I've worked in offices were the comradery is great and everyone does spend an hour or two a day chatting, then I've worked in offices were you're sitting in a cube for 8-10 hours a day and you may go days without seeing the person sitting one cube away. I'd MUCH rather have the first scenario because for me I need that interaction, and honestly I think people will have a more productive 6-7 hours when 1-2 hours a day is spent getting to know your coworkers than coding for 8-9 hours. Our current office does a morning meeting each morning where we go over work related stuff and visit for about 30 minutes or so, but after that I rarely see anyone else in the office unless we leave for lunch or end of day at the same time.

My thought is that you make your coworkers as good friends as you can because you'll often see them more than your own family, which means having a management staff that hires as much on personality than skills. Unfortunately it only takes one turd in the punch bowl to ruin the whole group.

So my suggestion is don't be a stick in the mud or prude... You'll never agree with your coworkers 100% of the time, but working in technology you instantly have a few things in common -- hopefully.

The glory really depends on the area of business you work in and the team. If you're lucky enough to work for a true IT company with a great management staff I think the glory and fun are indeed still there. But for those working in backroom IT shops at financial institutions, hospitals, and smaller companies the days run log sitting boxed in a cubical and listening to the click/clack of keys from across the room along with the occasional whisper with people talking as if they're in a library. These are the jobs where there is no glory and often not much fun or excitement. But unfortunately I'd say 90% of the IT jobs fall into this realm from what I've seen.

This post caught my eye because I'm taking Biology online which is my first online class to take ever, and I just moved from a 6 year old iBook as my primary system to a System76 Pangolin Performance laptop running Ubuntu 9.04 which I bought last month. I figured I'd run into some problems with the online classes, but after some tweaks within Firefox everything seems to work great.

What I've found is even though the college or university 'proper' might support Linux as far as VPN access and such goes, the question is do the third party applications required for each course also support Linux? For example the Virtual Biology Labs I have to do with my online Biology class are written using Shockwave, and Adobe Shockwave isn't natively supported by Linux. I had to jump through some hoops to get Shockwave working with Firefox - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Shockwave - which got me going. Also Blackboard, which is my college's Student Information System, had a bug where it didn't support Firefox 3.5, but that's since been ironed out.

Unfortunately Linux is still in the realm where those outside of tech still know nothing about it, so unless a question like this is posed to the IT department most have either never heard of it or have no clue what it is if they have. And even some IT departments will simply say it's not supported or say to dualboot, which is what I've seen some do.

For me it's not about 'do you support Linux', but rather get a list of the applications they do use and find suitable clients for Linux. For example if they offer Cisco VPN access to the network, even if they don't support Linux the client is out there plus a few FOSS compatible clients as well. Likewise with the Student Information System whether it be BlackBoard, Angel, Moodle, or whatever. See how those work in Linux and go from there.

Even if Linux isn't officially supported, which I'd bet only the largest colleges have an IT department geekly staffed enough to say they'll support 100% of the Linux systems students come in with, I'd bet 99% of the applications they use are supported in one way or another. But not unlike most other things in Linux, if your household has been running Linux for years then you're probably used to that.

Take care --

I guess they've never heard of Magnatune or Jamendo or any of the other sites that allow legal downloading of music under creative comments or free arts license? Music like any digital media can be copied illegally, but just because you run Windows on your system doesn't mean it's Illegal simply because so many people pirate it. As with music, just because you're downloading an MP3 doesn't mean it's Illegal. Gosh, whoever wrote that presentation needs to really stick their head out from time to time and see the world's not out to get them... nor is it ran by the RIAA or MPAA, though anymore it seems they do have lots of control.

I do like Ubuntu 9.04, but I've only used it through VirtualBox since my work desktop is Windows and laptop is OSX. My server at home is however running Ubuntu 8.10 server which I love!

As for advocating Ubuntu, I'm there with you because I push Ubuntu every chance I get yet I don't run it as my primary desktop. I'm saving-up for a System76 Laptop now, which hopefully I'll be able to get by end of the year, but who knows. For now I'm trying to get back into the GUI side of Linux through VirtualBox which has been awesome.

Hi Larryish,

Actually I used this old 486 as a dial-up server running one of the older versions of Red Hat, and it worked like a champ for my parents to get online before broadband was in their area. I even had Caller ID configured so it'd only answer when they called, all from a 486DX 50Mhz system :)

I'd love to see distros of Linux catered around the older processors, even going back to the 8088, because Linux is robust and can breath life back into these older systems. But anymore even Ubuntu wants a very robust system to run.

Sam

Hi!

What an awesome find! You can actually download all the software you'd ever want for the system here - http://www.vetusware.com/ - which is a website with hundreds of abandoned software titles for download free. They do have various versions of MS-DOS, which I'd suggest MS-DOS 5.0 or higher because I still have nightmares of edlin *cringe*. They do have MS-DOS 6.22 for download along with GWBasic, QBasic, Borland C++ for DOS, etc for development. I assume since you said the system is from 1984 that's it's an 8086 or 8088 which rules out Windows 3.x.

