Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

This is merely a mini-rant about the general state of certification in the computing field. I hold several major certifications and tactfully am not impressed with any of them.The current certs include MSCE+Internet, CNA, CCA, and IBM PSE. I am also working on the Redhat RHCE, Cisco CCNA and the Microsoft MCDBA. Now all of these sound pretty damn fancy, but trust me, they are NOT a true reflection of any type of computer skill. This is not an effort to toot my own horn, as I said, I am not impressed with these certs and I do not think others should be either. These certs were way too easy to obtain and generally did not TEACH me anything. Holding these certifications does demonstrate that you can take a test, because the questions are often ambiguous and stupid, but none of them (thus far) mean you know much about computing.The spark(s) that started this rant were the IBM PSE (Professional Server Expert) tests that I just took (Friday.) I have ranted previously about the general state of certification, and this cert isnt the only offender in my book, its just the latest. These tests are MARKETING crap in general and not only do they not reflect true ability, studying for them may actually make you dumber! What I mean is they cover ridiculous material and rely on you to memorize it. They require knowledge of really obscure crap that will obviously never actually be utilized in reality, the only time you will have to know it is to take the test. For example: "How many VRMS per CPU in each IBM Server product?". Or "Click on the icon that creates an Alias object". Or "How many characters are allowed in a NetBIOS name?" How about what is a VRM, what does it do? What is an alias object, what does it do? What is NetBIOS and what does it do? These are just quick examples, most of the tests I have taken for multiple vendor certifications are riddled with memorization acts for things that will never matter or could be easily looked up. I can open a book and find out how many of this or that, WHAT IS IT would be more pertinent.I am dissapointed in these certification processes in general because I wish the why and how was covered more than memorizing obscure proprietary facts. I would like to see more generalized certification efforts rather than vendor specific. All of the vendor specific tests I have taken thus far are obvioulsy aimed at creating an army of "Certified Professionals" that know product "X" and will therefore employ it. The tests are seemingly designed so that anyone can pass without understanding the concepts as long as they can memorize some crap.This is how these tests may actually make you dumber. They require you to memorize things that are not pertinent. Therefore they are consuming your brain RAM and taking up otherwise valuable space. This can be very dangerous if your brain memory is FIFO and your buffer is saturated by stupid testing crap. For example, you memorize a new fact "Microsoft SQL server requires seperate CALS if you use named pipes but does not if you use TCPIP sockets." Now that you got that fact in the buffer the fact on the other side of the buffer gets knocked out of memory. Say that was "Significant other birthday is . . ." Now you are in trouble. The point of this rant is that I would like more people to recognize that these are truly marketing certifications and not true reflections of knowledge. Dont get me wrong, in todays climate you DO NEED the certs, employers look and pay for them, so get them, just recognize what they are.