I'm not addressing your equivalency or limited access arguments since I don't think they hold up under scrutiny. Breadth and depth of the L/W databases, search functions, special WL or LEXIS pagination of unpublished opinions, exclusive features like electronic Shephardizing, to name just a few features, make the L/W legal database products unique. It would be impossible and/or impracticable for her to obtain these features elsewhere. Limited access does apply here.
With regards to price: she doesn't say the library can't afford it; she's saying that L/W won't sell the product (flat-rate access to the legal databases for a limited pool of concurrent users) to her. From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
My law firm has purchased flat rate access to the main legal databases on both Lexis and Westlaw (unlimited searches and printing). Pricing for the other L/W databases such as ALLNWS/ALLNEWS remains transactional/hourly. The pool of concurrent users is approximately 300-400 in 5-6 offices around the world. This setup appears to be very similiar to the sort of access that she wants to setup in Cuyahoga County (though probably with fewer concurrent users).
I still don't see how what she's asking for (flat rate access to the legal databases for a limited group of concurrent users) differs from what Lexis/Westlaw are offering major law firms. And since she hasn't said that Cuyahoga can't afford to pay for this access, I don't see how Lexis/Westlaw can justify not making flat-rate access to the legal databases available to the public libraries if they sell it to firms.
Obviously if she's asking for a cut rate that would change things. But if she can pay, she should be allowed to play. To use your analogy, the compact disc is in the bin but the retailer is choosing to sell it only to men (to pick an arbitrary characteristic that has no bearing on whether the individual can pay or not).
Honestly, I still don't see why this isn't possible - she's asking for flat-rate yes, but in a few lines below she says she only wants it for
"...a limited number of concurrent users".
This is the same setup my firm gets. There is a limited pool of users (about 400 attorneys and 200 paralegals) and access to the main citations database is completely flat-rate.
I don't see how the library setup differs, except that the pool of concurrent users would probably be a bit smaller depending on the size of each particular library system.
(Interestingly enough, the head law librarian here tells me that one of the reasons Lexis and Westlaw now offer flat-rate access is that their larger clients were balking at the extremely expensive rates that the two companies charge for both hourly and individual searches.)
I don't see how Westlaw and Lexis can justify not offering the database to libraries. There's obviously a market there. And a "limited pool of concurrent users" seems to be the exact same set up that large law firms and law libraries are allowed to buy access for.
And obviously libraries, since they make things like the latest issue of Science available to those who could not otherwise afford it, are an example of this destruction of the book industry and media, right? Since they're essentially eliminating the wealth requirement?
Number of public libraries in the U.S. in FY 2000: 9,074
Total number of books published in the U.S. in 2000, all publishers: 60,000 Total U.S. book sales in 2000: $25 billion Revenue per title, all U.S. publishers: $417,000
I disagree. I can't count the number of times I've been looking for a particular citation and seen another case or a headnote on a case that isn't the exact citation I was looking for but that leads me to think about the issue from another angle. This sort of free-flowing search is the reason that my firm expects attorneys and paralegals to conduct their own Westlaw and Lexis research instead of relying on librarians to locate the relevant law. Funneling everything through a librarian would essentially limit the use of Lexis/Westlaw to pulling cites, given how busy the average librarian seems to be.
I agree. I don't know where people are getting this "she wants access for free" thing from.
She wants to pay - they just won't sell.
Re:Don't put words in her mouth, please....
on
Democracy in the Dark?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Agreed - there isn't a legal obligation for Lexis and Westlaw to allow public libraries to purchase access to these databases.
I think there's a pretty interesting parallel to be drawn to laws that forbid insurance companies and banks from redlining people who live in poor areas of town however. Information about the laws and court decisions that affect how these laws are implemented is information that shouldn't be restricted to people in certain classes (whether of wealth or education). And essentially that's what Lexis and Westlaw have done by refusing to sell access to the public libraries.
