Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Geek Credit 0.016. Geek Credit is a digital community currency for the Internet. It is decentralized, secure, and interest and demurrage free. It is backed by mutual credit (time). There is no central issuing and control authority, so it is a true peer-to-peer currency. [freshmeat.net] Intersting.  Imagine adopting this to the teknoids community to cover things likes managing FAQs, book reviews, contributing to script pools, etc.  Each contribution has some community value that can be exxchanged for something else, like access to scripts, an hour of Elmer, etc. 5:35:43 PM    comment []  trackback []

Emerging Communications: Process theory vs. Channel theory Emerging Communications: Process theory vs. Channel theory:"Stephen Downes, in his outstanding newsletter OLDaily points me to an interesting article, Con-text? (An Inquiry), on the role of non-verbals in interpersonal communication on the internet, written for DEOSNEWS (a monthly electronic journal published by the American Center for the Study of Distance Education). The authors present a comparison of two different theoretical approaches to the subject, Channel theory and Process theory, and claim that process theory has many advantages. For instance, they argue that “as decoding channels like body language and tone are removed, humans will just find a way to effectively use whatever channel is available” (p.14), an argument which seems tenable to me. Also, their list of references includes links to some other online articles that look promising. " Interesting article that bears directly on the effectivenes of distance education. 10:12:47 AM    comment []  trackback []

LawGeek: Silly Internet Patent #9: Online Test-Taking LawGeek: Silly Internet Patent #9: Online Test-Taking:"Politech carries a story today from The Chronicle of Higher Education (account required) about a company asserting a patent over the administration of a test over the Internet. Again, I haven't seen the claims and don't know the claimed date of invention, but the idea of "administering a test" seems awfully close to filling out a questionaire to me, an activity that has been a part of the internet since the first web form." Nice.  Here's some more info: Test.com press release trumpeting the awarding of the patent From the PTO: Patent No. 6,513,042 Most directly it seems to cover things like standardized tests given on-line.  It is very specific about the patent covering testing that is being bought and sold with revenue sharing going on between parties.  At first glance something like CALI Author or the quiz features of Blackboard or TWEN wouldn't violate the patent because the tests are not being sold to the test takers and the test creators are not being directly compensated for creating test. And yes, this is yet another in a series of obviously obvious internet patents that are more about litigation and corporate blackmail than about protecting intellectual property.  Back in 93-94 when we were just beginning to work on the net with the web, there were floods of crude scripts and systems for doing most of what companies are claiming patents for today.  Doing stuff on the Internet is not hard or terribly complicated and usually high derivative, so it should be un-patentable. 10:08:48 AM    comment []  trackback []

Tom's Hardware Guide PCs & HowTo: Migrating from Windows to Linux, Part 1: Preparation - Introduction Tom's Hardware Guide PCs & HowTo: Migrating from Windows to Linux, Part 1: Preparation - Introduction "Crashes, viruses and headaches. You have had it with Windows and you want to switch to Linux. Where to begin? How do you save your documents? Will my hardware work? Slow down... take a deep breath, because you have a lot of work ahead of you. Millions of people have made the same switch before you, so it's not impossible. We are going to take you step-by-step through a whole migration from Windows to Linux, covering everything from picking the right Linux distribution to installing Linux applications. " Just the thing if you're ready to take the big step.  Also useful for those of us with a foot in each camp but leaning to the penguin. 9:47:13 AM    comment []  trackback []