IT Field Responds to Business Needs.

Current Areas of Growth

A May 2002 report from the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) confirms the stability of the IT field. ITAA President Harris N. Miller notes that, despite the industry slump in 2001, "the digital economy is here to stay." In the United States, the largest category of IT workers comprises software programmers and engineers. More than 2 million programmers and engineers constitute almost 21 percent of the total IT workforce.¹

Networking

In its May 2002 Hot Jobs Report, Robert Half Technology (RHT) reported that networking is experiencing the strongest growth in corporate IT departments in the United States. The development of wireless networks needed to support a growing mobile workforce and the implementation of new security measures to safeguard corporate data are two major contributors to this trend.

Workers with "skills in wireless LAN and firewall administration are highly marketable in the current environment," according to the RHT report.² Companies are looking for workers who have experience in security hardware and software and intrusion detection. Network administrators, security analysts, and network engineers are in the highest demand.

Support

User support jobs also are growing, according to the RHT report, with 15 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) rating this as their leading area of growth. While doing business over the Internet is not a new trend, organizations are relying increasingly on their Web sites to conduct business. The result is a greater need for internal and external user support. Workers in demand in this area include support analysts, technical administrators, and computer technicians.

However, the ITAA report found that, while companies are hiring user support workers, those same user support workers were the most likely IT professionals to be let go during 2001.

Internet and Intranet Development

Another high-growth IT employment area is Internet and intranet development. The continuing reliance on the Internet as a way to conduct business and the recent push to transition to Web-based services are feeding the growth. In the RHT report, 13 percent of CIOs rank this area as the biggest IT growth area for their firm. IT professionals with Extensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript skills are in particularly high demand. Web designers, Web programmers, and Web developers were listed as the workers most sought after in this area.

Security Job Growth Uncertain

In a recent Computerworld article, David Foote took an optimistic view of the security trend: "Beginning in late 2003, employers will be much more aggressively recruiting security professionals with the right combination of skills, knowledge, experience, and character….⁵ While technical security skills and network expertise will always be in demand, a red-hot market will explode for managers with a broad view of security and the ability to think strategically, adroitly navigate corporate politics, and create systems for entire organizations. And soon colleges will confer information-security degrees that blend information security, communications, and psychology."

Neverwinter Nights.

In Neverwinter Nights, you'll take a tour through the entire Forgotten Realms, as you adventure across an entire continent to become a skilled and mighty warrior! This game combines the hack-and-slash of Dungeon Siege and the complex character management of Baldur's Gate 2 into a very enjoyable game. The gameplay focuses on a single character; while there is no party system you can hire a henchman (a la Diablo 2) that can be useful.

The story line is detailed and interesting. Many, many NPCs to interact with. No "ultra-impossible" enemies: while the game allows you to examine an enemy and determine their challenge rating, I found that even ones labeled as "Impossible" by the game were not particularly difficult for my fighter to dispatch.

PBX Phone Systems.

A PBX or Private Branch Exchange phone system is one of the leading types of phone systems used in business. PBX phone systems are large installations, able to handle many extensions. PBX systems are programmable and highly customizable, able to meet the needs of different businesses. A business with more than forty employees, or that is quickly expanding, generally needs a PBX phone system instead of one of the smaller installations such as a Key or KSU-less system. Modern PBX phone systems can also accommodate a smaller user bases, with cost effective solutions.

Selecting a Phone System

When selecting an office phone system, it is important to consider the needs of the business and the features each system offers.

Phone system size – There are two important things to consider when determining phone system size requirements. First is the number of extensions the business will require. Generally, the number of extensions is equal to the number of employees or workstations. However, a business may require additional phone extensions for fax machines or any other equipment that requires a phone connection. If a business is in a growth phase, it is important to plan ahead for additional extensions that may be required. Phone system size is also determined by the number of outside phone lines that are required. In other words, determine how many lines will be in use at any one time for calls into or out of the firm. Most PBX phone systems count both of these numbers and tally them into the number of “ports” that is required by the business.

Expansion – Ensure that the phone systems you consider have room for expansion. Most PBX systems can be expanded, but every phone system will have a maximum capacity. It is important that the maximum capacity will more than allow for proposed growth since replacing an entire phone system is costly and time-consuming.