And I know, I know. Hard copies of these laws are available. Speaking as someone who works in the legal field though, I can assure you that if you don't run an electronic search for precedent you will seriously disadvantage and undermine your case. And doing such a search manually would exponentially increase the time it takes to look for precedent, essentially putting such a search out of reach of anyone except retirees. Thus not allowing public libaries to buy access to these databases for their users places these individuals at a significant and crippling disadvantage to those who can. And that inequity is something we _should_ be worried about, since we all stand to lose if only the rich or those in certain classes (law students, journalists, legislators) can access the law in this fashion.
"Why would I as a consumer ever pay for their service if the library had it, therefor they just lost my money, and all the other people that would go to the library use the service and not have ot pay for it."
For the same reason that I buy the vast majority of books from Borders - convenience and time. I don't have time to schlep down to the library to pick up the latest book, even assuming there isn't a long waiting list for it. I buy a resource that is also provided free because my time is worth more to me. Perhaps I also want my own copy as well.
"And since this is a service that is of specific purpose, like reference materials, they could stand to lose a lot of money."
Ah, my heart weeps for Lexis and Westlaw. They could also stand to make some money. Public libraries should be treated like any other potential Westlaw or Lexis client - if they can pay (and there is no indication that they can't) - they should be allowed to buy access to the legal databases - even if it's only one user at a time. The author of the article is saying that Lexis and Westlaw won't even sell access to the public libraries.
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
So if you go to the main branch of the local library system you won't be able to access Lexis or Westlaw case law databases. I did a search of the online site of the local two library systems nearest me (Alexandria and Arlington, VA) - they don't even mention offering access to Lexis or Westlaw.
Don't put words in her mouth, please....
on
Democracy in the Dark?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
She's not saying this information is free or should be free. She's saying that her public library can't even BUY access to these databases.
From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
And for those who say that the law is always available in hard copy volumes, I say that you can probably count on one hand the number of attorneys who don't, at some time, do research sweeps of Westlaw or Lexis Databases at some time during the research process. The volume of case law is simply too large and it's too easy to miss precedent if you rely only on hard copy.
It's not fair to let only certain parties have access to this information in electronic format - it's not bomb-making information after all. I would also argue that it's not fair for Lexis and Westlaw to set the prices for these databases beyond the reach of public institutions like libraries. As her article describes, these two companies essentially have a lock on the markeplace. Last I heard, extortion still wasn't legal.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. The original poster obviously has no idea what he's talking about.
The GN sections at both B&N and Borders are there and getting larger all the time. Heck, the Borders I worked at back in 1995 had a fair-sized GN section (manga, collected volumes of U.S. comics, and graphic novels such as Maus).
Not script kiddies. Content Providers. Just think about all those movies and music being traded for free without a single dime going to the big conglomerates.
Must be driving them nuts.
Wouldn't surprise me in the least if they've moved beyond rhetoric to action.
"All we need is monitors that are NOT backlit. Which is the reason people will read on their black and white 2" Palm-pilot screens, but read little on their computer screen. If screens weren't backlit (think; polarized light) it would be just as nice to read on as good old paper, with all the advantages of being electronic."
Wha?
The best thing about my PocketPC is the fact that is has a great backlit screen - makes it much easier to read at book at night as well as during the day. I can see where the complaint about e-books being hard to read derived when my PocketPC is running low on batteries and scales down the backlight. It's extremely difficult (for me) to read a non-backlit screen.
That said, I wish all my books were e-books now - the ease of use and additional features (highlighting, annotating, search, reading in the dark, storage of so many titles in such a small package) are incredible.
I remember a NOVA episode I saw once on hacking and they featured Stoll. They filmed a "recreation" from "Cuckoo's Egg" which depicted Stoll taking a shower with his girlfriend. Needless to say, that was one of the more entertaining NOVAs I saw when I was young.
...seriously. Given the amount of time I spend working on my computer each day, it'd be great to combine it with some exercise as well. Burn calories and get your work done at the same time.
