I am almost at the end of electronic filings for Legacy Farm. It is amazing how things have changed in just a few years. Last year I found out that I could file my W2 & W3 online with the Social Security Administration because I had less than 25 employees. I could also file and pay my Workmen's comp. This year I again filed online with the SSA(after getting my userid re-established). I am grateful they replaced the Acrobat forms file from last year with a regular PDF file. I like to have an electronic copy of what I submitted and the Acrobat forms file was unreadable without Acrobat software I don't own. Last year I found out that I could submit my filing online completely by accident. I was looking through the SSA site for a program or spreadsheet that would allow me to upload a file of my W2s and found out that I could enter them online.

This year I was looking to file and pay my workmen's comp online when I found the Ohio Business Gateway. I found a one-stop filing place for state forms. I could pay my state witholding, workmen's comp, and unemployment insurance all at one place. Pretty nice!

While I was hot on the subject of online filing, I called the folks at EFTPS for internet userid. I have used the phone system version successfully for several years and was happy with it. I think the online version will just be more convienent and quicker.

Silly me! I tried to use the Transfer Files and Settings Wizard. I 've been burnt enough with computers to treat automated programs with considerable disdain. I guess I was hopeful that the state of the art had improved into being something useful. Okay, let me back up to the beginning of the problem. I installed SBS2K and used a new domain name for my network, wehuberconsultingllc.local, and a new userid, whuber. This is a common naming standard for business systems. This meant I was going to create a new userid on my XP system. Since I thought I had a fast enough machine and enough disk space, I thought I would give the Transfer Files and Settings Wizard another try. After a couple of tries I figured out I did not have enough disk space. I pointed the wizard at a new location and a couple of hours later I had 5 GB folder. I am confused! What is in that folder? I know it is not my documents. Surprise, surprise, when I try to restore the settings I do not have enough free space to expand the files. So I skip the restore and move my files manually.

Everything has been running fine until yesterday. I install the new version of Tax for Home and Business and try to rollover last year's data. It cannot find the data. I try to run Taxcut2001 for Business and it crashed with an error message that it cannot find the data. I try to Taxcut2000 and it fails with the same message. I compare the database folders for 2002 and 2001 and see that 2001 is missing an Access data base and some Word documents. Oh, no, Mister Bill, someone has stolen your files! I narrowed the suspects down to the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard. So last night I uninstalled VisualAge for Java program to free up some disk space and let the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard run over night. The files are back! Another learning experience.

I started out on this adventure because of the recent notoriety of the Slammer/Saphire worm that wrecked havok over the weekend. I was pretty sure that my SQL2K server was not exposed to the internet. The free port scanner from Eeye.com did not indicate any problems with port 1433 or 1434 but I thought I should make sure and install the recently released SP3. SQL2K SP3 supposedly fixes several security problems including the Slammer worm. The service pack comes in three parts, database components, analysis services components, and desktop engine. The individual files range from 45 MB to 100 MB. In hindsight I could have skipped the desktop engine download since I now know that it is unlikely I will ever use it. When I ran the executable files for the database components and analysis components they created a folder for installing the service pack. I opened the folder and ran the setup file to install the service pack. To verify the installation I went to the Query Analyzer and checked the version. It was updated. I saw in the instructions that I could check the version of Analysis Services by checking the version shown in Analysis Manager. It still had the original version number. So I read the instructions again and found out that I had to a second setup file in the msolasp/install folder to update Analysis services. I ran the file and it failed with a severe error, “An error occurred during the move data process:-132”. I looked in the MS KB for more info and did not find any matches. I used Google to search the web for me and did not find any info. I tried to install the SP2 version I had on CD and it failed with the same error message. I removed SQL2K and installed a fresh copy. When I tried to apply SP3, it failed with the same error message. I was getting frustrated and was just about ready to spend some money on Microsoft when I decided to see what the installation log said before it failed. Maybe I would get lucky. I found a message in the log that complained about it being unable to shut down windows mgmt. I went to the services console, shut down the windows management service, and ran the update. It worked! The database and analysis services components are both at SP3.

I am a little puzzled why I could not find anyone who has had this problem before. I suspect that there aren't that many SBS2K folks running SQL2K. I guess that if SQL2K is important to a business they probably have it running on a separate computer. I noticed that windows mgmt had to shut exchange 2K down before it would shut down.

Robert Wilensky. “We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” [Quotes of the Day]

“I don't want to wait to find a smoking gun; that means the guy has already shot me.” John Hulsman, senior policy analyst at Heritage Foundation.

You can find this quote and more information about regime change. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

IMHO a democracy is a protestant viewpoint of an appropiate relationship between Church and state. It has been a very effective form of government for the United States and has been effective in promoting religious tolerance because it reflects the beliefs of the people. If a country is looking to change to a democratic form of government, I doubt they will be effective unless they share this cornerstone.

