IT Certification is a waste of time

"IT CERTIFICATION is proving a waste of time and money with few people with the right pieces of paper getting any extra cash for them.
Workforce research and consulting outfit Foote Partners, who compiled a study on IT certification has found that people who didn�t have any certification had their salaries had grown three times faster than those with qualifications."

SysIntegrators, LLC Honored by SonicWALL as One of Top Ten US Channel Partners

Just think how far they would get if they hired me?! That is right, they are responsable for more than just my missing chocolate.

"Hailed as Medallion Partner of the Year for Outstanding Performance as Member of Leading Security Vendor's US Channel Network

NEW YORK, April 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SysIntegrators, LLC today announced that it has been recognized by SonicWALL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL), a leading provider of integrated network security and productivity solutions, as one of the company's top 10 US channel partners. SysIntegrators, LLC was named Medallion Partner of the Year, Eastern Region following outstanding performance and innovation in delivering security products and services to its customers during 2005. SonicWALL acknowledged SysIntegrators, LLC at its annual partner conference, Peak Performance, which took place in Las Vegas from April 17 to 20, 2006."

Government-Funded Startup Blasts Rootkits

"A startup funded by the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is ready to emerge from stealth mode with hardware and software-based technologies to fight the rapid spread of malicious rootkits.


Komoku, of College Park, Md., plans to ship in the summer a beta of Gamma, a new rootkit detection tool that builds on a prototype used by several sensitive U.S. government departments to find operating system abnormalities that may be linked to malicious rootkit activity. Rootkits modify the flow of the kernel to hide the presence of an attack or compromise on a machine. This gives a hacker remote user access to a compromised system while avoiding detection by anti-virus scanners."

Another Wonderful Monday

    I am sure that many of you would think that saying something like that deserves a blow to the face, and you know, you are probably right. Something about getting back to the grind as an underpayed, undervalued worker in the IT industry makes you want to cringe when you wake up in the morning. There were many of us that thought when we were paying for our schooling that it was ok because our futures would be secure PLUS we were doing something that we enjoyed. You really can not ask for more than that. Instead many of us found ourselves working in IT departments in various companies that don't pay, and don't care. It became more and more evident that to go anywhere with IT you had to have multiple skills.

    If you ever look at some of the job requirments for some of these positions you wonder how somebody can retain all of the information that they want you to know. You will have no problem finding a job in the New York metro area if you know ten programing languages plus can administer all versions of windows and 10 flavors of *nix. I am not against additional schooling to take on new skills but sometimes that is just not possable and the entry level positions do not pay well. I do hear rumblings about the tech job market getting a little better and as my years in the industry increase then maybe chances will get better that I can find something to suite me well. I wish everyone out there searching for that better position the best of luck!

Dell produces monster thirty-inch winner

"AS BIG AS A BIG TELLY and with higher resolution than HD (high definition), Dell's mammoth 30in display is unlike anything else you're likely to have put on your PC."

Slashdot | Planning Dapper +1, The Edgy Eft

Slashdot Planning Dapper +1, The Edgy Eft: "Christian Jensen writes 'On the ubuntu-announce mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth announced the plans for the next Ubuntu release - 'The Edgy Eft', the successor to Dapper Drake.' This release is being touted as both cutting edge (edgy) and containing several comparatively 'young' software additions ('Eft' being a 'youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the rocky territory just outside the stream.') like Xen, XGL/AIGLX, and others. "

The RIAA vs. the EFF: who will redefine copyright for the digital age

"In a recent editorial, an attorney representing a defendant in one of the RIAA's 19,000 lawsuits over P2P technology made the case that the RIAA's arguments in Elektra v. Barker, if accepted by a judge, have the potential to undermine the very nature of the Internet. Here at Ars, we've previously touched on the RIAA's radical notion, first introduced in this case, that simply making files available on a shared folder constitutes infringement (regardless of whether the files were actually accessed by another party). The new editorial reiterates the dangerous absurdity of parts of the RIAA's arguments, but in favorably citing a recent EFF amicus brief in the case it also raises the question of who, in fact, is really the party arguing for the pre-digital status quo. "

Microsoft Releases VS Express for Free Forever - OSNews.com

"After more than 5 million downloads, Microsoft has decided to extend its free Visual Studio Express downloads indefinitely. In related news, they are running a contest too."

Ars System Guide: April 2006 edition : Page 1

"System recommendations are harder to do than most people think, but we've diligently worked to keep our guides up-to-date with the most mouth-watering hardware. Our last regular update in January saw some new hardware. This time? Read on...

But reader beware: we're not going to just choose the cheapest stuff or the best stuff and throw it together and call it a system (as many 'recommenders' are wont to do). Rather, our guides are meant to reflect real world issues. For example, we'll tally up prices for you based on what we glean from our own online comparison shopping engine, not vendors that we have special deals with, or even worse, MSRPs. Real-world prices, baby."

TV competition could save consumers big bucks | CNET News.com

"Competition in the cable TV market from phone companies could save consumers big bucks, according to a new study released Monday by an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Yale Braunstein, professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, found in a study focused on the California cable television market that prices dropped 15 percent to 22 percent when cable companies competed with another wireline paid-TV provider, such as a telephone company."

Ubisoft Drops StarForce DRM

"Earlier this week, we mentioned that Ubisoft was dropping malware/software copy protection company Starforce. What began with their decision to drop Starforce from Heroes of Might and Magic V, ended when game software maker Ubisoft confirmed to 1UP today that it has reached a decision to find another copy protection software solution.

