Internets Participation Inequality

This article shows how the same small percentage of folks do most of the "work" on the internets, in terms of blog posts, comments, wikipedia article writing, etc

Boardwalk Tech

This software vendor Boardwalk Tech, has an application that takes an existing business process that is existing user Excel spreadsheets, & makes the process like an enterprise software implementation. The users still use Excel as their GUI, but there is tracking of changes made to the Excel cell level.

This sounds interesting, since Excel is so prevalent by all "knowledge workers" for so many analysis projects.

fwd - Wal-Mart's midlife crisis

Interesting Business Week article on Wal-Mart. The article is surprisingly fair-minded & balanced on discussing the state of Wal-Mart. Also surprising is that my homegirl Ms. Kay Roger is sonning Wal-Mart in the grocery "space".

Jay Smooth ethers MSM

blogger Jay Smooth ethers American MSM



Fox News = blatant Republican party propaganda

CNN = randomly crappy & unethical. No political agenda, just random incompetence.

IMHO Jay Smooth = Jack Cafferty >>> anyone else at Faux News or CNN combined

Flipmode Squad fires Busta Rhymes

The Flipmode Squad has stopped working with Busta Rhymes & renamed itself (story here).

Is this the 1st case ever of "weed carriers" firing the "owner"/"star" in rap history?

IMHO the only Flipmode rappers good enough/interesting enough to have their own album were Rah Digga & Lord Have Mercy.

Busta may have been horrible in promoting the Flipmode into solo careers. At least I give Busta that he shouted "Flipmode is the Squad!" about 4.080 million times over the last 11 years.

Since Lauryn Hill doesn't make new music, there are no lyrical woman MCs, that don't rely on their sexuality as a gimmick, dropping albums on major labels. I can't believe there is 0 market for lyrical woman MCs. Some music industry "TI" should to the obvious & sign a lyrical woman MC like Rah Digga, Jean Grae, Invincible, or Bahamadia.

Thingamy

Thingamy is a software app, where supposedly 1 can quickly define a business process in the GUI, not needing custom software engineering, or even configuration of text files/DB/etc. Instead of a traditional relational DB, it uses an in-memory object-oriented DB.

Potentially this is as replacement for ERP, at least for a specific key unique process a business might have. I assume Thigamy currently is more implementable in a small business.

Not sure if Thigamy is open source or not. I didn't see a download link to the software on the site.

I will file this on the proverbial "watch list".

PayScale

I browsed PayScale, which is a good broad salary site, in which 1 can browse job titles by many factors, such as industry, yrs experience, age, etc. PayScale also has other countries, however I only looked at the USA in my skimming of the site. Off of a cursory glance, it seems PayScale > Salary.com

Wikileaks

I stumbled upon Wikileaks, which apparently is independent from Wikipedia.

Wikileaks is a news site for "whistle blowers" for journalists/activists/whistle blowers to inform the public of corruption/injustice.

Bravo! IMHO sites like this are needed to fill in the gaps that the lazy corporate American MSM are ignoring or even actively hiding.

article that says lucrative > altruistic career for society

Here's an interesting opinion by Daniel Akst, that says that a lucrative career is better than an altruistic career, not just for yourself, but society.

He has a thought experiment where 2 friends are compared 25 years later, 1 an investment banking company founder, the other a journalist/novelist. Akst argues that by being a multimillionaire, some millions of which are given to charity, & by giving good jobs to his employees, the investment guy helps society more than the journalist/novelist guy.

It's an interesting take, but I don't agree fully with the premise.

First, Akst is comparing a "best-case scenario" investment guy, with a mediocre altruistic career guy. Akst is comparing the 0.1% investment guy with a mediocre 50% altruistic guy.

The investment guy is given great performance, & great altruism. It's not certain that the investment guy would have the ability to be 1 of the few wildly successful entrepreneurs. Even if he has the ability, office politics or timing might prevent him from that goal. Also, if he does become the successful entrepreneur, treating his employees well, or giving substantially to charity is not a certainty.

In contrast, the journalist/novelist is a mediocre guy. For example, the journalists who exposed the Nixon corruption ending in Nixon's impeachment, did a great altruistic service for American democracy. A social worker who over a long career helps 20 parolees reform into productive members of society, has done a great work for society. The public health scientists who get an effective plan for dealing with avian flu, could potentially save 1000s of American lives.

Second, the premise that one's pay reflects the value to society is bogus. This is another example where I seem to be 1 of the few that recall from Econ 101, that free market capitalism requires many producers & many customers, such that any 1 entity has no meaningful influence on price or quantity of product.

The investment industry is closer to an oligopoly than free market capitalism. A few huge companies control a majority of the market.

American oligopolistic companies tend to source & desire qualified yet cheap labor, whether this means age discrimination of 40+ yo workers, excessively detailed job experience requirements, H1B visas, illegal workers, offshore outsourcing. If a union or union-like worker professional society exists to protect workers & limit supply of workers, the workers will be able to improve or maintain good pay & benefits.

The point is that many industries have artificially reduced the number of employees due to oligopoly, &/or reduce the number of qualified employees available via union/professional society, to make the free market capitalism model inapplicable. As such, Akst assertion is false that pay reflects the value of the work to society.

Like I said, IMHO Akst's argument is flawed, yet interesting. What do you think?

Housing Panic

I stumbled upon this blog Housing Panic, which has an interesting bearish take on housing & the economy in general.