Platinum Dragon writes "Ontario's auditor-general released a blistering report this week detailing how successive governments threw away a billion dollars developing an integrated electronic medical record system. This CBC article highlights an open source system developed at McMaster University that is already used by hundreds of doctors in Ontario. As one of the developers points out, 'we don't have very high-priced executives and consultants,' some of whom cost Ontario taxpayers $2,700 per day." The McMaster University researchers claim their system could be rolled out for two percent of the billion-dollars-plus already spent on the project. The report itself (PDF) also makes note of the excessive consultation spending: "By 2008, the Ministry’s eHealth Program Branch had fewer than 30 full-time employees but was engaging more than 300 consultants, a number of whom held senior management positions."

rsk writes "Justin Voskuhl, a Google engineer, in a 2-fold bid to fight boredom and figure out something to cover a large barren wall in his living room, one weekend developed a Java program using an annealing algorithm to figure out the best layout and colors of Lego blocks to reproduce a source image exclusively in Lego blocks inside a frame. He plans to release the source code soon. I probably would have just painted the wall ..."