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Monday 18 March, 2002
- 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!
Tuesday - 19 March, 2002
- 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!
Wednesday - 20 March, 2002
- 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!
Thursday - 21 March, 2002
- 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!
Aloha Friday - 22 March, 2002
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!
© 2002 Daniel K. Seto. All rights
reserved. Disclaimer
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