Software Soapbox

Now THIS is a conference!

Really sorry I can't make it to this....check out this speaker list!

Program Outline | Techonomy » Conference 2010.

TECHONOMY CONFERENCE 2010: Lake Tahoe, August 4-6 The Ritz-Carlton Highlands

XML Aficionado: Google’s new Tower of Babel

XML Aficionado: Google’s new Tower of Babel.

So why does everybody think machine translation should suddenly work

Singapore opens first casino

via Yahoo! News.

The opening -- to be followed within months by a second casino resort built by Las Vegas Sands in Singapore's business district -- is part of an ambitious plan to transform the city into a key destination for casino high-rollers, business executives and families.

cnewmark: Gov't software development a lot cheaper?

Totally agree - Can't imagine why cash-strapped local governments, for example, don;t just set up a small-scale Joomla or Drupal Web site with interaction built in....With the right hardware and host, you can probably scale that to the State level, if not higher.

cnewmark: Gov't software development a lot cheaper?.

Currently, government pays a lot of money for software that's frequently late and might not do the job. However, Internet style technology might offer a path to getting it done more effectively, cheaply, and on time.

Sunlight Foundation sponsored the development of a Federal contracts database, to show where that money goes. That cost around $300,000, though the gov't had allocated $12,000,000.

Now, California has allocated $50,000,000 for a unemployment check-processing system, and Vivek Wadhwa, a successful VC, has proposed that Silicon Valley teams develop their own bids. Two have come in at the $5,000,000 level.

It is NOT different this time, and XBRL will not avoid the coming crisis

via XBRL Blog Magazine.

Yes, a taxonomy for public spending to push that information where it belongs, into the public domain, is important and must happen. We will then be able to actually, as individuals, dissect government spending at the lowest level. The give winners will be the opposing political parties who will use the data to prove that one part or the other is spending money wastefully (usually in amounts that appear huge – $10s or even $100s of millions). These exposures will certainly bring some “discipline” to spending, but will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to avert the coming crisis.

Glitter and Doom Live Reviews

via Tom Waits

Tom Waits rollicking concert album “Glitter and Doom Live” is inspiring high praise from music writers across the land, from New York to Lexington to Tampa and the wild plains of the Playboy Mansion.

My Sentiments exactly: vowe @ Lotusphere

On the one hand I see warning signs in the future based on past ventures with Lotus Components, and eSuite, and Workplace - I want to hear how it will be different this time. 

On the other hand, I like most of what I'm hearing about the new products and features, and I'm encouraged by the turnout at the show. 

Of course, the real proof is in the marketplace.  All this talk of new customers and adoption and growth should be reflected in the amount of new employment and contract opportunities needing Lotus-based skills, but I see less of that every day, not more.  Let's hope we can turn that around!

via vowe dot net

I know you are waiting for my take on the event, but please bear with me for a few days. I'm not a microphone stand that takes the message and amplifies it. There is a lot going on, the news is spread out over a few days, and it's a little bit harder to find the beef than in previous years.

Open-source acquisitions: What's the holdup?

via CNET

What's interesting (and maybe disappointing) in the acquisition discussion is how fractured the open-source vendor base has become, with too few companies making enough money to be meaningful from a revenue perspective.

Accordingly, open-source acquisition targets need to have some kind of technology fit or magic--at the moment, cloud or virtualization--in order to have any chance at being acquired.

So what is the right acquisition strategy? It depends. Cisco Systems, Oracle, and IBM may have to buy revenue streams to keep growing, whereas I would argue that smaller vendors like Red Hat, EMC, and BMC have to make acquisitions that round out their portfolios for the future--even if it means taking a bit of a hit.

Pressure rises to stop antibiotics in agriculture

via Yahoo! News.

Here's how it happens: In the early '90s, farmers in several countries, including the U.S., started feeding animals fluoroquinolones, a family of antibiotics that includes drugs such as ciprofloxacin. In the following years, the once powerful antibiotic Cipro stopped working 80 percent of the time on some of the deadliest human infections it used to wipe out. Twelve years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study linking people infected with a Cipro-resistant bacteria to pork they had eaten.

Why you don't need an extended warranty

Consumer Reports Money & Shopping Blog

For the consumer, extended warranties are notoriously bad deals because:

* Some repairs are covered by the standard manufacturer warranty that comes with the product.
* Products seldom break within the extended-warranty window—after the standard warranty has expired but within the typical two to three years of purchase—our data show.
* When electronics and appliances do break, the repairs, on average, cost about the same as an extended warranty.