Of course, you do actually need to have the chops, but the truth of the matter is that of the people who read this, only about .01% of you have the gumption to actually take this sort of risk, and if you're willing to take it, you probably are either that good, or stubborn enough to become that good.

A rule of my life has been "I never want to look back and wonder 'What would have happened if I'd taken that chance'".

So far there's been only one time I let an opportunity pass me by, and that was because it was a choice between my professional life and my personal life. Personal won, and I don't regret that.

Min

Move to somewhere with very few people, like the Yukon Territory. That's how I started my IT career when it became obvious that in the big city it didn't matter how good I was, I was looking at doing my time in helpdesk. If you're serious about IT as a career, and can't stand doing your time on the line, that's one alternative. By the end of my 5 years up there I had run a regional ISP, and been the head network person for the Dept of Eduction. Also nothing makes you look good like being able to tell the cliche bear stories. My favorite though is the time the internet went out because a hunter with bad aim missed a moose and hit the waveguide on one of the microwave towers I was using!

Now here's the bad news:
I've been doing IT for almost 20 years, I manage the architecture team for a mid sized business with offices in 3 cities and 2 countries, I hold a CISSP and am responsible for the security of the company, and the owners/CEO/Execs STILL asks me to fix their computer. On the plus side I'd say my average between interruptions is down to about 20 mins. The interruptions tend to also be bigger problems. Some days I wish rebooting the PC would solve the tickets that get assigned to me, but my desktop support guy is good at that :)

Min

You meddling kids ruined everything!

Min

Wish I had mod points. I just hope for their sake the grandparent post isn't seen by my wife today....

Min

That's how I remember it. SLS was my first distro. Linux kernel .96a IIRC. Rebuilt that damned box so many times...

Min

So does this mean M$ will be extending the fully supported period for XP again, as it will be shipping with W7?

Min

I believe it was on a 286 and I was running a distro that doesn't exist anymore - Softlanding Software (SLS).

Those were the days... I remember trying to set up a dumb terminal off the serial port. I kept getting "inittab respawning too fast"... so I figured I'd delete inittab and recopy it.... don't try that at home kiddies!

Min

I set up a UUCP Fidonet gateway. Which is probably not the most normal thing.... this was back in 92 though, when installing X meant a bunch of extra 1.44MB floppies!

Min

Balderdash.

If bandwidth hogs were the issue they'd be going after companies who share a DSL with 100 staff. Ours is pegged all day every day. Check Bell's rate plans, business bandwidth is unlimited. How are the third parties going to compete with that? If Bell can sell unlimited bandwidth to business clients, shouldn't their wholesalers?

The issue is they want to put their competition out of business. Simple. They like being a monopoly (who wouldn't?) and want to make it as unprofitable as possible to compete with them, or at best, require all the wholesalers to lower their customer service to Bell's (crappy) standards.

Min

I once went to serve a search warrant with the local RCMP (they needed a consultant who could tell them if they found what they were looking for - 3DES SNK'd password files not exactly being in their training) and they called me to tell me where to meet them prior to the raid -- at the Tim Horton's.

I sat there planning a raid in the local Tim Horton's with them. It seemed surreal.

Min

Wonder if I can still get my april fool's achievement?

Min

No, no one trusts their peers anymore

I disagree. This may be true with the providers you work with, but when you get outside of NorthAm, into Central or South America for instance, it's not true anymore.

I had a client who was peering with a tier-1 international provider in one of those countries, the router admin fat fingered something and for a period of time, all the tier-1's traffic was routing through them. Oops. Also, hands up anyone who believes that no one in a tier-1 has a bot infested PC? You with the hands up, go back through Slashdot till you find the military contractor who p2p'd the plans for Marine 1, and answer again.

The biggest reason why the internet stays up is the people running the dark side have a vested interest in it staying up. If you have access to a tier-1, your power is in keeping that tier-1 routing traffic.

Min

Assuming a vulnerability is exploited in BGP, the internet would go bibi in a hurry. That's all our eggs in one basket, and it's a fairly rickety basket. There's still a lot of trust inherent in the BGP fabric and trust is a 4 letter word to anyone who deals with infrastructure security.

Min

Gotta say I love Google's April first jokes. Top notch!