[school-discuss] about s.i.f.

[mike eschman <meschman@etc-edu.com>]

hello,

i tried to sew my lips shut, but i have to comment on s.i.f.  about 2 years 
ago i met with a s.i.f. vendor (products incorporated s.i.f. protocol) on 
behalf of caddo school district in louisiana.

the vendor was ignorant of computing infrastructures in general, arrogant, 
microsoft-centric and his demo application was a bus scheduling system with 
one route that had less than a dozen pick-ups.

so we started to dig in s.i.f.  it pretty quickly became evident that we had 
met the top of the heap, and would have to head "down hill" or forget about 
s.i.f.

everything we found was glossy, over-priced and under-powered.

in general, protocols aimed at the education market specifically are about as 
trust-worthy as those e-mails "will you share your account with me?  i have 
millions and millions in a Nigerians bank ...", just with less moral courage.

people who are good at protocols have no interest in the education market.
they have no respect for the intellects or pocketbooks of the education 
community.  (because they are breathing).  those that do target education, 
literally "target" education, with half-baked techies that washed out in the 
real world (IF YOU'RE LUCKY) and salesmen with no i.t. background whatsoever.

spend your time on j-boss, soap and other broad target infrastructure 
middleware, stop obsessing about that next certification that's going to get 
you a raise to more than minimum wage (those jobs are gone), and in 3 to 5 
years you'll have something.  spend your time on s.i.f. you'll have an empty 
pocket.

s.i.f. is half-baked, and pitched at the clueless.  the desperate love it 
because it eschews technical jargon - that's a big part of the s.i.f. 
marketing focus, to let the clueless think they can have integration and stay 
brain-dead to infra-structure issues.  well, if you believe that, you deserve 
whatever happens to you - two times.

and don't worry about hearing more from me on s.i.f., my e-mail filter will 
move anything with s.i.f. in the subject straight to trash where it belongs.

it's nauseating to see the snake-oil guys have there way with the rubes.

but in large part the rubes deserve to get screwed, it's why they're here.

mike eschman, etc ...
http://www.etc-edu.com
"Not just an afterthought ...
-- 
in the time it takes to answer that question, i could have made another audio 
book!