Never had the stuck italics (?) thing happen to me, but if you want to see all hidden codes in a Word doc go to the Tools drop down menu --> Options --> Show --> check "Field Codes" (you can choose always, never, when highlighted). On that same menu page, under Formatting Marks, you can select "All" to see every hidden formatting code in the doc as well.
I've used both Word and WordPerfect extensively and Word is the product that best addresses my needs. That said, more choice is always a good thing and hopefully this will force MS to drop the price of its Office suite.
Heh - totally agree with you on the insanely high res. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm finding 1600x1200 to be too high a resolution for anything but a 19 inch+ desktop monitor. I have large fonts enabled but it's still hard to read on the Inspiron's 15 inch LCD screen in native res.
Also finding the fan noise to be pretty loud (and yes, I've got Fangui installed). You know your laptop fan is too noisy when people peer over the sides of your library cubicle when it kicks on.
Otherwise it's not a bad laptop - and the support is much better than Sony.
...and with a bit of adjusting of the post-it, it worked fine on my copy-protected CD-Single of Vanessa Carlton's "Thousand Miles". I would have preferred the marker method, but I didn't have a water-soluble felttip available and I want to return this crippled disk tomorrow. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known that Universal/A&M was copy-protecting all its new releases. And there was absolutely NO indication on the packaging or on the CD itself that it was copy-protected. Interestingly enough, the CD Logo was missing from the surface of the CD where it usually resides. But its absence wouldn't have helped me since I couldn't open the CD case to have an actual look at the CD before I purchased it.
It's unfortunate that Universal is treating me like a potential criminal when all I want to do is listen to these tracks which I've payed for on my mp3 player and my computer. I like Vanessa Carlton and I want to support her releases but I'll be deleting these two tracks from my hard drive and telling my friends to avoid purchasing her CDs when I return this single tomorrow. I'd write Universal a letter, but obviously the only thing that matters to them is money. So I'll let my return do the talking.
There's a very handy database program designed for large legal case management (cases with 100,000s of pages of produced documents) that enables one to link OCR text with a scanned image of the document. It comes in very handy when you're doing a keyword search of the OCR'ed text - you can automatically choose to go to a image of the page - circumvents quite nicely the problems that OCR has with images, tables, graphs, etc.
http://www.lcsweb.com/Software/concord.htm
But I have to admit that I would just check out Usenet or file-sharing programs for the titles you have - why duplicate work that someone's probably done already?
Yeah, I saw that article (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/magazine/14TECH NO.html). Scary stuff.
I have to agree with your assessment of Ellison - he comes across as incredibly pompous and arrogant individual, afflicted with the same overly-inflated sense of "I am right and you are wrong"-ness common to religious fanatics.
The best (worst) quote in that article is from him:
'I had one last question for Larry Ellison. ''In 20 years, do you think the global database is going to exist, and will it be run by Oracle?'' I asked.
''I do think it will exist, and I think it is going to be an Oracle database,'' he replied. ''And we're going to track everything.'''
Makes Bill seem all soft and fluffy in comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hell, my most recent readings include a history of the Qin dynasty as written by a historian of the Han...."
This sounds quite interesting. You wouldn't happen to have the title handy?
I'm not addressing your equivalency or limited access arguments since I don't think they hold up under scrutiny. Breadth and depth of the L/W databases, search functions, special WL or LEXIS pagination of unpublished opinions, exclusive features like electronic Shephardizing, to name just a few features, make the L/W legal database products unique. It would be impossible and/or impracticable for her to obtain these features elsewhere. Limited access does apply here.
With regards to price: she doesn't say the library can't afford it; she's saying that L/W won't sell the product (flat-rate access to the legal databases for a limited pool of concurrent users) to her. From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
My law firm has purchased flat rate access to the main legal databases on both Lexis and Westlaw (unlimited searches and printing). Pricing for the other L/W databases such as ALLNWS/ALLNEWS remains transactional/hourly. The pool of concurrent users is approximately 300-400 in 5-6 offices around the world. This setup appears to be very similiar to the sort of access that she wants to setup in Cuyahoga County (though probably with fewer concurrent users).
