News from PANUG/BizNix - September 26, 2002 http://panug.org - http://biznix.org THIS IS SERIOUS this was submitted anonymously I don't normally write in but this is serious. [Ray Robert's article yesterday] describes a very serious problem (Thank for the alert Ray). Having to connect to Microsoft's site for software updates while logged in as the administrator (with ActiveX enabled!) is unthinkable. I sense that most people are completely unaware how much of a problem this is - they are completely clueless where I work. If you do this, you're violating one of the cardinal rules of security. This is the ultimate Dilbert. It's like playing Russion Roulette with a round in the chamber. If you do this, you should paint an A on your shirt. The only long term solution is to dump all Microsoft products and put in ANYTHING else. I used to think that the Macintosh was a bad thing. Now I wish we went down that road and kept our Novell server as well. My company will probably go out of business continuing on down Microsoft road. They don't seem to care how much money they spend on problems that only Microsoft computer networks have. My resume is updated and I'm going to sign up for a Linux class. LINUX+ CERTIFICATION by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers I was asked by a publisher to become Linux certified by taking the Comptia Linux+ test. I'm already LPIC certified. Since they offered to pay, I accepted. There are two companies that do Comptia testing: Vue and Thomson Prometric. I called Vue and signed up but, at the end, they asked me for my promotion code. When I said that I didn't have one, they suggested that I ask my Human Resources department. Since I am the HR department and I don't have a Vue promotion code, I couldn't register for the test. I hung up and made a mental note to never call them again. Signing up with Thomson Prometric was easier - no promotion code requirements; no turning away paying customers. My kind of company. The test was supposed to take 2 hours and 45 minutes. This included two hours for the test and 45 minutes for the tutorial at the beginning and survey at the end. I skipped the tutorial and rushed through the survey. I did it all in 55 minutes. The Comptia Linux+ test does not only test you on your Linux knowledge - it also tests you on general PC Knowledge (hardware and BIOS primarily). It seems the Linux+ test is a stripped down A+ test with Linux-related questions added. It's silly to do this. There are people who run Linux on non-PCs. You might run Linux on your mainframe or Macintosh and not know anything about PCs. The test was frustrating to take. It was reminiscent of taking the Novell CNE test in the early days with ambiguous questions and answers. For example, one question asked what part of a computer is bad if you have to change your BIOS settings every time you power on your PC even though the battery is OK. There were two answers that were candidates for being correct: system memory motherboard I guess you have to go through Comptia training to know which is correct. Do they consider the memory that BIOS settings are stored in to be system memory or not? The motherboard is certainly where the BIOS memory is soldered to, so I chose that answer. Of course, I have no idea if I selected correctly. You don't see detailed test results. However, I was asked to review basic PC hardware on the test results form. Yeah, like I don't know basic PC hardware after 21 years. Several Linux-related questions were annoying. Comptia seems to think that the terms "program" and "command" are exact synonyms. One question asked how I would set the permissions on the grep command - an odd concept. I give myself permission to type commands. I must use the chmod program to change the permissions of a program. Another question asked how I would change the scheduling priority (they didn't call it scheduling priority; they used simpler language) of an already running program. Renice was not one of the answers! Instead, their correct answer was to kill the program and run it again but this time using the nice program. Morons. Linux users don't choose the hardest way possible to do things - they choose the simplest. Besides, why kill a process when you don't have to - Linux isn't Windows. Test scoring is almost identical to the LPI test. The highest score possible is 900. The passing score is 655. I got 815, which ticked me off because I knew all the topics on the test. I was penalized by their silly questions and answers. Although the LPI test has its problems, it's light years ahead of Linux+. Oh, the Comptia Score Report says this: "Candidates who have compromised the integrity of a CompTIA exam will not be eligible to schedule or take any CompTIA exams for one year." Make it two CompTIA.