BASELINE | JUNE 2007 | ISSUE 073
ONCE AGAIN, IN MY EYES, Baseline does a better
job at putting the pieces of the puzzle together
than any of its other industry counterpublications.
Hats off to Laton McCartney for a thorough job
(“Busted: Inside the Beltway’s Tech Bribery Scam,”
April, p. 28). I am impressed at your ability to smoke
the others consistently with treatments like this.
Jay C. James
Unix Administrator, San Diego
Minding MySpace
First off, let me say I am sorry
that I’m a little late in getting
through my January issue of
Baseline. But boy, am I glad I
held onto that issue until I
could finish the article “Inside
MySpace” (p. 34).
That has to be one of the
best case studies I have read
over my nearly 20 years as an
I. T. professional. The way the
story developed by identifying
the struggles along each step of
the way for this young, successful company was very engaging.
The details about the technology used and architectural
decisions are very beneficial for
anyone working in I. T. infrastructure or architecture.
With any somewhat successful Web application,
scalability and reliability are
a constant challenge. The
information gathered from
this article gives us, the I. T.
community, further knowledge
on approaches to take to tackle
these challenges. For example,
I typically would not have
thought to use Microsoft SQL
Server for such a heavy transactional application. But MySpace
was obviously able to make it
handle the tremendous work-
load and probably saved money
in the process.
Great job! I have already
started on “Is Business Ready
for Second Life?” (March, p. 30),
and that looks to be another
well-researched and well-written article.
Guy J. Leygraaf
Willoughby Hills, Ohio
Virtualization: Learning Curve
What’s the biggest problem
with virtualizaton software?
(“Virtualization: For Servers, a
Disappearing Act,” April, p. 64.)
Microsoft’s licensing policies
for non-Microsoft hypervisors.
Actually, this goes for most
vendors whose clients are
not running the VMs on their
native hypervisor.
Fighting the Bad Guys
Enjoyed reading your piece
about Washington Trust Bank’s
new tool to curb identity theft
from within its organization
(“What Are Your Employees
Doing at Work?” April, p. 51).
But I can immediately think
of one way for an unsavory
employee to compromise this
checks-and-balances system—
a cell phone camera or even
something as simple as a pen
and paper. An employee could
easily and legitimately bring
up account information and
take a snapshot of the screen,
then download the data later
to an OCR word processor
on a home computer, and they’re
off and scamming!
Hate to be a killjoy, but it
does just prove that companies—and people—need to stay
one step ahead of the bad guy.
Mark Bruno
President
Sentrec Electronics
El Cajon, Calif.
Brian Gupta
Senior Systems Architect
New York
Baseline senior writer Kim S. Nash posed the question:
Are contract jobs the way to go? Here’s what readers
posted at blog.baselinemag.com/talent_pool:
I’ve been using VMware
Server to run Windows 2000
Servers inside Windows 2000
Hosts. The biggest problem
I’ve had is with a single virtual
machine taking all of the CPU
time, and grinding things to a
halt. If there were some way to
throttle things back, I could
do a heck of a lot more with it.
Mike Warot
Manager, Information Systems
Chicago
WRITE TO US What do you think about
our story, “Does GE Have the Best I. T.?“ on
p. 24? Write to: editors@baselinemag.com.
No question that I. T. consulting or job loyalty from the employer
gigs are on the rise. HotGigs’ or from the worker.—JT5
recent I. T. demand report shows
that ERP professionals are the No doubt the total number of
highest demand, with SAP skills jobs posted on Dice is up, but
leading the pack.—DOUG BERG that does not mean that there
is a rise in actual jobs. As it gets
Contract jobs may be on the harder to find good people, each
rise, but it is not the way to actual job is given to more and
go. There are many negatives more staffing firms to work.
including lower pay, greater Each of these firms in turn posts
work hours, bad work sched- the same job on Dice (and other
ules, less benefits (medical, job boards). In the past, I have
401(k) pension, etc.), no or little seen the same job posted 10,
employer-to-worker investment, even 15 times. This increase in
and, of course, no job security “jobs” can be deceptive.—MARK
