Check out this YouTube video on the evolution of dance!
I wonder if he’ll dance in Transformers 3?
Category Archives: Miscellaneous
I Think Time Screwed Up It’s Best and Worst Of Lists!
Time recently released it’s list of the “50 best inventions” and the “5 worst inventions” of 2009. Most of the inventions in the 50 best were quite good, and all of the inventions in the 5 worst certainly belonged on that list, but there’s one invention on the best-of list that I have to take issue with. That invention is “The School of One”.
Now you’re probably asking why someone who writes a blog with the primary purpose of educating, for free, anyone who cares to read it and who believes education is something we all need more of would take issue with an invention focussed on education. Especially when it is a well established fact that some students learn best when they get personalized programs. Well, the problem I have is that, as Time notes, it’s learning for the X-box generation. In my book, that’s a problem. Video games can improve our reflexes, challenge our strategy skills, and even reinforce lessons through simulation … but they can’t replace the instruction that comes from a real person or the learning that comes from actually interacting with peers. It’s one thing to use video games as a learning supplement, but quite another to use them as a foundation. Since that’s essentially where The School of One appears to be taking us, that’s why I have a problem with it and believe it doesn’t belong on the “best of” list. We need a Renaissance Education, and that doesn’t start with video games!
Is The Future of ERP Harmonization?
In a recent article over on CIO.com, Thomas Wailgum suggests that “the future of ERP” might be harmonization, which he defines as the happy middle between new advances in middleware offerings, tools from the big vendors that allow easy integration between core databases and infrastructure, and SaaS apps where appropriate.
Given that, as Thomas astutely notes,
- for most companies, the pursuit of the single instance dream hasn’t led to success,
- companies can no longer afford to wait the typical five to seven years for returns on major IT investments (especially when, on average, three new hardware platforms and three new major software versions will materialize in that timeframe), and
- the worst recession in recent history is causing most companies to ask what the true cost of their ERP is and what the realized value is, especially when most ERP vendors are trying to raise maintenance costs to 22% or more while delivering little or no incremental value.
Given these harsh realities, and the fact that many companies are finding that their time is running out on their antiquated ERP systems such as PeopleSoft, R/3, e-Business Suite, and JDE, this might finally be the turning point where companies stop pumping millions of dollars into legacy ERP systems that, for many organizations, provide little return — especially when enterprise versions of open-source cloud-ready ERP systems like Compiere are available for a fraction of the cost of typical ERP systems. These systems, which can come bundled with support, often cost less than 1/5th of a SAP or Oracle solution and play nice with on-demand middleware and best-of-breed SAP solutions that implement common XML standards. This allows you to quickly assemble considerably more functionality, and value, for an up-front cost that is a drop in the bucket compared to what many traditional ERP systems cost.
In enterprise software, it’s often hard to say for certain what will happen. But I think this is the recession that will finally force the inevitable move away from “sunk cost” IT to “pay for performance” and that the enterprise of tomorrow will be different from today.
I’d also recommend checking out part II of the article on “Making Sense of All That Data” on CIO.com. Regardless of your viewpoint, Thomas makes some interesting points, especially with regards to the “Super Vendors” and the forthcoming consolidation in the traditional ERP space (which always occurs at the end of a recession when the rich buy the poor).
You Can Compare Apples to Oranges!
And they’re not that different after all!
All you have to do is gently desiccate them in a convection oven at low temperatures over the course of several days, mix the dried samples with potassium bromide, grind them in a small ball-bearing mill for two minutes, press 100 mg of each of the resulting powders into circular pellets having a diameter of 1 cm and a thickness of approximately 1mm, and record their spectra at a resolution of 1cm-1 using a Nicolet 740 FTIR spectrometer.
And when you’re all done, as per the above graph, you’ll find out that apples and oranges are very similar!
So, for those of you who are still claiming your solution can’t be compared to your competition because they’re “apples and oranges”, for e.g., I guess your bubble has been burst.
Source: Apples and Oranges — A Comparison, “Annals of Improbable Research”, May/June 1995.
This is Scary! We Have To Fix This!
Last month, MSNBC published an article on “Why American Consumers Can’t Add” that’s frightening. Look at these statistics:
- Only 2 in 5 Americans can pick out two items on a menu, add them, and calculate a tip.
- Only 1 in 5 Americans can reliably calculate mortgage interest.
- Only 13% of Americans were deemed “proficient”. That means
less than 1 in 7 American adults are “proficient” at math.
Furthermore
- 20 M Americans — roughly 1 in 9 of Americans aged 18-65 — pay someone to fill out their 1040EZ: a one-page tax form with around 10 blanks to fill out
- The U.S. Ranks 25th of 30 industrialized nations in math scores, down near Serbia and Uruguay!
- 50% of American 17 year olds couldn’t do enough math to work in an auto plant
And if this isn’t bad enough,
- In 18 US states, not even one elementary math class is required for teacher certification
- Some U.S. teaching colleges allow admittance as long as students have math skills equal to their future students — that is, as long as they could pass a grad 5 math class. (Are they smarter than a 5th grader? You have to wonder!)
- In some states, you can pass the teacher certification exam without answering even a single math question correctly!
Not only did our collective lack of math skills contribute to the current fiasco — after all, if you’re paying $100 to a tax preparer for 3 minutes of work, taking out 250% APR payday loans, and agreeing to 1,000% overdraft protect loans from your bank, how could you possibly see through the consequences of an (unpredictable) adjustable-rate mortgage or make a sound bet on their future earnings potential or fight with financial planners over fees that are swallowing one-third of your retirement savings.
We can forget about a recovery and any hope of regaining former glory if we don’t fix this — and do it fast. Math is becoming more and more necessary in just about every profession, and supply chain in particular. How can you do an analysis, break down a cost model, or even know whether or not the offer you’re getting is any good if you can’t do enough math to figure out a total landed cost per unit?
I don’t know what the answer is, but it has to start at the foundation. No more teachers who don’t know at least 1st year University math, and no more curriculums that don’t give math at least the same level of importance as every other subject. We need to get back to the three R’s, Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic … because Math is now the common language of the world. If you can’t read and write math, at the rate the information revolution is progressing, there might soon come a time where you can’t communicate at all!