It may not be a constitutional right, but my state (Washington) has a law on the books that protects the privacy of patron records, so a library cannot disclose any patron information without a court order.
We've been over this ground before. Libraries do not keep a reading history. If you bring the stuff back on time, it gets erased. Once it cycles off the backup tapes (which don't go back that far and would be a big pain in the patootie to restore) no one knows what you had checked out prior. Ant yes, I'm sure, because I've run these systems for the last 20 years.
Great. The best thing that could happen to the web is have PDF go away entirely. It totally circumvents html, is bandwidth intensive, and decidedly not ada friendly. The only reason it has succeeded is because it is so easy. You're totally at the mercy of the author unless you buy the writer kit. Of course, the reader is free--just like MSIE. Hmmmm. PDF and DMCA go hand in hand, as Adobe's behavior in the courts over the last year has proven.
Yesterday, once again, I helped a lady sign up for a Yahoo email account. It took nearly an hour. She didn't know how to sign up. She disn't know she could click on the 30 point letters that say "SIGN UP NOW!" on the Yahoo mail home page. She couldn't tell me how she got on the Internet or what ISP she used. There's just this icon on the desktop that she clicks, and the Internet just appears. She uses email. She doesn't know if it is Outlook, WebMail, or Pine. It's just mail. She doesn't know if she has a modem or broadband although she's noticed that when she uses a machine connected to a T-1, "it goes a little faster."
The day before that one of our employees complained that Office wasn't installed on her computer. It turns out she didn't know to click Start -> Programs. There was no icon on the desktop, so she thought the program didn't exist on her machine. Computer Services had forgotten to install the shortcut, so it was all our fault.
The day before that a fellow complained he couldn't get on the network. It turned out the last person on his machine was administrator, but my colleague had forgotten to sign on just once as the employee, thus ensuring next time the computer was started, the employee login would appear automatically instead of administrator so said employee wouldn't be confused.
Geeks may rule. Linux may be "better," but the people above inhabit the earth in numbers unmatched by the Linux uber alles crowd, which sneers at anyone who can't do C, perl, or cgi scripts, or cook up a passable web page in a few minutes.
The fact is, you guys don't count. The three people mentioned above do, and they outnumber you. You say those poor slobs don't get it, when, in fact, it is you who don't get it.
And that is why Microsoft has nothing to fear from Linux.
I heard it on NPR this morning. I believe it was the Center for the First Amendment. Yeah, they're biased. They believe in preserving the first amendment. Their survey has asked the same questions over the years and tracks changes in the publics' attitude. They are showing more people questioning first amendment rights lately. The information is in the variation in attitudes.
Lots of posts below this one displaying some ignorance of how modern libraries operate.
1) Most all libraries these days have computerized inventory systems using barcodes or RFID tags to track books and patrons. These systems make it LESS possible to track reading histories. In the old days with the 3 x 5 cards and date stamp machines one COULD track reading histories, though the logistics of such an operation would be daunting.
2) Libraries erase lending history upon return of items. In fact, librarians insist the systems keep no history as part of the RFP process.
3) It is potentially possible to retrieve lending history via backup tapes. These are usually recycled in a typical father-grandfather scheme. Restoring data from these tapes would mean the library system would be shut down during the process. It would be a massive operation and very visible.
4) Librarians are generally liberally educated left-wing leaning social and humanities graduates who are well aware of the first amendment and often the only people in the community willing to stand up for it. With recent polls shoing 49% of Americans believe the 1st amendment goes too far, you better go hug your local librarian. Because you know what? Nobody else is helping.
I work in a public library. We have installed Wireless in all branches. Rather than use the very de classe chalk we had nice signs made up with the war chalk symbol. You see it when you walk in the door. It's all on default in front of an RT-311 which supplies DHCP and masks the network itself. We even have one hub pointed directly at the parking lot. You can plug into our dual T-1 system 24x7. It's all free, of course; we're not pulling a Starbucks. In the near future you can expect to see all public libraries do this. It's too cheap not to do.
