Gotta mention my former employer, Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, MO.
It's a privately-funded library open to the public and focusing on science, engineering and technology.
The rare books collection is spectacular... if you can go in during the week, and give them a day or two notice, the folks in the rare books area will be happy to show you some of the neat stuff in the collection.
The library underwent a major renovation/building project a couple years ago.
In addition to the library, the grounds are maintained as a very nice urban arboretum....brig
Appearing on Fox News Channel's "On the Record" last night, Palin told Greta Van Susteren, "If there is an open door in 2012 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."...brig
Sorry to shout, but come on guys, it's tough enough getting past the FUD from the Friends of Microsoft without mis-stating things...
The guidelines do not ban Microsoft's Office product, they merely state that the state of Massachusetts will need to use products which support OpenDocument.
If Microsoft decides to support OpenDocument, or a third party makes a Microsoft Office to OpenDocument converter which works well, the state of Massachusetts will still be able to use Microsoft Office.
They're just expressing a very appropriate interest in non-proprietary file formats, not saying they won't use the software.
Two things that make digitizing collections difficult:
Copyright issues... the Senator from Disney and his friends keep extending copyright making it very difficult for libraries to determine which materials can/should be scanned for access. Owners of Intellectual Property are very much interested in licensing use rather than selling us a book and letting us share it via 'fair use'.
The second factor is the staggering cost of digitizing materials in a useful way.
It's actually pretty expensive to digitize a book... you have to get the actual book de-spined (you break the book apart to get clean scans of each page), every page of the book has to be scanned, each page has to be run through OCR software, every page has to be proofed by someone who's bright enough to catch OCR errors, the output has to be made accessible to patrons/staff and maintained/refreshed as media and software product changes....brig
FWIW, I used to be automation consultant for a regional library system, and we generally recommended folks look at things in this order:
PUBLIC machines first As much for PR reasons as any.
SHARED STAFF MACHINES second Usually most cost-effective distribution.
DEDICATED STAFF MACHINES third Meaning the director's desktop usually gets upgraded last!:)
Within each category, we then looked at how old the BIOS was and how much RAM each machine had. Then we looked at budget issues.
These are, of course, general guidelines... sometimes things are done differently because you either have a funding source wanting to push a particular program or service... sometimes you have a machine which fails or is unreliable. Common sense should always override a plan, if it hasn't already been incorporated within the plan....brig
I've spent two separate five-year stints with regional libraries in Kansas doing automation work... running around consulting with tiny libraries helping them figure out how to get the most bang from the small amounts of money they have to spend on computers.
It's a nice lifestyle... the pay isn't that great compared to what you can make in urban areas, but the cost-of-living is much less and there's a certain amount of non-tangible rewards working for libraries....brig
I think it's pathetic that a melody written in 1893 is still covered by copyright... barring additional changes in law, the song's now protected at least 2030!
The actual details behind Happy Birthday are kind of interesting... a good synopsis is available from the reference librarian's best friend, Snopes.
I'm only at 9 RHN subscriptions, 7 at my library, one at another library, and one personal, but I'm still annoyed that I paid for automatic renews a couple months ago for something that is useless to me after 31 Apr.:(...brig
Hutchinson, KS: Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center http://www.cosmo.org. "With a U.S. space artifact collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts found outside of Moscow, the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the Space Race. By focusing on the human story of space exploration and punctuating that story with one of the finest collections of international space artifacts in the world the Museum places space exploration in a broad historical context and presents the story of the Space Race in a way that no other museum in the world can."
Kansas City, MO: Linda Hall Library http://www.lindahall.org.
"The Linda Hall Library, opened in 1946 is the largest privately endowed science, engineering and technology library in the world." I work at Linda Hall, so I'm a little biased, but we really do have tons of journals, monographs, and rare books on just about every geek topic you can think of.:)
...brig
It's fun trying to answer trivia questions covering the gamut from "Which planet has a moon name Nereid?" to "Which sitcom family had a dog named Tiger?". Add in the ability to compete with other bars across North America and it's quite enjoyable.
Starting with a Palm IIIx when I was a consultant for a rural library... graduating to a Handspring Visor and now a Kyocera 6035... I use the darn thing all the time... waiting very impatiently to see if the new Kyocera color device is as useful as it appears in the ads!:)
Not only is my PDA handy for addresses and appointments, BankBook is the only tool I've ever used that's resulted in balanced checkbooks every time....brig
The technology you refer to is probably Centurion Guard from Centurion Technologies. They have a hardware/software product which I'm familiar with. The hardware is a black box that plugs into the floppy drive cable (getting around the fact that some folks use SCSI, some use IDE), and then you put a keylock into the cardslot on the back.
Load a software component, and Centurion Guard creates a 'scratch' partition on the hard drive.
While the machine is in 'locked' mode, any changes to the machine, including desktop, installing apps, changing screen res, whatever, get written to the scratch partition. Reboot the machine and the scratch partition is cleared, away go the changes!
Works pretty darn well.
...brig
It's good to make sure those wireless networks are secure... given how often wireless networks can be picked up outside the actual office building:
Wireless Network Visualization Project.
First I was annoyed when I couldn't get to Yahoo Mail with Opera, but resetting the privacy matrix and the privacy changes make it much easier to give up the darn account.
Without that loophole however I think it's perfectly valid for a company which owns a trademark which predates the acquisition of a domain name to request that the owner of that website transfer the domain name.
As to the question of style employed by the company, that's a little icky, but in the real world it's not at all uncommon to have the corporate attorneys handle _everything_.
Slashdot Mirror
Always nice to see a contribution from Steve Gibson... he's provided a lot of nice little utilities over the years.
Gotta mention my former employer, Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, MO.