I still don't see how what she's asking for (flat rate access to the legal databases for a limited group of concurrent users) differs from what Lexis/Westlaw are offering major law firms. And since she hasn't said that Cuyahoga can't afford to pay for this access, I don't see how Lexis/Westlaw can justify not making flat-rate access to the legal databases available to the public libraries if they sell it to firms.
Obviously if she's asking for a cut rate that would change things. But if she can pay, she should be allowed to play. To use your analogy, the compact disc is in the bin but the retailer is choosing to sell it only to men (to pick an arbitrary characteristic that has no bearing on whether the individual can pay or not).
Honestly, I still don't see why this isn't possible - she's asking for flat-rate yes, but in a few lines below she says she only wants it for
"...a limited number of concurrent users".
This is the same setup my firm gets. There is a limited pool of users (about 400 attorneys and 200 paralegals) and access to the main citations database is completely flat-rate.
I don't see how the library setup differs, except that the pool of concurrent users would probably be a bit smaller depending on the size of each particular library system.
(Interestingly enough, the head law librarian here tells me that one of the reasons Lexis and Westlaw now offer flat-rate access is that their larger clients were balking at the extremely expensive rates that the two companies charge for both hourly and individual searches.)
I don't see how Westlaw and Lexis can justify not offering the database to libraries. There's obviously a market there. And a "limited pool of concurrent users" seems to be the exact same set up that large law firms and law libraries are allowed to buy access for.
Did you read the article at all? That's definitely NOT what she's saying.
She wants to BUY access to the legal databases, but Westlaw and Nexis refuse to SELL such access to public libraries.
Don't worry, she's not a liberal commmie. She just wants to buy the same product that you can.
And obviously libraries, since they make things like the latest issue of Science available to those who could not otherwise afford it, are an example of this destruction of the book industry and media, right? Since they're essentially eliminating the wealth requirement?
p #H2
Number of public libraries in the U.S. in FY 2000: 9,074
source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/quarterly/fall/5_1.as
Total number of books published in the U.S. in 2000, all publishers: 60,000
Total U.S. book sales in 2000: $25 billion
Revenue per title, all U.S. publishers: $417,000
source: http://aaupnet.org/news/glance.html
Obviously the industry is suffering......
I disagree. I can't count the number of times I've been looking for a particular citation and seen another case or a headnote on a case that isn't the exact citation I was looking for but that leads me to think about the issue from another angle. This sort of free-flowing search is the reason that my firm expects attorneys and paralegals to conduct their own Westlaw and Lexis research instead of relying on librarians to locate the relevant law. Funneling everything through a librarian would essentially limit the use of Lexis/Westlaw to pulling cites, given how busy the average librarian seems to be.
I agree. I don't know where people are getting this "she wants access for free" thing from.
She wants to pay - they just won't sell.
Agreed - there isn't a legal obligation for Lexis and Westlaw to allow public libraries to purchase access to these databases.
I think there's a pretty interesting parallel to be drawn to laws that forbid insurance companies and banks from redlining people who live in poor areas of town however. Information about the laws and court decisions that affect how these laws are implemented is information that shouldn't be restricted to people in certain classes (whether of wealth or education). And essentially that's what Lexis and Westlaw have done by refusing to sell access to the public libraries.
And I know, I know. Hard copies of these laws are available. Speaking as someone who works in the legal field though, I can assure you that if you don't run an electronic search for precedent you will seriously disadvantage and undermine your case. And doing such a search manually would exponentially increase the time it takes to look for precedent, essentially putting such a search out of reach of anyone except retirees. Thus not allowing public libaries to buy access to these databases for their users places these individuals at a significant and crippling disadvantage to those who can. And that inequity is something we _should_ be worried about, since we all stand to lose if only the rich or those in certain classes (law students, journalists, legislators) can access the law in this fashion.
