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.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The morning comes
The morning started out like any other with one exception, my right foot was exposed from under the covers and unknowingly to me was placed where the cat decides to rest on our bed.
In the wee hours the cat sits down quietly beside my foot and began sniffing, then licking and then having what she thought was a nibble was definitely more like she was sitting down for a buffet! I immediately jumped up (as you would) and said something like damn cat!
Having realized I was awake the cat thought "I can eat later" and promptly decided to go and play with something else. Well I immediately zoned out and went back to sleep. An atomic bomb could go off and I would sleep right through it! Yet it is quiet around me that will wake me up. Go figure?
So now I am sitting here and pondering how is it with all the experience I have gained in information technology over the last 30 years why is it that I am currently out of work? Granted that I have not gone the academic route and not have a piece of paper to glorify experience in one particular area whereas I have learned from doing. It is true I am not an ardent user of Microsoft ™ products however I have used them in order to assist with peoples computer issues, the same applies to Apple OS ™ & POSIX (UNIX, Linux) operating systems. While I have completed a course in Telecommunications Cabling and achieved an open license (some time ago) has only opened a few extra doors.
Now I sit here on a late February morning, I am looking at what I am going to do with the day. Most likely do some web editing & some Stumbling (StumbleUpon providing you use Mozilla based browser). Undoubtedly a trip to the Mall will be on the agenda sometime.
Perhaps something will present itself today, if not hopefully tomorrow.
In the wee hours the cat sits down quietly beside my foot and began sniffing, then licking and then having what she thought was a nibble was definitely more like she was sitting down for a buffet! I immediately jumped up (as you would) and said something like damn cat!
Having realized I was awake the cat thought "I can eat later" and promptly decided to go and play with something else. Well I immediately zoned out and went back to sleep. An atomic bomb could go off and I would sleep right through it! Yet it is quiet around me that will wake me up. Go figure?
So now I am sitting here and pondering how is it with all the experience I have gained in information technology over the last 30 years why is it that I am currently out of work? Granted that I have not gone the academic route and not have a piece of paper to glorify experience in one particular area whereas I have learned from doing. It is true I am not an ardent user of Microsoft ™ products however I have used them in order to assist with peoples computer issues, the same applies to Apple OS ™ & POSIX (UNIX, Linux) operating systems. While I have completed a course in Telecommunications Cabling and achieved an open license (some time ago) has only opened a few extra doors.
Now I sit here on a late February morning, I am looking at what I am going to do with the day. Most likely do some web editing & some Stumbling (StumbleUpon providing you use Mozilla based browser). Undoubtedly a trip to the Mall will be on the agenda sometime.
Perhaps something will present itself today, if not hopefully tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
My initial blog
Here I sit, pondering what to write when I think '..most people just write about rather obvious & perhaps sometimes mundane issues'.
Well at times this may be the case however I think perhaps the one main issue I think about is how much the world would be better off without religion. Lets look at the precepts of certain groups (namely the extremist fundamentalists) who have taken small segments of their 'bible' (for want of a better word), and interpreted as doctrine. And yet many of these people complain of being stifled in their lives, yet they staunchly defend their direction of faith as the true religions. As my understanding of the bible (taken from the third person), has been rewritten several times and in each revision is an interpretation on the previous writings. Yet as experiments have proven many times over with a random number of groups, I believe I should elaborate here.
Say we have a target group of a hundred people and line them up, we tell the first person in the line a particular sentence and ask that they pass it to the next person in the line and so on until the last person has been told what the previous person has spoken to them. The first person is asked to repeat out loud what was told to them and then the last person does similarly, it is more often than not the text is either totally different or is totally out of the original context.
This is how I perceive religion as a whole, do not get me wrong if a person feels they need a crux in the form of a religious belief that is their choice but do not force others to follow the same belief.
As my understanding that stories of Jesus leave a gap in the bible, the period between the ages of 13 and 22 (or there abouts). This is because he had lost his way in the desert and was found by the Hittites and cared for. So what is perceived to be Christianity in fact the Hittite religion.
Some years ago during a conversation at the dinner table with family, the conversation came up if we believed there was a god. Someone made the comment you are only a good person if you believed. When it became my turn I calmly said I was an Atheist, my mother had a grim look on her face and I said "you have known me all my life and you know I am a good person, and I don't believe in any deity. I have faith in myself as I do others, why do I need to believe in something that is an intangible that there is no proof that it exists?" My mother very quickly became quiet, knowing that she had no recourse. And my father had a smirk on his face (perhaps because there was someone to win an argument against the family matriarch)!
There will be more to come in further posts.
Well at times this may be the case however I think perhaps the one main issue I think about is how much the world would be better off without religion. Lets look at the precepts of certain groups (namely the extremist fundamentalists) who have taken small segments of their 'bible' (for want of a better word), and interpreted as doctrine. And yet many of these people complain of being stifled in their lives, yet they staunchly defend their direction of faith as the true religions. As my understanding of the bible (taken from the third person), has been rewritten several times and in each revision is an interpretation on the previous writings. Yet as experiments have proven many times over with a random number of groups, I believe I should elaborate here.
Say we have a target group of a hundred people and line them up, we tell the first person in the line a particular sentence and ask that they pass it to the next person in the line and so on until the last person has been told what the previous person has spoken to them. The first person is asked to repeat out loud what was told to them and then the last person does similarly, it is more often than not the text is either totally different or is totally out of the original context.
This is how I perceive religion as a whole, do not get me wrong if a person feels they need a crux in the form of a religious belief that is their choice but do not force others to follow the same belief.
As my understanding that stories of Jesus leave a gap in the bible, the period between the ages of 13 and 22 (or there abouts). This is because he had lost his way in the desert and was found by the Hittites and cared for. So what is perceived to be Christianity in fact the Hittite religion.
Some years ago during a conversation at the dinner table with family, the conversation came up if we believed there was a god. Someone made the comment you are only a good person if you believed. When it became my turn I calmly said I was an Atheist, my mother had a grim look on her face and I said "you have known me all my life and you know I am a good person, and I don't believe in any deity. I have faith in myself as I do others, why do I need to believe in something that is an intangible that there is no proof that it exists?" My mother very quickly became quiet, knowing that she had no recourse. And my father had a smirk on his face (perhaps because there was someone to win an argument against the family matriarch)!
There will be more to come in further posts.
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