SOA: A prior post of David Linthicum’s sparked some debate about whether SOA is or is not a special project and how a turbulent economy could affect SOA. “What’s frustrating about all this is that SOA is really about a systemic change in the way we do IT, and not really a ‘special project,'” Linthicum proclaims in this Real World SOA post. “Within most enterprises SOA, like data warehousing, EAI, B2B, etc., are all considered to be ‘newer technologies,’ and/or approaches, and thus should be considered an ‘experiment’ in the minds of those writing the budgets. SOA is not about technology, it’s about architecture. The sooner everyone gets that the sooner it won’t be on the list of special projects.” Related: Budget cuts and SOA. Notes from the field: Friday again and that means Cringe presents: Geek week in review. This time around its Porn to run, More Sony baloney and Something Wikia this way comes. Microsoft and monkeys cameo, too. Look for them at the very end.The news beat: Touching, once again, on the service-oriented architecture theme, WSO2 brings Ruby to SOA with WSF/Ruby 1.0, with which it hopes to bridge Ruby programming with SOA and Web services. Intel releases Clear Bay, which it calls a low-cost white-box blade server platform. Ultramobile PCs get panned for hardware and design flaws at the CES show in Las Vegas this week. And long-time Microsoft veteran, and the president of its business division, Jeff Raikes will retire come September. Technology Industry