zen.org Communal Weblog

I had not logged into AIM in a long time. Over a year I think. I had no idea what my password was. I tried a few standards and nothing. So I jaunted over to aim.com and clicked on the Lost Password link. I actually had lost my username to, but Brendan remembered it. I entered it and it said that I had to wait 24 hours to request my password as I had login failures recently. The odd thing is a minuate later I got email with my password. No matter, just a bug I guess.

I’ve adjusted our WordPress server in an attempt to block trackback spams. It involves tricking the server to inject a comment into a post, used primarily to throw up a bunch of product plugs and ad links. Gah. Some folks have put a lot of effort into combating this sort of junk. The goal is to give us all some sort of shelter from the commercial-ridden world we live in. I wonder if this post will be the equivalent of cutting an artery to beckon the sharks?

In the mid-1990s, I picked up maintenance of a mailing list set up by some folks at MIT. Called CACI: Children Accessing Controversial Information, it was intended to offer a forum for parents, teachers, or just about anyone else to talk about the free anarchy of the Internet and its potential impact on children. With all the fear of porn and pedophilia lurking at every corner on the Net, we thought it’d be a fairly active list.

This is how the list describes itself:

CACI, Children Accessing Controversial Information, is a mailing list for
discussing children accessing controversial information through computer
networks. Can children be prevented from accessing materials which are
controversial? Is preventing access even desirable? We believe censorship is
not the answer. What alternatives do we have or could we provide? How do we
talk with children about these issues? What can we say to concerned parents
and school administrators? How and by whom are community standards set? We
hope to form a community of people interested in discussing these issues and
developing helpful materials.

For the last few years, however, it’s been pretty stagnant with only short bursts of conversation. I wonder if everyone is just so firmly set in their beliefs (filter my computer, don’t filter it, porn is good, porn will rot my child’s brain) that they see no need to talk about it and learn from others?

For ages, I’ve only been able to use billpay.ie with an old copy of the Opera browser (or, alternately, Internet Explorer in my VMware-resident copy of Win98). But today I tried using it to set up payment of our phone bill, and at the Confirm button, the JavaScript code didn’t fail!

Either they finally fixed the bug referring to an undeclared variable, or firefox is more lenient than previous Mozilla browsers—but I doubt firefox is letting people get away with bad code all the time. 🙂

We’ve been trying to get a replacement right hinge for a Dell Inspiron 7500. Asking Dell in Ireland, they referred us to a company called Upgrade Options in the UK. After a week and a half of trying to get a straight answer out of them, we finally said screw it and just ordered one from a company in America, paying $21 in shipping to get it here.

After an initial call where I needed to find out if it’s 15″ or 15.4″ (it’s 15″); he said they have right hinges for the 15.4″, but they were out of stock of those for the 15″ screen version of the Inspiron. But, he told me (and I noted), if I needed those they’d “be in soon.”

All further attempts to get the same person named Daniel failed. Three messages were left on his voice mail, and one call also had someone claiming to take notes to give to the right guy. Never got a call back. So today I tried again and another person took the information and said he’d look into it—only to have the call disconnected.

I called right back, and asked again for Daniel. Finally got him, said he recognized my name but wasn’t sure what I was calling about. Gahhhhhhhhh. I explained about my attempts to reach him, and he said he’d have to see what was going on with his sales team. He asked for the details again, and then I waited on hold for a moment. He came back to say he doesn’t know when they might get them in (when I pointed out the “be in soon” line, and asked if that would be within the next six weeks, his response seemed to suggest that he had no idea).

He told me that he knew of two companies in the US who had them now, and he could give me their number. I asked where they get their own parts (“the biggest collection of Dell spare parts in the UK”) since it’d help to know where they’d be getting them. Maybe something could be accelerated?

He started to respond, then click, the call was disconnected. Again. I’m not ready to theorize that their phone connection is faulty.

Thus we ordered one from a US company online, and will make sure to let Dell know that our experience with their support company in the UK was awful. If this is the only resource for people in the UK and Ireland for the care of their Dell equipment, it sure feels like we should go out of our way to use someone else’s product.

So fabulous is this WordPress thing that we are going to use it in school for collaborations between European schools on a thingy called the Comenius Comet ( Sample Here ) which is written and designed by 15 yr olds around Europe. Its kinda cool!

Correction on the URL:
The Comet…it’s a PDF.

I just spent all day trying to get my Linux software RAID devices to work on Debian Sarge. Then I noticed, there hidden in the middle of a bunch of X upgrades was a mdadm upgrade. Debian mdadm version 1.7.0-2 worked fine, but 1.8.1-1 did not. I downgraded and pined the lower version. I dislike software RAID in the first place.

It took all day to figure out. Much check/file bug report tomorrow.

A straw poll of sorts today, first day back in school, suggested that about 60% of the kiddies got a pink or silver mini i-pod for Christmas. A number of them could not send an email before the Christmas break but they are now all about the torrents and the folders and the iTunes and differences between MP3s and AAC and the best firewall software. Scary stuff. To be encouraged.

/. reports that Bill Gates thinks that `anyone who doesn’t support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as “communists”.’ United States Republican candidates often accuse Democrats of being liberal. There is an eerie relationship there I have not figured out yet.

A very cool project, even though I am still on my Christmas holidays: in late January, apparently, we will be setting up video conferencing between five Dublin schools http://www.global-leap.com/ and through this we will be running peer-to-peer teaching in things like web design, desk top publishing and programming. Sounds purdy cool.

Also, next September, about half the kiddies and all the staff get iBooks (except me ; I get a PowerBook next week ‘cos I’m special) and some Apple dudes are coming in over the summer to set up wireless access points in all of the classrooms and public areas.