"Why would I as a consumer ever pay for their service if the library had it, therefor they just lost my money, and all the other people that would go to the library use the service and not have ot pay for it."
For the same reason that I buy the vast majority of books from Borders - convenience and time. I don't have time to schlep down to the library to pick up the latest book, even assuming there isn't a long waiting list for it. I buy a resource that is also provided free because my time is worth more to me. Perhaps I also want my own copy as well.
"And since this is a service that is of specific purpose, like reference materials, they could stand to lose a lot of money."
Ah, my heart weeps for Lexis and Westlaw. They could also stand to make some money. Public libraries should be treated like any other potential Westlaw or Lexis client - if they can pay (and there is no indication that they can't) - they should be allowed to buy access to the legal databases - even if it's only one user at a time. The author of the article is saying that Lexis and Westlaw won't even sell access to the public libraries.
From her article,
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
So if you go to the main branch of the local library system you won't be able to access Lexis or Westlaw case law databases. I did a search of the online site of the local two library systems nearest me (Alexandria and Arlington, VA) - they don't even mention offering access to Lexis or Westlaw.
She's not saying this information is free or should be free. She's saying that her public library can't even BUY access to these databases.
From the article:
"When our contract expired at the end of 2001, we attempted to negotiate a flat-rate Westlaw contract for all of the materials from the CD-ROMs, plus some other databases. We hoped to make legal databases available to the public at all of our branches, although with a limited number of concurrent users. Neither Westlaw nor LexisNexis was ready to offer such a contract to a public library. LexisNexis' Academic Universe product includes a legal database, but it is marketed only to schools and colleges. Public libraries cannot subscribe to Academic Universe. LexisNexis products available to public libraries don't have the legal database. Westlaw does not have any similar products.
Bear in mind that West Group and LexisNexis, the two largest vendors of online legal information in the country, do not offer their online legal products to public libraries for patrons to use."
And for those who say that the law is always available in hard copy volumes, I say that you can probably count on one hand the number of attorneys who don't, at some time, do research sweeps of Westlaw or Lexis Databases at some time during the research process. The volume of case law is simply too large and it's too easy to miss precedent if you rely only on hard copy.
It's not fair to let only certain parties have access to this information in electronic format - it's not bomb-making information after all. I would also argue that it's not fair for Lexis and Westlaw to set the prices for these databases beyond the reach of public institutions like libraries. As her article describes, these two companies essentially have a lock on the markeplace. Last I heard, extortion still wasn't legal.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. The original poster obviously has no idea what he's talking about.
The GN sections at both B&N and Borders are there and getting larger all the time. Heck, the Borders I worked at back in 1995 had a fair-sized GN section (manga, collected volumes of U.S. comics, and graphic novels such as Maus).
Not script kiddies. Content Providers. Just think about all those movies and music being traded for free without a single dime going to the big conglomerates.
Must be driving them nuts.
Wouldn't surprise me in the least if they've moved beyond rhetoric to action.
"All we need is monitors that are NOT backlit. Which is the reason people will read on their black and white 2" Palm-pilot screens, but read little on their computer screen. If screens weren't backlit (think; polarized light) it would be just as nice to read on as good old paper, with all the advantages of being electronic."
Wha?
The best thing about my PocketPC is the fact that is has a great backlit screen - makes it much easier to read at book at night as well as during the day. I can see where the complaint about e-books being hard to read derived when my PocketPC is running low on batteries and scales down the backlight. It's extremely difficult (for me) to read a non-backlit screen.
That said, I wish all my books were e-books now - the ease of use and additional features (highlighting, annotating, search, reading in the dark, storage of so many titles in such a small package) are incredible.
tig
Thanks for mentioning that article. If anyone else is interested, you can read it here:
http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=1486
Thank goodness I don't live in Toledo anymore so I can avoid giving this numbwit and his family any of my hardearned cash.
