The Legend Continues After The Man

There are some who think men should not cry. I believe that at this moment in time, even rocks are crying. The world lost Randy Pausch 25 July 2008. If your not into UTube, his entry may give you a reason to be so.

His lessons of life are amazing.

Of course, this blog is about IT Training, and among other things, Randy was one hella of a trainer.

The AP wire entry on his passing noted

"At Carnegie Mellon, he was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design, and was recognized as a pioneer of virtual reality research. On campus, he became known for his flamboyance and showmanship as a teacher and mentor."

Personally, I owe this man a great deal. While I have stood by my own beliefs in my style to create Training Remembered (TM), some have taken some pretty low shots at me for my "flamboyance and showmanship."

I don't know if Randy ever read the ground breaking book, Memories Voice. It shows us how brains work. Being "flamboyant" helps gets facts in the brain faster.

So to Randy I say: Until I get the moment to thank you in person for all you have done still on this planet, I thank you from this planet.

Tcat

Mania 2.0

First it was Web 2.0 Now we have Music 2.0

I see (and so will you by selecting the Title Mania 2.0) we have a potentiality new audio standard coming out of Korea known as MT9. More details about its history and features can be found at

Rishi's Blog.

Three things strike me to call this Hot Stuff. (I always need at least 2 reasons).

1. The claim it can be 10 times smaller in file size.
2. The ability to single out voice. (More on that in a moment)
3. No DRM.

Working backwards. I *hate* DRM. It's not the basic idea, it the implementation. I'm not against the concept of locks. Bet most of you lock the door to your home. Door locks (mostly) work. DRM does not stop anyone and annoys the folks who paid for something.

The ability to "work" six different channels appeals to me. Like almost any older military vet, some types of background noise "kills" my ability to hear. I'm not deaf. And I cannot hear a human communication being presented to me when there is low frequency noise that accompanies it. So I avoid having any social time, say ordering a beer, where there is loud music.

Being able to select voice or chorus for hearing communication, like say, training, appeals to me.

Size. Sometimes smaller IS better, despise what all the Spam emails are attempting to tell/sell me. I don't know how much (if any) loss there is dropping in size. It is arguable that the .WMA format is superior/inferior to the .MP3 format for quality verses size. The argument is indeed a small one in my testing. I have seen 75MB .MP3 go to 25MB .WMA with little/no issue on vocals.

That is 1/3 the size for the same effect, as far as training purposes go, for .WMA over .MP3.

Give me say, 1/5 the size, and let me kill the background 'BOOM". Don't foist DRM hassles on me. Keep the quality roughly the same. Give me all that and I'll give away every MP3/WMA player I own. Thanks for the heads up, Rishi! Let me know when I can get a MT9 player and software to convert my stuff.

Open Source is getting some respect

The piece from InfoWorld says that MS Office will support ODF file formats!

Three cheers!

We are slowly getting a 2-way street! The beta of Open Office V.3 support the DOCX format.
This has been fine on my Windows boxes. I've been left locked out on my Mac boxes, til I could get Open Office V3 for the Macs.

Thank you, Redmond!

Open Source "Winners"

Following up on my last entry on Open Source.

A few days ago I got an email saying a security survey found open source has fewer "leaks" then ever.

This got my attention because the last round I read claimed commercial and open source we're running dead even.

So overall, Open Source applications are now more secure than commerical.
And free.

A client packing quite a few brain cells asked me how do these authors make money? Do they make money?

A: Some yes. And not in the way you would think.

Working an open source project give the author a more visible "try me out" to any employer. In short, it is a resume/CV builder. So yes, in a way they do make money!

Today I came across the link in this blog. Really interesting collection of programs! My largest gripe is the Windows-centric nature. I'm not Anti-Windows! (I'm a MCSE too). And I'm old enough to know there is more to life than Windows.

However besides selecting the best of "free" (some are Not Open Source, just free), the site does and excellent job of noting any cross-platform features. Additionally, if an offering can be used without touching the registry, it is considered portable.

This is a really 'nice to know'. You have your favorite application on a USB key. No install required. Today I saw a really well made (and fast) 32 Gig USB key for $100. That's pretty impressive. You could walk around with a waterproof USB "hard drive" for $100.

Isn't technology wonderful?

What do we train on?

