In fact, SCO UnixWare 7...is the ideal "deployment server for Linux applications."
Now, I might not be terribly smart, but wouldn't the ideal deployment server for Linux applications be...Linux? Why the hell would anyone buy SCO to emulate Linux in order to run a Linux app?
Kleenes [sic] is one that is on its downward slide. People are now referring to kleenexes instead of tissues. If that continues, Kleenex may cease to be a defensible trademark.
Probably not. Just because the great unwashed masses call a generic product by a brand name doesn't mean the trademark becomes unenforceable. Kleenex can't go around suing everyone who says "Kleenex" in reference to generic store-brand tissues. The only way the Kleenex trademark would become invalid is if those store-brand tissues said "Generic Kleenex" on the box, and the Kleenex people didn't take legal action.
If I decide to call all personal computers "Dells", it doesn't mean Dell is in danger of losing its trademark; it means I'm an idiot.
irony:incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result
This is only ironic in the "Alanis Morissette" (read: incorrect) sense of the word. In light of the earlier article, one would expect them to use PNG, not GIF, which is what they did.
Re:Thats because its utah :)
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911 Calls Linux
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· Score: 1
Umm, I beleive Mr. Twain's reference was that it wouldn't be worth it to get into heaven if you had to put up with more than one woman (from Utah or otherwise) on Earth. No slight against those hot Utah babes, it's more of a general misogynist comment.
I suppose that one bonus side-effect of the increasing complexity of cars is that dealerships are making more revenue on repairs and maintenance that "normal people" can't do at home anymore. I doubt that was intentional, and is probably offset a bit by the longer warranties new cars have nowadays.
Interesting proposition, though. He's probably right about some of it - that technology is getting more and more "black box" to the end consumer. "I just push these buttons, and my burrito comes out of this box heated up!" Probably not a very good thing in the long run - it takes control and choice away from the person using the technology and leaves them at the mercy of the company developing the technology.
For what it's worth, the "professionals" who work on cars today are mostly just parts replacers, who swap out parts based on error codes the car gives them. They're not the same breed of mechanic as 30 years ago, when the guy who worked on your car actually knew how it worked...
I heard the same thing happened in the car industry. All through the 50's, 60's, and 70's people would tinker and tune their cars, fiddles with the carburators, etc. Meanwhile, the car industry strived to make "tinker-proof" cars, since they saw the home mechanic as some sort of threat (not sure why).
Where did you hear this? Automakers aren't afraid of the home mechanic. The reason cars from that earlier era were more "hackable" than cars now isn't because the manufacturers decided to make them "tinker-proof" - it's because stricter and stricter government regulations and tighter competition from other companies forced them to computerize the hell out of every system in the car to reduce emissions and increase gas mileage. From that, it follows that there is less customization that the car owner can do - it's much easier to adjust a carburettor butterfly than to reprogram a fuel-injector control system...
Intel, on the other hand, is just trying to boost sales of their more expensive lines of processors. There's no government regulation forcing them to disable SMP on the Celeron. Unfortunately for them, I suspect it will backfire. The kind of people who run SMP Cels are a) the kind of people who won't buy a dual PIII anyway, and b) the kind of people whose friends ask them for computer-buying advice. The badmouthing Intel will take from this is surely going to send a few more folks AMD's way...
Here in Austin, TX, Goodwill Industries has a special store for donating computer equipment. They refurbish and resell the stuff, giving jobs to disabled folks. Not only is it a worthy cause, but one can often find such deals as complete working Commodore 64 and Apple II systems for ten bucks...
IIRC, the Altair could be expanded to address two 256k 8-inch floppy drives, giving a total storage of 512kb. Not too shabby, considering the max RAM on these things was in the 64kb neighborhood. Paper tapes were also an option.
They were pretty hefty, too. About like a big-ass piece of stereo equipment from the same era.
But I'm wondering if this is for real. How was the guy doing wills and legal documents on this thing? Didn't the Altair just have toggle switches and LEDs on the front panel? Did he have one of those teletype arrangements so the thing had a keyboard?
Sure, car companies make cars that are ripoffs of each other all the time (see any SUV), but not when the styling of the car is so distinctive, as is the case for the Vette or Firebird.
Or, it could simply be that other car companies have better taste than General Motors. Those two cars are a couple of the ugliest vehicles available today.
