Random thoughts from the edge...
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Why have we let the right, the conservatives, steal the American Flag? They claim to be for family values? Would those be corporate family values?
This isn't hard to get. They have very good help. The best hired guns.
How did we let this happen? Don't we remember that the revolutionary war was started by a bunch of twenty year olds? Have we forgotten where we come from?
Of course we have, but it is time to stop. Clinton was too smart for his own good, Bush is so stupid he isn't even evil, just manipulated. But Dean might be just about right!
This is a man who is smart. Well spoken. He even seems to have original ideas. He asks hard questions.
It is time for us to take back the flag. We are the patriotic ones. What could be more patriotic than defending our honor. Our people. US.
If the "right" can use the rhetoric of family values and patriotism, big business. Why can't we on the left use the TRUTH of family values and patriotism. We need to take this back. We need to remember that WE are the patriotic ones. We have the best interests of our contry at heart. We aren't the ones guting our environmental rules.
How many times should we be forced to listen to lies. Business has NO moral obligation. Regulations aren't bad for business, just bad for the very rich. In fact, they promote the creation of a large service industry designed to help larger corporations comply. On top of that they clean the air!
Dean in 2004!
Anonymous? [2:28 AM]
Not that it matters, but I've spent the last 18 months getting a software company off the ground, and that is HARD work. It seems like it was easier the last few times!
Here we are, a group of gung-ho developers, a GREAT solution for mid-market distribution and manufacturing companies, and three real clients.
We'd really LOVE to sell a product. In fact we'd LOVE to get VC money. BUT, we don't really believe that we can sell the intellectual property to our clients for long.
What we do believe is that things have begun to change. Ever hear of Ars Digita? For years they were our heros. They were making it. Then they made it, they got VC $$$.
End result? The VC's slowly brought in "managers" that new more than the developers and quickly they were gone. Amazingly, Philip, the CEO, a guy with an EGO, handed over the reins to a more experienced CEO. Why would he believe that this would make sense?
Do we really think this is a good idea? Did Apple do better without Jobs? What about Microsoft? Are they better off now? I don't think so, they've always been rich, but now they are GREEDY!
At the same time, I just spent 4.5 years with a DotCom (still alive...). While we went from $0/month to $6 million/month in revenue, we also tried lots of off the shelf software.
From SAP to Epicor, and we ended up writing our own. Amazingly bad software in the mid-market! On top of that, the dirty little secret is how easy it is to create from scratch.
So we did. Our team has written a toolkit to build Enterprise software for the mid-market. And we will. But we're not counting on selling licenses!
We sell our knowledge. Let me repeat that, "WE SELL OUR KNOWLEDGE!"
When my competing CEO's wake up at night in a cold sweat, they wonder if they'll be able to meet development schedules that we could hit easily. On the other hand, I have to figure out how to transfer and capture the knowledge that we gain over time!
COLD SWEAT
Anonymous? [7:51 PM]
The politics of science getting you down? The high cost of medicine taking its toll? What about health insurance, too expensive?
Just 6 years ago I was able to cover my employees and their famillies with great medical coverage for about $230 a month. Just this month I added a new employee with familly at just over $510 a month and the coverage isn't as good.
What really ticks me off though is hearing the drug companies whine about the high cost of drug development, and then seeing an add for a new anti-alergy drug. Maybe most people don't realize that fully HALF the cost of a new drug is now advertising to the general public.
You keep hearing about how insurance companies aren't making money, but nobody talks about the parent companies losing money!
Go figure!
Anonymous? [3:08 AM]
You rarely see articles and studies about great custom software. Could it have anything to do with the fact that most teams creating great custom software are too busy writing software to write ABOUT software?
Arguably the most sucessful and admired retailer in the world is Walmart. One thing that sets Walmart apart is their IT department and its capabilities. My favorite part is that they have always written their own software.
It is basically considered a truth that companies should buy software over the counter in a shrinkwrapped box and configure it.
Maybe we should begin to learn from Walmart's sucess?
Anonymous? [2:58 AM]
Once that I can think of, the world produced a GOOD dictator, Fidel Castro, and we have now spent 40 years forcing him to fail! Keep in mind that Castro, among other evil things like great health care, managed to make sure that over 90% of his citizens learned to read!
On top of that, point me at a Latin American country that has a significantly better human rights record, and they all have our support!
When are we going to discover that the two things that make a society (ours included) succesful are education and freedom of debate/press. In my opinion, killing people isn't nearly as dangerous as shutting them up!
Instead of bombing the Iraqis, why don't we send 500,000 soldiers to Afganistan to build bridges and schools? If we want to stop terrorism, we need to connect with the world. Why is it so difficult to understand that we need to build good schools more than good governments? Good governments can always become bad ones, but an educated populace can always make its own choices!
Religion is by choice, government is too!
Anonymous? [1:07 AM]
Prisoners declared enemy combatants do not have the right to a lawyer and the American judiciary cannot second-guess the military's classification of such detainees, the Justice Department argued yesterday in a brief to an appeals court.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/769806.asp?0bl=-0
About time we started worrying about these guys! First the supreme court (Capitalization removed on purpose) halts a constitutionaly accurate challenge of a state's internal elections, handing GWB the presidency, and then his people (the truly scary ones) make a grab like this!
To quote a very scared lawyer...
Dunham, who has until tomorrow to respond, agreed. "It is scarier than the dirty bomb," he said. "Now the government can label somebody something and then throw the key away forever. . . . The idea that a court can't inquire into these detention situations, to determine whether they are reasonable or not, is downright scary to me."
Anonymous? [9:47 AM]
Quick rant! What is it about Intel that pushes them to screw their customers sooo hard!? First they start a "great" new company, Pandesic, to host and nurture ecommerce companies.
Then, after the hard sell about how stable and smart they are because they are INTEL, just when investors start getting jittery on the category, they get cold feet and pull out! I mean DUH!!!
Then, as if that wasn't enough, they put the hard sell to the board and we get us a great deal (only $56k/mo) on 6 servers in their new "managed care" facility where we only have to spend half as much time yelling at them.
But it get's better... One offer from a competitor and our price drops to $21k/mo??? What happened to giving us an honest deal?
Why should it surprise us that they would shut it down! Here we are, being asked to move on, they don't like this managed care stuff.
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Anonymous? [11:14 PM]
Life in the rain. It catches you by surprise. 80 on Sunday. Raining in sheets on Monday. Just when you think that summer is here. There it goes.
Good thing I like rain. The only thing about rain in the summer is that the power isn't there. A good winter storm gives so much more than it gets. Branches and water lashing out, by now, in early summer the rain brings life.
ISDN? Why so slooooowww...
Anonymous? [9:39 PM]