IT certifications for newcomers

[wolf39us]

Oh yes.  I spent my teens and early 20's having some good ole fashion fun with Red Hat / Backtrack Linux.  Taking down networks, redirecting packets / images.  Capturing passwords, bypassing SSL with certs.  Before anyone jumps on that stuff, I didn't do it maliciously and reversed everything I did to mess with friends and family lol

A script kiddie then.

Had to learn quite a bit.  It's not like I just loaded an exe and hit "start" :-)

But yes many would consider that to be "script kiddie" status.  I've taught myself quite a bit more beyond just playing with that stuff.  

Just playing with that stuff in Linux forced me to learn a lot about the OS (since it wasn't familiar to me at the time).

[RobertE]

A script kiddie then.

Had to learn quite a bit.  It's not like I just loaded an exe and hit "start" :-)

But yes many would consider that to be "script kiddie" status.  I've taught myself quite a bit more beyond just playing with that stuff.  

Just playing with that stuff in Linux forced me to learn a lot about the OS (since it wasn't familiar to me at the time).

Linux is a fantastic operating system, very light, very stable (not as stable as UNIX) and I prefer to have Linux than either Windows or Mac. Where I work, we used to run some software of a Unix Server, it worked like a dream. Then they gave us a new version of the software installed on Windows embedded. I cannot possibly tell you how much I was and still am disappointed.

[wolf39us]

Had to learn quite a bit.  It's not like I just loaded an exe and hit "start" :-)

But yes many would consider that to be "script kiddie" status.  I've taught myself quite a bit more beyond just playing with that stuff.  

Just playing with that stuff in Linux forced me to learn a lot about the OS (since it wasn't familiar to me at the time).

Linux is a fantastic operating system, very light, very stable (not as stable as UNIX) and I prefer to have Linux than either Windows or Mac. Where I work, we used to run some software of a Unix Server, it worked like a dream. Then they gave us a new version of the software installed on Windows embedded. I cannot possibly tell you how much I was and still am disappointed.

It truly is an awesome experience.  Unfortunately being the gamer that I am, Linux just doesn't play well with the likes of DirectX.

I forgot to add to my last comment that my primary purpose for playing with those tools was to educate myself on WHY things work the way they do, WHY (insert exploit) works the way it does and how to use that information to my advantage.  Not just for entertainment :-)