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?

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?

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?

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?

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%?

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

The Path Intelligence FootPathâ„¢ 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 FootPathâ„¢ 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?

The following was posted on TechCruch and thought it would be interesting to see what your opinion would be on what happen…

Suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher James Buss was arrested last week after leaving an anonymous comment on the Boots And Sabers political blog as part of a discussion on teacher’s salaries. Under the name of “Observer” James Buss wrote the following:

Looking at those teacher salary numbers in West Bend made me sick. $60,000 for a part time job were you ‘work’ maybe 5 hours per day and sit in the teachers lounge and smoke the rest of the time. Thanks God we won on the referendum. But whining here doesn’t stop the problem. We’ve got to get in back of the kids who have had enough of lazy, no good teachers and are fighting back. Kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold members of the Young Republicans club at Columbine. They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time! Too bad the liberals rip them; they were heroes and should be remembered that way

Police acquired the IP address of Buss from the blogs administrator then arrested him at his home at Cudahy, south of Milwaukee. Buss spent an hour in the Washington County jail before he was released on $350 bail.

Now granted the comments are horrible but I have several questions to discuss.

Was the post enough to bring a just cause to find the IP from the ISP and arrest him?

From what I see there is not just cause. Maybe you can find something I missed.

Does this concern you now knowing that you can be tracked down and arrested for commenting on a blog?

If you live in Canada I don’t think you have to worry about it as much unless there is clear just cause to do so and a judge will provide a warrant to get your location from the ISP.

What do you feel would be a suitable punishement?

This week the Vancouver 2010 mascots were released to the public. A lot of criticism from the public came from these mascots, none of them positive. One SFU professor even went as far to say that the mascots are a marketing mistake.

As a marketing person I am always looking to see how well others market. Since the launch I have been showing friends and people of various age groups the pictures of the mascots (below) and anyone over the age of 15 has had a negative response immediately.  

 

Taking it one step further I have been showing the mascots video to the same people and for some reason it almost turns in to a positive experience. It must be the humanizing of the video.

What do you think of the mascots both before and after watching the video?

My favorite is Quatchi. Which one is your favorite?

If you run a business then the odds are your going to need to use a word processor, spreadsheet or slide show software in your business. So like most businesses you go out and drop $200+ on Microsoft office and your business is ready to go.

Did you buy Microsoft Office?

Today you don’t have to use Office anymore. There are online applications that are not only superior to Office but are Free. Two of these applications are Zoho and Google Apps.

Have you tried these applications?

If you have not tried them then I suggest you do. One of the neat features of these products is that you can access your documents or spreadsheets anywhere. Instead of keeping multiple copies on various machines an online version makes it easier to access the information and share it.

Do you see these applications taking over Office?

I see in the future that these types of applications will over take Office and computers will similar to the gPC computers with just an Internet browser.

If we were to integrate Zoho into our cPanel would that have value?

Several weeks back a Polish man was tasered at the Vancouver International Airport by RCMP. The man died from this incident and has caused a lot of questions to be brought up in regards to the use of tasers. A video of the incident is posted if your not sure what happen.

From the news the man did not speak English very well and was in the baggage claim area for approximately 6 hours waiting for his mother to pick him up. The man became somewhat erratic and the RCMP subdued him with a taser which killed him.

How do you think this issue could have been prevented?

I think this could have been prevented in several ways. I do not understand how the man was able to spend 6 hours in the baggage area without anyone noticing him and doing anything about it. The airport should hire someone to just watch for people that look confused in the baggage area and offer assistance. If they do not speak English they could be directed to a phone where an interpreter can communicate with them.

 I also think the RCMP should evaluate this video on how not to handle this type of situation. If you watch the video you will see the RCMP officers who finally tasered the man came from some off site location, surrounded him and then aggravated him to the point of which they required to taser him. If anything this situation would have been handled better by someone who could have looked at the situation and understood it from the other persons perspective.

How do you think this will affect international visitors from attending 2010?

I am very concerned that we could have 1000′s of people similar in the Vancouver International Airport come the 2010 Olympics.