Update on the Google Books project

The Case Against Google Books

How three East Bay librarians led the revolt against the company’s plans to archive all earthly knowledge.

By Chris Thompson

October 14, 2009

Google has empowered ordinary citizens beyond anything once thought possible. Thanks to Google, you can view your home from space, track flu outbreaks around the country, or figure out traffic congestion along your commute route, all instantaneously and without spending a single dime. And the company’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” underscores an undeniable civic-mindedness. Its nonprofit arm, Google.org, invests in green electricity start-ups. Goats graze the company’s lawns to reduce its carbon footprint. And yet, despite the company’s best efforts, there’s just something about Google that gives some people the heebie-jeebies.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/the_case_against_google_books/Content?oid=1211860&page=1

NYT Article on the Google Books Project

Since my employer is a partner in this project, I link here to the latest NYT article.

E-Books…the long sad story…

A history of the E-book, from Ars Technica.  An interesting analysis from someone who’s been in since the beginning of the format.

Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets are Pretty Pointless

…and yet I wrote one anyway, just to try it out: App Killer

Stopping VirusRemover2008

Once again some major fool has created more work for me…this time, a client intemperately clicking a link in Huffingtonpost.com’s comment section has installed an app called ViruRemover2008, supposedly an antiviral program, but in reality an annoying piece of malware.  Pop-ups continually distract you indicating that there are viruses on your computer.  To ‘fix’ this problem, you are advised to purchase the full version of VirusRemover2008.  VR2008 will never stop asking you, and will not allow itself to be uninstalled.  This is a business model?

So I spent some time trying to remove the program fragments in the manner suggested at Symantec.com, but I never did find them.  SAV might have found and deleted them by the time I arrived on the scene, or the VR2008 author may have read the same page and changed his code.  The virus was only active in a single user’s profile, so the actual fix was:

• let Symantec AV do its thing
• copy the user’s profile
• delete the user’s profile
• after making sure the problem is gone, restore the user’s desktop items and internet favorites.

So far, that has worked.  Try not to get too angry.

Another Day, Another Outlook 2007 Crash

Here’s the symptom (Windows Vista, Outlook 2007):

Corrupt Outlook.ost file error message

The Solution: Delete file c:\users\USERNAME\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\outlook.ost.

When you restart Outlook, it will act as though you are opening the app for the first time.  You won’t lose any of your settings. I take that back – I lost the ‘auto-complete’ list for previously used addresses.

BFlex 2008

I attended the annual BFlex this weekend, and I think a good time was had by all.  The intermediate-level class I attended, taught by Adobe’s Matt Boles, was chock-full of useful information I might not have considered in my usual self-study.  I definitely plan to attend next year, even though I didn’t win any raffle items (as usual).  The pizza was still free, and I ate too much of it (also, as usual).

Installing Infotrieve Ariel under Windows Vista

I wrote a little instruction set for this task, since it was a bit of a pain.  You can download the MS Word Doc from the URL:

http://www.indiana.edu/~libcasd/ariel-vista.doc.

/updated 7/24/2008

Copying a MS SQL server database – w/o BS

Sheesh, all I wanted to do was copy a SQL database from one MS Windows machine to another (we are migrating our Infotrieve Ariel servers to new workstations).  Searching the web for a solution to this simple task was like asking someone how to plug in a lamp and getting the entire history of physics first.

Here’s how we do it, copying from an MSDE 2000 server to MS SQL 2005 Server Express:

1. On the machine with the database, stop the SQL server
2. find the database files (suffixes are mdf and ldf) and copy them to your new workstation
3. Run Application SQL Server Management Studio Express (free download) on your new workstation
4. Connect to your SQL server using the aforementioned Server studio
5. in the Object Explorer, right-click the Databases object and choose Attach
6. Use the Attach Databases dialog window to locate your database files and attach them.

That’s all.  Now, see how simple that was?

Dell Computers Fail to Boot Due To ‘Bad’ USB Connections

Yeah, this was a new one on me…we use Dell Optiplex GX280 workstations here at the library. We’ve had the usual PS and HD failures this year, but last week I had a station that stopped booting right after the Windows “progress bar” screen. It just sat there, a black screen with a blinking cursor, no POST, no nothing.

It turned out that a USB printer cable was not plugged in “all the way,” something I had never even considered. Since the backs of our workstations are very crowded with cabling, one of the USB cables was 1/2-way out of its jack. The USB controller had failed to start, stopping the boot in its tracks. Plugging in the cable again and restarting solved the problem.