It was a poor design and like the Soviet Union once the central plan didn't comport with reality, it had to die on the ash heap of history.
The idiot MSN Groups is what killed it for me. If you have multiple identities, multiple email addresses, and different ones are joined to different groups, you can't remember which identity is to which group. The idiot MSN implementation sends you emails from the group but doesn't show you the email address that the message is being sent to--your own email address.
So you can't figure out which one to use to sign onto the Passport and of course since you use multiple identities you don't want it cookified on you.
Then the necxt problem is that it won't let you even use it if your cookies are turned off. You'd think Microsoft would have figured with all their security problems that people will turn off cookies and ActiveX (they give you the function to do it in Explorer) but then their passport thing doesn't work.
I hated it and would join Yahoo Grpoups instead of MSN Groups and they have their own problems but not this really quite rudimentary level of stupidity.
If true, this is merely an eccentric invention. Certainly nothing to do with librarianship, categorization of information, or research.
1. The sole purpose of the costly and time consuming task of assigning call numbers to books is to enable browsing the shelves for similar materials. In libraries with closed stacks, where pages, runners, or even robots, pull books by request of the reader (such as the Library of Congress, the British Library, the NYPL on 5th Ave.) there is no point at all in putting on call numbers. In fact it's a complete waste of money.
2. Amazon does not assign call numbers and it doesn't need them to pull a book. Amazon does not have a cataloging backlog like every library does. Every book has an ISDN number today and every book, journal, serial and monograph retailed today has a bar code on the wrapper.
3. This is really of value (if it works at all) as an order fulfillment system in any warehouse. I would venture to suggest that FedEx, UPS, DHL, most any mail order business and even the postal service have developed better ways of order-picking, retrieving a uniquely numbered item than using voice recognition (for an infinite number of different speakers) and a dinky robot running up and down the stacks.
No wonder Spain is so little known for it's brain surgery, rocket science, or advanced technology.
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It was a poor design and like the Soviet Union once the central plan didn't comport with reality, it had to die on the ash heap of history. The idiot MSN Groups is what killed it for me. If you have multiple identities, multiple email addresses, and different ones are joined to different groups, you can't remember which identity is to which group. The idiot MSN implementation sends you emails from the group but doesn't show you the email address that the message is being sent to--your own email address. So you can't figure out which one to use to sign onto the Passport and of course since you use multiple identities you don't want it cookified on you. Then the necxt problem is that it won't let you even use it if your cookies are turned off. You'd think Microsoft would have figured with all their security problems that people will turn off cookies and ActiveX (they give you the function to do it in Explorer) but then their passport thing doesn't work. I hated it and would join Yahoo Grpoups instead of MSN Groups and they have their own problems but not this really quite rudimentary level of stupidity.
1. The sole purpose of the costly and time consuming task of assigning call numbers to books is to enable browsing the shelves for similar materials. In libraries with closed stacks, where pages, runners, or even robots, pull books by request of the reader (such as the Library of Congress, the British Library, the NYPL on 5th Ave.) there is no point at all in putting on call numbers. In fact it's a complete waste of money.
2. Amazon does not assign call numbers and it doesn't need them to pull a book. Amazon does not have a cataloging backlog like every library does. Every book has an ISDN number today and every book, journal, serial and monograph retailed today has a bar code on the wrapper.
3. This is really of value (if it works at all) as an order fulfillment system in any warehouse. I would venture to suggest that FedEx, UPS, DHL, most any mail order business and even the postal service have developed better ways of order-picking, retrieving a uniquely numbered item than using voice recognition (for an infinite number of different speakers) and a dinky robot running up and down the stacks.
No wonder Spain is so little known for it's brain surgery, rocket science, or advanced technology.