Internet

“Talk is cheap.” That’s what we say. And, to a degree, it’s true. But bear this in mind: all action is precipitated by talk. People will often try to silence your voice expressly for that reason — because they know it will lead to action. In the age where hating on millenials is trendy, dismissing the value of social media is equally in vogue — there’s a correlation there, but that’s another post for another time. But like any form of communication, it has its pros and cons, and you get out of it what you put into it. ...

Recently, I needed to plot numerous addresses on a map and, ultimately, find the geocentral location of all addresses. The geocentral location is the weighted center of all the addresses, which can be useful in helping determine numerous things, including the average distance between all addresses and some other location. The geocentral location is attained through relatively simple vector math. Let’s say, for instance, you have a set of points on a graph. Adding each point together would give you the weighted center of all the points, which can help you determine quite a bit about how that population of points interacts with you or each other. ...

Gordon Crovitz wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled Who Really Invented the Internet? Fortunately, it’s only an opinion piece, because there was little more than opinion, littered with plenty of misinformation, in the writing. You can read the article here. Now, it’s not like I look to the WSJ for the latest technology information (or, in this case, technology history). Far from it. And generally when a here’s-the-truth-you-never-knew article starts with political propaganda, it’s pretty safe to assume that whatever comes next is going to be absurd. The article’s introduction could essentially be summarized as, “Obama said something that was true, but I’ll be damned if I can’t find a way to make it sound false!” ...

I’ve recently been reading through Steve Jobs’ biography, a phenomenal work by Walter Isaacson. A point that Isaacson keeps coming back to throughout the book is that Steve Jobs revolutionized six different industries: animated movies (through Pixar), personal computing, tablet computing, phones, digital publishing, and music. I don’t disagree with Isaacson. Jobs did revolutionize the way that digital media (including music, movies, books, and more) is marketed and sold today. But before you can have the corner on the market, there needs to be demand. And the revolution that realized the screaming demand for easily accessible digital media around the globe started in a college dorm room during the summer of 1999. ...

I heard a commercial with the booming and illustrious voice of Rush Limbaugh. After I recovered from banging my head against my desk, I reflected on what was said in the commercial. Rush pointed to the popular free email providers (Yahoo, Google, and others) to remind you that they scan your email. To remind you that they sell your email address, and other information about you, to the highest bidder. To remind you that the use of these free email addresses may increase your risk of spam mail. In contrast, purchasing an email address from Reagan.com provides you with private and secure email, and your information will never be sold. ...