security, encryption, and healthcare

[Joshua Zeidner]

  Healthcare is definately growing... I would guess it will probably
be the next bubble sector, if we have another bubble.  You can take a
look at the Dow Jones World Developed Health Care Index:

  http://finance.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX%3A.W3HCR

  At a certain level, money and investment simply follow these growth
curves in the various securities, futures, and stock markets,
regardless of whether these companies are actually providing a value
or not.  All too often the financial projections diverge from the
worlds of regulation and policy making( and are often at odds with one
another  ).  And given the problems in the medical and pharma worlds,
this is certainly the case.  But that has been the character of our
country since the 70s... will things change?  who knows!

  As for Cryptography, and anything security related... if you do plan
on operating in this area it acts a bit differently than being a
corporate code jockey.  You need academic credentials, and a history
of publication to be taken seriously.  If you are a self-appointed
math genius, this will not get you very far.  You need to be able to
convince large groups and HR departments that you have a serious and
quantifiable background in these disciplines.  Just 'getting into'
this field is not possible without a commitment to school or perhaps
military.

  this activity of jumping onto the next 'hot technology' is really
not going to be a very profitable game in coming years.  The Ruby
people I find are already jumping ship, now that every person who owns
a laptop has become a Ruby programmer and they can no longer charge
high rates.  Time to rewrite the resume!  "I think I'll make myself a
Python expert this time".  The most important thing to watch is labor
regulations( both foreign and domestic ), if the attitude at DOL
changes, then a skills investment may make sense.  Right now, our
policies do not favor domestic engineers on the middle level pay
scale.  And so it goes...

  Unfortunately there are no good organization that really track these
kinds of trends for American engineers.  Why?  I'll tell you why.
Because there is a large group of people here  in this country who
ended up in this field who had no investment in training or
credentials.  So naturally, they oppose any kind of opinions which
would suggest that to be considered an engineer one must have a degree
or some level of accreditation.  These are the types who say... "some
of the best people I know have no degree at all".  Some of the most
arrogant and self-serving people I know have no degree and insist,
despite the fact that they have little ability to work with a larger
community of people, that they are much more talented than %95 of
people working as software developers.  They are convinced they are
going to be the next Marc Andreeson or something.  Still though, some
disciplines are totally off limits to code honchos, and cryptography
and security have historically been one of them.

  In general though, the trend has been towards a cheaping of all
scientific disciplines.  Instead of computer scientists, we have
coders.

  -jmz


ps. for a good rundown of the problems with DOL and engineering check
out Norm Matloff or The Programmers Guild:
http://www.programmersguild.org/







On 2/27/07, Josh Coffman <josh_coffman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>     I'm getting the feeling there is some momentum building in a couple IT sector: Security/Cryptography & Healthcare. I read a recent article that Red Hat is getting into Healthcare. I have a friend whose primary job is application support in the Healthcare industry. Security is always a concern in the windows world, and I have a Novell friend who's been telling me the biggest buzz he hears is Security (& healthcare).
>
>    I like to be ahead of the curve when possible... Anyone know any good resources for those sectors? I'm more interested in the Security/Encryption arena because it plays right into my Math strengths. (And it should play a part in the healthcare arena)
>
> TIA,
> -j
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
.0000. communication.
.0001. development.
.0010. strategy.
.0100. appeal.

JOSHUA M. ZEIDNER
IT Consultant

( 602 ) 490 8006
jjzeidner at gmail.com