I know we wish we had the power to stop storms from striking, especially hurricanes and tornadoes. But even though we have the power to destroy cities in a moment, I think that same power probably ought not be used to disrupt a hurricane!

Incredible as it is to believe, this has actually been recommended by some amateurs. I admit, my first response was intrigue. I thought, “That may actually work!”

Of course, then common sense steps in and you realize what a dangerous idea that really is. Like the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s hurricane research division said, “Hurricanes are bad enough without being radioactive. Put that genie back in the bottle. Nuclear weapons are more dangerous than hurricanes.”

Can you imagine if we blew a nuclear weapon in the eye of a hurricane? If it disrupted the hurricane, oceanic wind currents would blow the nuclear fallout into nearby land. And think of how far a hurricane gets inland. Even here as far northwest as Illinois, we sometimes feel the effects of hurricanes (although they are only light storms or rain by the time they reach us). Can you imagine the widespread devastation such a radioactive storm would bring?

Fortunately, no professionals are foolish enough to even entertain such an idea. But even for the amateur storm chasers, I have to wonder why they don’t look past their nose when they think of such ideas? But I hope the very concept gave you a laugh like it did for me.

Crash your vehicle recently? Feeling frustrated at yourself? Don’t feel bad, at least you didn’t spend $264 million on it and then crash it during a live broadcast on television and the internet!

What makes the difference, I imagine, is if you got good mileage before you trashed the vehicle. I suppose NASA can say they did, since their “vehicle” had traveled 1.86 million miles before it crashed. ;-D

I am referring to NASA’s Genesis Project, which was launched on August 8, 2001, involved intricate recovery plans that pilots started training for in 1999, and ended in futility earlier today when the spacecraft accidentally crash landed during reentry. Ouch!

Check it out at: NASA Capsule With Solar Particles Crashes in Utah.

For a while, it seemed that employers were more excited about outsourcing IT labor than kids ever were about Beanie Babies. This would obviously concern all non-management IT workers, especially programmers, who were probably the most highly-outsourced labor of all. Thankfully, the seemingly unstoppable tide is waning.

Check out the article: IT Labor Boomerangs Back Home.

Certainly, it has to be acknowledged that any form of outsourcing incurs additional costs, so the cost savings are never as high as they are predicted. Combine this with the numerous hurdles of offshore outsourcing and you’re saving nothing.

According to the eWeek article linked above, just such a conclusion has been reached by many large companies who had initially decided to offshore outsource and have since retracted and brought the work back home at supposedly a higher cost. They are willing to do this because the supposedly higher cost is all up front in contrast with the hidden costs of offshoring.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens when appreciation is lost for a particular skill or line of work. Many companies do not appreciate how involved many positions in the Information Technology industry are, concluding that they can be mindlessly outsourced. IT is not about typing in some information, hitting the “Compute” button, and waiting for the computer to spit out the product. A great deal of sophistication and mind-numbing detail goes into most industry-level computer work. So until such a “Push in the reqs, crank the lever, and spit out a widget” system is created, I would hope that local employment will always be available for us programmers.

I love Robert X. Cringely! If you have not read the columns from this “mysterious” columnist in InfoWorld, you ought to begin to! They always have some tongue-in-cheek commentary. In today’s post, the Cringester makes a good jab at Microsoft, as he often does…

If you’re interested in more articles from the Cringester, check out his column at: Notes from the Field.

Today, Mr. Cringely noted that Bill Gates said he considered the cup still to be three-quarters full with regard Microsoft’s Longhorn, in light of the recent announcement that a major element of Longhorn, the WinFS data storage system, would be axed. Further, he noted that a source informed him that Microsoft developers on the Redmond campus would no longer be required to wear pants. He quickly quipped that the employees would thus comparably be only three-quarters clothed. Lol, I guess you had to be there to really get a laugh out of that, but I was dying in my office chair.