Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Fraud at LinkedIn

I worked with this guy during a few months. Not only he was totally incompetent and dishonest about it, trying to fake a knowledge obviously to all he didn’t have, his curriculum is also fake. For example, his ‘University of Cambridge’ is actually a diploma mill.

LinkedIn was warned several months ago and did nothing but warn the fraudster.

Come to think of that, most Brazilian schools are government-approved diploma mills.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Oracle Databaſe 11g diſappoints

Oracle diſappoints. Once again. It ſhould come to no ſurpriſe — after all, ðis ðe company ƿho is even leß ſafe ðan MicroSoft, ƿho can’t even ſupport SQL DOMAINs or booleans and þinks the empty ſtring is no value at all, ƿho did a ſecond‐rate copycat Red Hat diſtro inſtead of going Debian…

But noƿ it ſeems ðey really made an effort at diſappointing. Ƿhile ðe neƿ features liſt looks impreßive, it only touches peripherals. No SQL improvements at all. Read again. No SQL improvements at all. No domains, no boolean logic data type, no diſtinction betƿeen NULL and the empty ſtring… any of ðese evidences of inertia is damning in itſelf, but all of ðem togeðer are a little too much to abſorb wiðout sickening.

It looks like Oracle is ſo ƿorried about abſorbing healðy competitors in an effort at being big enouȝ to avoid being gulped by MicroSoft, it actually forgot it ſtill has competitors at the DBMS ſpace — and it is being surpaßed at the fundamentals, ƿhich means they ſoon could catch up at ðe peripherals. Not to mention RDBMSs being around ðe corner. All hail our neƿ free ſoftƿare overlords, ¡your arrival is overdue!

Monday, August 6, 2007

Olympus E‐510

My ƿife’s Olympus E510 has finally arrived. Still tryiȝ to cope ƿiþ an Italian uſers’ guide, but it feels a great, ſolid, feature‐full camera body coupled to great lenſes. Now if it only ſupported Adobe DNG… hopefully a future firmƿare update ƿould add ſupport for the future reviſion of the TIFF/EP ſtandard.

Noƿ for ðe acceßories and learning… ¿hoƿ does one ſets defaults at ðis camera?

Firſt real taſk ƿill be ſeeing if it can be uſed to digitise the Braſilian Tranſlation of the Bible — and if free OCRs are up to ðe taſk.