I'm with you on this. STEM is a term that's being pushed on us by political/media types for who-knows-what reasons. It reminds me of people talking about "ya". I saw that thrown around a lot as a genre of books, apparently meaning "Young Adult (literature)", and it took me a while to figure out what the hell people were talking about. It's not really even a genre, but a classification of the target audience. It's pretty dumb use of jargon.

Back to STEM. Science, technology, engineering, and math. As though those are the same things. As though astrophysicists and programmers and marine biologists are all doing the same thing, and their expertise is interchangeable. Whoever lumped all that stuff together either has an agenda, or has no idea what they're talking about. In the contexts I see it being used, I assume that the intention is either:

(a) Companies that rely on software developers complaining about the lack of people with "STEM degrees", in an attempt to justify more H-1B visas; or
(b) Dimwitted programmers who want to lump all kinds of people into a subculture of "science people" to make themselves feel important. Like, "I'm a STEM person, just like Einstein, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan. I'm just like those guys, because we're all STEM, unlike the filthy common people who like reading fiction and looking at art."

I mean, I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to take away from the whole STEM thing. Nobody talked about it 10 years ago. Having a lot of biologists does not help with developing software. Having lots of people capable of making iPhone apps does not push particle physics forward. I really think we need to drop the whole classification of "STEM" as a thing.

And the whole "preferably within the space industry"... what space industry does this guy mean? Does he want to work for NASA designing probes, or Boeing trying to design a space plane? Or is there some other "space industry". It'd be great to know, because it would really help narrow down what he'd need to do to accomplish that goal. But doing something related to space would probably mean, yes, you need to go back to school and get a undergrad in that particular field. Go find out what schools have the best Aerospace Engineering departments, and work your ass off, because that's going to get competitive.

I would say that it's not just the implementation, but choosing which thing to implement in the first place. A lot of these fads, whether it's "big data" or "cloud computing" or "agile development", have become popular because they're extremely useful in some cases. The mistake, sometimes, is in thinking that you've found a single solution to solve all problems, and applying it everywhere will fix everything.

Someone else here used the example of the language "Ruby" as a fad that was useless because Ruby is "awful". That doesn't seem right to me. In my experience, which is admittedly a bit limited (I'm not actually a programmer), it seems like different programming languages have their own strengths and weaknesses, so you may want to choose a specific language for a specific goal. However, realistically, in the projects that I've managed, it always made the more sense to take into account (a) the language any current code is written in; and (b) the languages my team is most comfortable working with. If you have a bunch of PHP programmers who only know PHP well, working to revise a web application written in PHP, then Ruby is probably a terrible choice. But then, Perl and C++ would also be terrible choices. Those aren't bad languages. They're just not the best choice for that particular project.

I don't want to start a shit-storm by talking about languages, since as I said, I'm not a programmer, but I think that example is simple enough. Similarly, "cloud storage" like Dropbox can be great for small teams working from different locations on small office documents. On the other hand, if you're a big company with tons of people working in a central office, editing video files that are multiple gigabytes each, then you're going to want some kind of internal storage. The issue isn't about implementing your Dropbox well, but making an appropriate choice for your needs.

Because you're being belligerent, and frankly, kind of dumb. That's "the reason why you shouldn't put things in the cloud". If it were the reason, then it could be easily fixed by having cloud providers give assurances that your data will be stored in a specific jurisdiction, and then you would have absolutely no reason not to put things "in the cloud".

But really my post is meant to indicate that there are some things about digital storage and transmission that needs to be considered, and the law might need to be revised to address any unclear points. In my mind, it's a bit like having copyright laws saying that you can't make any copies of copyrighted materials, ignoring (a) the possible need to make backups; and (b) the fact that, technically, copies might be made in various caches whenever you transmit or playback the digital file.

And by that comparison, I mean to point out that some things don't simply translate between the digital world and the physical world, so the rules have to be considered carefully. There may be issues that need to be worked out and clarified, even if it's only a common-sense judgement.

If you asked me to give a simple "yes" or "no" answer, right this minute, as to whether Microsoft is on the right side of things here, I'd say "yes". I'm just pointing out that it might not be something that you can decide simply without any unintended legal ramifications. Is that so hard to understand?

Honestly, I'm having a little bit of a hard time deciding what I think about this. On the one hand, I'm very much in favor of privacy, and it seems to me that the rules for searching a server in Ireland should be approximately the same as the rules for searching a storage locker in Ireland.

On the other hand, I feel that it's important to consider that, with the whole "cloud computing" thing, it doesn't necessarily matter where your data is stored. For example, I might throw a document in my Dropbox folder and it get synced to "the cloud", and I have no idea where that file is physically located. It could be in Ireland, for all I know. So even though I may not live in Ireland or access it from Ireland, I may not have intended to store it in Ireland, and I may not even know it's in Ireland, it happens to be stored in Ireland at this moment. It could be shuffled off to another physical location tomorrow.