Level3 is heavily in debt with junk bonds, but it has an awesome network underground in both the US and Europe. They built their fiber network in a way that can be easily updated as new fiber technologies come along. They build 12 conduits, say, and fill two with fiber. When the technology changes, they have all these empty conduits to blow new fiber through. They have co-location facilities in nearly every major city, and these facilities fill up almost immediately after construction. They are doing backbone stuff for companies like AOL. It's actually Level 3 equipment that is used for dial-up in many places. It's an all-IP network.
Level 3 stems from Peter Kiweit (may have the spelling wrong) which is a hundred year old and extremely well respected construction company. Through some very weird transactions the base company turned into Level 3 and spun off the construction arm. The construction arm then contracted with Level 3 to build out the network!
As I understand it, Level 3 is taking full advantage of the WorldCom and others' problems by buying up local loops these other companies are dumping because of their distress. Of course, their stock has doubled in price in the last week because of the Buffett news. Then again, that makes it worth $5.00 when two years ago it was in the $80.00 range, so maybe that's not saying much.
My belief is that when bandwidth demand creeps up, as it surely MUST, Level 3 is going to be there to take advantage.
I don't think so. In fact, if you go back to Babbage's Difference Engine, Moore's Law has been constant for 100 years. (See Kurzweil's raw data in The Age of Spiritual Machines). The mindset now is "transistors on silicon," but before that it was discrete transistors, and before that vacuum tubes. You have to think out of the box and not worry about lithography on silicon. Nanotechnology moving atoms, biochips, holography, all these are at least candidates to take Moore's law beyond silicon/transistors to the next level.
Those folks who have pointed out selling used books would be impossible to stop because of long-standing inertia are quite correct. The same is true with public libraries (indeed, ANY libraries) because they are very much entrenched. Indeed, there is along-standing friction between libraries and publishers over this very issue. In some countries there is a so-called "public lending right" which results in the goverment paying fees to publishers based on library corculation. Authors, in truth the most low-paid cog in the publishing machine, are all for this because that means more royalties (they think), so it's been made into a class issue as well.
Today is not the problem; tomorrow is. Today e-books and e-distribution, and e-paper, and all that is not much of an issue. After some initial excitement the concept is in the trough of disillusionment at the moment once publishers figured out people didn't want to lug around a Rocketbook.
In about then yeras or so we are likely to see the first signs of a peak in the "book" industry and the first statistically significant moves to digital in the industry. As that happens you will be buying a license to read the material. Time and technology will gradually decide this issue as more and more material is produced in the new formats.
It does not bode well for libraries or the used book trade. I am a librarian of 30 years in charge of our IT department. There is a sentiment in our profession that we may not be around as an institution very much longer.
I agree. Neither the United States government nor any serious company can afford to deal with implementing an operating system that greets you with a $ prompt or some weirdo word processor that looks like Word, but can't handle basic tables. Linux is great for Geeks, but there is a real world out there where people simply don't care about kernels and crontabs.
The company is a dog. Look on their web site and you can't tell what they are selling. Further, their stock is selling at 29 CENTS, yet their loss for fiscal 2001 is over $2.00 per share. So their loss per share is over six times the share price. Yet their CFO says they have a "strong balance sheet." Huh???
Reminds me of the story where son takes over the business and discovers they are selling their widgits at less than it costs to make them. Son asks Dad about this and he says, "Yeah, but think of the volume!"
I've got 350 machines and done it both ways. Been through this. It sounds good, but in my opinion, it just ain't worth it. Here's why:
Add up not just what you make an hour, but what your company pays to keep you around, including overhead. Most places you can double your wage. That's what you 'really' cost. Less? OK. Point still holds. We're buying perfectly servicable machines with giga wazoo drives and gigahz processors sans monitors (which have not broken) for between $700-$800 with a three year warranty. It breaks, they ship us a new one or repair it on site. Period. Your parts are costing $600. You're going to have to make money on a hundred dollar margin. That spread is too thin. You've got to manage the parts, store them, and get everything working quickly. That's a lot of prep time. Even if you managed to break even on paper, couldn't you be doing something more useful for the company? I know it's fun (I used to put together computers with nothing but a swiss army knife at trade shows), but you're supposed to be out there making a million dollars. Put your energy where it can be leveraged. --Just my opinion.
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It may not be a constitutional right, but my state (Washington) has a law on the books that protects the privacy of patron records, so a library cannot disclose any patron information without a court order.
