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Re: SAGE, certification, and you
Give 'em hell, Elizabeth!
I read your piece on this subject an issue or two back in login; and was
quite impressed with your obvious cogency, a thing which no myopic "seal
of authority" will ever be able to quantify or confer. Much of
any "profession" (including ours) consists of a rather purile set of
circumstances and corresponding activities which nearly any barely
capable member of our species could likely achieve "certification" in due
to classical conditioning alone. It's how well one manipulates the known
in reference to the unknown that distinguishes the truely proficient from
the sedulous, salivating, "certified" rabble. One can stick a USDA "seal
of quality beef" on all the cow shit one wants, but it's going to remain
cow shit every time. Paper is and always has been paper; it's enduring
value can be ascertained only from the words placed upon it... and I'm
relatively certain that our great libraries have throughout history been
appropriately devoid of volumes of certifications. The desire to
"certify" was, is and always will be little more than a grasp for power
by the very few over the very many. For if the "certifiers" among us
truely believed in their own dogma, they would realize that in the absence
of their arrogant, pretentious and self-apointed "authority", they
themselves have no real "credentials", save their presumed "devine right",
with which to serve as the grand dispensers of competency, or perhaps more
appropriately, "membership", without which there's really no way (and
certainly no "justification") to keep all those goddamn nigger, christian,
jew, little ender, unpedigreed heathens out of our country club, right
boys! :-)/:-(
What an arrogant little species we are. I look in the mirror and am
disgusted with a "membership" I can not cancel.
- Kyle
P.S. Face it people, it's all just nomenclature (ie. still cow
shit). Even prostitutes are "professionals", whether you
like it or not. Try cracking a dictionary once in a while.
A racket is a racket by any other name. And when your're
dead, nobody's gonna save your dumb ass certifications. And
if you think you can hang them on the walls of heaven because
the church sold you some "certified" immortality, then I've
got an unused pair of Emperor's New Clothes I'll sell you for
only $500, complete with certificate of authenticity.
P.P.S. Yeah, I know, "revoke his membership!" because it's pretty
clear he snuck into our country club, huh. Well, although
I'm generally pleased with my USENIX/SAGE memberships, I
really don't give a damn because I hang all my certificates
on the bathroom wall in case I run out of toilet-paper...
and you can cut a slaves fingers off for learning to read
and write, but you can't make him forget how it's done.
Kyle Amon email: amonk@raleigh.ibm.com
Unix Systems Administrator phone: (203) 486-3290
Security Specialist pager: 1-800-759-8888 PIN 1616512
IBM Global Services or 1616512@skymail.com
email: amonk@gnutec.com
url: http://www.gnutec.com/kyle
KeyID 1024/173D96C9
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A man denied legal counsel, held without bail or trial, is a political
prisoner in any country, especially the United States of America!
http://www.kevinmitnick.com
http://www.2600.com/kevin
On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, zwicky wrote:
>
> >During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and
> >goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time,
> >however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan.
>
> Exactly what is that plan? As in, what are its goals, its timelines,
> and the people who're carrying it out? What's in this e-mail is
>
> >We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems
> >administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather
> >vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a
> >"profession" entails certification - careers without such things are
> >generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between
> >MDs and morticians, for example).
>
> Doctors are not certified. They are *degreed* and
> *licensed*. A brief review of the web turns up the information
> that being a mortician requires a license, which in turn requires
> both an apprenticeship and a mortuary science degree, which in turn
> requires an undergraduate degree, preferably in biology -- so the
> difference between MDs and morticians appears to be mostly that one
> of them works with dead people, which is lower status than working
> with live people. Also that one of them requires even more time
> in education and apprenticeship than the other, but note that the
> one you call a trade requires 6 years more of education, 2 more degrees,
> and 1 more apprenticeship than system administration. It looks like
> we have a long way to go.
>
> This is one of the world's poorest arguments, on a whole bunch of fronts.
> Give it up.
>
> Here are some believable arguments in favor of certification:
> 1) It provides employers, who are not often knowledgeable about
> system administration, with an objective standard of evaluation.
> 2) It provides system administrators with a way of objectively
> evaluating their own skills.
> 3) It provides a basis for educational programs.
> 4) It's a whole lot cheaper than a college degree, and provides
> some of the same advantages to its holders.
> 5) A number of people are easily impressed by certificates. Why
> shouldn't we get to impress them, too?
>
> Elizabeth Zwicky
>