13.0380 CD-ROMs in libraries & at home

From: Humanist Discussion Group (willard@lists.village.virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2000 - 07:11:47 CUT

  • Next message: Humanist Discussion Group: "13.0384 CD-ROMs in libraries"

                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 380.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

             Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 22:07:51 +0000
             From: Paul Brians <brians@mail.wsu.edu>
             Subject: Re: 13.0377 CD-ROMs in libraries

    CD-ROMs are not only headaches for libraries. I recently received a free
    sample CD-ROM for a World Civilization text. Installing it cluttered my
    hard disk with 100 megs of files and then it tried to establish a live
    connection to the Internet without any action on my part. Such ill-behaved
    CD-ROMs are all too common. I've had one install an older version of
    QuickTime into my System Folder, wiping out the newer version that was
    already there. No option to avoid installing QuickTime was provided.

    CD-ROMs at the least should be self-contained, and not require that files
    be installed on hard drives or permanent links be available to the
    Internet. Ideally they would also be bootable disks, with their own
    operating systems. But they would still grow out of date, of course, as
    hardware changes. I agree the CD-ROM in its present form is a clumsy
    dinosaur.

    Paul Brians, Department of English
    Washington State University
    Pullman, WA 99164-5020
    brians@wsu.edu
    http://www.wsu.edu/~brians



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