NetworkWorld has a little piece on getting certified on Win 2008 and "should you do it?" angle.

The short story is they say maybe not now, and it will certainly be in higher demand in the future.

So isn't that sorta like saying in the future the sun will rise in the east?

IMO there is a larger issue here. That is the rise in both respect and quality of open source software. Typically, most folks have a brain link that says Open Source = Linux. Try as I might, I don't see dramatic growth in Linux making being certified (on any level) in Windows 2008 being the next functional equal to being Netware certified today.

It appears the Open Source = Linux brain link to be so last century. This is where I see the old judgement as being, well, old.

This blog is about IT Training, and it is not labeled IT Certification. It appears time to update our mental shortcut that Open Source = Linux, and start IT training on Open Source tools. Let's look at some examples of the changes.

Open Office. This open source offering (with lots of $ponser$ip from Sun) is in beta on Version 3. IBM has released a stripped version of this.

Many pundits like to say Open Office isn't worth a damn because it cannot do X. I'm not disagreeing that currently OO.org cannot do X, Y or Z.

I *do* question from the standpoint of large body count, how many folks (percentage wise) actually need the features X, Y or Z? It appears Open Office already has Too Many features similar to MS Office for a percentage of daily users. Why else would IBM go to the trouble of stripping Open Office down?

On the other side of the coin, Open Office has something going for it (besides being free) that MS Office doesn''t. MS Office 2008 on the Mac doesn't have VB for a macro language. Makes sense since the source code for this was based on the PPC chips (pre-Intel/Apple days). The Mac MS Office users have howled enough that the next major release will have VB back, some time in the next decade.

The critics of course are going to say, Who cares? Mac has such a low market share (percentage wise).

Wait a minute. If the small % for the Mac - Office numbers don't count, why should the same small % of users who need the features in MS Office that are not in Open Office matter? That is just not using the same yard stick.

Lets take another example where Open Source is beating the pants off commercial offerings.

Audacity.

This is an Open Source offering for (almost) everything audio. Ok. Not everyone does audio. And a good number of us do, including me. I used to use a commercial offering. Now I can do everything in Audacity (release) I used to do with commercial stuff. The beta version is giving me features I couldn't buy. UTube video training on Audacity (also free) is leading me into audio areas I didn't dream of before.

There is a common thread here I want to pull together.

Open Office, Audacity, and others such as FileZilla have something in common besides being Open Source (and free).

They are available on OS platforms for 'the big three' (Win/OSX/Linux). No one platform has a big lag over the others. The offerings are available in multiple human language interfaces for the big three platforms.

Dividing by human interface (localization) AND by platform availibity, makes for servicing really small percentages of users, without creating a file format issue.

The best part is training for Open Office (or FileZilla or...) is except for Very Small differences, the same on the big 3 OS platforms.

The free part is just icing on the cake. (OK, a lot of icing).

About the only thing that seems the same is the drive to do more, with less, and do it faster.

The book, The Tipping Point takes a in depth look at change. Another book called The Innovators Dilemma takes on the issues of change facing large established companies. (The fact that the author uses the disk drive industry only make it eaiser for us in IT to follow along.) The second book, The Innovators Solution is not a path Microsoft (and many others) followed.

20 years ago, the buzz was that we're entering the third phase of civilization (The Information Age). Well it hasn't exactly gone as predicted, and we seem to be on course for the big picture.

From my chair, it looks like Open Source is moving from the expermential and early adopter phases and is preparing to enter the large percentage mass appeal phase. I only need to look at myself. Yes, I use MS Office. And I *also* use Open Office. I stopped paying for FTP software, and use FileZilla. The same is true with Audacity. I didn't select those to be a researcher. I just wanted to get something done. That these same products work on the big three means I'm not paying, 3 times.

To the trainer in me, this speaks volumes on what we need to prepare what we are going to be training on.

MCA's $25,000 USD question

Over at Infoworld, there asking if MCA is worth $25K bucks.

Yup. That is the price tag, pre-paid before starting down the path for Win 2008 and the new top level cert.

Personally, I don't think the 25K is going to be the big show stopper. It's the double-digit years at the top of the heap at the enterprise level that will keep the numbers low. I'm not pretending that 25K is chump change.

And this is certainly one cert that showing up at Prometric isn't going to cut it.

