Fixed that for you.

Yes, you will find that vast majority of small companies looking to hire a "computer guy" to click on the GUI are not going to pay very much and they are going to get exactly what they pay for. If they do manage to hire someone with real skills, that person will be gone within a year or two because they can get a hiring paying job once they have some experience.

Not only have I spent over 10 years as a professional *nix system administrator, I currently work training professional system administrators. I don't know *anyone* who thinks that a system administrator should be a programmer. That being said, shell scripting is a tool of the skilled system administrator. Writing simple scripts is nothing like programming. While shell scripts can be quite complex, most that a system administrator would write are very simple. Really just a series of commands.

And how! The vast majority of developers I know are terrible system administrators. There is a reason we keep them as far from the production systems as possible. The problem is that they think they do know system administration, but they have a completely different mindset.

Again, I don't know anyone who thinks this. People should learn the tools they are being paid to work with. That includes shell scripting. Now, some shops like to write a lot of in house tools in perl or python and will look for people skilled in system administration as well as those languages. Most big shops have a small number of sys admins who can write such tools. Don't confuse the tools team with the rest of the sys admins. This is a specialized role.

I could not disagree more. While a GUI might help someone plod through without really understanding what they are doing, this is not a good thing. I agree that no one knows everything. However, a skilled sys admin can research and learn new things when needed. Most GUIs just get in the way of learning and deeply understanding. Then when something doesn't work as expected, you are SOL. Or you miss a subtle issue that bites you in the ass later.

I'd like to point out that I use GUI tools all the time. However, I make a point of learning the technology I am paid to understand. When I use a GUI it is because it is the best or most convenient way to get something done. I can also tell you all the places on the system that GUI changed and what to do if something went wrong.

I have worked in IT for long enough to know this isn't true. The simple reality is that most people working in IT suck. Seriously. I have interviewed and worked with more than enough of them. They use GUIs as crutches. They are over worked and have no time to learn anything even if they were so inclined. They have a very shallow understanding of the technology they are paid to understand. They choose "easy" tools instead of tools that require learning. It is the sad state of things that truly skilled system administrators are a rare find.

Should everything be CLI? Of course not. Should everything be GUI, of course not. However, to say that GUI tools are better because you don't have to be familiar with them is a very scary attitude if you ask me.

No, actually it can't be done with any phone. It doesn't work.

Elsewhere on the same site, the designer says:

I don't know why this is on Slashdot. The headline might as well read "Neat looking was to disable your iPhone's camera"

As to encryption, you just encrypt the file before you tar it. In fact, with gpg you get both encryption and integrity checking.

Gnupg is available in Mac Ports and comes with just about every linux distro.

True, but simply hashing the file at both ends solves that. Both linux and mac support shasum.

If you are only moving files from one system to another, and do not need to edit them on the portable drives, skip the filesystem and just use tar. Tar will happily write to and read from raw block devices... In fact, that is exactly what it was designed to do. A side benefit of this approach is that you won't lose any drive capacity to filesystem overhead.

So I see you're the "if it ain't broke fix it anyway" type.

Actually, Jesus was a tree killer, not a tree huger.

Matthew 21:18: Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, "May you never bear fruit again!" Immediately the tree withered.

Just sayin

This is a common misconception. When you eliminate 1 wrong answer, the probability of the remaining unchosen answer being correct is 2/3, not 1/2.

Wikipedia offers a simple explanation: "...switching loses if and only if the player initially picks the car, which happens with probability 1/3, so switching must win with probability 2/3."

I have been running Android 1.6 on an old eeepc 701 for quite a while now, thanks to the good folks over at android-x86.org. Android is quite well suited to a low power, small screen machine like the 701.

Also, consider this: When running the android bowser, more and more sites default to a mobile version. I've found that the mobile versions of many sites are preferable to the full versions. I suspect this is at least partly to do with the mobile interface being streamlined.

Forget irony, clearly you are not very familiar with organized crime.

Yes, it is a tough job market out there. However, there are lots of companies hiring. Those companies are currently in a position to be very picky about openings. Regardless, top talent is having no trouble getting work.

The reality of the situation is that those who are currently employed have a much better shot at landing a new gig than those who have been out of work for months.

Some companies have even started noting in their ads that they are not interested in candidates that have been out of work for more than 3 months, etc. So while it is a rough job market right now, the OP stands a good chance of landing a new gig if he's worth his salt.

This is where you tell them, "gee, that LAMP sounds like fun... As a writer, while I seem to be ok at some of this ad hoc project management, I really don't know the first thing about setting up a linux whatever server. Do you think I could get some training?"

If they are simply demanding that you figure it out and get it done. Just do your best while updating your resume and finding a new job. A company that plays this game will never give you a raise. In their eyes, the mere fact that you could take on more work, while getting your original work done, means you were being overpaid to begin with.

It frightens me to think that there are people getting paid to take care of enterprise systems that would not already know everything in this article. Mostly, it reads like a thinly veiled ad for VMWare products.