Social media sends Ballmer off with a bang

Reaction to news of Microsoft CEO's forthcoming retirement unsurprisingly noisy, contentious.

The Internet reacted to the news that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer plans to retire within 12 months as might have been expected – with a flurry of jeers, opprobrium and the occasional heartfelt farewell.

“Retirement! Retirement, retirement, retirement!” japed redditor trataka, in reference to one of Ballmer's well-known performances at a Microsoft conference.

Fellow reddit user foxmccloudpsu went with “I see you're trying to find a new CEO. Can I help you with that?” and Arizhel bemoaned the loss of Ballmer's influence at Microsoft - “I'm not happy at all. Ballmer needs to stay in charge; he's doing an excellent job of running MS into the ground. I do not want this trainwreck to end.”

[MAIN STORY: Microsoft CEO Ballmer to retire in 12 months]

Much of the reaction on Twitter, by contrast, was surprisingly measured, with much made of the fact that Microsoft's stock price jumped by about 9% following the announcement. Register writer Iain Thomson said that “has got to be more than a little embarrassing.”

Journalist Ed Bott joked that “mainstream support for Steve Ballmer ended in 2009. Extended support ends in 2014,” while a spoof account for tech evangelist Jeff Jarvis snarked “what Microsoft needs is a CEO who thinks big, like Elon Musk.”

Snide comments were unsurprisingly rife on Google Plus as well. Blogger Patrick Jordan weighed in with “I'm sure he's going to be a business school study, for all the wrong reasons.”

Well-known Rackspace startup liaison officer Robert Scoble, as part of a lengthy open letter to Microsoft's board, said that Microsoft under Ballmer “is like that super smart kid who is doing drugs and not living up to its potential.”

Pocket Labs' Gary Royal dug all the way back to antiquity for his zinger, saying that Microsoft's board “no doubt plans to install a Caligula to make Ballmer's Tiberius seem sane, tolerant and kind by comparison.”

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7 IT security skills certifications on the rise

GIAC IT security certifications, among others, show strong gains in demand

A number of IT security skills certifications requiring candidates to pass exams have sharply gained in terms of demand and pay value, according to a new Foote Partners report.

The “2013 IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report” is based on the tracking of the demand for a wide range of IT skills at 2,496 private and public-sector U.S. and Canadian employers for a total of 151,864 IT professionals.

For the second quarter, seven IT security certifications gained 10% or more in market value in terms of demand from the previous quarter, according to Foote Partners. David Foote, chief analyst and research officer, says obtaining certifications in IT skills typically means the worker’s pay gets a boost, often as a bonus for having been certified for certain skills through training and passing an exam of some type.

Foote Partners tracks 61 separate IT security certifications overall, and over the past three months five of the seven hottest are produced by the Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) organization, which is affiliated with SANS Institute for training.

The five GIAC certifications singled out are:

Certified Incident Handler, which spiked 22.2% in demand according to the companies reporting to Foote Partners.
Foote says which typically translates into a 1% to 2% pay bonus to the employee holding the security certification.
Certified Firewall Analyst, rising 20%.
Certified Forensics Examiner, up 16.7%.
Certified Intrusion Analyst, up 10%.
Certified Forensics Analyst, up 10%.

Two other IT security certifications were also considered valuable in terms of boosting pay during the past three months.

One of them is the CWNP Certified Wireless Security Professional certification, up 16%, from the Certified Wireless Network Professional organization.

The other is the Infosys Security Engineering Professional certification, known as the as the ISSEP/CISSP certification, and which is up 10%. It recognizes advanced security engineering and was designed by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) in coordination with the U.S. National Security Agency.

Foote notes that while trends can show upward spikes in demand, they can also drop in a three- and six-month timeframe. He adds that security spending tends to be driven by corporate need to achieve regulatory compliance.
The GIAC IT security certifications cited in the Foote Partners report were among those considered to provide “the highest pay premiums” along with non-security specific ones, such as the Open Group Master Architect and the EMC Cloud Architect Expert (IT-as-a-Service). “Cloud certifications haven’t been around for a long time, so we’re just starting to put in this data during the past year,” Foote points out.

Other IT security certifications are also ranked among those earning the highest pay premiums, though they didn’t necessarily show the three-month market-value jump. These include the IT security certifications known as the GIAC Security Leadership; Certified Information Systems Security Professional; Certified Information Security Manager; CyberSecurity Forensic Analyst; and the Information Systems Security Architecture Professional (ISSAP-CISSP).

The Foote Partners quarterly report also cited significant rise in market value in a number of non-security-specific certifications, including the CWNP/Certified Wireless Network Expert and CWNP/Certified Wireless Network Administrator certifications. Some HP systems administration certifications rose sharply in value as did some project management certifications. Three Oracle database administrator certifications jumped 10% or more in pay value. However, a number of Oracle certifications also declined 10% over the previous quarter. These decliners were: Oracle SOA Infrastructure Implementation Certified Expert; Oracle Certified Professional Java EE Web Services Developer and Oracle Certified Master, Java EE Enterprise Architect.

The only IT security certification seen as falling 10% or more in pay value in comparison to the previous quarter was the GIAC Certified Penetration Tester certification, which dropped by 33.3%.

The Foote Partners report points out that overall, IT certifications in general have actually been falling in value since 2007, so it’s notable that 289 IT certifications increased last quarter, up 0.84% in value overall. Foote Partners also continuously tracks the demand for IT roles and responsibilities not based on IT certifications.

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642-181: Cisco Unified Presence Design and Implementation

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QUESTION 1
You have recently upgraded as follows:
From:
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 5.x Cisco Unified Presence Release 1 .x
To:
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 6.x Cisco Unified Presence Release 6.x
Which feature is not found in the later releases?

A. server redundancy
B. SIP PUBLISH trunk
C. calendaring via Microsoft Exchange
D. adjunct licensing
E. line appearance by user definition

Answer: A

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QUESTION 2
Which two solutions are supported with Cisco Unified Presence? (Choose two.)

A. Microsoft Windows 2000
B. Microsoft Exchange 2000
C. Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005
D. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Answer: C,D

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QUESTION 3
A Cisco Unified Personal Communicator is configured as follows:
as a device in Cisco Unified communications Manager Release 6.x user name is UPCXXXXX
How many user licenses are consumed when a primary phone is not set?

A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4


Answer: C

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QUESTION 4
Which is the most important issue to be aware of when bulk assigning user licensing for presence users?

A. Enable Cisco Unified Presence licensing before enabling Personal Communicator.
B. All users must beconfigureci before enabling Cisco Unifieci Presence and Cisco Unified
Personal Communicator licensing.
C. Cisco Unified Presence and Cisco Unified Personal Communicator licensing should first be
enabled on the Cisco Unified Presence server.
D. Do not license the same user in multiple clusters.

Answer: D

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QUESTION 5
What type of users must be created on Cisco Unified Communications Manager when Cisco
Unified Presence users are created?

A. line-based
B. line-appearance-based
C. either line-based or line-appearance-based
D. both line-based and line-appearance-based

Answer: C

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