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$10,000 Prize For Connecting Businesses With Government Data
First time accepted submitter InsertCleverUsername writes "The Department of Commerce has announced a $10,000 contest for developers making apps to utilize Commerce and other publicly available data and information to support American businesses. Developers must use at least one Department of Commerce dataset to create an application that assists businesses and/or improves the service delivery of Business.USA.gov to the business community. Developers may choose any platform. A list of developer-friendly data sets can be found on the Business Data and Tools page of Data.gov."
what government needs all the info about you for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To do a $50,000 contract job plus on ongoing support hours. This is a pretty shitty IT bailout
Wouldn't they be further ahead to just publish their data as simple web services as a starting point? I see that some already seem to be, but many are just CSV files, zip files, etc . You never know when new data is available, or there's corrections, etc. It's also a little surprising that the number of downloads for the first file I tried was zero.
I mean, they do it already.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Vivek Kundra is a judge. Enough said.
"well, we held this competition, and no US citizens applied, so we must have a huge skills shortage...."
Cheap investment on the government's part.
the way i hear it, thousands of government bureaucrats get a $40,000 "prize" every year, whether they actually accomplish this goal or not.
I just called my boss and told him I was quitting to work on this competition full time.
I could do a lot with $10k.
Why should I have to "earn" it by participating in this pointless exercise when people "earn" far more than that for doing far less?
And what is up with all these anti-American stories? It seems like everything on Slashdot lately has been about how retarded Americans are.
6. Intellectual Property Rights: All submissions to the DOC Business Apps Challenge remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By registering, consenting to the terms of the challenge, and entering a Submission, however, the Participant agrees that DOC reserves an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, distribute to the public, create derivative works from, and publicly display and perform a Submission for a period of one year starting on the date of the announcement of contest winners.
So, for $10k they get bunches of apps which can be distributed royalty-free for a year. If an app is popular, they can change the labels (create derivative works) and continue on. Only 3 developers get any money. Everyone else may have their their app distributed with no compensation.
If you plan on paying off loans or feeding your family by developing software, you should avoid these contests. Leave the submissions to the 9th grade web design classes.
Hey $10,000 isn't too bad for the work, at least if you compare it to other things, like the X-Prize.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at, AC. So no, enough isn't said.
NYC had a similar contest. http://nycbigapps.com/ The data they gave access to was quite useless, though. e.g. a database of city events which only had a bout a dozen entries. These federal datasets look a bit more promising at first glance.
Ties ins with business and government data, privatized police forces and military, Super PACS, we are living in a Plutocracy.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Note: I understand the anecdotal nature of this comment. The problematic, US Government (USG) employees (mentally retired but still obstructing progress) are what we call "institutionalized."
This program, to pay people to develop apps based USG data sets and applications, is not a good idea.
USG cannot and will not guarantee access-to nor permanence-of data and applications.
Engineering firms used data sets and applications via analog or digital files for years. Engineers and firms swapped their copies of data and some programs.
USG decided it would 'help'. USG adopted data sets and applications and hosted them.
Organizations built applications based upon USG-hosted data. Organizations built applications based upon applications built upon USG data.
After a few iterations of Federal employees and administration changes, unilaterally, USG personnel decided either it cost too much to host the data or no one used the data or no one should be allowed to access to the data, and, USG cut off the data and applications. (USG employees exacerbated the problem when they declared public domain data to be proprietary property of USG. "We're not sharing, and, it's illegal for you to share!")
Suddenly, applications around the world crashed. The underlying software crashed because USG-hosted data was inaccessible. The meta software crashed because underlying software crashed.
Users revolted against USG.
USG relented a little. Some data and apps became available - if you applied for access and a USG employee's arbitrary decision deemed you worthy.
However, realizing the unreliability of politicians in charge of data, applications, science, and 'approval', engineers returned to swapping their copies of data and programs.
Trusting USG to guarantee access and permanence of data is a bad idea.
This program, to pay people to develop apps based upon probably transient and spurious USG data sets and applications, is a bad, bad idea.
An independent-host or revolving-host escrow repository of data and source code could be more reliable.
When someone says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.", grab you data and source code and RUN!
The article links to a White House blog, which is nothing more than a parroting and link to the real information. Must be an election year.
What you failed to mention is that, to be eligible, one has to be a US citizen/resident or company. Why was this info even posted here? This is an international site, or so I thought. Frankly, I don't see many /. posts regarding business opportunities for, say, Saudi Arabian or Uzbekistan citizens.
This amount is laughable. I have a few ideas for web crawler algorithms that can compile specific government data across single US government agency sites. If i were to package them into subscription based web services then I could hopefully make 50 times that by starting a business.
The "billionaire boys club" cliques that "run the show" out there nowadays ( & right into the ground) will NEVER "give up the ghost" on their cushy billet(s).
From THEIR "pov"? It's like this:
"Why know how to do something yourself" (especially if you're a supervisor, who SHOULD know the job as well as or BETTER than subordinates in MY book @ least, hence WHY he's a "superior") ", when you can 'delegate authority'" (same as a babysitter & just about as skilled/educated too) and NOT HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO DO A DAMNED THING?"
In fact, I confronted a 'superior' of mine about 12 yrs. ago & said:
"How the HELL are you my 'superior' when you can't even DO THIS JOB YOURSELF?"
His answer? See the above on "delegating authority"... a stack of TRULY, dead-wood, just like you said... & it's ALL OVER THE PLACE out there - goofs like that?? They make HUGELY shitty decisions, because they do NOT understand what it is they are "managing"...
E.G.-> It would be much like placing myself into a surgeon's shoes & being told "perform this coronary bypass"... well, heck - the poor bastard on the table would DIE were I "@ the wheel", & the same with our "fine leadership" (especially in the information systems/comp. sci. area, largely - no, not ALL cases, but the majority & this is myself speaking from professional experience in this art & science since 1994).
* The world today is more than ever "It's WHO YOU KNOW, not what you know" b.s. & look @ the results!
APK
P.S.=> Face it, though I *think* you know this already:
The "cliques" ARE in control, the "connected people" etc./et al, & they WILL (and are) running the show into the ground rather than setting things straight!
Simply since "setting things straight" would require that 'superiors' TRULY BE, superior to their subordinates in various departments and that they actually UNDERSTAND and HAVE DONE THE JOB THEMSELVES... largely/again - this is NOT the case, especially in comp. sci. related fields!
(You realize that this is NOT how it really works and WHY things are shitting the bed so badly economically - this goes STRAIGHT UP to the "political level" where perhaps the BIGGEST dunces & fakes exist - hell, look @ them: Barely ANY of them understand economics, & LOOK @ THE RESULTS OF IT!)
That's just largely fact (and a KNOWN weakness of gov't. bureaucracy & leadership - our 'leadership' isn't QUALIFIED to lead us, period - & imo, it's WHY they fear guys like Ron Paul, who actually DOES have a grasp of things @ that level... let a guy like that into office? He'd be killed most likely, because he'd 'upset the easy ripoff profit money applecart' most likely...))... apk
I once tried to convince someone trying to get into programming after a career of underemployment that programming was about solving other people's problems. If you can't find satisfaction over solving problems you didn't imagine yourself, you're not going to like programming for other people. As he was coming up with his portfolio project to demonstrate his knowledge I tried to convince him to solve a problem potential employers could relate to. But he thought it more important to bring his vision to the world. So he wrote a web-based dice game.
This is a great project for someone looking to show potential employers they know how to solve problems. Winning would just be gravy.
Perhaps we should change the historic documents to read of the business, for the business, by the business. And the people pay taxes to be the enemy.