From davidrothman at pobox.com Sun Apr 1 00:49:29 2007 From: davidrothman at pobox.com (David H. Rothman) Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 03:49:29 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] some things never change In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <460F6409.5070005@pobox.com> Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > david rothman is touting a $200 version of the o.l.p.c. machine. > > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6352 (1) I'm very nostalgic--about Bowerbird's past comments on this topic. ;-) See URL below. Then check out Ars Technica ("OLPC manufacturer to sell $200 laptop in developed countries") and the Financial Times ("Quanta launches ultra-low-cost PCs"). (2) The TeleRead blog community didn't ban Bowerbird per se--but, going by others' preferences, not just my own, I said he'd have to stop trolling. The Bird flew off. The TeleBlog welcomes commenters with all kinds of 'tude on the OLPC machines, e-books standards, copyright, you name it. I just wish I had time to moderate Bowerbird regularly--something I can't recall having to do with anyone else. No one pays me or others to run the TeleBlog. With the Bird, we're in "No good deed goes unpunished" territory. (3) While the Bird can be a human time sink--and I lack time for the extended debate he wants here as an attention-loving performance poet--I do appreciate his just-offered pointer to the TeleBlog. We often surpass libraryjournal.com in unique visitors, according to Alexa.com. Thanks, Bird! I suspect you're among our most devoted readers. (4) The TeleBlog publishes success stories out of DP, among other posts, and we'll certainly welcome newsworthy items from PG, too, especially involving great K-12 uses of public domain texts (see PG examples among the others at http://www.teleread.org/ptaguide.htm). Much more fun than Bird-style debates! It's great to disagree and be outspoken about it. It's not so cool to flame other community members constantly. Thanks, David David Rothman | dr at teleread.org | 703-370-6540 Moderator, TeleBlog: http://www.teleread.org/blog P.S. This is a retransmission since I had an e-mail problem earlier. Meanwhile I notice Bowerbird has replied and protested that the press release from Quanta "means zilch." I, too, am often skeptical of press releases. But let's remember that Quanta has already come through with the hardware. It's just a matter of getting prices down, and extrapolating from previous trends, I think that's possible even if an exact timeline is hard to come up with. ///////////////////////////////////// URLs The Bird's comments - November 29, 2005 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3911#comment-35062 Among other things, he wrote: "A machine you can manufacture and sell for $100 goes to the wholesaler who will sell it for $200 and that means the retailer--who deals with individuals as buyers--will set a price of $400. unless mr. dell wants to use this machine as a loss-leader, which i believe is untenable, it?s not gonna be cost-effective." No one can absolutely say precisely when the consumer-prices of OLPC-style machine will reach $200, but it appears this could well happen in the next year or two. Unlike the Bird, I won't be so hung up on this issue of EXACTLY what month the price will drop to X level. But we are talking about the very near future. ///////////////////////////////////// "OLPC manufacturer to sell $200 laptop in developed countries" Ars Technica - March 29 - 2007 http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070329-olpc-xo-manufacturer-to-sell-budget-portables-in-developed-countries.html No mention of $400 consumer prices for OLPC equivalents! ///////////////////////////////////// "Quanta launches ultra-low-cost PCs" Financial Times - March 28, 2007 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6d086a62-dcb3-11db-a21d-000b5df10621.html Lead: "Quanta Computer, the world?s largest manufacturer of notebook computers, will start making ultra-low-cost computers that could be sold in developed markets for as little as $200 this year or the next, according to its president." Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > david rothman is touting a $200 version of the o.l.p.c. machine. > > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6352 > > furthermore: > > That???s the start. Costs will only go down, _a_lot_. > > and he winds himself up even more: > > within five years a better machine will cost $75 > > of course, since he has, in the past, promised a $50 machine, > and like any drug, you've gotta keep increasing the dosage, > he's now obliged to go even further, and yes, he does: > > Of course, if you want to talk about just e-book reading, > > not full-fledged computing, we could well be seeing > > $35 readers on the shelves at Walmart in the next five or ten years. > > yeah, right. at least he's smart enough to extend it out to 10 years. > > i've called rothman on this destructive hype before -- > > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3911 > -- but he just seems to be addicted to the stuff... > > (indeed, he ran me off his blog so i wouldn't keep on pointing out > that his fashion-leading emperor wasn't even wearing any clothes.) > > yes, certainly the day will come when we have super-cheap