So I guess that makes me wonder, in such a hypothetical circumstance, if declaring it absolutely within the jurisdiction of Ireland might be opening a bit of a can of worms. If I throw a file up in my Dropbox and it ends up cached in Russia, without my knowledge or permission, is it now subject to Russian copyright laws? Is it now subject to Russian decency laws? If the information is considered illegal in Russia, am I now guilty of smuggling?

I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so maybe I'm wrong to think that there might be some weird repercussions.

I would have said, "Any change is risk. But so is not changing."

It seems to me that the question asked in the headline doesn't quite match the summary:

"Is managing IT harder now than it used to be? I think it is, and I offer as my support that IT executives are not as influential as marketing executives!"

In a lot of ways, IT management is probably easier. The technology is better and more reliable. We have a new generation of cloud management and MDM for all kinds of things. Managing an IT department is hard, but it's always been hard.

But I think what you're really getting at is, businesses don't want to spend money in IT. The reality is, they never did. I've been working in IT for a couple decades now, and the whole time, there's always been budget issues where upper management is saying, "Do we really need to buy new workstations? Didn't we just buy new workstations 7 years ago?" Sure, a couple decades ago, they were saying, "Didn't we just install the terminals 7 years ago?" but the concept was the same. I doubt it was new then, either. Businesses don't like to spend money, and IT gets classified as a cost center.

Sure, "the cloud" makes it all a bit worse, since now clueless executives can say, "It's all this stuff supposed to be free now? I have a Dropbox account that I use for personal stuff, and it works great, and it's free. Can't we just put all of our servers in the Cloud like Dropbox is?" But is it new that marketing is driving business decisions more than the IT department is, or that clueless executives want to replace everything with whichever buzzword-heavy technology that they've recently heard about? Nope. That's pretty much the deal.

Well, there's a general theory that I've heard before: A lot of the attraction to be a police officer is that they're tough and powerful. Therefore, the people who are attracted to becoming police are those who want to be tough guys and like the idea of having power over other people. If true, then there would be a tendency to end up with police officers who are wanna-be tough-guy bullies.

Now I want to stop short of asserting that this theory is true. It makes sense to me, but I don't actually know if it's true. I wouldn't claim to have any real knowledge of the internal aspects of the police force and their recruiting, aside from what can be learned from TV and movies. I'm no expert. I will say, of the police that I've met, some have been very nice and seem to be trying to make a positive difference, and some others have been bullies.

Yeah, I think this is an issue that should be treated like.... smoking, or overeating, or poor hygiene. The government shouldn't be trying to fix it with force. The role that the government should play is in making it free and easy to get vaccinated once you'd decided you want to do it.

Maybe it's the "And get new ones," part. Do police have a hard time recruiting enough good candidates?

First, I'm sure it's not that rare for home users to want a wireless NAS. Second, I didn't say that I was in the majority. You said, "There's no reasonable excuse to want wireless networking in a server." I was merely pointing out that there is a reasonable excuse for wanting wireless.

Well that's an issue of priority. I can want wireless networking, along with all kinds of other things, while recognizing that there are higher priority issues. That doesn't mean it's unreasonable to want it.

What if it's a home server, and for some reason you can't feasibly wire your home?

No, it's not just like that. It would be more comparable to buying a TV at full price, and then having to constantly pay a subscription fee (in addition) to keep the TV's operating system working, or else it wouldn't turn on. Because yes, modern TVs have operating systems, too. Content is a different thing. Add-ons are different things. But to keep the machine you purchased functioning on a basic level, you shouldn't need to pay a subscription fee.

And that's specifically where I'm drawing the distinction. For most people, if you say, "Well you could just install another OS," it's actually not too different in saying, "Yes, you need to pay a subscription fee or your TV's operating system, or else it will stop working. If you don't like it, you could hack it to run Linux." The TV is an appliance, and people don't want to worry about their TV's operating system. For most people, computers are an appliance in approximately the same way.

Sure, they might know that you can do different things on a Mac vs. a Dell, but you can do different things on a Sony TV vs a Samsung TV. The GUI looks different, and there are minor differences in the functionality, but they don't have a grasp on what the actual technical differences are.

So yes, I'd be in favor of offering subscriptions for Windows, but if they're going to stop offering the option to purchase a perpetual license of Windows with free updates, then they should have the Windows subscription include a free perpetual license for Windows, and only have the subscription be necessary for updates. If my only option for Windows is to have a subscription version that completely stops working when I stop paying, then I'm going to avoid using in any situation where it's not completely required.

Not necessarily. When you've worked with these kinds of things long enough, you realize that most businesses are willing to spend money on *something*, and the willingness to spend is often connected to how and where it fits in their budgets. You have businesses much more willing to spend $10/month every month, reliably, then to spend $120 per year all at once. You have some that will spend money on renting things, but not buying things, or vice versa. Don't underestimate the importance of being able to push an expense past the paper-pushers.

Along with everything else, sometimes it's just an irrational thing. I can get a client to agree to spend $10/month every month for the next 5 years, and explain, "this is just what you're going to spend." It works itself into their budgets and they just take it for granted. If I charge them $600 every 5 years instead, even though it's not that much money and it amounts to the same amount, it'll be an argument every 5 years. "Do we really need to spend the $600 this year? Can't we put it off? Can't we just not spend that money?"