When questioned Ubisoft representatives told 1UP, 'Right now, Ubisoft has decided to use an alternative copy protection system to Starforce for upcoming releases and we are investigating other possible steps at this time.' But why the change now?"

Jobs snubs Wozniak

"MUSIC BOX maker Steve Jobs has snubbed his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and declined to pen a forward in his former chum's forthcoming autobiography.

Wozniak told the Seattle Times that he was a little disappointed as Jobs had indicated he would write a forward to the book.

Jobs had apparently never written a forward before and Wozniak told him to just write what 'Apple was like back then'."

AMD's new Socket AM2: it's no Conroe-killer, but it's not supposed to be

"For those of you who've been following the coverage of AMD's 2006-2007 plans here at Ars, Anandtech's new benchmark results for a prerelease version of AMD's forthcoming AM2 socket format will come as no surprise. The combination of AM2 and DDR2 doesn't offer any real advantage for AMD at this point, because their processors aren't yet bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. The introduction of AM2 is a forward-looking move that will become relevant only when more cores per chip and higher clockspeeds start to put more pressure on the memory subsystem."

Gaming with Vista and DX10

"Set to ship at the beginning of next year, Windows Vista will be Microsoft's first major operating system release since introducing Windows XP in 2001. The new Windows Vista operating system offers a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organization, and near-instantaneous search. The new operating system will be a major gaming platform release because it includes DirectX 10, an upgraded and rebuilt collection of APIs that, according to Microsoft, will offer six to eight times the graphics performance of DirectX 9.0. In our final look at Windows Vista, we find out what DirectX 10 means for gaming."

Entrepreneur involved in Enzo Ferrari crash arrested - Apr 10, 2006

"The Swedish video game entrepreneur involved in the 162-mph crash of a rare Ferrari has been arrested on suspicion of grand theft, officials said.

Detectives concluded that the wrecked Enzo Ferrari -- one of only 400 made -- along with a Mercedes and another Enzo Ferrari in Stefan Eriksson's collection were actually owned by British financial institutions, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Eriksson apparently brought the cars to Los Angeles when he moved from Britain last year, but the financial institutions that held the titles said his payments had lapsed.

Authorities have said the $600,000 Mercedes had been reported to London's Scotland Yard. The Ferrari was worth more than $1 million."

ATI does Oblivion FSAA and HDR

"ATI really likes the fact that it is the only graphics company that can support both HDR and FSAA. Well if you like to play games at the highest settings, it makes perfect sense to turn the FSAA and HDR on at the same time, it is natural, right?"

This is great news! Although I did hear about it a couple times I havn't had time to post as much as I have wanted to due being tied up quite a bit the past week. I cant wait to see the difference with HDR on at the same time as FSAA. I am sure it will add a little chop to my game (only a X800XT here) but will be enjoyable none the less.

Sony insists Playstation 3 will be cheap

"JAPANESE GIANT Sony has rushed to deny claims that its new PS3 console will cost as much as €499-599.

The comments were made by Sony Computer Entertainment France boss Georges Fornay on a French radio station so it is a little hard to get out of it. But a spokesSony claimed that George had been mistranslated or misunderstood."

Sony Begins Talking About PS3 Pricing

"A Gamasutra story points to a Europe 1 french radio interview with George Fornay, president of Sony Computer Entertainment France and vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The interview yielded the first public comment from a senior Sony executive on the pricing for Sony's next-generation console.

Fornay said on French radio that the PS3 will cost 'around 500 euro [$613], in the range of 499 to 599 euro [$612 to 734].'


Sony Computer Entertainment president, Ken Kutaragi has mentioned that the system was going to be expensive, but $612 expensive? If Sony's pricepoint for the PS3 is $599 in America, will you be standing in line to buy one? Would a more palatable pricepoint of $499 have you camping out in the cold come early November for a PS3? While nothing Fornay says points to the price slipping that low, keep in mind Sony hasn't confirmed, commented or made any indication about what the North American pricepoint will be."

NOTE: I don't know about you guys but I would rather spend that money on a computer upgrade, a widescreen monitor, toward a paint job on the car. Just about anything but a gaming system. If you have to spend that much why not just buy a PC?

ATI Cat 6.3 drivers and 6.3 based issues

I am wondering if anybody has been having issues with the 6.3, Omega 6.3 based, or the Zeropoint 6.3 based drivers. With this driver set I have been getting repeated GPU crashes while trying to test out Oblivion and Battle for Middle Earth II. I know the BFME II has stability issues to begin with but the errors I am getting seem to be VPU related and all error reports lend to this fact. If anybody is noticing issues like this with any of these games please post in the forums and lets see if we can work this out.

Test rig is:
650 Watt Aspire Power suppy
ASrock DualSATA2
AMD +4000
2GB PQI DDR400
NEC DVD-RW
Connect3D X800XT AGP
OCWorkbench Bios BETA3 (Reverted back from BETA5 to test if that was the issue.

I have also uninstalled and reinstalled sound and video drivers multiple times, cleaned the registry and all other sorts of nonsense.

Argentina students help Apache's effort towards OSS Java

"A GROUP of Argentinean students and graduates has compatible Java VM code and has contributed it to the Apache Software Foundation's project to create an open source, J2SE 5.0-compatible java runtime and virtual machine. The project has received Sun's blessing, with Graham Hamilton from Sun commenting in his blog: 'The licensing rules for J2SE 5.0 were carefully designed to allow independent, compatible open-source implementations of the J2SE specification'."