The idea that "you are only ever six ‘degrees of separation' away from anybody else on the planet" was first introduced by Stanley Milgram in 1967. He came up with the number six using a letter sending experiment [here]. Brett Tjaden, a computer scientist at the University of Virginia, demonstrated this concept when he created a game based on finding the degrees of separation between any given actor and Kevin Bacon [here]. The game has become a big hit and there is even a Visa commercial where Kevin Bacon is playing the game himself [here].
9:00:55 PM    

Bloomberg is running a piece on MySQL [here]. Making the comparison between the big databases like Oracle with the free MySQL, the article states:

"Some navies need aircraft carriers, but you don't need many aircraft carriers in the world,'' Mickos said in an interview. "The rest of the world can manage with frigates."

I have been using MySQL for years. For 90% of the database projects out there, MySQL is a great choice. Microsoft's claims that it is unreliable are absolutely unfounded. It is far more reliable than SQL Server. Oracle does offer quite a bit more in terms of both performance and capability, but the cost is not justified for all but the most database intensive projects.
10:57:58 AM