Keep copies of the contracts and statements of work to show what you were contracted to do. Contact the client (not the developer currently maintaining the code, but that developer's manager or whomever at the client signed the contract) and ask them for a letter to clarify that you did the original work for them, regardless of the copyright notices in the code now.

Be polite about it, and most clients will be happy to help.

Gah, I misspelt it. Of course, I meant Scrum. :) (What was I saying about being familiar with the terminology being as important as being able to do it?) :)

Yes, it is important as well not to spend a lot of time early in your career hopping between different jobs. Employers want people who are stable, and I've seen plenty of people who spent 6 months at a string of different jobs be turned down because they're perceived as "too opportunistic".

It costs money to hire and develop an employee, and those who jump between jobs are perceived as not worth the investment of time or money to hire.

For my own part, I've done the studying for the PMP and just need to get to the point that I'm ready for the exam (I'm pretty good with project management, but I learned mostly "by doing", so I had to study up on the official terminology and such - and I'm not a very good exam taker, sadly - and I worked in technical certification and testing for a number of years).

Personally, I've ended up moving into technical writing, documentation, and training materials development. My background in programming, IT, and technology really serves me well for that - and along the way, I served as a technical instructor and a program manager. That makes for an interesting career path, too - you go from having done on-call 24x7x365 (or less if you've got more IT people and are part of a larger organization) to being able to work 9-5 if you want (as an independent writer, certainly) except when a deadline is looming.

I've found this to be a great way to get deep exposure to a number of different technologies as well - and the weeks that there isn't any work, I can rest up for the next job. I've had more vacation time the past two years than at anytime in my career - just no resources to travel yet since I'm getting started in this line of work. The only downside (which most consultants and contractors will be very familiar with) is the uncertainty of the next gig.

I guess the point here is that having business skills, writing skills, people skills, and great technical skills is a good combination as well - but if you want to continue down an IT path or working for companies, a degree is a huge foot in the door. I've been burned a number of times in job interviews because I lack a degree - and at least in the US, that should be a serious consideration for any candidate who is looking to get into the job market.

Jim

70% of IT professionals these days have some sort of degree.

Tech skills on their own won't get you far - back in the late 80's and early 90's when I got started in the field, it was sufficient. I dropped out of college to pursue an IT career and did very well for 15 years in the field before moving on to other stuff.

Then I got laid off, and the lack of degree has really hurt my ability to get a job in this economy. I currently do contract writing for software companies, and that pays well enough - when there's work to do.

My advice would be to pursue the degree while working full-time, either as an intern or other full-time position. The degree, sadly, will be more valuable than the experience.

In the IT field, things that help are the ability to solve business problems (IOW, don't focus strictly on technology) and to manage projects. PMP certification will get you farther than any technical certification (the tech certification market has been in decline for years). Companies don't want to hire someone with specific technical skills - they want people who can function independently and can manage IT projects. Being able to do that will really help you.

A CS degree in combination with project management skills, familiarity with Agile/SCRUMM development methodologies, and business skills will take you farther these days than tech skills alone.

Jim

And there's a huge difference between "detailing the crack down on [OWS]" and "detailing the crackdown on [OWS]".

Looks like the author of the summary didn't RTFA, since they actually got it right in TFA.

I spent some time late last year and earlier this year working very closely with the developers of BetterLinux, and in the work I did, I did stress testing (on a limited scale) to see how the product performed. It has some OSS components and some closed-source components, but the I/O leveling they do is pretty amazing.

http://www.betterlinux.com/

The PC version multiplayer may not work well, but the PS3 version sure does. I started playing a solo game, and my stepson (who has his own copy and PS3) came online and joined my single-player game with no trouble at all. I wasn't even aware that it would do that. What is lacking is some player-to-player communication options when the bluetooth headset isn't available (had some trouble with pairing mine and ended up horking the PS3's bluetooth up until the next restart).

Having played the first game all the way through, I like the UI changes so far.

Use something like blockhosts to deny connections to addresses that have repeated unsuccessful attempts.

Use public key/private key pairs for authentication and disable password authentication completely.

Use a non-standard port for the ssh service.

Who to report them to? Unless you're actually compromised and suffer harm, there really isn't anyone who is going to look into it; seriously, reporting every potential attacker results in nothing more than a very large scale game of whack-a-mole.

Pair someone with strong programming skills with someone with strong sales skills. Lots of tech companies supplement their sales staff with "sales engineers" who know the technology. It's not unusual, and many IT organizations are impressed to have someone with expertise sent along with the sales people.

Got this one myself last December, and I use the numeric keypad on it quite a bit - it's comfortable and easy to use.

I'm really happy with it.

Yup. That thought occurred to me after you "called me out". Not a lot of people are familiar with Poe's Law (though more are now).

So something good comes out of my error. :)

That you didn't find it funny is fine. I don't post a lot on /., so I don't expect everyone to understand when I'm being funny. But no, I'm not trying to "cover up" that it was stupid. It was intended to be stupid, but I neglected to put sufficient context in there. I didn't take my audience into consideration (I usually write things like this to people who know me well enough to know when I'm being satirical or silly about something).

I actually do have a bit of a background in astronomy, and I read Phil's blog regularly. Unlike others who comment on stories here, I actually /did/ read the story before I posted. But I could see the potential for stupidity in replies, so I was more or less doing a bad "Gumby" impression for the benefit of those who didn't RTFA and were replying (or thinking) in a similar manner.

I see your point about it "smelling" like Faux News tripe. My bad for not making it extrordinarily clear that it was intended to be satire (indeed, I well could have prefaced it with a comment saying "Here's how Fox News would respond to this:".

I'll grant that some additional context to make it clear would've pulled it off better.

Live and learn.