It looks like I finally found the correct solution to the offline files problem. A couple of key facts that led me to the correct solution were:

1. “Make available offline” option is greyed out.
2. Folder remains read only despite efforts to change it.
3. When I tried to delete the folder, the computer said I should not delete a system file.

For a long time I could not figure out why the computer thought that the folder was a system file. Then I figured it out. I had redirected the “My Documents” folder to the network shared folder. I reset the “My Documents” to the default folder on the PC and deleted the files from the Folder Options menu. I setup the Quickbooks company file as an offline file. Finally I have only one file I am going to synchronize.

Peter McWilliams. “To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.” [Quotes of the Day]

I read the SBS2K newsgroup on Yahoo daily. They frequently talk about offline file issues with XP since there is a bug. I generally do not use offline files because awhile back I turned it on and found myself getting increasingly annoyed with synchronization. Yesterday I installed the printer driver for my QMS printer on the server and had to reboot the server to complete the installation. I forgot I had been working in Quickbooks on another machine and the company database resides on the server. When I got back to Quickbooks and tried to exit it reminded me that the server had disappeared and it was unable to apply the update on the screen to the file on the server. At that point I realized that offline files could have saved me from problems like this. So I turned offline files back on. I made the QB database available offline and then I made a mistake and made my entire user directory available offline. When it started to copy over local files to my pc and I saw how much data would be synchronized, I started looking for ways to undo my mistake. When I looked at the offline files I found that I not only had about a gig of recently synched files, I also had the over a gig of files from the last time I had used offline files. I had two to three gigs of files I did not want available offline. I tried deleting the files from the offline files folder but that did not work. So I read the manual and tried using the delete files button. It brought a screen that was relatively crude and confusing. It allowed me to delete all local files by network share!? I expected a little finer control. I soon noticed that my efforts were not working because XP appears to have a mind of its own and started to repair the offline files directory. I would delete files, XP would repair them. So I went to bed and let XP do its thing. Today I deleted the files. I got most of them and the offline files symbol has disappeared for all of the subdirectories. I think I finally have offline files under control and working for me.

There are days when I wonder why the US Postal Service cannot be more like UPS. Then there are days when I wish UPS was more like the USPS. Today was one of those days. I have been waiting on a part for my printer. It was scheduled for delivery Thursday. It snowed and got pretty sloppy so I was not surprised that they did not deliver the package. I was surprised when they did not deliver the package on Friday. It was very cold but clear. The roads were in really good shape. On both days my son went to school at the regular time, the mail was delivered, our employees came to work, and I went out to various places. UPS says they can't make the deliver because of the weather. I just don't get it.

Media Companies Money Was Well Spent After All.

Supreme Court OKs Copyright Extension

“The U.S. Supreme Court upheld on Wednesday a 1998 law extending copyright protection by 20 years, delaying when creative works such as Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons, F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels and George Gershwin's songs become public property.

The 7-2 ruling was a victory for supporters of the law, including large media companies and song publishers that argued the longer term was needed to protect a vital industry that contributes more than $500 billion to the U.S. economy.

It dealt a defeat to an Internet publisher and others who challenged the law for limiting free speech and for harming the creative process by locking up material they said should be in the public domain for all to use without charge.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court majority that the U.S. Congress in adopting the law acted within its authority and did not exceed constitutional limits. She also said the law does not violate constitutional free-speech protections.” [CNET News.com]

What I'd like to know is if the Bono Extension doesn't exceed constitutional limits, what does? What is to prevent Disney from asking for another extension? How does this madness ever end?

Will gave me the heads up on this, including the original notice from Lessig's blog and now an AP story. The decision itself still hasn't shown up online.

Update: I came out of a meeting to find that Larry Lessig has posted the opinion online (PDF). I'd also like to take issue with those sites using a headline that reads “Lessig lost Eldred,” because Lessig is the last person in the world that should shoulder any blame here. How about “Supremes lost [the point of] Eldred” or “American public loses Eldred” or “Your grandkids lose [all of the creative wealth they would have had access to because of] Eldred.”

And if you buy the “harmonization” argument the Justices used to justify this travesty, doesn't the mean that Bush should be signing the Kyoto Accord later today?

[The Shifted Librarian]

I briefly read the majority and dissenting opinions and found it curious. My opinion is that the majority opinion did not like the several areas associated with the law but did not find the law unconstitutional. The “harmonization” was particularly wimpish.

The dissenting opinion written by Justice Stevens argued that the Congress could not extend the expiration date of a patent or a copyright because patents and copyrights are issued for a limited time. The primary objective of a patent or copyright is to promote science and arts. The conclusion is that the sooner the art or innovation enters into the public domain the better.

A second dissenting opinion written by Justice Breyer was a little more practical. It argued that the “Bono Act” extended copyrights to a point where they will never enter into the public domain and will primarily benefit the heirs of the innovator or artist. Since the law primarily benfits private interests rather than public interests it is unconstitutional.