Dennis Ritchie isn't a well-known figure outside of the programming community, but he was kind of a big deal. Considered one of the founders of Unix, he was responsible for developing the C language back in the '70s and from that came the many derivatives that exist to this day. He was 70. His life is worth Googling.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/13/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
There was quite a bit of news coing from the Microsoft SharePoint Live Conference, mainly on the next major update to SharePoint and specifically in regards to SharePoint Online. So, the Microsoft Learning group saw the conference as a perfect venue to announce a new SharePoint-specific program that's being added to the Microsoft Certified Architect title, MCA SharePoint, sometime early next year (you can read about the track here). A TechNet blog also mentions the names of two of the first MCAs to earn the new title in its beta form. Any version of the MCA is rigorous and isn't very easy to obtain, so congrats to them!
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Not sure if eight fixes is a trick or a treat, but that's what IT pros should expect with next week's Patch Tuesday security update.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
When Steve Jobs
announced his retirement a few weeks ago, many an industry pundit treated the occasion with tributes as though the man had already passed on. Business news on television droned on for days on the impact of his retirement to the financial community. The story was a big deal. So, yesterday's sad news of his quiet passing shouldn't have come as a surprise, even though it did for me as well as many of my colleagues here at 1105 Media.
Jobs' passing was marked on the Apple.com site with a simple photo and date, and his death has dominated news media and social media for the last 24 hours. Our own, very simple and factual statement which includes links to statements made by industry giants is here, but ones I also recommend you check out are here, here, here and here. (If you have any links you'd like to share, please add them to this post; I do ask that you refrain from adding your condolences to his family or friends here, because, frankly, they won't be read by them on our site.) I also recommend you see the TV melodrama, Pirates of Silicon Valley, if you get a chance.
We at MCPmag.com and the rest of the 1105 Media family extend our heartfelt condolences to Jobs' family, friends and colleagues.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 10/06/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Microsoft Learning a few weeks ago introduced a new Jump Start online course for those interested in learning about virtualization, taking place Oct. 6 -- yes, next week! It's a very inexpensive $99, and the kicker is that those who are able to register for it will also get a voucher to take a Microsoft exam for free. The target exam for the course is 70-659 TS: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization. More details here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/29/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
In just the last few weeks we were excitedly talking about the Windows 8 tablet prototypes that were given away at Build, which aren't even slated to be available before mid-2012 (if that). To put a damper on our excitement is Amazon, which will have its tablets out before the 2011 holiday shopping season. Its devices sport the Android OS, and they're considerably less expensive than competing tablets from Apple or Samsung. But from what I've seen on the specs, Amazon's tablets aren't really meant for serious enterprise business like an iPad or Galaxy. Instead, they're aimed at consumers consuming mainly cloud-based content, such as music, movies, books and Angry Birds. At $79 for the basic model, I may buy two or three as holiday gifts for friends.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/29/2011 at 11:59 AM2 comments
The Windows 8 tablet won't be here for quite some time. If you plan on buying one, you can get familiar with its Metro interface simply by checking out the latest Windows Phones. Some of the newer ones will be sporting the Mango code update. RCPmag.com Editor Scott Bekker offers his purely subjective comparison of his personal iPhone 4 against the Windows Phone 7 evaluation unit here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/29/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Forbes (by way of The Christian Science Monitor) last month released this nifty list on some the happiest jobs out there right now, where people are thriving, not just toiling. I was looking for the usual suspects: CIO, DBA, game programmer. But none of them were on the list. Instead, clergy topped all, with teachers, artists and firefighters some of the others.
At the bottom of the article was a link to the 10 most hated jobs. Oddly enough, four of the jobs were IT-related: IT director topped all, senior Web developer and tech specialist were 4 and 5, and tech support analyst was 8. It was then that I was thinking, "I'm being punked by this writer." Except, I couldn't find any evidence of such punking in the article. Tell me if read this wrong.
For some balance, here's a list from earlier this year, compliments of WSJ, showing software engineer topping all jobs in the best category, with computer systems analyst at the fifth spot. Happy or best, worst or burned out, working is probably better than not working. In any event, if you're interested in a more accurate job satisfaction survey for IT people, check out the salary surveys on our sites, starting with this one.
Do you find your work in IT to be satisfying? How happy are you to be working in IT? Gloats or gripes are welcome here.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/22/2011 at 11:59 AM6 comments
Microsoft Learning's Born2Learn bloggers blogged that all e-books on the MS Press site have been discounted to half price of retail. I clicked on some of the MS Press books that were still listed at retail price, but I suspect that putting in the discount code that you can find at the site will give you the discount. The sale ends Sept. 28.
Many of the titles are MCP-related, which means it's time to get your learn on.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/22/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
With all the Windows 8 news coverage we posted from last week's Build Conference, lost in the shuffle is the live demo, of a Windows 8 tablet built by Samsung, at the offices of 1105 in Irvine (you can view it at this news item). The tablet is pretty slick, the demo by editor Chris Paoli, even slicker.
Too bad it was a journalist demo model loaned to Kurt Mackie only for the duration of the conference -- he returned it last Thursday before any shoot-on-sight orders were put into effect by Microsoft marketing.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/22/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Microsoft's
September patches has fixes on the scale of "important," but nothing deemed "critical." That's good news for some, after a crazy August that swept in with 13 fixes (although only two of those were rated "critical"). Still, it pays to at least look into the fixes this time out--among the important ones is an RCE exploit that employs a simple load jacking trick. Be careful out there. ...
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/15/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments
Virtualization Review's editor, Bruce Hoard, blogs about a performance comparison between vSphere and Hyper-V done by Principled Technologies. The researchers pushed SQL Server data through a bench test of 24 VMs, then 30 VMs on both hypervisors at full resource utilization. Hyper-V got pinned in the arm-wrestling contest by vSphere.
The test does come with some bias, though--Principled Technologies was commissioned by VMware.
Posted by Michael Domingo on 09/15/2011 at 11:59 AM0 comments