CogBlogged from ‘August, 2006’

Despite my best intentions, I find myself with a small herd of WordPress blogs- this one, my running blog, and two more over at NMC (one is our Second Life site, the other is still under wraps, sorry). So today was upgrade day, making sure they were all brought up to the latest 2.04 version (and sadly enough, this very blog was the most behind). Running WordPress upgrades is not too challenging, and they certainly have the steps outlined in grand detail. And I do it to the letter; disable plug-ins, make a dump of the database (well first optimize some of the bloated tables), and then start moving up the new files, run the upgrade script, and re-activate the plugins. I did 3 of my WP blogs in about 25 minutes. Things I wished for: * It would be great to have an upgrade distribution of WP files that [...]

So the sun is shining a bit brighter on my technical woes. Last weekend, my satellite internet connection at my cabin was back where it should be (800-1000 kbs download and 150-200 kbs upload), not exactly the DSL speed at home, but that’s as good as Hughes gets. However, that’s not to say their support phone line solved my problem. I keep nagging them about my terrible experience (almost 2 hours on hold waiting for escalated customer support), and their response by email (which again is a donotreply@hughes.com address, thanks a bunch) still contends that “my problem was solved with the steps provided by customer support” which is total bull turds since their “steps” where that I should call customer support! What kind of Orwellian logic is that? But my desire to pester them is dwindling… until the next time Fred in the Switch Department decides to Flick Off the [...]

After some intense days this week (three > 2 AM nights, more on that later), it was nice to kick back and just sift through some neglected RSS injected content in my aggregator. So I was reading Gardner Campbell describe In My Life, where he shares the moments of his transition from University of Mary Washington to University of Richmond (just a highway a way, and by the way, Dr. Glu, a big dog nod for making a tough decision). It struck me as sublimely profound that I was able to read this. No, nothing profound in the technology… much more subtle. It was the fact his thoughts, experiences, etc, are stored at www.gardnercampbell.net where they belong to him and have permanence, or as much web permanence as can be, in a unique identifier that is so over looked… just an URL. So what’s the big deal? It’s still so [...]

The patent eager folks at Bb seemed to have missed a crucial earlier patent which usurps everything they claim: Socrates Awarded Patent on Learning Methodology ATHENS–(BUSINESS LIAR)–July 26, 440 BC–Socrates Inc. (NASDAQ:SOCRA), a leading provider of philosophical ideas and services to the education industry, announced that it has been issued a U.S. patent for the method of learning used for all education support systems and methods everywhere. The patent covers core methods relating to certain systems and methods involved in inquiry, structure of knowledge, and dialogue, including all educational systems and enterprise traninng systems. In addition, patents corresponding with the U.S. patent have been issued in Greece, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore and are pending in the European Union, China, Japan, Canada, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, Hong Kong and Brazil. In addition, it is strictly enforced in the Athenian hemlock bars. The patented methodology underpins Socrates’ Learning applications, including [...]