3/10/2010 -- Microsoft announced that it's launching the Elevate America's Veterans Initiative to build on last year's Elevate America program and "to bring together a coalition of public, private and nonprofit organizations to give veterans and their spouses the skills and resources they need to be successful in today's civilian work force." Through this program, Microsoft will contribute $2 million in cash and up to $6 million in software over the next two years to veterans' service organizations as well as work force agencies, community colleges and nonprofits that work with them.   

More information on the announcement can be found here.

Sun Certification Now Given Through Oracle
Completing another component of the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, Sun training and certification are now handled by Oracle University. The plans are to continue to teach "all active Sun Java, Solaris, MySQL, software, server and storage courses" as well as retain the top Sun instructors.

More information can be found here.

New Peoplesoft Ledger Certification
Speaking of Oracle, a new PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 General Ledger certification has been released.  Exam number 1Z0-228 consists of 80 questions that have to be answered in 120 minutes (60 correct are required to pass). The cost is $195 and the exam is available through the VUE network of testing centers.

The top level exam topics include information on how to create a general ledger structure to creating and planning Peoplesoft trees. 

More information can be found here.

Project+ Beta Results Expected Soon
CompTIA is assuring those who took the Project+ beta exam for the latest revision that results will be released this month. The newest iteration, referred to as the 2009 Edition, has five domains and the weighting is as follows:  

• Pre Project Setup/Initiating (12%)
• Project Planning (29%)
• Project Execution and Delivery (23%)
• Change, Control and Communication (27%)
• Project Closure (9%)  

There are currently 80 questions on the exam (PK0-002), 90 minutes in which to take it and the passing score is 499 (on a scale of 100-900).  

More on the Project+ exam/certification can be found here.

Book Of The Week: A Practical Guide To Fedora And Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Some things have the ability to improve with age and refinement and the fifth edition of A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (ISBN: 978-0-706088-7) certainly falls into that category. While there are a plethora of books on Linux cramming the shelves, the differentiator in this case is the author. Mark Sobell has the ability to make even the most complex of topics understandable for the reader.  

Coming in at just under 1200 pages, this book cover Fedora 12 (the full version of which is included on the included DVD) and RHEL 5. There are 6 parts holding the 28 chapters and most of the chapters end with both "exercises" and "advanced exercises to test your brain. For example, the chapter on system administration: core concepts ends with seven exercises that are open-ended questions ("How would you allow a user to execute privileged commands without giving the user the Superuser password?"), and 6 advanced exercises ("Take a look at /usr/bin/lesspipe.sh. Explain what it does and describe six ways it works.")