Besides, if Chevy sued someone over a Corvette knockoff, they'd be countersued by Acura for the styling cues that the Vette stole from the NSX...;-)
Car companies generally don't sue over this sort of thing anyway. They're resigned to the constant, spiraling "arms race" of their business, and they know as soon as they innovate something, everyone else will steal it. It's just part of them doing business, and it's what's driven the automotive industry to continually produce better and better products.
Apple should realize the same thing, as often as they sue people for these kinds of infringements. Maybe a few less lawsuits and more money spent on developing their next innovation would get them out of the backwater corner of the technology industry that they've been stuck in since about 1995...
You are half-correct. Tax money doesn't fund the USPS at all. But it is a government agency. It is entirely self-supporting, getting all its revenue from postal fees. Hence the periodic rate hikes.
I can't see any reason for the USPS to exist outside of high volume, low speed junk mail delivery.
Or to allow the millions of Americans who don't have E-mail to communicate with each other, or for people to send bill payments without paying extra bank fees for "online" payment systems, or for me to be able to send a birthday card to a friend without paying for FedEx or UPS rates...
The USPS isn't dead yet, nor should it be. We've got a LONG way to go before E-mail replaces the postal service...
If this question comes about as a result of the e-mail that everyone is forwarding around, I'm pretty sure it's a hoax. The EFF has an alert about it here.
The USPS has neither the resources nor the jurisdiction to do this; it's just another in a long string of chain e-mails that morons forward around without knowing anything about it.
In general, Internet taxes won't work. There are only two real models that could work: charge the ISPs a tax, which they would pass on to subscribers (I imagine AOL and others would fight this tooth and nail), or a national sales tax on purchases made over the Internet. Taxing things such as e-mail or bandwidth would be impractical.
That won't stop legislators from trying, though...
Re:Everything computer is a Microsoft spinoff
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SCO does Linux
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· Score: 1
If you'll remember, Microsoft invented the PC.
Funny, the way I remember it is that IBM "invented" the PC...
I personally email every congrassman, and state legislator I can, whenever something like this come's up (I did for this action too). Unfortunately my email is apparently one of four:(
No, the problem is that legislators (or, more accurately, their staff who deals with correspondence) know how easy e-mail is (and how easy it is forge a lot of messages to fake a groundswell of support), so they don't lend it much credence. I would guess that one real, paper letter is probably worth at least twenty e-mails.
That said, an e-mail is better than nothing. But if you really want your voice to be heard, send a paper letter, or call your representative's office. If you can't or won't do that, at least send an e-mail...
The Income Tax was started to raise money for World War I. It is a voluntary program! You don't have to pay if you don't want to.
Inasmuch as all amendments to the Constitution are "voluntary", as in: you can choose not to obey the law of the land by leaving and renouncing citizenship...
See Amendment XVI:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
[Ratified February 3, 1913]
Now, either Mr. Schiff is a moron, he lives in a strange time-vortex in which 1913 never happened, or he's spreading a little "brain-washing" of his own (which it appears you bought into).
*sigh* I wish folks would actually read the Constitution before appointing themselves scholars...
I'm sure the marketing genius who came up with this one didn't clear it with ole Billy-Boy...
Somehow, I suspect a lot happens in Redmond that doesn't get cleared with "ole Billy-Boy". I highly doubt he's in every marketing meeting for every little stunt they come up with. Gates is probably involved in much higher-level stuff than this (although I personally have the feeling he's more of a company mascot than fearless leader at this point - think Ronald McDonald). Microsoft is way too big for one person to keep track of everything that's going on...
Most of SGI's customers left a while ago. That's why they're doing this - they aren't able to compete anymore. The faster and cheaper PCs get, the less likely it is that $10,000 workstations from SGI (and others) are going to be considered an option.
It's happening across the board - everybody (not just SGI) is reorganizing around Intel on the low end, because they can't compete on price with Intel systems, and the majority of low-end systems are sold on price, not performance. I'm not saying it's right, but I would rather see SGI stay alive by selling Linux than die a slow, wasting death clutching onto IRIX...
P.S. Before anyone feels the need to point it out, I know that the $10K SGI will run rings around the $3K Intel box - but try to convince a purchasing manager of that...
There is a program available called "p3nfs" that allows you to mount the Psion's drives on your Linux filesystem, and then you can use standard Linux commands (cp, tar, rm, ls, etc) to operate on those files. It doesn't do any of the file-type conversion that PsiWin does, but at least it's good for making periodic backups and transferring files to/from the Psion.
