These days, getting into an information technology career requires very stiff competition. With today's software getting more and more complex and new languages and scripting technologies being developed, it can be very hard to gauge a professional and find the right employee.
And add to that is the breaking of global boundaries with the internet. There are already many schools advertising on their websites that they have the best IT curriculum.
The best way to get the right candidate under certain standards is through certifications. But then, certifications do not come cheap and many people especially those coming from the third countries can hardly afford and do not even own credit cards to pay for online certification.
Good thing there are online free certifications. In fact there are thousands of websites claiming to give free certifications but the problem is how credible and acknowledged these companies are.
I stumbled upon Brainbench I think around the year 2002. Well, actually my friend working in Japan recommended Brainbench but I totally forgot about it until I heard about it on television. I visited their website at www.brainbench.com and learned that the company was founded in 1998 and has served 5000 corporate and 6 million individual customers.
But of course, the skeptic that I always I am, I did believe because many things are possible on the internet. What if it was a hoax.
Last year, my friend landed on the IT job of his dreams in Florida and he said that his Brainbench certification was a big factor his being hired.
I revisited the site. Actually, not all certifications are given free. In fact, most of the important and most used technologies certifications come with a price but which are significantly lower than other credible and well known certification bodies.
I tried the trial. They were quite difficult and intimidating but seemed to be very credible. During the last few months, I had resolved to get certified on PHP which costs $49.95 and MySQL which costs another $49.95 but I haven’t had the time to really get my hand dirty because I was busy with other things.
But just yesterday, Brainbench send my an email (I subscribed for alerts of course) saying that they are offering more than 2 dozen exams at no cost. These include .NET Framework 2.0, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition, Macromedia Director 8, HTML 4.0, RDBMS Concepts, Programming Concepts and many more. I am thinking of taking Java 2 but then I have to do more reviewing as I hadn’t done Java in many months already.
Oh, and Brainbench actually has a learning center where you pay to learn some technologies while you get the others for free.
For now, I should have followed the advice of my friend back then. He now heads an IT department and at the same time runs his own profitable website.
Well, I am very positive that in one of these days, I'm going to be certified on one of those technologies. I know that to some degree, I am confident of my skills being better than many people, but it still is a different to be certified. Especially if you get it from a reputable company for free!
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Be wary during you birthday and other important events
Sounds like a weird advice, don’t you think?
Well, last July 4, 2007 I received an email from my best friend in Boston and the email said I had an Independence Day greeting from America. When I opened the email, it said that I need to click the link and be taken to another website where I could view the greeting card. I could have been the biggest dork on earth had I clicked the linked: a combination of four set of numbers better known as IP address! Who are they fooling? – me the IT professional? An elementary student could immediately recognize the link to be an IP address, which was a very glaring indication that there was something fishy going on
The emails contain the following subjects and people should delete them immediately:
Happy Fourth of July
Independence Day Celebration
July 4th Fireworks Show
America the Beautiful
God Bless America
Your Nations Birthday
I tried looking for information about the Trojan on Google and learned that when one clicks on the link which, as I said, comes in the IP address format, one is taken to a zombie computer that hosts the JSecard-A Trojan downloader. A code which is called Mal/Dorf-C is then immediately downloaded and installed into to the victim's computer.
These shameless, malicious spammers, who I think are not even technology savvy and are just mediocre marketing people trying to take advantage of vulnerable people, have no qualms at all at tricking people by using important events up to international stature!
For those who may not be aware, Trojans are malicious codes that install somewhere in the back of the computer without the owner's knowledge. It is actually taken from the Greek Trojan Horse which was used by soldiers to win the battle in the guise of a giant wooden horse gift but actually contained soldiers.
A perfect example of how a Trojan works is the program called "waterfalls.scr". This program deceives people by making it appear as a beautiful waterfalls screensaver, which it actually does, but in the back, the program would open some computer ports so that hackers and other evil computer people can have access to the computer's resources. This would also open to cyber thieves the private information, including credit card numbers and even passwords, of the unsuspecting computer user.
As a safeguard, we should always use the latest anti virus and other protection software and regularly get updates. A firewall is also a very important tool for one who is on the internet. My firewall always prompts me for permission for any incoming or outgoing access to the internet so I know everything that passes through my computer.
The internet is a jungle of different kinds of beast. Millions have been lost to online thief. If one is not careful, he may lose not just computer hardware by being physically damaged by malicious codes but his bank savings as well. Worse, one may be penniless on his birthday!
Well, last July 4, 2007 I received an email from my best friend in Boston and the email said I had an Independence Day greeting from America. When I opened the email, it said that I need to click the link and be taken to another website where I could view the greeting card. I could have been the biggest dork on earth had I clicked the linked: a combination of four set of numbers better known as IP address! Who are they fooling? – me the IT professional? An elementary student could immediately recognize the link to be an IP address, which was a very glaring indication that there was something fishy going on
The emails contain the following subjects and people should delete them immediately:
Happy Fourth of July
Independence Day Celebration
July 4th Fireworks Show
America the Beautiful
God Bless America
Your Nations Birthday
I tried looking for information about the Trojan on Google and learned that when one clicks on the link which, as I said, comes in the IP address format, one is taken to a zombie computer that hosts the JSecard-A Trojan downloader. A code which is called Mal/Dorf-C is then immediately downloaded and installed into to the victim's computer.
These shameless, malicious spammers, who I think are not even technology savvy and are just mediocre marketing people trying to take advantage of vulnerable people, have no qualms at all at tricking people by using important events up to international stature!
For those who may not be aware, Trojans are malicious codes that install somewhere in the back of the computer without the owner's knowledge. It is actually taken from the Greek Trojan Horse which was used by soldiers to win the battle in the guise of a giant wooden horse gift but actually contained soldiers.
A perfect example of how a Trojan works is the program called "waterfalls.scr". This program deceives people by making it appear as a beautiful waterfalls screensaver, which it actually does, but in the back, the program would open some computer ports so that hackers and other evil computer people can have access to the computer's resources. This would also open to cyber thieves the private information, including credit card numbers and even passwords, of the unsuspecting computer user.
As a safeguard, we should always use the latest anti virus and other protection software and regularly get updates. A firewall is also a very important tool for one who is on the internet. My firewall always prompts me for permission for any incoming or outgoing access to the internet so I know everything that passes through my computer.
The internet is a jungle of different kinds of beast. Millions have been lost to online thief. If one is not careful, he may lose not just computer hardware by being physically damaged by malicious codes but his bank savings as well. Worse, one may be penniless on his birthday!
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