It's a privately-funded library open to the public and focusing on science, engineering and technology.
The rare books collection is spectacular... if you can go in during the week, and give them a day or two notice, the folks in the rare books area will be happy to show you some of the neat stuff in the collection.
The library underwent a major renovation/building project a couple years ago.
In addition to the library, the grounds are maintained as a very nice urban arboretum. ...brig
It's not over if she keeps talking...
Appearing on Fox News Channel's "On the Record" last night, Palin told ...brig
Greta Van Susteren, "If there is an open door in 2012 or four years later,
and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my
state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that
door."
FWIW, she was playing a private detective... great series of mystery novels, crappy movie. :(
Good discussion of this at "The man who changed America" from the Federal Highway Administration publication PUBLIC ROADS. ...brig
Yet another reason there's serious talk about Knight-Ridder being sold to someone who'd break it up.
Sorry to shout, but come on guys, it's tough enough getting past the FUD from the Friends of Microsoft without mis-stating things...
...brig
The guidelines do not ban Microsoft's Office product, they merely state that the state of Massachusetts will need to use products which support OpenDocument.
If Microsoft decides to support OpenDocument, or a third party makes a Microsoft Office to OpenDocument converter which works well, the state of Massachusetts will still be able to use Microsoft Office.
They're just expressing a very appropriate interest in non-proprietary file formats, not saying they won't use the software.
Pretty important difference.
Two things that make digitizing collections difficult:
...brig
Copyright issues... the Senator from Disney and his friends keep extending copyright making it very difficult for libraries to determine which materials can/should be scanned for access. Owners of Intellectual Property are very much interested in licensing use rather than selling us a book and letting us share it via 'fair use'.
The second factor is the staggering cost of digitizing materials in a useful way.
It's actually pretty expensive to digitize a book... you have to get the actual book de-spined (you break the book apart to get clean scans of each page), every page of the book has to be scanned, each page has to be run through OCR software, every page has to be proofed by someone who's bright enough to catch OCR errors, the output has to be made accessible to patrons/staff and maintained/refreshed as media and software product changes.
FWIW, I used to be automation consultant for a regional library system, and we generally recommended folks look at things in this order:
:)
...brig
PUBLIC machines first
As much for PR reasons as any.
SHARED STAFF MACHINES second
Usually most cost-effective distribution.
DEDICATED STAFF MACHINES third
Meaning the director's desktop usually gets upgraded last!
Within each category, we then looked at how old the BIOS was and how much RAM each machine had. Then we looked at budget issues.
These are, of course, general guidelines... sometimes things are done differently because you either have a funding source wanting to push a particular program or service... sometimes you have a machine which fails or is unreliable. Common sense should always override a plan, if it hasn't already been incorporated within the plan.
From Ed Reitan's web site http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/. ...brig
I've spent two separate five-year stints with regional libraries in Kansas doing automation work... running around consulting with tiny libraries helping them figure out how to get the most bang from the small amounts of money they have to spend on computers.
...brig
It's a nice lifestyle... the pay isn't that great compared to what you can make in urban areas, but the cost-of-living is much less and there's a certain amount of non-tangible rewards working for libraries.
I think it's pathetic that a melody written in 1893 is still covered by copyright... barring additional changes in law, the song's now protected at least 2030!
The actual details behind Happy Birthday are kind of interesting... a good synopsis is available from the reference librarian's best friend, Snopes.
Please mod this up.
:( ...brig
I'm only at 9 RHN subscriptions, 7 at my library, one at another library, and one personal, but I'm still annoyed that I paid for automatic renews a couple months ago for something that is useless to me after 31 Apr.
Hays, KS: Sternberg Museum of Natural History
http://www.fhsu.edu/sternberg/.
Hutchinson, KS: Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center
http://www.cosmo.org. "With a U.S. space artifact collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts found outside of Moscow, the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the Space Race. By focusing on the human story of space exploration and punctuating that story with one of the finest collections of international space artifacts in the world the Museum places space exploration in a broad historical context and presents the story of the Space Race in a way that no other museum in the world can."
Kansas City, MO: Linda Hall Library :)
...brig
http://www.lindahall.org. "The Linda Hall Library, opened in 1946 is the largest privately endowed science, engineering and technology library in the world." I work at Linda Hall, so I'm a little biased, but we really do have tons of journals, monographs, and rare books on just about every geek topic you can think of.
It's fun trying to answer trivia questions covering the gamut from "Which planet has a moon name Nereid?" to "Which sitcom family had a dog named Tiger?". Add in the ability to compete with other bars across North America and it's quite enjoyable.
Starting with a Palm IIIx when I was a consultant for a rural library... graduating to a Handspring Visor and now a Kyocera 6035... I use the darn thing all the time... waiting very impatiently to see if the new Kyocera color device is as useful as it appears in the ads! :)
...brig
Not only is my PDA handy for addresses and appointments, BankBook is the only tool I've ever used that's resulted in balanced checkbooks every time.
While the machine is in 'locked' mode, any changes to the machine, including desktop, installing apps, changing screen res, whatever, get written to the scratch partition. Reboot the machine and the scratch partition is cleared, away go the changes!
Works pretty darn well.
It's good to make sure those wireless networks are secure... given how often wireless networks can be picked up outside the actual office building: Wireless Network Visualization Project.
For others who want to opt out, the URL is https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user.
PS: Why's that [yahoo.com] show up at the end of my link?
It's in Michigan... down the road from the slashdot compound. :)
...brig
Without that loophole however I think it's perfectly valid for a company which owns a trademark which predates the acquisition of a domain name to request that the owner of that website transfer the domain name.
As to the question of style employed by the company, that's a little icky, but in the real world it's not at all uncommon to have the corporate attorneys handle _everything_.