We've been over this ground before. Libraries do not keep a reading history. If you bring the stuff back on time, it gets erased. Once it cycles off the backup tapes (which don't go back that far and would be a big pain in the patootie to restore) no one knows what you had checked out prior. Ant yes, I'm sure, because I've run these systems for the last 20 years.
Great. The best thing that could happen to the web is have PDF go away entirely. It totally circumvents html, is bandwidth intensive, and decidedly not ada friendly. The only reason it has succeeded is because it is so easy. You're totally at the mercy of the author unless you buy the writer kit. Of course, the reader is free--just like MSIE. Hmmmm. PDF and DMCA go hand in hand, as Adobe's behavior in the courts over the last year has proven.
Yesterday, once again, I helped a lady sign up for a Yahoo email account. It took nearly an hour. She didn't know how to sign up. She disn't know she could click on the 30 point letters that say "SIGN UP NOW!" on the Yahoo mail home page.
She couldn't tell me how she got on the Internet or what ISP she used. There's just this icon on the desktop that she clicks, and the Internet just appears. She uses email. She doesn't know if it is Outlook, WebMail, or Pine. It's just mail. She doesn't know if she has a modem or broadband although she's noticed that when she uses a machine connected to a T-1, "it goes a little faster."
The day before that one of our employees complained that Office wasn't installed on her computer. It turns out she didn't know to click Start -> Programs. There was no icon on the desktop, so she thought the program didn't exist on her machine. Computer Services had forgotten to install the shortcut, so it was all our fault.
The day before that a fellow complained he couldn't get on the network. It turned out the last person on his machine was administrator, but my colleague had forgotten to sign on just once as the employee, thus ensuring next time the computer was started, the employee login would appear automatically instead of administrator so said employee wouldn't be confused.
Geeks may rule. Linux may be "better," but the people above inhabit the earth in numbers unmatched by the Linux uber alles crowd, which sneers at anyone who can't do C, perl, or cgi scripts, or cook up a passable web page in a few minutes.
The fact is, you guys don't count. The three people mentioned above do, and they outnumber you. You say those poor slobs don't get it, when, in fact, it is you who don't get it.
And that is why Microsoft has nothing to fear from Linux.
I heard it on NPR this morning. I believe it was the Center for the First Amendment. Yeah, they're biased. They believe in preserving the first amendment. Their survey has asked the same questions over the years and tracks changes in the publics' attitude. They are showing more people questioning first amendment rights lately. The information is in the variation in attitudes.
Lots of posts below this one displaying some ignorance of how modern libraries operate.
1) Most all libraries these days have computerized inventory systems using barcodes or RFID tags to track books and patrons. These systems make it LESS possible to track reading histories. In the old days with the 3 x 5 cards and date stamp machines one COULD track reading histories, though the logistics of such an operation would be daunting.
2) Libraries erase lending history upon return of items. In fact, librarians insist the systems keep no history as part of the RFP process.
3) It is potentially possible to retrieve lending history via backup tapes. These are usually recycled in a typical father-grandfather scheme. Restoring data from these tapes would mean the library system would be shut down during the process. It would be a massive operation and very visible.
4) Librarians are generally liberally educated left-wing leaning social and humanities graduates who are well aware of the first amendment and often the only people in the community willing to stand up for it. With recent polls shoing 49% of Americans believe the 1st amendment goes too far, you better go hug your local librarian. Because you know what? Nobody else is helping.
I work in a public library. We have installed Wireless in all branches. Rather than use the very de classe chalk we had nice signs made up with the war chalk symbol. You see it when you walk in the door. It's all on default in front of an RT-311 which supplies DHCP and masks the network itself. We even have one hub pointed directly at the parking lot. You can plug into our dual T-1 system 24x7. It's all free, of course; we're not pulling a Starbucks. In the near future you can expect to see all public libraries do this. It's too cheap not to do.
1. Excuse me, but 802.11b's range is 100-300 FEET and we're running out of spectrum?
2. Zeke gets into your home network why? Because you left the SID at default and didn't code in your MAC address? (I know, that's SO hard!)
