I am sorry ... there is no Santa Claus ...
and there is no Microsoft OS product worth talking about until they rewrite their kernels
from scratch (from the large switch statement with a lot of gotos that is being added to with
each tick of the build meter, and as any good sun sized object will reach a point [Vista]
where it collapses onto itself if not fixed... oh gravity) with some modularity in its core.

The reason you are excited is because the Microsfot site for Windows 7 is flashing subliminal
images of Windows users being taken advantage of in Mojave desert to a cheesy tune.

I guess, I am not a fan of being called stupid and paying for it too.

Sadly, most scrip-kiddies would not be able to read the last sentence and paraphrase it. (btw: that's 1337)

Many a contributor asks here:
what's the motivation and why the specific target?

If we follow the money we get:
1) Non-open-source software shops
2) EOM software shops
3) Propriatory software shops

Oh, did I mention that posting spolits hurts those who are not open source, but helps
the open source community to debug and fix software in a fraction of the time this gets
(if every) done in closed shops?
It also allows sysadmins to take action in a meaningful
way. Yeah, the security dudes get a cut from this too if you let them.

As in other incidents where the terrorist and rebel has way less to gain than many other
interest groups ... something smells fishy here ... if we just could prove this ...

I use cobbler and cfengine to deploy and maintain a couple of clusters including Xen virtual machines and a
few labs with workstations.
Cobbler does a pretty good job at deployment ... cfengine a pretty good job at management ...


Automatic configuration ... uh ... I guess cobbler takes the edge off of configuring dhcp/pxe/dns/yum servers
for deployment and updates. Kickstart scripts can be obtained by building one machine, grabbing the anaconda
script from the root directory and fudging it to taste.
That's almost automatic ;-) (not really)
On the downside, with cobbler, you get the overenthusiastic release sequences typical of Fedora related
projects (if it compiles and runs, it is production ready; major features introduced within a minor release and
all that good stuff), so updating is a bit of a adrenalin rush time.
But, such is price of freedom (and free beer).

Configuring machines using cfengine is a dog (and I learned to love the pup), but it is the best dog we have.
That is all but automatic. I also have puppet deployed to compare ... well, It has its upsides, but it is not
better than cfengine. Frankly, I do not benefit much from the main concepts and features behind cfengine
and would probably be as well off with puppet, or even func and such.
Having a company backing cfengine
makes me feel a little better now. (I was a little nervous about Mark crossing the streets every day ... buses
stop for no one).

I don't think that in the current state of affairs automatic configuration is not even desirable as all of the
components involved very rapidly reach configuration complexity that needs auditing.

I have my working setup, but the next step in improving and upgrading it is a bit of a mystery to me
given the options out there.


Anyway ... that's my rant.

Since the degree is in computer science ... you should feel blessed you get to program at all ;-) As a scientist, you do need to understand the concepts and many a computer scientists ends up doing more math (algorithms and such), devising new ways for machines and humans to interact and many other beautiful things .... not coding. Programming by itself is not a science (although many aspects of it can be subjects of scientific research). Although 'trade schools' may not be the best way to go, some colleges nowadays offer various programming oriented degrees (such as web developer). A good program of this sort will teach you how to program as well as the concepts that go along with it. On the other end of the spectrum: problem solving, computing related concepts etc. in combination with solid basic programming skills will have you program enough in any language to be dangerous without putting all your eggs in the same basket (... 'I program well in Visual Basic' does not go over well during interviews ... 'I have strong programming skills' feeds the kids). Languages come and go (as they should ... call it progress). Good programming skills stay.