author to make sure their changes didn't affect anything major.
/.
.02
He's claiming to be technical, would you allow an editor to change a major point on "Why Linux GUIs suck" from configuring a display resultion to resizing icons? Come on.
Also, in the conclusion on his link he says something along the lines of "If you're technical or willing to learn, Linux is a good choice", the "edited" (sarcastic quotes) version lacks that point, leaving a negative light to Linux in the conclusion.
I'd have never let them done that to an article I wrote. If you look at his origional story on LinuxToday, most of the flames were for the stupid icon statement and the negative spin. I think he doctored up the article, blaming the editors, and then sent along his little sob story to
Just my
And yes you can get a distro from cheapbytes for $3.00 (or $1.99) but they also range all the way
up to $86) Like I said I'm already well aware of the facts/arguments.
If you're aware of the cheaper ways to acquire Linux (Cheapbytes, LinuxMall, etc) why are you making such an issue out of the price? You said the "Lemmings" are the ones out there paying full price, you seem to be clued in to the alternatives, but you still are bellyaching about the cost of the boxed sets.
Get yourself a copy of whatever distro you want online, and stop worrying about what choice the Lemmings (your analogy) have the the Best-Buy.
For example NASA might buy a bunch of new laptops with Linux installed. Where will they be used, how will they be used, will they stay in the default configuration, are these for managers;programmers;engineers;techsupport,was it simply a cheaper way for purchasing, or
was it a linux advocate simply pushing his own personal choices. Rumor and speculation abound
"oh they could be used on the shuttles, wahoo!"
Umm, Linux has been going up in the Shuttle for *years* now. Where have you been?
The "second story" the author provided is not the same as the one that was published
;)
The author doctored out the outright dumb comment about resizing icons in the link he provided to the second story, and some other points were modified as well..
Here's the real article that was published and which drew the flames. I think it's unprofessional for a journalist to write an article critical of the Linux community's flaming and not provide a link to the real article which was published.
I certainly don't agree with the flaming, but there's trolls in all aspects of discussion, take a look at the talk.* heirarchy
To classify the actions of a few idiots as the norm is ignorance at its finest.
Boy, I'd hate to be one of *their* test subjects. When these guys actually did get to sleep, the VA probably accidentally amputated their legs and then lost the medical records.
The things I've seen at the VA Medical Center East Orange NJ, it wouldn't suprise me!
I just saw a little clip the other night on TV how Microsoft and Maytag are teaming up to make "smart appliances", though I can't seem to find any mention of it on the Web anywhere.
How long before the script kiddies are able to freeze over my produce drawer and defrost my freezer?
# kitchen_killa -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
-> connecting to oven
-> turning on burners
-> connecting to fridge
-> programming icemaker (infinite l00p)
-> done!
-> gr33tz out to Babba Booey and the former h4ck3rz at KitchenAid.
I heard the super of my building chased a LinuxOne employee out of my lobby. He was taking those AOL cd packages that are too big to go in the mailbox, so they get stuck in between the trim and the wall by the mailman.
;)
Keep your eyes open for a Win32 AOL client by LinuxOne. With 100 FREE HOURS!!
The commercial:
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a toy datacenter with toy sitting in a mini ergo-chair, child's voice cries "Kim, we lost the print spooler, I say again, print services are OFFLINE! Perform a reboot!"
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a childs hand holding Dan and knocking over toy computers, the child cries out "Take that you hard to use and expensive Sun servers! Microsoft clustering can deliver the same performance for 1/3 the price!"
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Cut to a closeup of Nate, a child shreiks, "Oh my Kim, the UNIX Admins are installing Linux, what do we do?!"
Girls voice "They're too smart to attack directly, they know Computer Science and all of that other bits and bytes stuff. Wait!!! There's their managers, ready the FUD Cannon!"
Cheezy electric recorded voice, "Windows is a robust solution for your enterprise...."
Deep Male Voice Sings, "MCP--with the Reboot Grip!"
Generic anouncer "Collect Dan, Kim, and their fearless MSCE+Internet leader Nate, the MCP Action figures by Wham-O! FUD Cannon and Clue-Stick sold separately!"
Without implying that either of you are wrong, in roystgnr's defense:
He has worked in multiple metro areas (including Houston and Albuquerque) and is extremely
intelligent and enlightened. Why don't you point out specifically what's wrong with his argument and
why, instead of slinging ad hominem attacks? I'm sure the humor was not intended to be a personal
slam, but rather a reminder that this issue is, in fact, easily stereotyped and polarized and requires
careful, elaborated, and specific argument.
I'm not sure how to repond to what's wrong with his argument, since he completely didn't understand the issue, and instead of just moving on (like most people do when not familiar with an issue) chose to use humor in a personal slam.
