I guess you have to be part of the elite to hear Al Gore talk about green tech.

Or maybe they aren't going to talk green at all but sit around and plan how Gore can use tech to win this presidential election. Or at least to do something about his Inventor of the Internet reputation.

I'm totally curious about what they are going to discuss now... If they'd let just anyone film and webcast, I'd probably never even bother. Marketing is probably really to blame. I see a "bootleg" YouTube video in the nearish future.

Real estate and mortgage fraud could account for $2.5 billion in 2008 losses. The causes range from lying on mortgage application and providing false documentation to appraisers pricing houses at lots more than the actual value.

There's no reason the government should force the taxpayers to bailout these folks. Lenders, especially, should have known better. As noted in The Foundry the government is going to do something just to be seen to be acting, so it has some recommendations.

One of the interesting mentions is eminent domain--why isn't that more of a campaign issue. Has everyone forgotten Kelo already?

OK, so they didn't release the Vista source code, which might have broken the tubes the internets run on, but Microsoft has released WiX, a toolkit for building installation packages from XML files on SourceForge.

If they'd open up Vista, The lure of the kudos in saving Microsoft from its monolithic self could be a nice incentive. Unless they tied success to meeting Ballmer or something.

This just in from the founder of JBoss:

"1. they can
2. it's kind of cheap
3. RHT deserves this fate
4. my stock in RHT would go up
5. it would piss off IBM, SUN and LarryE all at the same time, it's beautiful.
6. they would integrate the business model without skipping a single beat, IBM did.
7. cloud computing a la Amazon, Google both directly compete!
8. need for those virtualized runtimes across run-times in windows, Unix. Think VMWare.
9. could provide basis for a larryE style acquisition of VMWare.
10. it kind of shocked Matt Asay."

Makes too much sense to happen. Where's the hubris?

(via MF)

"The question: How much public money should be spent on keeping the Chargers in town?

The answer from Eric Bidwell: "Is this really what America and this city have come to that we have no better things to talk about than football?" If they can't find a chunk of land and throw a ball around, he said, well, that's life.

That the resounding applause that followed was the night's largest could be due to Bidwell's charisma. Or it could speak to the relative disinterest that has greeted this year's mayoral race to date. Regardless, it seemed to be the winning moment in a night in which the leading candidates stuck to their few talking points, broke little new ground and offered few political punches, whether the topic was city finances, illegal immigration or water."

Bread and circuses. Not a bad circus, really.

(via voiceofsandiego)

It's so rare for the Clinton's to release their papers, no wonder their tax returns for 2000-2006 being released is a bit of a to do.

Of note:

* They ain't poor.

* Although they paid "a far higher income tax rate than most people in their tax bracket", they paid a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than I did last year. Not sure how that works. (As if I understand anything about how the tax system works.)

* They aren't middle class.

* They were conservative in their deductions. Looks like they learned from the days of deducting Bill's briefs.

* They're not even upper middle class.

The relentless pressure of the 24/7 news cycle meant these bloggers never took a break. The stress and exhaustion that created led to health problems that caused their deaths.

Writers aren't the only ones feeling the pressure to work 24/7. As a programmer, I did that for about 6 months--at the worst point, I had slept for about 4 hours in 3 days, lost 8 pounds and fainted on a wooden floor. I know network professionals also face the same pressure to babysit the servers at all times.

Managers need to do a better job of policing overwork. Good, dedicated employees will have a hard (or impossible) time of saying no. You want to keep those people healthy and happy in their jobs. So get them help to share the load or ask them to do less and extend your deadline. Otherwise, you'll lose them to another employer or, worse, death.

The Taliban is complaining Sarkozy reneged on an election promise to focus on pulling troops out of Afghanistan. He is now sending 700 French NATO troops to Afghanistan.

Lesson 1: Elected politicians lie or mislead folks in order to get voted into office. (They aren't allowed to use guns or machetes to convince people to support them.)

To be fair to Sarko, he merely said the French presence is Afgh-y was "not assured". (The Talis may need a new translator.) And I'm pretty sure he wasn't making political promises to the Taliban anyway.

Lesson 2: You can't vote in France. So, he wasn't really talking to you anyway.

Charlton Heston is my president won't work anymore... Supporter of gun rights, MLK and civil rights. We need more like that. RIP.

Hillary stated that she and McCain have a lifetime of experience and Obama gave a speech in 2002. Is she really as old as McCain or does she think the years he spent in a cage don't count towards experience?

Also troubling (though this is the first source I've seen it in): is she really blaming sleep deprivation for the mirage of sniper fire in Bosnia? I don't want her anywhere near a button at 3 am if that's the case. She might nuke the Smithsonian exhibiting the blue dress so she can deny Bill had an affair. She wouldn't even consider the collateral damage to Bush's third sock.