It requires a small OPL program to be running on the S5, so you'll need PsiWin (or minicom under Linux connecting to the Terms app on the Psion) to transfer that file over first.
I'm currently using a somewhat more expensive, but convenient method of transferring: I have a 48M compact flash card for my Psion, and a PCMCIA adapter that allows me to mount it under Linux on my laptop, so I can transfer files that way.
If you have a copy of Windows, it might also be a workable solution to buy VMWare and use it to run a small Windows install for PsiWin...
That said, I love my Psion. It may not be as compact as Pilot or as flashy as a color-screen CE device, but the EPOC software is a pleasure to use. It's a very well-designed machine. I wish it was a little more Linux-friendly, but you can't have everything. Supposedly the new Series 5mx is twice as fast and comes with twice the RAM, and has a brighter screen, so it should be a very nice little machine.
Well, according to Netcraft, they're running FreeBSD.
This must be recent, because I recall reading about the attempted switch to NT long ago, and when I checked Netcraft at that time, it revealed Solaris. My guess is that Microsoft found it embarrassing to leave such a high-profile project in the hands of a competitor, so moved it to FreeBSD, which they probably consider less of a threat than Sun.
It could also be that the web-server front end is FreeBSD, while all the backend mail-handling routines still run on Solaris.
That, or Netcraft's detection routines aren't entirely accurate.
This article sounds a lot like wishful thinking to me. When was the last time people showered you with adoration because you bought arline tickets online?
Within the confines of the Internet itself, there are social strata, certainly. But the "real" world is not going to idolize this "Net-Set" any more than they idolize people who know a lot about cars or banking or any other complex subject.
The reason wealthy people are admired is because they are wealthy, and presumably their status is unattainable by the "common" people. If it was easy to become a billionaire, everyone would do it. Getting on the 'Net and learning to use it is within the grasp of most people, and therefore impresses only the very, very dumb.
The idiotic thing about this article is that the premise is that people who know how to navigate the 'Net and use it are the new elite. As if buying books at Amazon takes a huge amount of skill or knowledge. It says nothing about having an in-depth knowledge of how the system works, or being able to do much more than point-and-click. These aren't skills that will be cherished and admired; they're skills everyone will have.
...AOL has a valid argument based on their well known and publicized security policy regarding giving names and passwords to 3rd parties.
But why isn't AOL screaming that GAIM and all the other "unsupported platform" AIM implementations are evil, because they are written by a third party and ask for your password? The whole username/password thing is a smokescreen. AOL has a few (very few) valid points in this argument (as does MS), but the "password hijacking" one is not a valid argument unless they enforce it across the board, with all AIM clients.
AOL really only has three valid options here:
1) Change the "standard" and not allow anyone else to write clients. Return it to a proprietary protocol. AOL loses a (sizeable?) chunk of user base, many of whom migrate to competing (Microsoft) technologies.
b) Open the protocol completely and let anyone and everyone write clients. Microsoft wins this battle, but AOL's AIM servers are suddenly flooded with many, many more users, many of whom aren't seeing AOL's advertisements, and therefore aren't a revenue stream. The system might eventually collapse here.
III) Close the protocol, and only allow "licensed" authors to write clients, approved by AOL. This would be a major headache for them, as they would have to negotiate agreements with every programmer who wants to make a Perl/Tk implementation, or a Python version, or a KDE/QT client, etc... The upside is AOL could charge MS a license fee to help defray the cost of the additional load on AOL's servers.
Katz writes commentary. If he knew as much about technical stuff as you, he would prolly be a sysadmin instead of a writer.
And if he were a good writer, you might find a complete sentence or two in his articles, instead of the jumbled mass of fragmented thoughts he generates...
Good point about the filtering, though. I've been filtering him out since that feature was added, but I figured I'd give him a shot today and see if he's improved any. He's still desperately casting about for a crusade to justify himself, and trying to convince anyone who will listen that he really is a Geek (emphasis his), so I guess it's back to the preferences page for me. I'll swing by again in a few more months and see how it's going.
Re:Security Concerns...
on
Beaming Money
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· Score: 1
Well, they said the word "secure" three times in that paragraph, AND "state-of-the-art". How much more do you want...?
I'm very skeptical of this scheme. First, they have a stupid name. "PayPal"? Uggh. Sounds like a toy cash register made by Mattel.
