Perhaps the funniest moment was when one of the individuals made a comment that "grown-ups" working for a real company don't do things like ignore others, get involved in turf wars, etc.  The teacher and I just had to laugh out loud a bit at that and let them know that in fact, that kind of "childish" activity by adults occurs daily.  They were of the opinion that individuals like that should be "grounded", because they sure would be if they tried something like that.

Anyway, in talking with the teacher, she said she made the class work on writing up their impression of the JA program and its usefulness.  She said that without fail, they all indicated they had learned more from that experience, because they had to actually "do it", than from all of the textbook learning they had to do during the semester.  So although their company only partially succeeded, we both felt like the program had been a success in giving them a little taste of just what hard work it takes to keep a business running.

Meanwhile, back to the IP wars world, I ran across a post by stats_for_all over at the Y!SCOX board where he was commenting on some features/failures of software like geeklog or whatever is running the Y! boards.  I even responded to him about some of the things I was trying to address through the selection of the Scoop software for the ip-wars.net site.  Anyway, as the day has worn on, I've started thinking about the problem he was describing and that it is really the problem that so many companies are trying to address through business intelligence systems, knowledge management, etc.  How to get that valuable information to trickle to the top just at the precise moment that you need it.  I don't have any experience with some of the big packages that are used in large corporations, but from everything I read, I get the feeling that no one has truly succeeded at taming the beast (despite what their ads might say).

So, it was some uncanny timing this evening when I got my latest eWeek and found a Scot Petersen article on the semantic web. [As an aside, the online version shows the article title/subtitle as "Data Delivery Is Web's Next Challenge/Opinion: The Semantic Web will rely on RDF and OWL to make data available and accessible via the Internet" whereas the deadtree version I received today has it as "Semantic Web awaits/With 'Third Web,' Everything Could Change - Again"]  The bulk of the article is an interview with Tim Berners-Lee.  Among the quotes that I found interesting were

The Semantic Web is all about data, structured and unstructured, and how to use the Web to get at it. Not just some data, but all of it.

What we can see on the Web, or as the Web, represents a fraction of available data. Most of the data that could be put on the Web can't be because of language or formatting restrictions or because it's stuck in a database.

And now for something completely different.  In the deadtree version of eWeek they have their Reader mail section with letters folks have written in (I could not find the online equivalent).  This issue happened to have a letter complaining about an eWeek review of Firefox that extolled its interoperability.  The writer went on to explain how Firefox doesn't play nice with the IIS server he apparently manages (among other things, it commits the cardinal sin of bringing up a "non-Windows-standard dialog").  He felt that Firefox's interoperability really represented a programming effort to the "least common denominator" and it would hurt the features people wanted when they choose a tool (I'm assuming when they "choose" IE).  See, it's all Firefox's fault that M$ stuff doesn't show up like it is supposed to when used outside of the M$ castle (see, all the talk about Castle Groklaw over at CKX has that word in my brain and I can't think of anything better).

So, those are just some rambling thoughts for a Wednesday evening (here anyway).