machines. > but no, it won't be soon, and it's counter-productive and irresponsible > -- terribly -- to make people believe that "it's just around the > corner"... > > what it does is mislead people about the important e-book advances > that are taking place _now_, with the hardware that we already have. > they wait for a super-tomorrow that's _not_ gonna come tomorrow. > > jon noring, from 1996 on, was constantly talking about the emergence > of high-quality, high-resolution, low-cost screens, and he always put > the arrival date at "within 5 years". finally, in 2001, when those screens > were still "within 5 years", i was able to start pointing out that > he'd been > saying that for 5 years already. this led him to curtail his > prognosticating. > > (ironically, 10 years later, by 2006, high-quality, high-resolution > screens > _are_ appearing -- at a high cost, to be sure, but they are still > appearing > [e.g., you can see full-color thin-screens being used at every mcdonalds] > -- which means that _within_5_years_ [e.g., 2011], they will be low-cost.) > > this is how the electronics industry works. they soak the early-adopters. > very few products come out at the lowest price possible. we all know this. > if you want to see what will be cheap in 5 years, see what's expensive > now. > if you can't already see an expensive version of something, then you will > _not_ see a cheap version of it appearing soon. don't let yourself be > fooled. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG. > Version: 7.5.448 / Virus Database: 268.18.22/739 - Release Date: 3/29/2007 1:36 PM From Bowerbird at aol.com Sun Apr 1 13:10:57 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 16:10:57 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] hacking an e-book reader out of a cheap hardware product Message-ID: well, i'll be darned. although it won't come in under david's $50 pricetag, let alone his $35 ridiculousness, i think i've discovered a machine that can be repurposed as e-book hardware. costs $64.95 new (online, so add the cost of shipping), and various "accessories" will be required to make it an e-book reader, so figure you will be nickle-and-dimed up to the $80-$95 range, depending on your choices. this is a fairly new product, so there aren't a lot of them on ebay yet, and the ones that are up there are fetching a price not significantly below the price for a new unit, so i'd say $80-$95 is about as cheap as you can get it. but still, if i can make this work -- i'll finish experiments today, so i hope to give y'all a full report by tomorrow -- then this could become a truly affordable hardware hack, at least for those who find the display is readable enough. it looks very promising, and i can't see any reason why it _shouldn't_ work, but i won't know for sure until it _does_, and i've had a bit of trouble rounding up one final part... i've been convinced the hardware industry will not choose to give us inexpensive e-book reader-machines because doing so would cannibalize their existing product-lines. but ever since the "juicebox" was released and abandoned a few years ago, i've been intrigued by a notion they might unwittingly release something cheap that could be hacked. so i've regularly eyed new products with that idea in mind, and i finally might have discovered one that will fill the bill. i'll let you know by tomorrow. anyway, hope you're enjoying your cesar chavez weekend. (you do know who he was, don't you? i hope he's not just some california/mexican-american hero.) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070401/55b96be2/attachment.htm From j.hagerson at comcast.net Sun Apr 1 16:38:52 2007 From: j.hagerson at comcast.net (John Hagerson) Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 18:38:52 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site Message-ID: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> I received an e-mail message to the CD distribution alias informing me that Google has a link to the files/19784 directory of gutenberg.org. Unfortunately, the message did not indicate the search that linked to this particular directory. If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it from happening. Thank you. John Hagerson From marcello at perathoner.de Sun Apr 1 23:01:31 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:01:31 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> Message-ID: <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> John Hagerson wrote: > I received an e-mail message to the CD distribution alias informing me that > Google has a link to the files/19784 directory of gutenberg.org. > Unfortunately, the message did not indicate the search that linked to this > particular directory. > > If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to > ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it > from happening. Thank you. That is a page like any other page. I can't see why you want to prevent Google from indexing it. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Sun Apr 1 23:25:33 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:25:33 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Challenge: more Bookshelf CDs Message-ID: <20070402062533.151830@gmx.net> The SF CD is definitely a success. More than 800 downloads and the SF Bookshelf page is now #2 on the polular pages list of the Wiki. Now i challenge all volunteers to do better. The Christmas Bookshelf and the Children's Picture Books Bookshelf are definitely candidates. The Detective Fiction Boookshelf is still a bit short on books. I happily offer any help needed to create the CDs. I am mainly a Windows programmer so it is easier if you use Windows also. