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.

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

The Daily WTF – Library IT edition

Definitely check out today’s Daily WTF for an example of what happens to coders who try to meet every contingency.

Google, Library Scanning, and Copyright

There’s a nice (and brief) roundup of issues concerning Google’s massive library book scanning project at Ars Technica this morning. I’d like to comment on it more fully, but I don’t have the time or patience to read through all the relevant copyright law. My illustrious employer is also a member of this project, so I expect to be hearing a lot about this topic in the coming years.

The gist of the problem appears to be that copyright pertaining to electronic media has not been fully hashed out in the courts, so several opinions can be regarded as having validity. The idea of Google, a powerful media corporation, having control over copies of many millions of pages of copyrighted content is mind-boggling. What do they say they intend to do with them? Their use could be either lawful, unlawful, or exist in a legal limbo.

Several amusing remarks are made in the back-and-forth comments between Paul Courant and Siva Vaidhyanathan about the general laziness of modern students, to the effect that they won’t bother to physically seek out actual books, but prefer electronic versions…a generalization, but one with some truth to it. It’s just the way they was raised, I guess.

J.K. Rowling: Rich Idiot

From AP (it’s Fair Use!):

“NEW YORK – Author J.K. Rowling and the maker of the “Harry Potter” films are suing a small publisher in Michigan over its plans to release a book version of a popular Web site dedicated to the boy wizard.”

I read these fine words sitting underneath one of the largest library collections on the planet: 7 floors practically groaning underneath exactly the sort of book that Rowling is suing to prevent. There’s probably an entire floor devoted to books about other authors’ books. Where is her precedent for this suit? Of course, precedent doesn’t matter when you’re rich: pay a law firm, and it will happily sue the sky for being blue.

I fondly remember a time before any bonehead who could afford a pack of lawyers (a trouble of lawyers? a suit of lawyers? a bill of lawyers?) decided copyright was a club to beat the heads of those who dared to trespass on their financial turf. I blame the RIAA, of course.

Perhaps there is a certain madness that comes upon the newly rich, which makes them honestly believe that their desires rate above those of others. All I know is that if I were Rowling, I’d never even want to hear the name ‘Harry Potter’ again. She beat that particular horse to death. My advice to her as a reader: fire your lawyers, and hire a decent editor for your next book.

Libraries and ‘Adult Materials’

More like ‘Adolescent materials’…Atlanta public library patrons are up in arms over alleged viewing of pornography at library workstations.

Viewing pornography is a private activity which should be restricted to one’s home.  If one doesn’t have a home, though, who am I to deny adults their rights?   And who decides what is pornographic?

A few days ago I saw another story about a public library that had two internet areas: one monitored; one un-monitored.  This struck me as eminently sensible.  Kids to the right; perverts to the left.

“The library system is not a baby-sitting service, and the librarians are not our children’s nannies,” he said. “Let’s not surrender our parental responsibility to a software package, the librarians and the county government.” – A library patron from the article.

I agree.  Filtering software has been shown (at least to my satisfaction) to be  poorly programmed, and likely to block sites based on oversimplified textual criteria (breast cancer information, for instance.)   Who will decide what is pornographic – “community standards”?  Oh, please…I personally don’t care to surrender my personal tastes to my community’s lowest common denominator.

Notes for fixing ILLiad Invoices by editing the SQL tables on the ILLiad server.

Just to show I mean business here, I’m posting one of my manual fixes for the OCLC ILLiad ILL Management system. ILLiad is great, but sometimes I have to get into its guts and fiddle around.

 

Use this fix at your own risk! And I always appreciate comments and complaints. If you see a problem let me know.

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At IU we occasionally have mysterious transactions for which monthly invoices are not generated. It’s possible to create invoice records for transactions that weren’t invoiced automatically. You need to add records in the following tables: