Flopping Floppy Disks

Awhile back (see it here) I talked about how I recovered a corrupted WordPerfect file from a floppy. A similar problem occurred last Friday, but this time it was an Excel file. Now, there is much to like about how MS does things, but in this case, WordPerfect makes it a lot easier to recover corrupted files by providing the free tools you will need to do so.

This turning a blind eye, on the part of MS, to the problem has created a niche for a couple of companies to create the utilities that MS should include with their products as a default. Unfortunately for the end user, the cost of these third-party recovery utilities can run you up to $150US per copy (do a google search using "excel corrupt").

Being that I had nothing to loose (it wasn't my file. I don't know why people use floppies as not only their primary storage medium, but their only storage medium), I decide to try some things. But first, a small digression on relative reliability.

The TEAC FD-235 is a typical floppy drive and has a MTBF (mean time between failure) of about 30,000 hours (see their PDF file here). The MTBF for a Maxtor DiamondMax 1750UDMA hard drive, one of their older models, is listed as in excess of 500,000 hours (see the specs here), or a difference of about 16 times. Unfortunately, I could not find any reliability information on floppy diskettes themselves. Perhaps this should be telling you something - like don't consider them reliable.

But back to our story. As a review, if you have a floppy that you suspect is corrupted (for example, the floppy drive does multiple tries to read anything off of it), don't bother using the Norton System Works 2002 since it's "Disk Doctor" is totally useless in finding and fixing corrupted clusters on a floppy, and I think hard drives as well, when running under Windows 2000 Pro. So make sure you have a copy of a Windows98 start-up boot disk with scandisk on it. By using scandisk, you can at least move whatever readable data there is to good clusters.

Having done that, I now had a file that had some data on it (I could look at it using a hex editor) but that Excel could not read. From this starting point I went to the MS site search for whatever they had on recovering damaged files. A good document to start with is Q179871 XL2000: Summary of Methods to Recover Data from Corrupted Workbooks.

But none of the methods worked. Sigh.

So I then fired up Red Hat Linux 7.2 and used KSpreadsheet to try to read the file. And heck if KDE's spreadsheet didn't do just that. What Excel couldn't do, KSpreadsheet could. Yahoo! Until I realized that KSpreadsheet, while it can read Excel's format, can't write it.

KDE essentially says don't hold your breath for any export filters for Excel (see the KDE FAQ 8.4 Are there import filters for Excel...located here). So while I could read the corrupted file, I had to save it to another format (e.g., html, text, delimited, etc.) and then read it into Excel. Doing it this way lost all formatting but at least the numbers were there.

If this were really vital information, it may be reasonable to buy one of the third-party programs that fix corrupted Excel files, but if not, give some of the above a try. Remember of course, to make all of your changes on a copy of the file, not the original. Professional driver on a closed course. Don't do this at home. YMMV.

Aloha!

When will they learn?

You would think most clueful companies would know by now that creating spyware, i.e., surreptitious software that accumulates data about you and transmits it back to their company without your permission or knowledge, is not a Good Thing.

But I guess the word has not yet gotten to Netscape. The Newsbytes site (see it here) notes the following:

According to a network traffic analysis performed by Newsbytes, Netscape is capturing Navigator 6 users' search terms, along with their Internet protocol (IP) address, the date Navigator was installed and a unique identification number.

When confronted by Newsbytes, Netscape spokesman Derick Mains, "said the company developed the URL forwarding system in order to bill participating search sites for sending them traffic."

"We just keep track of aggregate numbers and don't monitor any terms or anything. We just need to know how many people are searching via our browser to our search partners, and that's all the information we receive,"

If this is true, why log the search terms, IP numbers and unique identifiers in the first place? Or are the unnamed "partners" the ones who are logging the terms?

In the end, it is up to you to decide whether this is acceptable behavior or not. As for me, I don't want to get into another holy war over this. Some people think this is okay, some don't. YMMV. Thanks to InfoWorld's Brian Livingston for the link.

Fair Use and Thumbnails

The case law on copyright and the Internet is still evolving. One case that may shed additional light on the subject is also from Mr. Livingston (see the link here). The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Kelly v. Arriba (see the 25-page PDF here) opines that some use of thumbnailed images may fall under the "fair use" clause of the copyright law. However, this should not be construed to be a blanket approval of thumbnail images of copyrighted material. The intent of the use as well as the type of image itself may enter into the equation so contact a good attorney for clarification.

I don't know if there will be an appeal so this may not be the last word, but still, the case law is beginning to give a clearer picture as to what is fair use and what isn't.

The Bush Doctrine

Seven months ago, if you had predicted that a Republican president would espouse an activist and expansive foreign policy your membership in the Trilateral Commission would have been immediately revoked. And yet, looking at the events post 9/11, this may be true.

How else can one explain a policy based on an "axis of evil"? One in which US armed forces are found in Afghanistan and the Philippines, and threatened in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea? Was this just rhetoric intended for the domestic masses to shore up sagging support for the war in Afghanistan (which is what I originally thought it was)? Or is there a kernel of truth among the chaff?

It may be too early to tell for sure, but I wonder if this wasn't the proverbial trial balloon signalling a shift in policy...

Aloha!

Cone of Silence

If it's Wednesday, it must mean Internet access must be down. As far as I can see, the problem lies outside the borders of the Judiciary, but it could be the firewall acting up again. In either case, this will get posted when it gets posted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This Day in History

On this day in 1854, former members of the Whig Party met in Ripon, Wisconsin to form a new political party. They named it the Republican Party and had as its platform the abolition of slavery. Four years later, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president of the United States. Within three months of his election, six southern states seceded from the Union. A few months later Ft. Sumter would be fired upon, officially beginning the US Civil War. How far the Republican party has come since then.

Aloha!

Ringing Shoes

Internet access is still down more than it is up. One would think our high paid network analysts would get smart and figure something out. But nooooo. And, they don't let people know what is going on like a cone of silence, even though our intranet and cc:mail (soon to be converted to Lotus Notes) is working fine. Oh well, guv'mnt workers.

Dancing Keys

We have virtual worlds so why not a virtual keyboard? Siemens showed at Cebit an Israeli made device from Developer VKB Inc., that projects the image of a keyboard on any flat surface. The device then detects where your fingers are in relation to the projection. This would work great in harsh environments where a regular keyboard would not work (e.g., underwater, sand/dust, etc.). See the article from ananova.com here.

Aloha!

It's Friday!

Unclear on the Concept Award

Micron Technology's minuscule sales down 40 percent in Q2. 3Comm communications reveal that revenues down 43 percent in the Q3. Palm sweats out sales figures down 38 percent in Q3. Apple says time ripe to boost price of iMacs by 7 percent. Say what? Citing increased costs of RAM and LCD monitors, Apple will increase prices by about $100 per iMac. Hmmm. I guess when you are a monopoly, the old saying about "when the going gets though, the tough raise prices" is still true.

Stick Built

So the carpenters are supposed to be done with the rennovations/repairs to the back house today (except for the counter tops, which are on order and will be in about a week and a half from now). We will see. If so, then we can have the painters come in followed by the carpet guys. I must say, it is looking pretty good but when you consider how much we've paid since we started work last July, all I can do sigh and move on. When they finish the house, they will start on the outside stairs of the front house. When that is pau, they can go find somewhere else to make their money.

I have a meeting to go to this morning so I gotta' go. Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!