InfoWorld: “Microsoft's Bill Gates kicked off the company's annual Financial Analysts Day here Thursday by announcing the company will boost R&D spending by 20 percent from $4.3 billion in FY 02 to $5.2 billion in FY 03.” [Scripting News]

Paul Andrews: “I'd feel more optimistic about R&D at Microsoft if the company could point to a single successful original product to emerge from R&D expenditure.” [Scripting News]

Measurement It seems like any time you try to measure the performance of knowledge workers, things rapidly disintegrate, and you get what Robert D. Austin calls measurement dysfunction. His book Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations is an excellent and thorough survey of the subject. Managers like to implement measurement systems, and they like to tie [...]

Frank McPherson Thinks Churches Need To “Shift,” Too. “Today I had a good conversation with Matt and his wife, Kim, about the unique perspective that Gen-Xers have on church. In particular, Gen-Xers expect far more use of computers and electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messaging, and yes, even PowerPoint. One of the things that [...]

Hey, for what its worth:  the US isn't in a recession.  Most economists think we are going to grow from 3-4%.  Productivity is expected to grow 4%.  Real wage growth is over 3%.  Inflation is nearly zero.   Fed rates are expected to remain unchanged for the rest of the year.  In fact, even the markets [...]

Associated Press via TBO.com – Expert: Palm Beach's New Voting Machines Have Problems. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) – The voting machines that replaced butterfly ballots and hanging chads are checked by an “Enron-style of auditing” and don't provide voters any assurance that their votes are being cast, an expert testified Tuesday. Rebecca Mercuri, a [...]

A hidden engine behind the stock declines (as opposed the obvious engine:  the malfeasance of America's corporate executives) are hedgefunds that control $560 b in assets for the extremely wealthy (this is double 2 years ago).  These unregulated and secretive funds are heavily shorting the market, driving it lower.  The upshot is that as wealthy individuals get wealthier [...]

Amazon.com Launches Web Services. “We're putting out a welcome mat for developers — this is an important beginning and new direction for us,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “Developers can now incorporate Amazon.com content and features directly onto their own websites. We can't wait to see how they're going to surprise us.” [...]

An Open Offer to Utah State IT Employees.   This is brilliant. I believe that the 900 or so IT employees of the State of Utah would benefit from speaking and listening to each other more. I think we need groups of specialists inside various departments to communicate with others in their specialty and without.  Consequently, I'd like [...]

Translucent databases. I had lunch with my old pal Peter Wayner yesterday, and he gave me a copy of his new book, Translucent Databases. In the book, Peter defines translucency as an approach that “lets some light escape the system while still providing a layer of secrecy.” … [Jon's Radio]