Time for another “This and That” post…
Drools – a funny name for some amazing scheduling technology
During the CTC-2013 program I noted during a session on the future of case management systems that scheduling and calendaring capabilities were less than adequate (I actually used a more colorful metaphor). So recently I went back to visit the Drools project that is technically described in Wikipedia as:
“Drools is a business rule management system (BRMS) with a forward chaining inference based rules engine, more correctly known as a production rule system, using an enhanced implementation of the Rete algorithm.”
Now I certainly understand that this doesn’t mean much to most folks, but what developers have done will. With Drools software they created Optaplanner. The home page provides the following description:
“OptaPlanner optimizes business resource usage. Every organization faces planning problems: provide products or services with a limited set of constrained resources (employees, assets, time and money). OptaPlanner optimizes such planning to do more business with less resources.
OptaPlanner is a lightweight, embeddable planning engine written in Java™. It helps normal Java™ programmers solve constraint satisfaction problems efficiently. Under the hood, it combines optimization heuristics and metaheuristics with very efficient score calculation.”
Doesn’t this sound like something that courts could use? I thought so too. So I definitely recommend checking it out.
ZDNet Notes the Passing of the Repairable PC
An article posted by ZDNet columnist Jason Perlow notes:
“The evolution of the PC industry over the last several years has not been good to the old-school PC professional, particularly for those whose careers have been heavily hardware-oriented.
I touched on these issues in previous pieces, such as one which I wrote back in February of 2013, which centers on the trend of laptops and ultrabooks becoming more like sealed appliances than user-servicable systems.”
To read the rest of his rant (um.. article) click here.
Computerworld Comments on N-Dex Adoption
In an article posted on October 24, 2013, online at Computerworld titled: “It's criminal: Why data sharing lags among law enforcement agencies: Only 23% of law enforcement agencies participate in a national data warehouse -- but observers remain hopeful.”
The authors write:
“In 2008 the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) embarked on an ambitious effort to enable information sharing among every federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement agency in the United States. It launched the National Data Exchange (N-DEx), an $85 million data warehouse project, and waited for the data to roll in. Kevin Reid, the program manager at that time, expected the majority of agencies to be voluntarily participating by 2009 -- two years ahead of plan.
Today, five years later, around 4,200 of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement organizations -- around 23% of agencies -- are contributing data to the system.”
For more click here.
nCourt Acquired
Via Press Release on Nov. 7, 2013 – Mainsail Partners, a San Francisco-based growth equity firm has partnered with the company’s management team to acquire nCourt, the leading provider of online payment solutions for municipal and county courts and government agencies. The company, based in the Atlanta area, serves more than 2,000 local government partners across the United States.
nCourt’s technology solution helps to bridge the gap between local government and citizens by enabling courts to accept and process payments over the web or by phone. The service, which is free to the courts, reduces paperwork and processing expenses and increases convenience and efficiency for both the courts and the citizens that interact with them.
Click here to read the full press release.
The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint
And last for fun, fellow NCSC’er, Ms. Di Graski passed along an article of how not to use PowerPoint via a rendering of the President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address using the now-infamous AutoContent Wizard to create it.
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During the CTC-2013 program I noted during a session on the future of case management systems that scheduling and calendaring capabilities were less than adequate (I actually used a more colorful metaphor). So recently I went back to visit the Drools project that is technically described in Wikipedia as:
“Drools is a business rule management system (BRMS) with a forward chaining inference based rules engine, more correctly known as a production rule system, using an enhanced implementation of the Rete algorithm.”
Now I certainly understand that this doesn’t mean much to most folks, but what developers have done will. With Drools software they created Optaplanner. The home page provides the following description:
“OptaPlanner optimizes business resource usage. Every organization faces planning problems: provide products or services with a limited set of constrained resources (employees, assets, time and money). OptaPlanner optimizes such planning to do more business with less resources.
OptaPlanner is a lightweight, embeddable planning engine written in Java™. It helps normal Java™ programmers solve constraint satisfaction problems efficiently. Under the hood, it combines optimization heuristics and metaheuristics with very efficient score calculation.”
Doesn’t this sound like something that courts could use? I thought so too. So I definitely recommend checking it out.
ZDNet Notes the Passing of the Repairable PC
An article posted by ZDNet columnist Jason Perlow notes:
“The evolution of the PC industry over the last several years has not been good to the old-school PC professional, particularly for those whose careers have been heavily hardware-oriented.
I touched on these issues in previous pieces, such as one which I wrote back in February of 2013, which centers on the trend of laptops and ultrabooks becoming more like sealed appliances than user-servicable systems.”
To read the rest of his rant (um.. article) click here.
Computerworld Comments on N-Dex Adoption
In an article posted on October 24, 2013, online at Computerworld titled: “It's criminal: Why data sharing lags among law enforcement agencies: Only 23% of law enforcement agencies participate in a national data warehouse -- but observers remain hopeful.”
The authors write:
“In 2008 the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division (CJIS) embarked on an ambitious effort to enable information sharing among every federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement agency in the United States. It launched the National Data Exchange (N-DEx), an $85 million data warehouse project, and waited for the data to roll in. Kevin Reid, the program manager at that time, expected the majority of agencies to be voluntarily participating by 2009 -- two years ahead of plan.
Today, five years later, around 4,200 of the nation's 18,000 law enforcement organizations -- around 23% of agencies -- are contributing data to the system.”
For more click here.
nCourt Acquired
Via Press Release on Nov. 7, 2013 – Mainsail Partners, a San Francisco-based growth equity firm has partnered with the company’s management team to acquire nCourt, the leading provider of online payment solutions for municipal and county courts and government agencies. The company, based in the Atlanta area, serves more than 2,000 local government partners across the United States.
nCourt’s technology solution helps to bridge the gap between local government and citizens by enabling courts to accept and process payments over the web or by phone. The service, which is free to the courts, reduces paperwork and processing expenses and increases convenience and efficiency for both the courts and the citizens that interact with them.
Click here to read the full press release.
The Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint
And last for fun, fellow NCSC’er, Ms. Di Graski passed along an article of how not to use PowerPoint via a rendering of the President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address using the now-infamous AutoContent Wizard to create it.
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