Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 63
November 14, 2012
Pain, The Mind, and the Vastness of Life
Could the mechanisms by which our mind deals with pain (i.e., blockout the memory of the actual pain) be related to our need for a God as a black to the overwhelming vastness of the world/universe? If so, realizing that we are insignificant, the “vastness” is “painful,” and God becomes a way to mitigate that pain.
Truth in Fiction: Cameron’s Avatar and the “Global Brain”
Watching Avatar recently got me to thinking about what Cameron was trying to describe in this movie.
If you haven’t seen it (under a rock jokes aside), the world of Pandora has a global network of data that can be accessed by the indigenous population. This network is embodied as the planet itself and connection happens when the natives connect a piece of themselves (nerve endings hidden in their braid) to vines hanging from special trees.
This is an obvious metaphor for our own changing human...
Reading Between the Lines…Literally!
As kids, I think we are all fascinated with invisible ink. It just seems like such a cool idea: being able to write something down and only have it seen by the person intended. Maybe it’s the “secret agent” in all of us. Of course, I tried many a version of the super secret ink (some garnered from stores, others from the back of a cereal box) but was never able to find one that I thought actually worked. Regardless of whether or not I ever got to use it, the history of invisible ink is a fasc...
For Better or For Worse, the Internet has Impacted Journalism
The Economist has been hosting a debate between journalism professor Jay Rosen and media skeptic Nicholas Carr about how the Internet has either impacted journalism negatively or positively (with Jay on the positive side and Nick on the negative). GigaOm has an excellent write-up of the debate to date.
All-in-all, there has definitely been an impact. Perhaps it has been positive to the art and craft of journalism, forcing professional journalists to be more careful about how they report news g...
Photo: Some Images Go Beyond Just Visual Appreciation
Bored? Got a few minutes and want to do something fun and mindless? Check out NatGeo’s “puzzle-ization” of the latest crop of contest-winning photographs. Even if you don’t really like building the puzzles, just watching these pics get turned into them is pretty cool:
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/photo-contest/entries/puzzle/winners/
The Future of Mobile Gaming? Subscriptions.
As an avid gamer and mobile user/advocate, I’ve downloaded a lot of games for both my iPad and iPhone (yes, I’m much happier when I get a single purchase for both although I have to admit I have paid twice just to see the different experience) but I’ve noticed that I often download the games and only play them for a little bit. With the exception of Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds, I tend to play hard on a game (like Infinite Blade) for a week or so and then abandon it. After talking with...
Do It Yourself vs. Amazon: Weighing the Pros and Cons of Cloud-based Businesses
Although we talk a lot about how the cloud in terms of companies off-loading costly infrastructure, what we don’t often talk about is how the cloud has enabled a new crop of technology startups. Whether it’s managing lots of cloud instances (Rightscale) or reporting on cloud traffic or helping companies deploy applications into the cloud (EngineYard), there’s a myriad of businesses sprouting up to take advantage of this rush to the cloud.
Now whether or not you believe that the cloud is new or...
My Data: What’s It Worth To You?
Although there has been a back-lash about “personalization” software on websites and desktops, there is an obvious benefit to these technologies: you get advertisements that are more suited to your needs, tastes, and predilections. When I am looking at a website, I’d much rather see an add for Home Depot knowing that I’m in the market for a kitchen sink than I would for 1-800-flowers. The same goes for mobile. According to some recent research by JiWire, 53% of mobile consumers are willing to...
It’s Not Just About HTML 5: Why Flash Can be a Better Solution for Streaming Video on the Web
This originally appeared on the Limelight Blog (link below).
There is an unmistakable trend in the video delivery and content publishing industry right now: HTML5.
When HTML5 hit the market, the video industry immediately jumped on it as the proposal of a tag that was part of the native HTML, which meant no more specialized players (like Flash) and easier delivery as vi...
Cloud Computing: The Really New is Sometimes Really Old
I think that most people believe cloud computing is a relatively new concept. Of course, those in the IT industry have scoffed at all the hype knowing that cloud (or distributed) computing has been around for a few decades. But based on the video below, it seems that the concept of cloud computing (called Polymorphic Computing) has actually been around since the 1950s. This video really brings to light how ideas sometimes take decades to slowly integrate into the fabric of implementation. I w...
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