Discussion: 2010 Female Ski Jumpers

The 2010 Olympics are looming closer and closer each day which will be hosted in both Vancouver and Whistler. While watching the news I was shocked to hear that in the 2010 games they would not be allowing female ski jumpers.

I did a bit of research to find out why and the only reason put forth so far is that they say the woman are not skilled enough to jump at an Olympic level. To me that seems like putting the cart before the horse. How would you know what the Olympic level is if you don’t have them included in the Olympics.

I recently joined a group on facebook that support the Female Ski Jumpers that has been growing by 200 or so members a day. One suggest in the group was to contact your local MP. I did that and was directed to the IOC contact us page. I was a bit disappointed in my local MP Russ Hiebert because I know he can do better.

What do you think of the current issue with the female jumpers and what do you think can be done to fix it?

Discussion: Cluster Hosting

We have seen more companies come online last year with a grid, cloud, cluster technologies for shared hosting. This services consists of multiple Apache servers, a few database and email servers. Their is usually a load balance and failover component to it as well. Some of the providers do this through hardware where others do it through software.

I have been tracking up time for all of these new services and their support notices. So far the service does not appear to be a production ready service from the indication of the downtime and issues pushed out through support notices.

One of the problems I have with Clusters in a shared environment is that they create a large single point of failure which can kill your entire business. Where separate servers in separate data centers means you do not have one single point of failure.

I think that Clusters for shared hosting is still a ways away before it makes sense.

What do you think?

Discussion: Gas Prices

Today I went to fill up and found the cost to be 108.5. I was angry and decided to only put in $20 instead of filling up. I’m sure my passive aggressive way of only paying $20 will not affect the gas companies but I know I felt better.

How does the current gas prices make you feel?

One of the main reasons I was angry is because you see things like this gas companies investor relations press releases…

Net earnings from continuing operations were $845 million in the second quarter of 2007, compared with $472 million in the same period of 2006.

I am all for making money and free enterprise. There are lots of companies that make this much revenue year after year. My only concern is that gas is an integral part of our society and greed can cause greater social issues.

Although at what level are gas companies hurting society by doubling earnings year after year?

Discussion: Predictions for 2008

It’s always fun to do predictions because you never know they might just come true. Next year we will see how well I did. For 2008 I predict the following…

1. Google will fail at it’s attempt to launch a social network site like Facebook.

2. Microsoft will purchase Yahoo to compete against Google.

3. Amazon will buy eBay.

4. Video blogging will become more popular in traditional blogs.

5. Business sites will begin to use RSS to push out specials, news and information.

Do you have an predictions for 2008?

Discussion: Fear

Do you live in fear?

You are exposed to 100’s of warnings, cautions and horrible news stories every day. You can not escape them it is on every medium that you read, watch or listen to. With all of these fear mongering mediums inundating you on a daily basis it makes me wonder what the effect is.

I have friends that live life in fear of the 0.1% or less. They change their lifestyle in fear that something could happen. I always live for 99.9% instead and choose not live in fear of something that could happen.

Can you think of something that changed your lifestyle because of the fear of the 0.1%?

Discussion: Big Brother is in your Phone

I found a company called Path Intelligence that provides a new unique service…

The Path Intelligence FootPath™ system consists of a small number of discreet monitoring units installed throughout the centre…The units measure signals from the consumers’ mobile phones using unique technology that can locate a consumer’s position to within 1-2m…The FootPath™ technology is the only system available on the market today that can gather information on shopper paths…

Sounds kind of neat.

If you were to enter into these stores they would be able to track your movement through the store and then possibly compare it to your last 10 visits or that of the average visitor. A friend who is the owner of a local mall said that they would see this software working for many stores and would help them to determine where to place certain products.

The only thing I don’t like is that this is a bit of a invasion of privacy.

How would you feel knowing that a store has tracked your every movement and stored it?

There is nothing stopping non-stores from buying this and tracking you.

Does it change how you feel if it was not a store?