Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

Next week I’m headed to New York for the O’Reilly Money:Tech Conference billed as “Where Web 2.0 Meets Wall Street.” The conference speaker list is impressive. I see this conference as a potential opportunity to extend Hyperix Search into the vertical finance segment.

Over at Mashable their reporting today that;

“Reuters will publicly discuss their new initiative around a social network for traders; LinkedIn will introduce a new way for members to create connections and networks with experts by industry; Stormwatch will come out of stealth mode to unveil a project in the financial service industry related to tracking sentiment indicators in real time; Eventvestor, a new ad-driven service for aggregating and tracking financial events, will launch; Motley Fool will present evidence that the collective analysis of the community, and their own analysis, is wisdom not to be dismissed.”

And if you want to go Mashable has a discount coupon to save you 20% off the registration.

Greg Linden has an excellent post about MapReduce and how some database gurus view at as “a giant step backwards”. Personally I don’t buy it and we’re implementing something similar for Hyperix. Here’s an excerpt of what Greg had to say.

“The comments on the post are enjoyable and useful. Many rightfully point out that it might not be fair to compare a system like MapReduce to a full database. DeWitt and Stonebraker do partially address this, though, by not just limiting their criticism to GFS, but also going after BigTable.

The most compelling part of the post for me is their argument that some algorithms require random access to data, something that is not well supported by GFS, and it is not always easy or efficient to restructure those algorithms primarily to do sequential scans.“

A day after the MDA deal to sell its space division to ATK we learn that the Canadian Space Agency president Laurier Boisvert resigned in December and was replaced on January 1st by Guy Bujold, an assistant deputy minister at Industry Canada.

The Canadian Press is reporting that Mr. Boisvert may have left because of the pending MDA deal.

“He was officially replaced by Bujold this past Jan. 1, but the resignation was communicated to CSA staff on Dec. 20.

There has been speculation Boisvert may have quit over the planned sale of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.,a Vancouver-based company known as MDA, to Alliant Techsystems (NYSE:ATK) of Minneapolis.”

Even if this was the case which in itself begs for more questions to be asked, why are we only learning of this now?

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Yesterday’s acquisition of Canada’s MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) is bad for Canada for so many reasons. It’s reminiscent of when Avro Canada closed down and most of their talent headed to the US and were instrumental in helping them with the Apollo program. While MDA is not shutting down operations in Canada it should be asked what the long term viability is for them in Canada. After all the Canadian dollar is stronger than the US dollar and the Canadian government seems indifferent to sustaining a space sector made in Canada.

MDA is the leading space company in Canada. Best known for the Canadarm which it acquired from another Canadian company, Spar Aerospace in 1999, MDA has led the way in Canada for the space commercialization sector. It’s also known for its satellite systems which included the recently launched Radarsat-2. Their planetary robotics division had been growing and the Canadian Space Agency had been hoping that it would be a key contributor to the European Space Agencies ExoMars rover by having Canada build the rover through MDA. Even if the government had changed its mind and approved this plan it seems unlikely to do so now that MDA would be under foreign control.

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Yesterday the Mars Institute began initial building on its island in Second Life. While public access is not available just yet, we plan on opening up the area soon. Details of what we plan for the island will be released as soon as possible. But we are looking at a presence for the Haughton-Mars Project and will be collaborating with other groups.