Rich Whitey is Running

This is just too good. Although it appears to be simple human error, it appears that Rich Whitey is running for election.

Innate and Constructed

Here's a great graphic showing the true delineation of political thought. 

I Tried, Honest I did

I promised to concentrate on Information Technology in this blog. This, however, is just too good to pass up. If you're one of my frequent reader (singlular intended) then you know my opinion of how our beautiful free market system has morphed into Corporatism. This post from Captain  Zero is one of the most eloquent rants I've read in a long, long while. It's worthy of Thomas Paine.

Shaking Off the Negativity

Or as Donald Sutherland said in "Kelly's Heroes", "Enough with the negative vibes, man!"Okay, so the problem is the business's negative impression of IT as a profession and as an aid (versus a drag) to the business.

Even in the IT departments I've seen with the best relationship with business, there are still pockets of disapproval and disappointment. Here's a very interesting article at Silicon.com on the topic. 

One of the chronic problems I've seen over the years is the the operating business units unwillingness to even pretend to understand or even pretend to want to understand how IT operates. (Someone should write a book about that! Why, yes, I should ...). Another way I could say this is from the business-side perspective, "I am too busy to help you help me. Just solve my problem."


The money statement in the article, to me, is this, "IT is effectively operating as a black box that is not well understood by the business, and which does not itself understand the business." Which does not itself understand the business.

Too many business people look at the world through a straw. Pity, that.

The Hype Cycle

Almost everybody in the IT business is familar with Gartner and Magic Quadrants. Here's another useful visual from Thomas Wailgum at CIO.com. My personal favorite is what you find on the Slope of Enlightenment.

Not Socialism

A recent public opinion poll showed that something like 55 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Socialist. This interesting post from Dan Mitchell begs to differ with the public on this. According to Mitchell, Obama is, in fact, a fascist - in the Mussolini sense of the word.

Granting that the word fascist has some pretty ugly connotations, Mitchell prefers to use the label Corporatist. Funny, that sounds like something I've been saying. I love it when smart people agree with me. Read the whole thing.

The Book

In a previous life time I was a newspaper reporter. Early in my IT career I published a couple of technical articles on database design (back when relational databases were new technology - check your calendars for that date!). At that time I had ambitions of publishing more articles but then the babies started appearing from some magical place. (I never did understand how that happened ... ) Read more really means read more this time.