mad_ddog
Friday, March 28, 2008
  ZDNet - Waste Management sues SAP over 'complete failure'
Isn't this how all enterprise software projects work - marketing promises everything, development suddenly has to create brand new features.

The software maker [SAP] sold Waste Management computer programs that were supposed to be designed to manage tasks unique to U.S. companies that haul waste and handle recycling, with no customization required, the lawsuit said.

Those programs handle tasks including billing, waste logistics, container management, and on-board computing, according to a December 2005 press release from SAP America.

"Unknown to Waste Management, this 'United States' version of the Waste and Recycling Software was undeveloped, untested, and defective," the suit says.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
  Engadget.com - Motorola insider tells all about the fall of a technology icon
This guy is not pulling any punches...

Zander, who seemed to care more about his golf score than running one of America's greatest technology companies, left all of the hard work to Geoffrey;

Many close to Geoffrey believed Ed Zander worked him to death, putting the pressure of the fate of the company in his hands.

On a personal note, Lynne, his wife blamed the company for his passing. She committed suicide soon after.

But apparently different from the rest of the incompetent senior executives at Motorola -- except instead of merely being inept, you're actually actively killing the company. Your lack of understanding of the consumer side of Motorola doesn't give you a valid reason for selling the handset business; moreover, publicly disclosing your explorations of such a move, in an attempt to keep Carl Icahn off your back, shows how much you value the safety of your incompetence.

You clearly have no interest in fighting the good fight and attempting to mold Motorola into the market leader it can and should be. Taking control of the handset division, as you have recently announced, will accomplish very little except but to give you an ability to say, "We tried our best" -- which you haven't -- when you finally do cart the business off to the highest bidder.

Friday, March 14, 2008
  Bloomberg.com - Miners Top MBAs as Metal Boom Makes Geologists Scarce
Brittan Jones passed up a $100,000-a-year job at a mining company last December when he finished his degree in geology. The 24-year-old Canadian said he's confident he'll get a better offer.

Salaries for geology undergraduates in Canada, home to three of the world's largest gold producers, jumped to an average C$90,000 ($91,776) from C$62,500 in 2004, according to Norman Duke, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, who has been a consultant for companies including Teck Cominco.

Geologists' pay tops the average for new U.S. MBAs, which, according to an August 2007 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, was $86,696. Those with mining skills are also catching up with Harvard University MBAs, whose average starting salary rose 15 percent over three years to $115,000 in 2007, according to the university. Tuition for the two-year program is $87,600.

This year there will be about 1,200 geology grads in Canada to fill 9,000 positions in the country's mining industry, said Ryan Montpellier, executive director of the government's Mining Industry Resources Council. In the U.S., the number of jobs open to geologists will rise 22 percent in the decade ending in 2016, about double the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Instead of taking a permanent, full-time position, Brittan Jones started a research project after completing his four-year course at Canada's provincially funded Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba. Tuition for his undergraduate honors degree was about C$15,000 for the program.

In June, he will start a four-month contract managing a British Columbia drilling program. Jones said he is betting the additional experience will result in a more lucrative job than the C$100,000-a-year position offered by a private exploration company in Manitoba.

Demand for his skills is unlikely to drop. Mining companies announced 1,100 new projects last year with a total value of $308 billion, 50 percent more than a year earlier, Magnus Ericcson, an analyst at Stockholm-based Raw Materials Group, said in an interview.

Teck Cominco estimates that as many as half its workers in British Columbia will retire over the next five years.

The shortage of mining expertise is particularly acute in Canada, Australia and the U.S., said Frances McGuire,

  NYTimes - U.S. Is Examining Spitzer’s Funds
But he has told his aides in recent days that he used prostitutes only in the last eight months and never spent campaign or public money in that regard, according to several of the aides. He reaffirmed that position to his lawyer during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday, others present said.

A person briefed on the inquiry said on Thursday that investigators pursuing the case discovered something last fall that raised suspicions that Mr. Spitzer may have used campaign money to pay for transportation or hotel rooms for trysts with prostitutes.

A person close to Mr. Spitzer said that prosecutors told Ms. Hirshman this week that they would be more inclined to pursue a criminal case against Mr. Spitzer if he remained governor because of the violation of public trust.

Thursday, March 06, 2008
  IE8's Automatic Crash Recovery Whitepaper
Over 70% of all Internet Explorer crashes and hangs are caused by extensions, such as ActiveX® controls, Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), and Toolbars. By isolating extension code in the tab process, we can protect the integrity of the browser and limit many failures to the tab process.


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