Of course businesses don't want to spend money that they don't need to, but I don't think it comes down to "not wanting to spend money" as much as people who want their expenses to be justified, which is pretty much everyone.

Not exactly. Because it's mandatory in a way that doesn't make sense. It might make sense in cases where people lease a computer. Let's say I lease a Dell laptop for 4 years, and included in that cost were all Microsoft software updates for those 4 years. That makes some sense, because then I'm essentially renting the hardware and the software it requires for 4 years, after which, I'm done with it. However, if I buy a computer, I've bought it, and I expect it to be able to run its basic functions indefinitely, until it breaks.

And that's why I think a mandatory OS subscription is a really awful idea. If you're very knowledgeable about computers, you might not think this way, because you think about how you can install a new operating system, and therefore think of it as separable from the computer itself. However, for most people (and most businesses), it's more of a single unit. You buy a machine, and the operating system is just part of it required to make it work. Without an operating system, the thing is useless. So it's not like Adobe CS or Microsoft Office, which people see as an add-on piece of software, but it's something directly involved with making the hardware that they bought functional at all.

So it's not like employees or heating, which are services that you pay for. It makes sense that you would continually have to pay for it. It would be better to compare it to buying a chair where the seat is designed to self-destruct every month like clockwork, rendering the entire thing useless until you buy a new seat from a single particular manufacturer. It might make sense if you rented the chair to say that you have to pay every month, but if you've purchased the chair, why would you put yourself in the position of needing to pay monthly, for no reason except to satisfy the money-grab of the seat manufacturer?

My experiences is that you might find applications for either that don't exist for the other. For enterprise, managing a large fleet of workstations is a bit easier with Windows workstations running on a Windows domain, but there are actually management tools for Macs. Most Windows IT people just don't know about them. If I had an objection to Macs for the enterprise market, it'd sooner be that Microsoft Office for Mac sucks, and Apple seems intent on screwing up their file sharing with crappy implementations of SMB.

But yes, I would take your point that in some situations, the TCO for Mac would probably end up being higher. But then, that's what I said-- that the TCO may be higher or lower, depending on "things like user training, what kinds of systems your IT department is familiar with, and what kinds of functionality you need from your computer."

It doesn't solve the problem of "forced upgrades", but as you said, the upgrades are free. But none of that is actually what bothers me. If Microsoft was trying to push us all to Windows 10, I would be kind of ok with that. At the heart of my first post, I was saying that I don't even exactly have a problem with them pushing people towards a subscription model, if the intention of that subscription model is to keep everyone up-to-date by having a lower yearly cost for continued updates, rather than a higher up-front cost.

It seems to me that part of the problem Microsoft runs into is, people will buy Windows XP and then stick with it for 10 years because they don't want to pay $250 per computer to upgrade to the next version, only to know that they're supposed to spend $250 in a couple years for the next version. The result is that Microsoft has to offer continued support for old versions of their software for 10 years, which kind of sucks for Microsoft. Part of my thinking is that, because of how IT business decisions work, even if they were to charge the same amount ($100/year subscription vs. $250 every 2.5 years to buy a new version), they'd probably get more people to pay it for subscription services. This is especially true if they bundle it with other services businesses use (Office 365) to make it a good value for the money.

What doesn't work for me, however, is the idea of an operating system that stops working if you stop paying the subscription. I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend that to a client.

It's a small point, I'm actually not sure that's true. I support Macs and PCs, and I suspect that if your business can go with Macs, the TCO may be lower. Of course, that depends on things like user training, what kinds of systems your IT department is familiar with, and what kinds of functionality you need from your computer. Yes, you're going to spend at least $1000 for a laptop and at least $600 for a desktop, but I wouldn't generally recommend businesses buy those cheapo $300 desktop/ $700 laptops anyway. You'll spend more money supporting them than you save buying them.

But speaking as an IT pro, none of this solves the "I don't want to spend any money" problem. If you don't want to spend any money, then don't attempt to run a business. Keeping the TCO low does not mean "not spending money".

Well not "nothing" exactly. If Windows forces people to go with a subscription plan where their computers stop working when they stop paying the subscription, I'll warn my clients of that danger. I'll probably recommend against going along with the whole thing, and offer help them look for alternatives if possible (e.g. standardizing on the last version of Windows without that requirement, evaluating alternative operating systems). Given my experiences, I'd expect that a few will switch to Mac, most will want to standardize on Windows 8.1 and wait to see how things shake out. A lot of clients didn't want to upgrade from XP, and we're only getting the last few to upgrade now that Microsoft has officially dropped support, so if we recommend going no further than Windows 8 or 10 or whichever is the last version you can "buy", then I doubt clients will object.

Of course, though, some clients will still want to go with Windows, and some won't have a choice. Microsoft has a long history of trying to make sure you have no choice other than to go along with buying the products they want you to buy. In the end, if my client has a business need that requires Windows, and they choose to spend their money on paying a subscription, I'll set it up for them. It's not my job to tell my clients what to do. I advise them on what choice I think is good, and then help them with whatever choice they make.