-tig
...I'll be happy. http://www.advfilms.com/news/index.asp?c=&p=0&i=64 8
^_^
ROFL - too true.
I remember a NOVA episode I saw once on hacking and they featured Stoll. They filmed a "recreation" from "Cuckoo's Egg" which depicted Stoll taking a shower with his girlfriend. Needless to say, that was one of the more entertaining NOVAs I saw when I was young.
...seriously. Given the amount of time I spend working on my computer each day, it'd be great to combine it with some exercise as well. Burn calories and get your work done at the same time.
Never had the stuck italics (?) thing happen to me, but if you want to see all hidden codes in a Word doc go to the Tools drop down menu --> Options --> Show --> check "Field Codes" (you can choose always, never, when highlighted). On that same menu page, under Formatting Marks, you can select "All" to see every hidden formatting code in the doc as well.
I've used both Word and WordPerfect extensively and Word is the product that best addresses my needs. That said, more choice is always a good thing and hopefully this will force MS to drop the price of its Office suite.
-tig
Heh - totally agree with you on the insanely high res. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm finding 1600x1200 to be too high a resolution for anything but a 19 inch+ desktop monitor. I have large fonts enabled but it's still hard to read on the Inspiron's 15 inch LCD screen in native res.
Also finding the fan noise to be pretty loud (and yes, I've got Fangui installed). You know your laptop fan is too noisy when people peer over the sides of your library cubicle when it kicks on.
Otherwise it's not a bad laptop - and the support is much better than Sony.
Since we're speaking of FF ports...does anyone know if there are plans to port 9 and 10 to the PC?
I'd love to get a chance to play them, but if I buy a PS2 I will never emerge from my apartment again....
tig
...and with a bit of adjusting of the post-it, it worked fine on my copy-protected CD-Single of Vanessa Carlton's "Thousand Miles". I would have preferred the marker method, but I didn't have a water-soluble felttip available and I want to return this crippled disk tomorrow. I wouldn't have bought it if I had known that Universal/A&M was copy-protecting all its new releases. And there was absolutely NO indication on the packaging or on the CD itself that it was copy-protected. Interestingly enough, the CD Logo was missing from the surface of the CD where it usually resides. But its absence wouldn't have helped me since I couldn't open the CD case to have an actual look at the CD before I purchased it.
It's unfortunate that Universal is treating me like a potential criminal when all I want to do is listen to these tracks which I've payed for on my mp3 player and my computer. I like Vanessa Carlton and I want to support her releases but I'll be deleting these two tracks from my hard drive and telling my friends to avoid purchasing her CDs when I return this single tomorrow. I'd write Universal a letter, but obviously the only thing that matters to them is money. So I'll let my return do the talking.
Bakas.
Tig
There's a very handy database program designed for large legal case management (cases with 100,000s of pages of produced documents) that enables one to link OCR text with a scanned image of the document. It comes in very handy when you're doing a keyword search of the OCR'ed text - you can automatically choose to go to a image of the page - circumvents quite nicely the problems that OCR has with images, tables, graphs, etc.
http://www.lcsweb.com/Software/concord.htm
But I have to admit that I would just check out Usenet or file-sharing programs for the titles you have - why duplicate work that someone's probably done already?
Tig
It's an appointed position, not subject to Senate approval.
:)
You now know whom not to vote for in 2004.
Tig
Yeah, I saw that article (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/magazine/14TECH NO.html). Scary stuff.
I have to agree with your assessment of Ellison - he comes across as incredibly pompous and arrogant individual, afflicted with the same overly-inflated sense of "I am right and you are wrong"-ness common to religious fanatics.
The best (worst) quote in that article is from him:
'I had one last question for Larry Ellison. ''In 20 years, do you think the global database is going to exist, and will it be run by Oracle?'' I asked.
''I do think it will exist, and I think it is going to be an Oracle database,'' he replied. ''And we're going to track everything.'''
Makes Bill seem all soft and fluffy in comparison.
Tig