Features – PBX phone systems offer a full array of features. Consider which features are requirements for your office as well as which would be nice to have. One of the most popular features in phone systems is voice mail. Voice mail allows the owner of each individual extension to record outgoing messages and to allow callers to leave messages when the employee is unavailable. An auto attendant feature allows callers to use an automated directory system to navigate the phone system. Directories vary dramatically and the most flexible ones allow callers to search for an extension by names (first and last), by department and by function. It can also control a general greeting, mailboxes with messages for general information and fax machines. Some other commonly requested features include: conference calling, call forwarding, hold functions, call transferring, hold music or messages and ringtone variations.

Installation and Maintenance

While most PBX phone systems require professional installation and maintenance, some small, modern systems can be user installed. Often, these PC based systems are most suitable for small to medium sized businesses, perhaps with a small information technology staff who can maintain the system. Ensure any phone installation service provider is experienced with the particular manufacturer and model you have selected. In addition to installation fees, it is important to discuss costs for maintenance or expansion service. Get references and ask about the firm's response times and quality of service. Remember that a phone installation and maintenance firm that deals with multiple system vendors is more likely to give objective advice on system selection.

Five reasons no one will replace Google

Google has five advantages that will keep all but the most determined innovators from beating it to artificial intelligence.

Google knows semantics.
Its entire business drives it toward pulling meaning from context. Better semantics make better ad placement and more precise search results. That's the reasoning behind contextual ads, topical search results, and the closely guarded and ever-changing search algorithm.

Google has the smartest people in the world.
Or damn close to it. Google's increasingly discriminating hiring process weeds out all but the top engineers -- executives are fond of saying that Google only hires people smarter than half its employees. As one tech exec said, "Yahoo's morning bus may have wifi, but it doesn't have any PhD's on it."

Google has Marissa Mayer.
All "Marissa is a robot" jokes aside, Senior VP Marissa Mayer, one of the most powerful Google executives after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is a titan of artificial intelligence. For her Bachelor's and Master's at Stanford, she specialized in A.I., and she holds several patents in the field. Her knowledge will not be lost in her role as Google's product gatekeeper -- it's Marissa who decides what products are ready for release.

Google is filthy rich.
And don't think clickfraud will bring them down -- today, Google launches GBuy, a payment system that trumps pay-per-click advertising with pay-per-sale, meanwhile bringing in the dollars of would-be buyers who don't trust vendors, but do trust Google. All this income gives Google a lot more room to play than its most ambitious competitors.
Google says it's working on AI. The co-founders already said that they're building a sharper artificial intelligence. Their new ambient sound translator can already identify a TV show from five seconds of computer-captured sound. Google plans to use the system for even more contextualized ads and content. Why this isn't the biggest tech news of the year is a mystery.

Google is not distracted.
The company's major competitors are Microsoft and Yahoo. The former is plagued by unwieldy plans for an operating system, software suite, and struggling media network. The latter is approaching media company status with an expanding network of original and outsourced content. While both Microsoft and Yahoo are making valuable progress in other fields, neither is innovating in search anywhere near the rate of Google. That's why over the past year, Google is the only engine with a growing market share in the U.S., and why Google could soon become China's top engine as well. And Google will stay on top -- by beating everyone else to the world's first global A.I. system.

Internet has 80 million websites.

According to Netcraft's most recent web server survey, the amount of hostnames on the Internet has doubled within the past three years. At the end of March, Netcraft said it identified a total of 80,655,992 websites, which represents an increase of 3.1 million since the end of February. In March of 2003, Netcraft reported the existence of about 40 million web sites.

Apache, the most popular web server software on the Internet suffered a substantial slide in market share in March, the research firm said. Compared to the previous month, Apache lost six percentage points from 68.7% to 62.7% due to a large-scale migration from Apache to Microsoft software at domain registrar GoDaddy. Microsoft gained almost five percentage points and stands now at 25.2%. According to Netcraft, GoDaddy will shift a total of 4.4 million hostnames from Apache to Windows Server 2003.

Computer Languages.

