I've been working on a couple of new things. One is called Folding@Home. It's a distributed computing project that uses your unused computing power to help find cures for diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and cancer. Check it out HERE It's for a good cause and it's free.

There is a lot of work going on in business computing. MS is dedicating Billions of dollars anually to the problem. The problem is making data access and analysis simple. I use a database called SQL Server which is in a sense just a glorified excel spreadsheet. It's an ugly beast to work with. If you want to analyze data through reports you have to write your own custom front end code in C# or some other language or pay a lot of money for Crystal Reports which still requires a lot of configuration. I'm planning on starting my own business so I'm looking at ways to start with the latest, legacy-free stuff and eek out a competitive advantage.

The big picture is that people who are good at analytical thinking will start to earn a lot more money because they will no longer have inefficient tools holding them back. Everybody will be more productive and everything will begin to cost less. Now the question that remains is, where do all the people who used to do paperwork go?

Theory of the day: Inefficiency prevents a massive, impending wealth divide.
The assumption here is that low skilled laborers will be unable to adapt to the "New Economy" Supposedly the Jobless Recovery is due to the efficiency gains created by the massive IT shopping spree during the dot.com bubble. That doesn't bode well for the wealth divide. The fact that striking grocery workers have renamed capitalism corporate greed is a powerful sign that progressive taxation isn't progressive enough. The single biggest barrier to a healthy society is a lack of estate taxes. Bush calls estate tax "anti family" which is the same spin that brought us the constitutionally offensive Patriot Act. Look at Coors. The company was nearly run into the ground because of family members on the Board of Directors. It's anti-capitalist, in fact it's neo-monarchistic. Bush would have us eat cake.

Another issue I have is the tax code. I had a tax class in college and it was one of the two toughest classes I had. The complexity is tied to the fact that we like to give tax breaks to those in need. Fair enough but we've created enough complexity that tax lawyers become a good investment that mainly benefit the rich. Ironic that this regressive taxation is the result of a well meaning legislature. I'd love to see the end of itemized deductions. Have a couple simple credits and be done with it.

XML Web Services and the things MS is proposing are the epitome of efficiency. It's going to be interesting to see what the wealth divide looks like in 6 or 7 years.