If I were launching a meatspace business – not involved directly in any way with selling anything tech-related at all – you know what the first thing I’d do is?

I’d set up a website for it. It’s the best way to advertise, and it would help you get your most aware, most wealthy customers.  Apparently, most businesses are run by blundering idiots.

No matter the business, the first place people are going to go for more information is their favorite search engine… and when they search for you they better find your website. This is mostly true at any age, but it’s 100% true of your future clients and customers under say, 40.

Exactly. If you don’t have a website now and you run any sort of business, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I still go to a few businesses that have no sites, but I generally don’t even consider using an establishment with no web presence anymore unless there is no other alternative or they are truly excellent (not many of those). Hell, these days I even schedule my car to be serviced on-line.

This reminds me why I switched from Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu Forums were once great – excellent community with useful, non-condescending advice. Without those forums, it’s unlikely I would’ve stuck with Ubuntu for five years as my main desktop OS.

Now that is being further destroyed – moving all the tutorials, tips and tricks into a wiki makes it impersonal, not centralized and loses the community feel.

It seems as companies attempt to grow, they nearly always destroy everything that makes them worth a damn.

On our server, I still use an Ubuntu-derived binary-compatible distribution, but next time I update it, I won’t even do that as the removal of the most useful section of the Ubuntu forums has already made it noticeably harder to support.

I just updated the server recently and wasn’t able to find much useful on the forums any longer nor on any of the crappy new wiki pages. Too bad, as the forums were one of the main reasons to use Ubuntu or its derivations in the first place — you knew you could always get useful advice and tips.

I liked this post, but have to quibble with this part a bit.

She never even clicked on the link. But when I gave her back the slide album she hadn’t looked through in 30 years she could barely contain her joy.

The power of physical objects in a nutshell.

I’d change it to read, “The power of physical objects to old people in a nutshell.”

When someone gives me something heavy and non-searchable that could’ve been digital, I get annoyed. At work people insist on handing me physical documents that I know exist in digital format. Most of the time I say, “Can you please put that on the file share? I don’t need any more paper.”

Maybe in 40 years when the big new thing is neural interfaces, I’ll sound like these old people who want everything to be physical, even when it’s senseless. But please. Don’t give me a physical book. In most cases, don’t print out anything for me. I’ve got enough shit to carry around already.