Computer Languages

Language

Origin of Name

Year

Uses/Comments

ADA	Augusta ADA Byron (Lady Lovelace)	1979	Derived from Pascal, used primarily by the military.
ALGOL	ALGOrithmic Language	1960	First structured procedural programming language, used mainly for solving math problems.
APL	A Programming Language	1961	Interpreted language using a large set of special symbols and terse syntax. Used primarily by mathematicians.
BASIC	Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code	1965	Very popular high-level programming language, frequently used by beginning programmers.
C	Predecessor was Bell Laboratory's 1972 B Programming Language	1972	Compiled, structured, programming language commonly used in many workplaces because its programs are easy to transfer between different types of computers.
C++	Advanced version of C. Developed at ATT Bell Labs.	1985	C++ is used in numerous fields, such as accounting and finance systems, and computer-aided design. Supports object-oriented programming.
COBOL	COmmon Business-Oriented Language	1959	English-like programming language, emphasizes data structures. Widely used, especially in businesses.
FORTH	FOuRTH-Generation language (4 GL)	1970	Interpreted, structured language, easily extended. Provides high functionality in limited space.
Fortran	FORmula TRANslation	1954	Initially designed for scientific and engineering uses, a high-level, compiled language now used in many fields. Introduced several concepts such as variables, conditional statements, and separately compiled subroutines.
HTML	HyperText Markup Language	1989	Designed for publishing hypertext on the Internet.
JAVA	Sun Microsystems developers drank a lot of coffee when coding for this.	1990	Originally developed for use in set-top boxes, transitioned to the World Wide Web in 1994.
LISP	LISt Processing	1960	A list-oriented programming language, mainly used to manipulate lists of data. Interpreted language, often used in research, generally considered the "standard" language for Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects.
LOGO	Derived from Greek logos, meaning word	1968	Programming language often used with children. Features a simple drawing environment and several higher-level features from LISP. Primarily educational.
Modula-2	MODULAr Language, designed as secondary phase of Pascal (Niklaus Wirth devised both)	1980	Language that emphasizes modular programming. High-level language based on Pascal, characterized by lack of standard functions and procedures.
Pascal	Blaise PASCAL, mathematician and inventor of first computing device	1971	Compiled, structured language, based on ALGOL. Adds data types and structures while simplifying syntax. Like C language, it is a standard development language for microcomputers.
PERL	Practical Extraction and Report Language	1988	It is a text-processing language that looks like a combination of C and several Unix text processing utilities.
PILOT	Programmed Inquiry, Language Or Teaching	1969	Programming language used primarily to create applications for computer-aided instruction. Contains very little syntax.
PL/1	Programming Language One	1964	Designed to combine the key features of Fortran, COBOL, and ALGOL, a complex programming language. Compiled, structured language capable of error handling and multitasking, used in some academic and research environments.
SGML	Standard Generalized Markup Language	1986	Designed as a metalanguage, it is used as an international standard for the description of marked-up electronic text.
SQL	Structured Query Language	1986	Designed to be used for creating complex databases and accessing data in a relational database.
VB	Visual Basic	1990	Sometimes called the Rapid Applications Development system, is used to build applications quickly.
XML	Extensible Markup Language	1977	Used for creating arbitrarily-structured documents and Web pages; it is commonly associated with the Internet.

MAN in MOON

Now, here are the opposing explanations to all the reasons that claimed that "Man didn't land on the moon".

[REST ASSURED, MAN DID LAND ON MOON!]

What is the evidence?

1) Claim: Film clearly shows a flapping flag but there is no wind on the moon, how can this be?

Argument: It isn't flapping, things can move in a vacuum, it's just 'wobbling' until it finds its center of gravity which, in weightless space, is everywhere.

2) Claim: There are various lighting discrepancies on pictures which indicate more than one light source, when the only light source was the Sun, there was no artificial light source taken.

Argument: If there are two light sources on the pictures used for this evidence, then why aren't there two shadows? Check out the perspective which could compromise the pictures.

3) Claim: There are no stars in the sky

Argument: They are there, you just can't see them. In daytime on earth the stars are still there, you just can't see them.

4) Claim: There is no engine noise behind the voice of the astronaut as it comes down to land on the moon. The sound of the engines should have been deafening.

