So twenty percent (and not even that) indicates the FBI's competence at cyber crime? Right. TFA should come up with a more realistic conclusion.

The simple answer is it is just too costly in some environments to do so, and I'm not talking about SSL Certs, which are arguably pretty cheap.

With using HTTPS for everything, you need that much more processing power to encrypt and decrypt all traffic. That needed processing power has to come from somewhere, and that is going to be more hardware, which in turn says a lot more money is needed for security.

Sure, you can minimize the cost a bit by using SSL gateways, but those can get quite expensive as well, especially in larger web environments like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Don't get me wrong here -- I would love to see every site using HTTPS (and some of the major ones do offer the option like Facebook), but the cost of implementing a solution like this can be prohibitively expensive.

Most of my users are developers. We use VMWare for a majority of our systems, including development environments. Most of my users have one or two laptops, however, they develop inside VMs with all their development tools installed. The question of thin or thick clients isn't really an issue for us, because it doesn't matter. As long as our developers can access their VMs via RDP or SSH, then they're good. Our support personnel are the same way. They can generate a client's entire environment through some of VMWare's solutions, and control it all from their laptop, desktop, or hell their phone if they really wanted to.

I guess my point is, is that for a development environment, what you use to access your virtualized development environment, the medium to access it (laptop, desktop, ipad, etc.) doesn't matter, just as long as you can access the VM and do your work on it.

... I could've sworn people STILL say that about Linux.

Look, I'm not a die hard Windows fanboy by any means, but I just can't help but balk at the notion that Linux is perfect. What drivers do exist, are usually developed by third parties and are shoddy at best. Then there are companies who flat out refuse to write drivers for Linux, and this is just one example.

My point is, is that while there is an "ecosystem" of patching and driver incompatibilities with XP, Vista, or Win 7, it is no different in that regard to Linux, and anyone who disagrees with that and states, "Linux just works" is one naive little child.

You don't have to have a degree for IT. As is viewed by others here, IT is more of a trade than a science or something that a university can teach you. The catch 22 with a lot of employers these days is that they "require" a degree, but also "require" experience. You can't get experience from going to university, and you can't get a degree on just experience. In my case, I went to university for a couple of years, then got hired by a large corporation for an entry level job. I was there for two weeks, before it was found out that I can do a lot more, and before I knew it I wrote software for a year or so. After that, I became a full time sys admin for another year and actually just got promoted a bit so that I run the entire IT infrastructure in one of our development labs, and will be having about four people working for me soon. Also, before I got hired, I had no certifications at all. Right now, I just have one(I plan on getting a few more in January) and it is useless when it comes to sysadmin positions. Another adage that is familiar to anyone in IT is, "It's not what you know, but who you know." Nowhere else in any profession is that more prevalent in IT. I've seen complete idiots be promoted to management just because they knew someone. So one thing that may help you here is poking around friends, family, etc. and see if their employers are looking to hire any additional IT staff and go from there. Anyway, the bottom line is no, you do not need a degree for IT. If you do not have any certifications(like I did when I got in), then I suggest you get your hands on a few servers (build them from the ground up if you can) and play around. Hey that reminds me, if anyone is in the MN/Twin Cities area and needs a sys admin job in January/February... =D

I got about halfway through the article before giving up on it. It's too poorly written.