Not to mention the enormous difficulty of getting this thing to spread. I don't have a Palm or WinCE device (I prefer EPOC, thanks), so if someone wanted to "beam" me the ten bucks I lent them for lunch, they would have to first explain the scheme, quell my fears about its safety, and then convince me to download the software (most likely Windows and Mac only), give this company my private financial information, and then collect my ten dollars. Yeah, ummm... There's an ATM a block away. Let's go get my money.
Because, as we all know, an academic degree is the best measurement of hands on vendor- and application- specific skills. NOT.
Of course it isn't. The best measure of hands-on skills is a certification that can be obtained via a three-week "boot camp" by anyone with a modicum of computer experience.
"Professional" certifications will always be a joke as long as companies use them for marketing purposes only ("See how many MCSE's there are? NT is popular! Support is available!", "See how many CNE's there are? Netware is popular! Support is available!") rather than as a truly objective measurement of a person's skills and knowledge. None of the people I know who are "certified" by any of these programs got the cert because by doing so they would expand their skills - they all got it because it's worth a couple thousand more when the salary negotiations come up.
Such programs remind me of the "driver safety" courses most states offer to let you remove a traffic ticket from your record. They care not a whit about teaching actual driving skills or imparting safety knowledge - they just want to make sure you sit there for six hours and regurgitate the "right" (i.e., the ones you were given a few moments ago) answers when prompted.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, I might not be terribly smart, but wouldn't the ideal deployment server for Linux applications be...Linux? Why the hell would anyone buy SCO to emulate Linux in order to run a Linux app?
Probably not. Just because the great unwashed masses call a generic product by a brand name doesn't mean the trademark becomes unenforceable. Kleenex can't go around suing everyone who says "Kleenex" in reference to generic store-brand tissues. The only way the Kleenex trademark would become invalid is if those store-brand tissues said "Generic Kleenex" on the box, and the Kleenex people didn't take legal action.
If I decide to call all personal computers "Dells", it doesn't mean Dell is in danger of losing its trademark; it means I'm an idiot.
This is only ironic in the "Alanis Morissette" (read: incorrect) sense of the word. In light of the earlier article, one would expect them to use PNG, not GIF, which is what they did.
And a funny one, at that...
Interesting proposition, though. He's probably right about some of it - that technology is getting more and more "black box" to the end consumer. "I just push these buttons, and my burrito comes out of this box heated up!" Probably not a very good thing in the long run - it takes control and choice away from the person using the technology and leaves them at the mercy of the company developing the technology.
For what it's worth, the "professionals" who work on cars today are mostly just parts replacers, who swap out parts based on error codes the car gives them. They're not the same breed of mechanic as 30 years ago, when the guy who worked on your car actually knew how it worked...
Where did you hear this? Automakers aren't afraid of the home mechanic. The reason cars from that earlier era were more "hackable" than cars now isn't because the manufacturers decided to make them "tinker-proof" - it's because stricter and stricter government regulations and tighter competition from other companies forced them to computerize the hell out of every system in the car to reduce emissions and increase gas mileage. From that, it follows that there is less customization that the car owner can do - it's much easier to adjust a carburettor butterfly than to reprogram a fuel-injector control system...
Intel, on the other hand, is just trying to boost sales of their more expensive lines of processors. There's no government regulation forcing them to disable SMP on the Celeron. Unfortunately for them, I suspect it will backfire. The kind of people who run SMP Cels are a) the kind of people who won't buy a dual PIII anyway, and b) the kind of people whose friends ask them for computer-buying advice. The badmouthing Intel will take from this is surely going to send a few more folks AMD's way...
Here in Austin, TX, Goodwill Industries has a special store for donating computer equipment. They refurbish and resell the stuff, giving jobs to disabled folks. Not only is it a worthy cause, but one can often find such deals as complete working Commodore 64 and Apple II systems for ten bucks...
They were pretty hefty, too. About like a big-ass piece of stereo equipment from the same era.
But I'm wondering if this is for real. How was the guy doing wills and legal documents on this thing? Didn't the Altair just have toggle switches and LEDs on the front panel? Did he have one of those teletype arrangements so the thing had a keyboard?
Somebody should upgrade this guy to a VIC-20...
Or, it could simply be that other car companies have better taste than General Motors. Those two cars are a couple of the ugliest vehicles available today.
