What are you reading?

[progdirjim(Admin)]

Originally Posted by VAXman

What a waste of human endeavor! If there is an after-life, you should be tormented eternal for wasting the precious few hours we are granted here in this life!

I looked up A+ certification and Wiki says:

The A+ certification demonstrates competency as a computer technician. CompTIA A+ certification is a vendor neutral certification.


Vendor neutral my ass! I found the practice exam questions on-line and the questions are anything BUT vendor neutral!!! They're quite vendor specific! ...wanna take a stab at what specific vendor?

I took the OS portion of the exam and there wasn't a single question about an OS; only Weendoze.

I perused several of the network and security exam questions as well. Way too M$ specific to be of any real use. The hardware exam was also brain-damaged IBM PeeCee BIOS specific.

For as smart as you are, I'm surprised how badly you totally missed the point here. Let's say for the sake of argument, that MS is as bad, or even worse, then you say. If a person wanted to make a living FIXING computer problems, which would you rather train in?: Microsoft, which is approximately 80% of the fielded computers in the world; inherently inferior and bug ridden; used by morons (I'm paraphrasing you). Or, Mac/Unix/VMS which is (optimistically) used on 20% of the computers in the world, is so fucking superior that it virtually never fails, and when it does, the users are smart enough to fix the problem themselves?

I think Dale has made an EXCELLENT business decision, based on the world's computer situation as YOU describe it...

Vendor neutral in this case means it don't matter if it's Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP, etc making the PC...

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by progdirjim

For as smart as you are, I'm surprised how badly you totally missed the point here. Let's say for the sake of argument, that MS is as bad, or even worse, then you say. If a person wanted to make a living FIXING computer problems, which would you rather train in?: Microsoft, which is approximately 80% of the fielded computers in the world; inherently inferior and bug ridden; used by morons (I'm paraphrasing you). Or, Mac/Unix/VMS which is (optimistically) used on 20% of the computers in the world, is so fucking superior that it virtually never fails, and when it does, the users are smart enough to fix the problem themselves?

I missed nothing. It's just another, completely self-serving, way to exploit money from the hapless M$ sheep.

Actual experience in the field, IMHO, if far more valuable than being able to regurgitate certification answers. I was able to run through most of the sample test questions getting a greater than 95% correct and I've almost never used Weendoze.

Originally Posted by progdirjim

I think Dale has made an EXCELLENT business decision, based on the world's computer situation as YOU describe it...

... for the short haul. M$ failed to hit Wall Street expectations; whereas, their closest commercial competitor on the desktop (Apple) bested expectations. The latter's market share has also increased significantly.

There's also a BIG push toward Linux, open source and STANDARDS! Being M$ centric is not a move forward.

FWIW, my daughter's boyfriend has all the M$ certs and has been M$ centric since he left college. 5 years in the field and he's really going nowhere unless he's willing to permeate the NYC rat-race for a job. Being M$ centric is, IMO, like being a COBOL programmer just a decade or so ago -- dime a dozen.

Originally Posted by progdirjim

Vendor neutral in this case means it don't matter if it's Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP, etc making the PC...

Well then, they should stop being so BIOS (Brain-damaged IBM Obsolete Services) hardware based (and ACPI too but that's a rant for another day) and start instructing on EFI.

The "security" test was completely self-serving too. Not a single security concept from NIST CSRC.