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org "Feel free" - 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ... Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Sun Apr 1 23:57:26 2007 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:57:26 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> Message-ID: <35a11317re7rpm09a14hgclt3lknd28egi@4ax.com> On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 18:38:52 -0500, "John Hagerson" wrote: |!I received an e-mail message to the CD distribution alias informing me that |!Google has a link to the files/19784 directory of gutenberg.org. |!Unfortunately, the message did not indicate the search that linked to this |!particular directory. |! |!If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to |!ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it |!from happening. Thank you. If someone is researching/looking for a book, then finds and downloads a copy from PG, surely that is a Good Thing. -- Dave Fawthrop From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Mon Apr 2 00:00:31 2007 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:00:31 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Challenge: more Bookshelf CDs In-Reply-To: <20070402062533.151830@gmx.net> References: <20070402062533.151830@gmx.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:25:33 +0200, "Robert Marquardt" wrote: |!The SF CD is definitely a success. |!More than 800 downloads and the SF Bookshelf page is now #2 on the polular pages list of the Wiki. |! |!Now i challenge all volunteers to do better. |!The Christmas Bookshelf and the Children's Picture Books Bookshelf are definitely candidates. The Detective Fiction Boookshelf is still a bit short on books. |! |!I happily offer any help needed to create the CDs. I am mainly a Windows programmer so it is easier if you use Windows also. The SF CDROM less so :-( I have managed to give away only one totally free copy with a sig :-( -- Dave Fawthrop 165 *Free* SF ebooks. 165 Sci Fi books on CDROM, from Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Completely Free to any address in the UK. Contact me on the *above* email address. From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 2 00:35:15 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:35:15 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Challenge: more Bookshelf CDs In-Reply-To: References: <20070402062533.151830@gmx.net> Message-ID: <20070402073515.266610@gmx.net> > The SF CDROM less so :-( > I have managed to give away only one totally free copy with a sig :-( Wrong hunting ground maybe. I had no problem giving away 10 copies when asking on LibriVox, Distributed Proofreaders and Baens Bar (worldwide though). -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org "Feel free" - 5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS/Monat ... Jetzt GMX ProMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail From desrod at gnu-designs.com Mon Apr 2 03:07:35 2007 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:07:35 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> > > If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to > > ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it > > from happening. Thank you. > That is a page like any other page. I can't see why you want to prevent > Google from indexing it. Other than there being absolutely nothing of use there, why WOULD you want Google to index it? There's no useful content or context there at all. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19784/ -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now." From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Mon Apr 2 04:28:59 2007 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:28:59 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <34q113hu72rjjsm5da7u9ckch3p8f4o6re@4ax.com> On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:07:35 -0400, "David A. Desrosiers" wrote: |!> > If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to |!> > ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it |!> > from happening. Thank you. |! |!> That is a page like any other page. I can't see why you want to prevent |!> Google from indexing it. |! |!Other than there being absolutely nothing of use there, why WOULD you |!want Google to index it? There's no useful content or context there at |!all. |! |!http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19784/ The links work fine, which tell you what is there, just tested them. -- Dave Fawthrop From marcello at perathoner.de Mon Apr 2 10:08:34 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:08:34 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> David A. Desrosiers wrote: > Other than there being absolutely nothing of use there, why WOULD you > want Google to index it? There's no useful content or context there at > all. 1. I don't *want* Google to index it. Know what? They just indexed it without asking me. 2. I don't give a damn if they index it or not. It's a waste of their disk space, not ours. 3. As long as you cannot give a valid reason why to remove those pages from Google you are just wasting my time. 4. How's the port of plucker to linux pdas going? (Just in case you wanted to do something useful.) -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From desrod at gnu-designs.com Mon Apr 2 11:56:25 2007 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:56:25 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <1175540185.7470.