[ale] cabling and GA

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 03/30/2010 11:08 PM, David Ritchie wrote:
> I think the short answer w.r.t. PI licensing and data collection for
> forensics - if you don't have one, don't
> be surprised if any lawsuit involving drive contents turn into
> expensive discussions of topics including
> 'chain of custody' and 'hearsay evidence' when you try to submit the
> drives as evidence in court - at least
> if any of the lawyers involved at at least semi-competent... just my
> 0.02 worth....

Yes, though, that's the thing that I find absolutely impressive. 
Evidence that is carefully worked with by a person who documents all 
that they have done (I'd likely go so far as to include a description of 
the operational environment used and every command that was run, along 
with an explanation of why I did things the way that/in the order that I 
did them) and can be seen by any (competent!) professional to really 
know what they are doing should be permitted to produce the evidence 
without hassle.

Having meaningless credentials merely in existence creates several 
problems, though there are two that I come into contact with on a 
regular basis.  The first one is that if you don't have the meaningless 
credential and some lemming has been told, "people who don't have 
credential X don't know what they are talking about," then you can 
prove, with logic and reason, that you know *precisely* what you are 
talking about, but the person listening doesn't give a rat's ass, 
because they were told (probably by someone carrying the credential) 
that everyone who has not got the credential doesn't know squat.

The other problem, which I honestly run into *far* more frequently, is 
that some credentialed asshat who actually knows nothing (or, I should 
say, as close to nothing as is observable in their highly-paid work 
environments) is getting a hell of a lot of money to sit there and look 
fugly, while I clean up their stupid messes.  Or teaches people, or 
whatever.

Note before reading any further that I am not saying that every person 
who is certified in something is an idiot, or is ignorant.  But nearly 
everyone I have encountered who _prominently_ asserts their 
certifications seems to fall into that category.  "Can you fix this?" 
"I'm MCSE certified! *stupidshiteatinggrin*"  Uh, sure.  That had 
nothing to do with my question, just fscking fix it.

I know a person who carries MCSE, MCDST, and MCSA certifications, and 
doesn't seem to even know how to keep their network running.  They get 
very confused when things don't work as a result of being configured 
incorrectly.  When they have a problem that they can't solve with a 35 
second query to Bing, they call me, and I come in, and I look at the 
system logs for their blasted Windows server and start logging network 
traffic to find the problem and track it down, or whatever.  I know 
other people who have only one of those (most often, it seems, MCSE, but 
there are some who have MCSA) and know just as much nothing as the 
person that I know who has all three.  Offensive!

Now, I don't mind doing the work.

But I certainly mind seeing people make $30k--$70k annually when they 
_clearly_ don't deserve it.  I don't even know what a lot of these 
people's job descriptions _are_.  It seems to me that often, it is 
"spend lots of money on Windows server licensing and Office licensing 
and keep things breaking at a regular enough interval to be sure 
paychecks still come in."  I don't understand it.  And even worse, 
I---who uses Windows not at all---shouldn't be able to come in and 
out-sysadmin the certified sysadmin on a platform I don't even know all 
that intimately (but am, it seems, picking up and learning since I'm 
being exposed to it with more and more frequency).

Grr.

You can bet your rear that when _I_ start looking to hire people, I'm 
going to be doing so on merit.  And those who advertise their 
credentials loudly will be sent to the bottom of the pile or thrown away 
entirely if they can't even answer a few simple questions that their 
likely over-credentialed selves should know the answer to off the top of 
their head.  Computer systems, operating systems, networking, and 
software aren't rocket science, but it seems that a lot of people think 
it is.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                    ☎ (404) 492-6475