Erica Ann writes

True - You can have the knowledge without having to pay to be Certified when it comes to computers.
True - Just because you have the certification does not mean you actually know the material as well as someone who is not certified. You might just be good at taking tests.

So what is the point of getting IT Certifications? To have a piece of paper? Superficially that might be the big debate. But, take a closer look at that and you might find more to it than what meets the eye.

The discussion then moves on to a long talk on manager’s perceptions of certifications and why you may need certification to get a job. There are many valid points, and the situations she describes (where the HR department and/or hiring manager sees the resumé) …

The updated Certification Study Guide for MySQL 5.0 exams is coming to a bookstore near you!

In fact, it may already be there. Officially, it should have been released about a week ago, but it seems that e.g. Amazon have yet to get it in stock.

The book is published by MySQL Press, a joint venture between MySQL AB and Pearson Publishing (a.k.a. Sams). A sample chapter (on the MySQL Query Browswer) is available on-line. Personally, I find this particular sample to be one of the “weaker” chapters in the book and thus not very representative of the great writings of Paul and Stefan. (Yes, I had a part in the writing, too. But it’s not just because of alphabetical ordering that my name appears last in the list of authors ).

I think it’s a great book, but of course I would. If you …

I've spent the last few days in a series of meetings as part of the MySQL Management Team (MT) and also with our Board of Directors.  One of the topics we've talked about extensively is how we can continue to expand our community worldwide.  Many people know that MySQL gets over 40,000 downloads per day.  (No, not per month, per day!)  And with MySQL 5.0 release candidate expected shortly, that number will likely increase over the coming months as many people check out the latest features including stored procedures, triggers, views, etc. 

The interesting thing is that while two thirds of MySQL revenue is generated in North America, we have huge download volumes in countries where we have no business efforts.  For example, Brazil is our number one download country after the US, generating more …

Did you know that MySQL Certification was voted one of the hottest new certifications for 2005?

We’ll admit it: When we saw how well this certification did on our reader survey, we double-checked the numbers. Then we double-checked them again. And again. (O.K., maybe not that many times, but we definitely did a few retakes).

It’s not that we didn’t think the kudos weren’t deserved — by all accounts this is a solid credential that employers are using to determine whether candidates have the knowledge needed to set up and maintain their open-source MySQL databases.

Seeing how our certification numbers are picking up, I can’t say I was quite as surprised. But it’s awfully nice of them to take notice.

Dunno why they assume that the end-users …

There's a new quick poll on MySQL dev zone, we would like to learn which IDE or editor you use for developing MySQL-related applications.

We decided to chuck editors in because some are really an IDE anyway (I know people who live in Emacs ;-)

A company in Belgium has a patent-pending system ("SMS2mail") whereby you can text a word to a free short code and get back more information by email to the address of your choice. So where's the invention, exactly? ;-)
For further details see this article: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25732

Given the current fuss around Linus and the Linux trademark, I should perhaps clarify that I think intellectual property (IP) is important. Basic copyright and trademarks make sense. Patents also, they give an inventor some time to market their creation.
It just goes horribly wrong with software patents. See my recent post for an idea about where the line can be drawn effectively.

On my recent trip to the Wind River Mountains (you should go) I lugged along what proved to be a very heavy book. It wasn't physically all that weighty, but it made for dense reading. Karl Jaspers: Basic Philosophical Writings. Again, this was a recommendation from Tim, though I can't remember the context for Tim's recommending it to me at OSCON. After plowing through Jaspers, my brain no longer functions well enough to remember much of anything.... :-)

In case you're curious, here's a brief synopsis of his philosophy, from Wikipedia: In Philosophy (3 vols, 1932), Jaspers gave his view of the history of …

What a great -important and necessary- initiative!
From the site:

OpenUsability.org brings Open Source Developers and Usability Experts together
The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who want to contribute to software projects.
And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and as a consequence, more successful.

Postal services take good care of our items... so we were happy to use their services to ship three boxes of MySQL 10th anniversary T-shirts from Germany to my place in Australia - to hand out at local user groups, conferences, and send to other worthy individuals in this part of the world. Anyway, here's how they arrived:



But wait, there's more! [drumroll of anticipation]

The three boxes arrived separately. Pretty mangled as you can see. The second a few days after the first, and the last more than a week after the second. The third one had been opened by Australian customs for inspection (fair enough).

Luckily the t-shirts are undamaged. I've already handed out a few around Brisbane and Melbourne, so all is well. Good for a laugh. The t-shirts themselves, by the way, were printed in Bulgaria. …