Nice review at Infoworld... Take a peek.

"The Brain"

Folks who have followed my thoughts for any length of time know that Gudrun and I are really excited to study and follow threads on getting "stuff" (facts, thoughts, etc) firmly rooted in the organic computer we call the brain.

Gudrun found a software entry in the category known as 'mind mapping'. This is not some voodoo trick. It has been around a while, just not really well known.

What makes this entry unique is the 'Personal Edition' is really free, not trialware. Sure its limited in the fact that you cannot tie a base thought to files on you drive. That takes the version that is $150. USD. And yes, multi-user versions have a higher price tag.

The part that got my attention is they offer Windows, OS X and Linux versions.

While the Personal Version (free) is limited to connecting web sites, anyone preparing to study in a particular area of study is probably searching the Internet. The first glance at this offering suggests it would be much more intuitive than bookmarks on the subject.

Maybe you want to give this method a shot. Check out the Personal Version of The Brain from http://www.TheBrain.com

If you have given it a try, please offer your thoughts here. Thanks. And thank you Gudrun for this great find.

The Trojan Horse still works

Sigh.

A really good article from Wired reminds me that the 1st Trojan Horse appeared 3K years ago, give or take a bit.

And Ryan Singel points out that not much has changed.

I read, a lot.

I *get* human nature hasn't changed much in thousands of years.

Maybe if we relate the cost to the city of this 'victory' prize, we'll get people to think.

Hope springs eternal.

And right now, that is about all I got, hope.

So I hope we can change the thoughts of oh, 0.5% of the users.
And hope like hell the 1st really new Windows since 1985 really is here soon, and it may safe the other 96% of those....

Training Intelligence

Oh boy.

Here I'm going to ask for what is probably impossible.

I am hoping that I live long enough to see us as IT folks to train intelligence to our end users.

Why? Because it is in there best interests.

As a electronics geek, I've always had a bit of a bleeding edge, excuse me, leading edge leaning. So I have a number of email accounts, including Gmail.

I noticed enough attempts actually getting through to my inbox to join some Google Group, asking me to verify my account request, not just saying, no such group.

It got to a point where I am going, WTF?

I got the answer, and it is here.

Damn!

I get things change. I have learned to roll with that.

And clearly, we are not going to stop spam by a single great idea, like Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

The 'final' answer is to make Spam unattractive from a reward standpoint. That will only happen when we as IT geeks educate our people to not buy stuff sold in spam. AND to not accept "baiting" that something was taken from them. AND to not follow links to "racy" topics.

This is a high bar. Probably impossible. Maybe we can train our users (and ourselves) to a point where spam is a less attractive business, thereby reducing spam.

It's a sad day when CAPCHA has been "had" by the black hats. Again, this isn't theory. I'm seeing it myself in my own inbox. For the readers that want the "how data", here you go.
http://securitylabs.websense.com/content/Blogs/2919.aspx

I have faith that the Googlers can control this.
I have hope that we who care of, the end users, make all this not worth while by not responding. Get rid of the demand and the supply will dry up. Simple math. Hard solution.

Tcat

Hello Boys! I'm Back!

I do believe that is one of the great lines from the Si-Fi movie, Independence Day.

My co-author Gudrun sold me that it is time to look @ IT Training Today.

Obviously the most comments came from my FL thoughts. To answer a few questions I saw...

I was the lead on Exam Prep i-Net+. Matt and L.A. certainly killed themselves along with me getting that out the door in a couple weeks (yes, weeks). Matt did fantastic graphics.

Someone else suggested Sunbelt should sue me for my thoughts. I suspect Stu is pretty happy I at least spelled the name of the company right ;-) And, yes there are great folks in the Sunshine state.

So what has been going on out there?

I'm getting a number of reports that IT Training (and testing) is on the rise. Well we always seem to do better when the "R" word is tied to the economy.

CompTIA wants a 'super cert' if you got A+, Network+, Security+ and Server+. I was promoting a Triple Crown (no Server+) years ago. It appears CompTIA is reversing course after 'drinking the Kool-Aid'.

Cisco and Microsoft are really starting to play hard ball with the illegal brain dump sites. Yes, some folks call guidance 'a brain dump'. Maybe that is a marketing thing. Illegal is posting actual questions or having someone take the test for you!

