NHL Shows Some Life

Good news! The NHL is extending its agreement with NBC to broadcast NHL games through 2009. In addition to Sunday afternoon games, NBC will continue broadcasting weekend playoff games and Games 3-7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Kind of reminds me when NASCAR used to fight for TV coverage. Now even Busch qualifying makes live TV. Hopefully the NHL can fight back to having all playoff and finals matches on TV.

Fortunately, the lack of television coverage this year spared me the pain of watching the Flyers drop 44 of 64 games with 11 ties (to date).

Pete Rose To Attend Opening Day

And well he should. His lifetime ban from baseball is ludicrous, whatever the details.

As it stands, Pete Rose was an integral member of the finest Major League Baseball team ever to take the field. The Cincinnati Reds clubs of 1975 and 1976 were arguable better than the 1958 Yankees or even the 2000-odd Yankees. Rose was a pivotal contributor to The Big Red Machine's machinelike production, and his determination and hustle helped spearhead the team's spirit.

Add in the fact the man earned more hits than any other player in the sport's history, and he's an automatic shoe-in for the Hall of Fame. Of course, he made some bad decisions, forgot/neglected to pay taxes and ultimately was booted from the same sport that provided his identity and income.

While officially ostracized, there's no prohibition on the man's attending a baseball game as a citizen. And that's exactly what Pete Rose is going to do this April 2. I'll be there, as will some 30,000 others, to celebrate the wonder of Opening Day in Cincinnati.

With a season-long exhibit dedicated to celebrating Pete Rose's contributions to baseball, now would be a great time for the Reds ownership to also consider retiring the #14 jersey. While MLB might prevent retiring "Pete Rose's" jersey by name, there's seemingly no prohibition aginst the Reds retiring the numerals one and four together - possibly the most famous jersey number in the game's history. It would be the right thing to do in a bad situation.

IT Departments Warm Up To Apple

Network World, in its March 5, 2007 issue, notes Apple Mac OS X is making inroads within IT departments. Previously IT departments were largely committed to the Windows platform.

According to the article, several factors are fueling Apple's newfound corporate popularity, including:

• Directory services native within Mac OS X Server.
• Elegant dual-boot support.
• Strong clustering and storage technologies.
• Well-performing third-party virtualization software.
• Migration to better performing Intel CPUs.

A Gartner analyst states, "Because of the switch to Intel, success of the Mac OS X, the stability and elegance of the platform, the Mac is a very viable alternative." He notes, however, that Apple's market strategy still doesn't favor the enterprise market.

But even blue chip companies such as Ford are now turning to Macs. Former Windows- or UNIX-only shops are now trusting Apple-powered Macs to power everything from assembly line production to massive backend backup operations. Anytime you see such adoption (independent of dedicated enterprise sales organizations) it's a sign someone's building a technology others want.

Real World Test: Mac OS X v. Windows XP and Vista

The Cincinnati Reds today placed Opening Day tickets on sale. Unless you're purchasing a complete season ticket package, which runs almost a thousand dollars per for the least expensive seats, your only other option for a guaranteed seat at the home opener is the new Power Pack set. Priced reasonably and consisting of 11 well-attended games, the packages were sure to sell out.

Sure enough, the moment tickets went on sale the Reds ticket Web site defaulted to placing patrons in Virtual Waiting Rooms. Having anticipated the rush, I pointed three computers at the Web site: a Mac OS X PowerBook, a Sony Vaio running Windows XP and a brand new Windows Vista box.

I proceeded to open browsers on the three PCs, pointing each to the ticket order site. How'd the machines fair?

The Windows Vista machine promptly locked up. Apparently the screen saver tried to kick in, as half the screen was painted with the new screensaver and the other half displaying a frozen IE window. Nice. In a moment of crisis, when the PC was needed most (such ticket packages typically sell out within minutes and are sold only on the Internet, I'd been told), Windows Vista tanked and required a hard reboot wasting precious time.

Meanwhile the Windows XP system continued cycling through both the Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 virtual lobbies without any luck. But I'll give it credit; at least XP didn't blow up.

The Macintosh, after just a minute or two and despite having logged on after the Windows systems, was the first to make contact with the order form. While the Windows systems were either rebooting or stuck, I was able to complete my purchase, scoring six seats directly behind home plate.

How cool is that?

Does the Mac OS deserve all the credit? Certainly not. But it's telling that the Vista machine crashed while the XP system toiled away without success.

Google's First Production Server

Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of a Menlo Park VC firm, has posted a wonderful photograph of Google's first production server. It's worth a look.

As with many of Google's strategies, the approach the engineers took was unconventional. Gone are the traditional 1U or 2U 19-inch rack systems. In its place are Duplo blocks, bare PC motherboards (some boasting twin Pentium CPUs if I'm viewing the image properly), naked NICs and strings of Category 5 cable. Apparently Google techs figured out it's much easier to replace and upgrade equipment with such a design.

The Politics Of Health Care

CBS News and The New York Times just released the results of a joint poll. They're not surprising. Nine out of 10 say the U.S. health care system needs major repairs and just one in five claim general satisfaction with what they pay for health care.

It's easy to complain, of course. Before I do, I'll admit health care research, delivery and management are incredibly complex challenges. Paying for it all (whether as the patient or the health care provider trying to cover expenses) is an even more formidable battle.

The question is what to do about it. Some 8 percent of respondents said minor changes are required. Fifty-four percent voted for fundamental changes, while 36 percent feel the system must be completely rebuilt.

Put me in the last group. The amount I'm paying for "catastrophic" health insurance is stupendous. And I mean "catastrophic" insurance. I receive little for my thousands in premiums. When I need coverage, I'm basically on my own. Like many I'm liable for personally covering the first $5K or $10K I spend in any given year. That's a lot, and it's pushing me to join the universal health insurance bandwagon.

We've got to find a way to maintain medical advancement, deliver quality care and maintain costs. But, the more I think about it, the more I feel that's a hopeless combination. And I'm an optimist.