Besides, if Chevy sued someone over a Corvette knockoff, they'd be countersued by Acura for the styling cues that the Vette stole from the NSX... ;-)
Car companies generally don't sue over this sort of thing anyway. They're resigned to the constant, spiraling "arms race" of their business, and they know as soon as they innovate something, everyone else will steal it. It's just part of them doing business, and it's what's driven the automotive industry to continually produce better and better products.
Apple should realize the same thing, as often as they sue people for these kinds of infringements. Maybe a few less lawsuits and more money spent on developing their next innovation would get them out of the backwater corner of the technology industry that they've been stuck in since about 1995...
You are half-correct. Tax money doesn't fund the USPS at all. But it is a government agency. It is entirely self-supporting, getting all its revenue from postal fees. Hence the periodic rate hikes.
Or to allow the millions of Americans who don't have E-mail to communicate with each other, or for people to send bill payments without paying extra bank fees for "online" payment systems, or for me to be able to send a birthday card to a friend without paying for FedEx or UPS rates...
The USPS isn't dead yet, nor should it be. We've got a LONG way to go before E-mail replaces the postal service...
The USPS has neither the resources nor the jurisdiction to do this; it's just another in a long string of chain e-mails that morons forward around without knowing anything about it.
In general, Internet taxes won't work. There are only two real models that could work: charge the ISPs a tax, which they would pass on to subscribers (I imagine AOL and others would fight this tooth and nail), or a national sales tax on purchases made over the Internet. Taxing things such as e-mail or bandwidth would be impractical.
That won't stop legislators from trying, though...
Funny, the way I remember it is that IBM "invented" the PC...
No, the problem is that legislators (or, more accurately, their staff who deals with correspondence) know how easy e-mail is (and how easy it is forge a lot of messages to fake a groundswell of support), so they don't lend it much credence. I would guess that one real, paper letter is probably worth at least twenty e-mails.
That said, an e-mail is better than nothing. But if you really want your voice to be heard, send a paper letter, or call your representative's office. If you can't or won't do that, at least send an e-mail...
Inasmuch as all amendments to the Constitution are "voluntary", as in: you can choose not to obey the law of the land by leaving and renouncing citizenship...
See Amendment XVI:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
[Ratified February 3, 1913]
Now, either Mr. Schiff is a moron, he lives in a strange time-vortex in which 1913 never happened, or he's spreading a little "brain-washing" of his own (which it appears you bought into).
*sigh* I wish folks would actually read the Constitution before appointing themselves scholars...
Somehow, I suspect a lot happens in Redmond that doesn't get cleared with "ole Billy-Boy". I highly doubt he's in every marketing meeting for every little stunt they come up with. Gates is probably involved in much higher-level stuff than this (although I personally have the feeling he's more of a company mascot than fearless leader at this point - think Ronald McDonald). Microsoft is way too big for one person to keep track of everything that's going on...
Most of SGI's customers left a while ago. That's why they're doing this - they aren't able to compete anymore. The faster and cheaper PCs get, the less likely it is that $10,000 workstations from SGI (and others) are going to be considered an option.
It's happening across the board - everybody (not just SGI) is reorganizing around Intel on the low end, because they can't compete on price with Intel systems, and the majority of low-end systems are sold on price, not performance. I'm not saying it's right, but I would rather see SGI stay alive by selling Linux than die a slow, wasting death clutching onto IRIX...
P.S. Before anyone feels the need to point it out, I know that the $10K SGI will run rings around the $3K Intel box - but try to convince a purchasing manager of that...
It requires a small OPL program to be running on the S5, so you'll need PsiWin (or minicom under Linux connecting to the Terms app on the Psion) to transfer that file over first.
I'm currently using a somewhat more expensive, but convenient method of transferring: I have a 48M compact flash card for my Psion, and a PCMCIA adapter that allows me to mount it under Linux on my laptop, so I can transfer files that way.
If you have a copy of Windows, it might also be a workable solution to buy VMWare and use it to run a small Windows install for PsiWin...
That said, I love my Psion. It may not be as compact as Pilot or as flashy as a color-screen CE device, but the EPOC software is a pleasure to use. It's a very well-designed machine. I wish it was a little more Linux-friendly, but you can't have everything. Supposedly the new Series 5mx is twice as fast and comes with twice the RAM, and has a brighter screen, so it should be a very nice little machine.
