Roll The Dice On Likable Choices: A Left Wing Lunatic Set of Amoral and Completely Unworkable Ideas Because No One Likes Me

Extremist Jihad Osama Bin Ladin Allah Muslim MightLikeNakedWomen... is that enough keywords to get the attention of the attention-obsessed with their hands on the dials?

You know who you are. And now, so does the rest of the world.

Now that I have your attention:

Re-elect Jimmy Carter for President

He is experienced, above moral reproach, hard working, well-educated, fiscally conservative, well-liked internationally and ... eligible. He can't be bribed because at his age, he doesn't need anything. He is an evangelical but not a neo-con. He is the perfect spoiler and has good hair. He can pronounce 'nuclear'. He is on a first name basis with most of the world's leaders and as far as we know, no one wants to assassinate him. With a solid staff and an eminent but trustworthy VP, he can do this. It would be fun to watch the attack dogs set on him because he could turn and say, "Now, there you go again." Priceless.

We elected him last time because we were tired of crooks and meanies. Anyone really happy about the current choices? Let's roll the dice on a person we all like.

Make Open Source Code Development Tax Deductible

Fess up to reality. The illusion of a frictionless community of zero cost code is made of models of the code itself, not models of the cost of owning the code. To improve that, reduce the amount of it you need, increase the quality of what you use and don't waste all of your time trying to measure that and control it. It is a ecosystem of cooperators who share costs for code evolution. Just stimulate it. It already knows how to do the rest.

I realize it's not in the nature of sales to espouse a commissionless system, but it may not be their choice. Software ecosystems don't require sales. They require non-negotiable price lists.

Services, of course, are negotiated. However...

Understand The Middle

If the top and bottom of the stack are free to use, all the IP and non-open source software is in the middle. That's a cosmic d'oh in the software development community, but I'm not quite sure the businessHeads get this. To control costs, you either

Accept a business model where the middle is commoditized (translation: no legacy interfaces, all standard business documents and forms, single roots for the ontologies, standard contracting and licensing, in short, very few negotiated options in the software costs, or

You measure and cut and name and send out an RFP with the best wishlist the organization or your consultant can produce. RFP authors take note: you have champagne tastes, you pay champage prices. If you can party on beer, prices are better.

Model one is cheaper. It means change for the organization but the mammals are quite adaptible. Be aware that the perceived value of local code is better costed as frequency of use/cost of use across some organizational boundary. The second term provides for the fact that low frequency cost hits even at higher costs are unavoidable because of the value proposition of the service. Software costs are not the source of the highest costs: the cost of use is.

Make Internet Legal Services A Tax Deductible Purchase

The problem of the middle is local variations on common processes. Accelerate the purchase of XBRL and other standard contracting systems. Gains here scale all the way through the economic model of in both government and business operations. Provide grants for government systems that provably conform to the open standards.