Argument: The microphone is at the mouth of the astronaut. In space there is no sound, thus you couldn't hear the engine noise.

5) Claim: There is no blast crater beneath the lunar lander

Argument: They decelerated down slowly, they didn't crash down, they were slow enough to cause dust clouds but not remove all dust.

6) Claim: There are pictures of the feet of the lunar lander which look completely dust free, why?

Argument: There is no moisture in space, nothing for dust to cling to and thus it just did not stick, hence it looks pristine.

7) Claim: The on-moon photographs were taken with cameras which had view finders on which the astronauts could not see, yet a number of the pictures are perfectly framed.

Argument: OK so they couldn't see the view finder, but they practiced endlessly on earth before they went. They took thousands of pictures and only showed the good ones.

8) Claim: The space suits and the space craft were just not strong enough to fight off the radiation either on the Moon itself or through the Van Allen radiation belt.

Argument: They went through the Van Allen belt in an hour, this was not enough time to be affected by the radiation. The astronauts were affected by radiation, they just were not made ill by it as the doses were small. As for 'how did they survive the sun's radiation on the moon if the suits weren't strong enough': Hmmm... well, the suits must have been strong enough if you think the conspiracy is wrong, or they didn't go...

9) Claim: The moon walking, if doubled in speed, looks like running on earth.

Argument: UHM, NOT REALLY. OK if they had a suspension cord on their backs maybe, but take a look at the moony buggy, that looks realistic driving in a weightless environment.

10) Claim: There were problems on earth with the LAM moon lander, which was very unstable on earth (if you moved your body weight slightly it would destabilize the craft, but on the moon pictures it was flawless.

Argument: You are in weightlessness up there, the problems were all because of gravity on the earth.

11) Claim: Photos: When an astronaut goes into the shadows you can still see him, why, there is no light? Also there is at least one picture with the sun behind the craft but everything in the foreground is clearly visible, with no secondary light source surely this is not possible, it should have been in a shadow.

Argument: Yes but light bounces off objects too so that doesn't prove anything - the sun's light could bounce off the surface of the moon (even on earth the sun lights things it doesn't have a direct line of sight of.)

12) Claim: On some of the film footage from the moon there seems to be identical scenery, one with the lander on, one without. Clearly the one without must be wrong as they had not been there before and after they left the lander base was still there.

Argument: But there are differences, the backgrounds are not identical if you look closely enough. The Moon is a pretty featureless place and certain mountains can look similar.

13) Claim: Identical backgrounds on different days with pictures of astronauts looking around but we are told this is a different day, how can this be?

Argument: It's a simple mistake.

14) Claim: People have been killed and threatened to keep this story quiet.

Argument: 750,000 people work either directly or indirectly for NASA - they couldn't keep this a secret.

15) Claim: Launch of Apollo 11 did happen, just the astronauts went round the earth for 8 days, in the interim NASA showed the pictures and then they touched down again.

Argument: There is testimony from very respected astronauts who say they went to the moon, are they liars?

16) Claim: Strange camera work on Apollo movies which suggest a person is working the camera when in fact nobody could possibly have been left on the moon to operate the camera.

This starting frame shows the camera looking straight at the Apollo craft as it blasts off from the moon's surface.

As it goes up, the camera pans upwards.

Even higher... the camera filming this (on the moon) continues to follow the ship upwards (see the scenery at the bottom of the screen disappear). But there was nobody left on the moon to film this, surely this is further evidence this is all a fraud?

(If you look at the video [see below] you can also see that the camera seems to pull backwards slightly when the explosion takes place, as if someone is pulling back... All very strange...)

Argument: No person was working the camera, the automatic camera could focus on an object and was programmed to follow it, (or maybe it could be controlled from ground control.)

Later on in this particular movie:

In this picture the space ship (which blasted off in the sequence above) is shown floating above the moon's surface. But there must be a camera above it to take this shot! Was there a second space ship filming this? Or is the whole thing a fake, or somehow computer generated?

Argument: There was a second ship from which this was filmed. This smaller ship on the picture couldn't have made it back to Earth on its own. It had to dock with a mother ship ie the ship with the camera on it filming this shot.