This must be recent, because I recall reading about the attempted switch to NT long ago, and when I checked Netcraft at that time, it revealed Solaris. My guess is that Microsoft found it embarrassing to leave such a high-profile project in the hands of a competitor, so moved it to FreeBSD, which they probably consider less of a threat than Sun.
It could also be that the web-server front end is FreeBSD, while all the backend mail-handling routines still run on Solaris.
That, or Netcraft's detection routines aren't entirely accurate.
Within the confines of the Internet itself, there are social strata, certainly. But the "real" world is not going to idolize this "Net-Set" any more than they idolize people who know a lot about cars or banking or any other complex subject.
The reason wealthy people are admired is because they are wealthy, and presumably their status is unattainable by the "common" people. If it was easy to become a billionaire, everyone would do it. Getting on the 'Net and learning to use it is within the grasp of most people, and therefore impresses only the very, very dumb.
The idiotic thing about this article is that the premise is that people who know how to navigate the 'Net and use it are the new elite. As if buying books at Amazon takes a huge amount of skill or knowledge. It says nothing about having an in-depth knowledge of how the system works, or being able to do much more than point-and-click. These aren't skills that will be cherished and admired; they're skills everyone will have.
But why isn't AOL screaming that GAIM and all the other "unsupported platform" AIM implementations are evil, because they are written by a third party and ask for your password? The whole username/password thing is a smokescreen. AOL has a few (very few) valid points in this argument (as does MS), but the "password hijacking" one is not a valid argument unless they enforce it across the board, with all AIM clients.
AOL really only has three valid options here:
1) Change the "standard" and not allow anyone else to write clients. Return it to a proprietary protocol. AOL loses a (sizeable?) chunk of user base, many of whom migrate to competing (Microsoft) technologies.
b) Open the protocol completely and let anyone and everyone write clients. Microsoft wins this battle, but AOL's AIM servers are suddenly flooded with many, many more users, many of whom aren't seeing AOL's advertisements, and therefore aren't a revenue stream. The system might eventually collapse here.
III) Close the protocol, and only allow "licensed" authors to write clients, approved by AOL. This would be a major headache for them, as they would have to negotiate agreements with every programmer who wants to make a Perl/Tk implementation, or a Python version, or a KDE/QT client, etc... The upside is AOL could charge MS a license fee to help defray the cost of the additional load on AOL's servers.
Am I missing any other options?
And if he were a good writer, you might find a complete sentence or two in his articles, instead of the jumbled mass of fragmented thoughts he generates...
Good point about the filtering, though. I've been filtering him out since that feature was added, but I figured I'd give him a shot today and see if he's improved any. He's still desperately casting about for a crusade to justify himself, and trying to convince anyone who will listen that he really is a Geek (emphasis his), so I guess it's back to the preferences page for me. I'll swing by again in a few more months and see how it's going.
I'm very skeptical of this scheme. First, they have a stupid name. "PayPal"? Uggh. Sounds like a toy cash register made by Mattel.
Not to mention the enormous difficulty of getting this thing to spread. I don't have a Palm or WinCE device (I prefer EPOC, thanks), so if someone wanted to "beam" me the ten bucks I lent them for lunch, they would have to first explain the scheme, quell my fears about its safety, and then convince me to download the software (most likely Windows and Mac only), give this company my private financial information, and then collect my ten dollars. Yeah, ummm... There's an ATM a block away. Let's go get my money.
we cant you simply say what colour you want your box like you do with a car ?
Your prayers have been answered.
Of course it isn't. The best measure of hands-on skills is a certification that can be obtained via a three-week "boot camp" by anyone with a modicum of computer experience.
"Professional" certifications will always be a joke as long as companies use them for marketing purposes only ("See how many MCSE's there are? NT is popular! Support is available!", "See how many CNE's there are? Netware is popular! Support is available!") rather than as a truly objective measurement of a person's skills and knowledge. None of the people I know who are "certified" by any of these programs got the cert because by doing so they would expand their skills - they all got it because it's worth a couple thousand more when the salary negotiations come up.
Such programs remind me of the "driver safety" courses most states offer to let you remove a traffic ticket from your record. They care not a whit about teaching actual driving skills or imparting safety knowledge - they just want to make sure you sit there for six hours and regurgitate the "right" (i.e., the ones you were given a few moments ago) answers when prompted.
Pfft!