After years of using TRS-80 systems I moved to an 8088 XT clone in 1990 running MS-DOS 3.3, and as you that's where I really started learning to code with GWBasic. About 6 years ago I had some stuff in my closet shift one evening and that old system fell from the top shelf to the floor never to boot again. I wish I still had it, but a few years ago I did pull out an old 486SX system I picked up used in college (around 1996) and played with some of these old DOS languages and games.

Have fun though... so many people cast away these old systems as boat anchors, but they're awesome to work with if you have some patience.

I didn't read through all the posts, so someone may have suggested these. I have three suggestions: School, Certifications, and Submersion.

First off try to get a degree of some sort, even if it's just a AAS Degree in Computer Science at a local community college. If you have any credits it may not take as long as you'd think.

If school isn't an option or you don't want to spend the time, pick a path and submerge yourself in it. If you want to go the DotNet path then pick-up VS2008 Developer Edition, Sql Server 2008 Developer Edition, and as many books as you can. Yes it will cost some money, but you're talking about a life changing career move so you'll need to invest some cash and time.

Also a huge piece most folks miss when telling someone how to get started are the conceptual aspects of coding. I'd say any good program has more time put into planning the concept then typing code itself. Spend as much time learning the theories behind coding, which generally are language independent. I'd suggest getting Beautiful Code and also reviewing the books at OReilly on this topic - http://oreilly.com/store/series/theory.html .

Then once you pick a language and start getting familiar with it, start coding! Put together anything, whether it's a program to calculate your budget, your bowling team's scores, anything. Find some practical use for hte code and start hacking. Then when start looking at certifications. Microsoft has several for developers: MCTS, MCPD, MCAD, etc.

So how does this apply to breaking into the IT workforce??? Personally my experience is a degree is best, but many employers will look at certifications second. Either shows you're able to follow through with something. Secondly even if you have no professional experience, I've seen folks carry a portfolio of work to show. If the hiring is done by a CIO or HR department, they probably will look more at certs and degrees, but if the technical side of the department is involved have something to show, even if it's a small sample of printed out code. To a developer they can read this and see how good you are.

With all this said, don't expect to find an awesome job right out of the gate. Try to get a gopher job, which is generally fixing bugs, doing reports, etc... and from here you'll get the work experience you need to really move up in the industry. ALso make contacts!!! Find folks in your area who are coders, whether in a user group, local computer shop, or whatever. Most jobs I've seen folks get around our area are through contacts. The verbiage "It's who you know not what you know" does hold true.

Have fun... , but my suggestion is to go to school part time at your local community college and try to pick-up an AAS Degree in Computer Science. Depending on the credits you have now it may only be a matter of a few classes, or if you're starting from scratch some technical colleges will give you a certification. But for better or for worse many employers look for a degree of some sort.

Secondly I'd suggest picking a path and submerging yourself in it. For example if DotNet is your route, get

"Between him and JJ Abrams, the era of Rick Berman looks to finally be at an end. Cross your fingers. " What??? Berman was instrumental in making Trek what it was after Roddenberry passed away. He along with Michael Piller were the driving force of Trek through the 80's and 90's, and though I have no doubt Abrams can work some magic with Trek I don't see where this comment by the OP came from.

Most folks now'days have never heard of a BBS (Bulletin Board System), but before the WWW took off this was what I guess would be called social networking of that era. I'd bet more folks frequented BBSes then the Internet back then, and though I first touch the Internet in 1994 back then it was mainly IRC, FTP, Gopher, and jumping into the occasional website since there weren't many back then. I even still have my copy of the Internet Yellow Pages, first edition, which I picked-up at Waldon Books in 1994 or 1995. I'd venture to say only 5% or less of the entries were even websites... most were listservers accessible via email, gopher, archie, FTP, or telnet sites.

BBSing is still very much alive, but instead of the thousands of boards that once existed, it's down to a hundred or so globally.

At any rate, the Internet of 1996 was quite different from today, but I can't say I like it any better. I personally liked it when the Internet was a smaller group of folks and you were still considered 'nerdy' for using a computer and no one knew what 'online' meant. It might sound like an elitist group, but that's pretty much what it was. You had a certain level of power that you could go 'online' and 'talk' with folks all over the world when no one else around you could. That was cool back then, but now'days it's just as common as talking to someone across a restaurant.

I've used and advocated Google for many years, but I'm getting really close to dropping them all together. They are one single company that has probably more personal data on every Internet user then anyone, and with that trust comes responsibility... but they've been very non-responsive to most Internet users as of late.

I'll probably never be able to drop them completely since they do have the best search engine, but as a portal site for pretty much everything, email, newsgroups, etc... I think they're becoming way too big for their own good.