Therefore is shows his ignorance on this issue, he could be the most intelligent person in the world, but he's ignorant on this issue, and immature in his response.
I can't see how he was trying to give us a 'reminder that this issue is, in fact, easily stereotyped and polarized...', since he was insinuating that I'm some foreigner hating redneck, which is far from the truth.
I've seen abuses on both sides when it comes to immigration of skilled workers. This involves ppl that
should have been granted work visas or permanent immigration status, and the lowering of work
conditions by the importation of cheaper labor.
Exactly. I've seen people months away from getting their citizenship being forced to work 60-70 hour weeks, with the employer's attitude being "What are you going to quit and start your immigration all over again?"
I've been in the computer industry for a while in the New York City area, and I'd say that 80% of all people once they get citizenship bail out of their jobs because they were mistreated and underpaid.
"roystgnr" shows the ignorance that a lot of people in technology have to this issue, instead of reading the Website I linked to, or better yet, even understanding the issue before trying to be cute, he chose to insinuate I'm sort of foreigner hating hillbilly, which did nothing but demonstrate his ignorance.
If he held a job in a major metro area, I'm sure he'd be more enlightened.
Damn straight! Everybody knows them immigants can't write good code like Honest God-Fearing
Americans! Why, the next thing you know there'll be a horde of swarthy green card holders here
working on their cheap Leenooks and slandering the quality of the US and our Windows software!
I think you're a little ignorant about your argument. Some of the best software in the world is written by non-Americans. The point I'm making is that corporations, if work visa restrictions are lifted, will degrade the quality of working enviornments for *all* their employees who are affected by these visas.
What happened at the end of the cold war when we cut defense spending and wound up with too many engineers? Think they all kept their jobs?
Why would they need to pay you, when they can have their development done overseas by people willing to work for 1/3 your salary? Why provide a decent work enviornemnt if they *do* need you? Why provide a decent work enviornment to the developers overseas?
If you think that overloading the market with workers (regardless of nationality)is going to actually help growth, you probably don't have much experience in corporate America.
Hey great, we just elected ourselves an "Internet Savvy" President, or is "President in the pockets of large tech corporations" a better description?
The article didn't say where they stood on dramatically increasing foreign work visas, which McCain supports. Which I think is a bigger "geek issue" than taxing Internet commerce.
Corporations don't want to pay high salaries for their tech people, they only do because there's such a demand. If they can get the restriction on visas lifted, the market gets flooded, and salaries and quality drops.
The IEEE has done a pretty good job at fighting this, it should be an issue for anyone working in technology.
Data is fundamental to running a business. If a business loses data, it loses money. Since it is a given that systems will fail, backups are a requirement for businesses. Any business that cuts costs here will eventually learn why it's bad. If they're lucky, it will be a painful lesson; often the lesson is a fatal one.
If you're a system administrator and say that all of the companies you've worked for practiced good disaster recovery, then I'd say you've worked for a lot of good companies.
I've worked for companies where I took over production machines which were backed up with (non-GNU) tar, which might be fine for simple restores, but not a very good option if you have to perform a complete restore. A lot of these machines were being backed by by the cron, where a help-desk person would drop a tape in the drive, and pull it out the following morning.
No log checking, no verification, no nothing. Most of the backups were failures due to bad tape, tape capacity not sufficient, etc, but as long as there's not a major disaster, they could skim by.
Media (especially DLT) is expensive, and most companies reuse it to the point of it being worthless in the event of a failure, I've seen DLT drives not cleaned for years, and while I personally would never practice such shitty administration myself, I see it happen on other machines with other administrators and on machines which I assume responsibility for.
Which is probably the case of CIHost, they probably gave their admins such lousey hardware (Here's a DAT drive, do your backups) with little or no software, and expected them to backup terrabytes worth of data.
Good businesses will practice decent disaster recovery, but the majority of them won't, I guess what I meant to say that it *is* fundamental, but the majority of companies don't practice it.
However they aren't fundamental in running a business.
;)
Businesses will always try to cut corners, unfortunately backups and high availability, which should be the cornerstone of this kind of "operation" are often overlooked.
Just today in fact I came into work and had a disk crashed on a Jamaica JBOD attached to a Hewlett-Packard K370. True, since it's not an array it took a while to recover everything, but being as it was a development database, I managed to restore it back to the state it was at 2am last night.
Without those backups I'm be typing my resume now instead of posting to Slashdot
But there's no excuse for a company like this to backup their customers' data, the technology is out there--StorageTek, ATL, they all have scalable solutions to back up terrabytes worth of data, but that costs money and apparently they didn't think providing a decent service to their paying customers was worth it.
If I had an account there, I'd most likely find another provider that knew about system backups and high availability, it is *your* business.