Irish bailout

Ireland

Some great articles on what can be done about the Irish economic situation. The question I’m asking is why the Irish government doesn’t take some of that advice on board. I would presume that the issue is that they are staggering towards the end of their tenure in a haze without clarity and motivation to take action. And the ECB/IMF is taking full advantage of that.
The Footnote On The Irish Bailout Plan comments on the comparison between the way Iceland and Ireland have handled the crisis.

This is nothing less than yet another example that in the great collapsing game of Keynesian fundamentalist’s dilemma, he who defects, defaults and devalues first is the winner. Congratulations Iceland. To everyone else: enjoy the eventual revolutions. They are now inevitable, courtesy of your favorite neighborhood parasite banker.

Ronan Lyons gives a detailed but concise overview of how Ireland got into the mess and some ideas of how to get out of it.

The full story of Ireland’s economic highs and lows over the past generation will no doubt be examined in many books for years to come. That’s no consolation, however, for people who are voting in a few weeks and who want to know where we are and what we need to do. They want to know which painful hits they should take, and which they shouldn’t. To know what to do next, we need to know how we got here and how bad things are, so this post aims to give a bare-bones outline of how Ireland dug itself into a hole, how deep the hole is and the kind of things we need to do to get back out of the hole.

Read the full post for his analysis of the reasons and ideas.

Oracle Vs SAP

CRM, Tech, Thought Provoking

The Financial Times covers the Oracle Vs SAP courtcase which starts on Monday. What was particularly interesting if you work in this area and thought about developing some utilities what could bolt-on to any of that software is the last paragraph.

The theatre has obscured a more serious side to the TomorrowNow trial.

Through its lawsuit – and another case against a similar company called Rimini Street – Oracle has left a chill over the independent maintenance business, according to some analysts.

“Oracle is using that tactic to intimidate entrants into the market,” says Paul Hamerman, an analyst at Forrester Research.

With more than 70 per cent of his software revenues coming from maintenance and support, the tactic is understandable.

Picasa Albums

Uncategorized

One of my gripes with Picasa is that it doesn’t do slideshows outside folders. Or so I thought until I did another search today if one of the recent versions had solved his issue. It seems that it is possible but only if you create an album and assign photos to that album. Why? What I would like to do is to just create a search term (I use very long descriptive filenames for my photos) and let a slideshow run from that search query. Google, Picasa please include in a release in the near future. Thanks!