b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Saturday, May 14, 2005
New b.cognosco Wiki
I know nothing about how this is going to work, but I just installed a new wiki over at wiki.terryfrazier.com. I used mediawiki, the same wiki that runs Wikipedia. Seemed like a good choice.But this is still really, really geeky. I mean, try searching Google for "wikimedia admin" and you get pages telling you to run sql queries to set user rights and such. My manhood is pretty much assured, I don't need shit like that. Just give me some text file to edit or something I don't have to think about too hard. It's not like sql queries are human-readable. But I think I can probably do it through the cPanel interface that my host provides.
It's like everything else - those things that are self-evident to geeks and don't seem to need explanation aren't, and they do. But I did this for the fun of it and to learn something about it. So I'll learn as I go and see what happens. Drop over there make a page or two, put in a comment, or something...
Posted by: 
Terry Frazier at 5:41 PM
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Categories: Collaboration, Technology
Terry Frazier at 5:41 PM
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Frank Zappa Was THE Man
As Zappa would have said — “Poot”
But that Would Have Killed the Music Industry, Right?
“We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1…
All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.
The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.”
-- Frank Zappa invents Rhapsody, Napster in 1983 [Good Morning Silicon Valley, via Shawn] via Jenny Levine
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 1:24 PM
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Categories: Copyright, Music, Technology
Terry Frazier at 1:24 PM
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Thursday, May 5, 2005
Update on Skype Performance Issues
I got some help from Skype tech support on the CPU usage issue. In addition the list of conflicting programs listed on the Skype site, I was instructed to turn off the built-in speech recognition function in Windoze:Also, be sure to turn off Windows XP speech recognition feature. The speech recognition engine kicks in when you begin a call and can cause your CPU to run at 100%. Turn off the speech recognition by opening the Control Panel and selecting Regional and Language Options. On the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details. Under Installed services, click Voice Recognition under the language you are using, and then click Remove.
I didn't even know this was on, and removing it did make a significant difference in performance. Skype still hogs CPU at logon, and whenever I initiate new activites, but it doesn't seem to hang during calls, or when I send an IM during a call. I tested it for about 15 minutes this afternoon and results were acceptable.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 5:54 PM
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Categories: Collaboration, Productivity, Technology
Terry Frazier at 5:54 PM
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Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Budget Conferencing
My experiments with SkypeIn/SkypeOut conferencing have been mediocre, at best. I don't know how the Skype advocates can actually be running significant businesses on Skype-based telcom. It's great if all you work with are geeks who overlook the flaws just to be playing with a new toy. But my clients are pragmatic businessmen who have little time for screwy phone problems.Skype beta 1.2 0.48 continues to have serious resource issues on my PC, taking 99% CPU at random points during a call and locking out all callers until CPU usage returns to normal. So I'll be waiting a while before I put any significant business on Skype.
In the interim I've signed up with Budget Conferencing. They have a full-featured service and a toll rate of only 4.5 cents per caller/per minute. That's roughly 2x the SkypeOut call rate, but the service seems to work and has a full feature set for managing callers, recording calls, etc.
Posted by: Terry Frazier at 4:57 PM
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Categories: Collaboration, Technology
Terry Frazier at 4:57 PM
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This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT
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