Here is sit pondering how it is an IT specialist with my years of experience has difficulty in finding work?
Granted that I have not sat for the Microsoft MSCE or A+ certification yet I have seen individuals (who have these pieces of paper) make some pretty big blunders. In the end it is individuals such as myself who have to correct them, and we have to calm the business owners down afterward!
This obviously leads into the other issues, where I feel that open-source alternatives would be better suited to the application. Such as the substitution of OpenOffice.org OpenOffice suite to replace Microsoft Office suite, primarily because the system load is much less per user than latter. Another plus is the fact it can open MS Word documents (as well as the newer docx formats), also that if you wish to export your newly created document to Adobe Acrobat PDF it can directly.
Not long after I had rebuilt my computer towards the end of last year I had joined a discussion within LinkedIn and discovered that this individual had been planning on replacing the main in-office system with Linux. After a number of phone calls and chats he had successfully had deployed a fully secured wireless network based around Linux systems and with little or no downtime. I applaud his tenacity! :)
Another point, in recent months an acquaintance from Australia had found one of my Facebook profiles and contacted me informing me that he was having major issues with his computer. Now I had not done any work on his system in well over a year and through the wonderful utility of Teamviewer which allows for a technician to remotely control a client computer bypassing firewalls currently in place via a secure proxy. It is true at times this can be rather slow due to connection speeds but it is possible. Whoever had done the partitioning on his system should have been shot! Granted a good rule of thumb is perhaps 2 to 4 partitions but around 10 is ridiculous! Now I did some work initially out of friendship but after 4 sessions averaging about 3 hours each I had no alternative but to invoice him for the work done.
I will continue this discussion in my next post.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
In the cloud or earth bound
In recent years there have been migrations of who have decided that online applications are the way to go.
I have my reservations.
Once you decide to rely on another party to store any material created by you, you then lose complete control of which you have created. Let us cast our mind back some years when Microsoft ™ made a comment that in years to come the point of facilities (IE- word processing applications, spreadsheet, collaboration tools, etc.) would be the norm, and that essentially that your computer system would then become (albeit powerful) a dumb terminal. Since that point, services such as Google © & Novell ™ have created cloud environments with all the bells and whistles.
I suppose my IT roots are having a hard time adjusting to this environment because I have always firmly believed that access information is a right, not a permission. Just as I coincide the issue of Microsoft marketing strategy, using a tactic that every system has to be loaded with their operating system(s). This in my view is BS! Yes they have a place in the market but it should be peoples choice what operating systems they wish to use, not be told what can & can't use!
To be fair I admit I use a dual boot environment of both Linux & Windows, where Linux is my primary operating system of choice and Windows is there merely to play games and to facilitate in the aiding of clients who have issues with their own Windows systems.
Now I say these following words purely as opinion and not to be misconceived as an attack on the people themselves.
Bill Gates was not that great a programmer but more of a marketing person. Unfortunately his ideas initially when the group who were developing the operating system initially for IBM, saw him license the code under Intellectual Property allowing the user to operate with the product but sole ownership remained with his company. This has been carried over with Steve Ballmer as well, merely looking at increasing the bottom line.
I have often pondered "what if I created a complete an LCARS (a Star Trek reference operating system compatible with all forms of processor) and merely patented the software, thus allowing for anyone to make system changes (similar to LGPL) they wished as long as the initial code reference remained the same and the modified code was included down the line. How would that affect the behemoths already mentioned? Should I be in the cloud or earth bound? Food for thought.
I have my reservations.
Once you decide to rely on another party to store any material created by you, you then lose complete control of which you have created. Let us cast our mind back some years when Microsoft ™ made a comment that in years to come the point of facilities (IE- word processing applications, spreadsheet, collaboration tools, etc.) would be the norm, and that essentially that your computer system would then become (albeit powerful) a dumb terminal. Since that point, services such as Google © & Novell ™ have created cloud environments with all the bells and whistles.
I suppose my IT roots are having a hard time adjusting to this environment because I have always firmly believed that access information is a right, not a permission. Just as I coincide the issue of Microsoft marketing strategy, using a tactic that every system has to be loaded with their operating system(s). This in my view is BS! Yes they have a place in the market but it should be peoples choice what operating systems they wish to use, not be told what can & can't use!
To be fair I admit I use a dual boot environment of both Linux & Windows, where Linux is my primary operating system of choice and Windows is there merely to play games and to facilitate in the aiding of clients who have issues with their own Windows systems.
Now I say these following words purely as opinion and not to be misconceived as an attack on the people themselves.
Bill Gates was not that great a programmer but more of a marketing person. Unfortunately his ideas initially when the group who were developing the operating system initially for IBM, saw him license the code under Intellectual Property allowing the user to operate with the product but sole ownership remained with his company. This has been carried over with Steve Ballmer as well, merely looking at increasing the bottom line.
I have often pondered "what if I created a complete an LCARS (a Star Trek reference operating system compatible with all forms of processor) and merely patented the software, thus allowing for anyone to make system changes (similar to LGPL) they wished as long as the initial code reference remained the same and the modified code was included down the line. How would that affect the behemoths already mentioned? Should I be in the cloud or earth bound? Food for thought.
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