Can anyone lend me a beginner's C++ book and a house in California?

I'm mildly flattered to have been sort-of-headhunted by Google's US technical staffing team today. Apparently my...

experience at Pitch and strong educational background make [me] an excellent fit at Google.

Cool, thanks Google. But I'm not sure that you've researched me too well.

Never mind. Should I feel the urge to up sticks and become a C++ programmer in Mountain View, California (a mere 5,431.51 miles from home) I'll give you a ring :)

Are Relational Databases Obsolete?

I found this hilarious.

Michael Stonebraker, co-creator of the Ingres and Postgres database management systems, recently made a blog posting suggesting that column-oriented database engines (example: Vertica) might someday triumph over the traditional row-oriented engines (example: every other database engine you know) in some situations, perhaps most notably the data-warehousing field. It's an interesting post, and well worth reading.

Somebody else thought so. Computer World reported the story under the title:

Relational database pioneer says technology is obsolete.

Slightly sensationalist, but whatever. And so naturally the story turned up on Slashdot as:

Are Relational Databases Obsolete?

Did anybody read TFA? I doubt it.

The real shame is that, I suspect this is how most 'real' journalism happens too.