3. We need the FCC for what?
Ba! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Level3 is heavily in debt with junk bonds, but it has an awesome network underground in both the US and Europe. They built their fiber network in a way that can be easily updated as new fiber technologies come along. They build 12 conduits, say, and fill two with fiber. When the technology changes, they have all these empty conduits to blow new fiber through. They have co-location facilities in nearly every major city, and these facilities fill up almost immediately after construction. They are doing backbone stuff for companies like AOL. It's actually Level 3 equipment that is used for dial-up in many places. It's an all-IP network.
Level 3 stems from Peter Kiweit (may have the spelling wrong) which is a hundred year old and extremely well respected construction company. Through some very weird transactions the base company turned into Level 3 and spun off the construction arm. The construction arm then contracted with Level 3 to build out the network!
As I understand it, Level 3 is taking full advantage of the WorldCom and others' problems by buying up local loops these other companies are dumping because of their distress. Of course, their stock has doubled in price in the last week because of the Buffett news. Then again, that makes it worth $5.00 when two years ago it was in the $80.00 range, so maybe that's not saying much.
My belief is that when bandwidth demand creeps up, as it surely MUST, Level 3 is going to be there to take advantage.
I don't think so. In fact, if you go back to Babbage's Difference Engine, Moore's Law has been constant for 100 years. (See Kurzweil's raw data in The Age of Spiritual Machines). The mindset now is "transistors on silicon," but before that it was discrete transistors, and before that vacuum tubes. You have to think out of the box and not worry about lithography on silicon. Nanotechnology moving atoms, biochips, holography, all these are at least candidates to take Moore's law beyond silicon/transistors to the next level.
Those folks who have pointed out selling used books would be impossible to stop because of long-standing inertia are quite correct. The same is true with public libraries (indeed, ANY libraries) because they are very much entrenched. Indeed, there is along-standing friction between libraries and publishers over this very issue. In some countries there is a so-called "public lending right" which results in the goverment paying fees to publishers based on library corculation. Authors, in truth the most low-paid cog in the publishing machine, are all for this because that means more royalties (they think), so it's been made into a class issue as well.
Today is not the problem; tomorrow is. Today e-books and e-distribution, and e-paper, and all that is not much of an issue. After some initial excitement the concept is in the trough of disillusionment at the moment once publishers figured out people didn't want to lug around a Rocketbook.
In about then yeras or so we are likely to see the first signs of a peak in the "book" industry and the first statistically significant moves to digital in the industry. As that happens you will be buying a license to read the material. Time and technology will gradually decide this issue as more and more material is produced in the new formats.
It does not bode well for libraries or the used book trade. I am a librarian of 30 years in charge of our IT department. There is a sentiment in our profession that we may not be around as an institution very much longer.
I agree. Neither the United States government nor any serious company can afford to deal with implementing an operating system that greets you with a $ prompt or some weirdo word processor that looks like Word, but can't handle basic tables. Linux is great for Geeks, but there is a real world out there where people simply don't care about kernels and crontabs.
The company is a dog. Look on their web site and you can't tell what they are selling. Further, their stock is selling at 29 CENTS, yet their loss for fiscal 2001 is over $2.00 per share. So their loss per share is over six times the share price. Yet their CFO says they have a "strong balance sheet." Huh???
Reminds me of the story where son takes over the business and discovers they are selling their widgits at less than it costs to make them. Son asks Dad about this and he says, "Yeah, but think of the volume!"
I've got 350 machines and done it both ways. Been through this. It sounds good, but in my opinion, it just ain't worth it. Here's why:
Add up not just what you make an hour, but what your company pays to keep you around, including overhead. Most places you can double your wage. That's what you 'really' cost. Less? OK. Point still holds. We're buying perfectly servicable machines with giga wazoo drives and gigahz processors sans monitors (which have not broken) for between $700-$800 with a three year warranty. It breaks, they ship us a new one or repair it on site. Period. Your parts are costing $600. You're going to have to make money on a hundred dollar margin. That spread is too thin. You've got to manage the parts, store them, and get everything working quickly. That's a lot of prep time. Even if you managed to break even on paper, couldn't you be doing something more useful for the company? I know it's fun (I used to put together computers with nothing but a swiss army knife at trade shows), but you're supposed to be out there making a million dollars. Put your energy where it can be leveraged. --Just my opinion.