Mailing the story:

This is a hot topic, and like religion and sport there seems to be as many opinions as there are people. But we can all agree on the real purpose of certification. It is a way to measure something -- competence. It turns out that this is very very hard to do properly. Firstly because competence is an ability, not an object, so you have to measure the end result instead of the thing itself. And secondly because of the human factor and all the variables involved.