MS-Vista just isn't taking the world by storm. It never will. The DRM stuff takes so many cycles making sure you didn't stick electronic probe to suck a movie off the video card, Vista will join MS-Me and MS-BOB. However if your studying Windows 2008 Server, you are probably surprised at the power and features!

The Electronic Industry Association International ( http://www.eta-i.org ) has taken CompTIA rollovers back in house. I *finally* got my Master status, taking and passing all the RESI (Residential Electronic Systems Integrator) exams. And as a Master, I'm done for life.

Gudrun and I have finally gotten moving in the direction we we're looking at for http://effectivegeek.com

Only we really haven't done IT there! We have teamed up with Harry from http://www.SMBNation.com/

The first offering (fast becoming a series) is Certification Success
http://www.amazon.com/Certification-Success-success-anything-getting/dp/0977094979/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208176626&sr=8-1

Since our work is *really* about the fantastic organic computer located between the ears, our new effort can be applied to any 'high bar' endeavorer. We're working on a "Project Mgt." book, taking on the weird ways of being human.

Folks that have known me since almost forever have been surprised that I had pretty much stopped beating the drum for subliminal learning the past couple years. Beyond experiments I conducted on myself, http://TcatU.net really laid to rest (for me) that subliminal study is a great aid. How great depends on you preferred learning style in the first 20% of Dale's Cone of Experience. And even if hearing or seeing (as opposed to reading) is on the bottom of your brain preferences, anything extra is, well extra.

So finally, a study was done that pretty well goes against the opinion that subliminal learning cannot work.

Quoting from:
http://www.technoccult.com/archives/2008/03/30/subliminal-exposure-to-corporate-logos-effect-how-people-think-study-says

“This is the first clear evidence that subliminal brand exposures can cause people to act in very specific ways,” said Gráinne Fitzsimons. “We’ve performed tests where we’ve offered people $100 to tell us what logo was being flashed on screen, and none of them could do it. But even this imperceptible exposure is enough to spark changes in behavior.”

The blog from the Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/03/20/think-apple-it-boosts-creativity/ says:

"Scientists have long debated whether subliminal messages, the idea that subconscious exposure can shape behavior, really work. In recent years, the consensus opinion has tended towards no. But most studies measured if subliminal messages caused people to buy products. Fitzsimons and his colleagues wondered if the exposure resulted in behavioral changes that don't show up on the balance sheet."

I am *so* glad both Gudrun and Harry had the courage to grant me the mini-rant on subliminal learning, as well as allowing me to offer my research on the best (Windows) program for subliminal delivery to the computer screen (the program is free of adware, spyware or even cost), in the Certification Success book. Thank you to both of you!

The two of us are releasing some of our training material for Certified Technical Trainer through http://www.TotalRecallPress.com shortly. Yeah, I know it has a + sign now. And I earned my CTT years before CompTIA had it, so I'm proud to say I'm sans +.

If you met me about oh, 40 years or more years ago, you correctly assumed I slept with a camera. (Freelance photographers don't make $ when you don't have a camera). I pretty much gave up the idea of photography when I had to do it for a living, for Uncle Sam, wearing a green suit. Me shooting silver while the other side is shooting pieces of lead back sorta turned me off to the idea.

Well my polite yet firm friend and co-author finally sold me on picking up a camera again, in 2008. I started with Berlin Germany and found taking pictures was fun again. So I'm putting up cities as I fancy @ http://photos.Travel4RoadWarriors.com/

My choice of shots is not what you would normally think of. My Philadelphia stuff has no liberty bell, for example.

Looking not too far out, it appears the 3rd MS-Windows will be out soon. (The 1st was DOS Windows, the 2nd, NT Windows). Don't believe me, do a Start-Run and enter CMD (return). You see the NT Version # and final build #.

Hardware is getting pretty exciting too. The same folks that gave us the 3.5" 'DeathStar' HD (now a Hitachi product), have RaceTrack Memory coming.
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/dn13648-ibm-creates-working-racetrack-memory-device.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

1/2 million MP3's, (or 3,500 movies) stored while using less power could mean a heck of a lot of subliminal learning.

I'm going to experiment with allowing comments. Certainly, you Don't have to agree with me, or even like me. All I ask is to keep in mind your word choices might be read by minors.

Best,
Tcat