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Mon, 2007-04-02 at 19:08 +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > David A. Desrosiers wrote: > > > Other than there being absolutely nothing of use there, why WOULD you > > want Google to index it? There's no useful content or context there at > > all. > > 1. I don't *want* Google to index it. Know what? They just indexed it > without asking me. Then fix your robots.txt accordingly. Yours is broken, if this is your intent: http://www.gutenberg.org/robots.txt > 2. I don't give a damn if they index it or not. It's a waste of their > disk space, not ours. And a waste of your bandwidth and power and resources, of course. > 3. As long as you cannot give a valid reason why to remove those pages > from Google you are just wasting my time. I never suggested such, perhaps you meant someone else? > 4. How's the port of plucker to linux pdas going? (Just in case you > wanted to do something useful.) Its been working for about 4 years. Where have you been? We don't maintain it of course, but there are Plucker document viewers written for gtk+ that work with QPE/GPE on Linux-based PDA devices. You might want to seek one of those out. -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now." From marcello at perathoner.de Mon Apr 2 13:37:42 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:37:42 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <1175540185.7470.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> <1175540185.7470.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <46116996.5000707@perathoner.de> David A. Desrosiers wrote: > Then fix your robots.txt accordingly. Yours is broken, if this is your > intent: > > http://www.gutenberg.org/robots.txt If you found a bug, send a patch. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From desrod at gnu-designs.com Mon Apr 2 14:04:14 2007 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:04:14 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <46116996.5000707@perathoner.de> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> <1175540185.7470.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46116996.5000707@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <1175547855.7470.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> > > Then fix your robots.txt accordingly. Yours is broken, if this is your > > intent: > > http://www.gutenberg.org/robots.txt > If you found a bug, send a patch. No. I won't do your work for you. If you don't want Google to index /files/, then fix your robots.txt to stop them from doing so. Since you don't exclude /files/ from public web spiders, Google is appropriately indexing that content, as it should, as well as other spiders you allow in there by not excluding them. -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now." From phil at thalasson.com Mon Apr 2 18:51:19 2007 From: phil at thalasson.com (Philip Baker) Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 02:51:19 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> Message-ID: In article <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9 at sarek>, John Hagerson writes >I received an e-mail message to the CD distribution alias informing me that >Google has a link to the files/19784 directory of gutenberg.org. >Unfortunately, the message did not indicate the search that linked to this >particular directory. It comes up on a search on 19784. Ranked 5th when I did the search. > >If this is not supposed to happen (and I don't think it is), I would like to >ask the appropriate person to take the appropriate step(s) to prevent it >from happening. Thank you. > >John Hagerson > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -- Philip Baker From marcello at perathoner.de Mon Apr 2 22:55:30 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 07:55:30 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Deep link from Google into PG site In-Reply-To: <1175547855.7470.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <000001c774b6$eaa76fa0$1f12fea9@sarek> <46109C3B.2020207@perathoner.de> <1175508455.29410.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46113892.8090404@perathoner.de> <1175540185.7470.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> <46116996.5000707@perathoner.de> <1175547855.7470.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <4611EC52.5000609@perathoner.de> David A. Desrosiers wrote: > If you don't want Google to index /files/, then fix your robots.txt to > stop them from doing so. You must be the most obtuse person I know. I expressly stated I don't care if they index it or not. If *you* have a problem with that, send a patch. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From gbnewby at pglaf.org Thu Apr 5 15:56:28 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 15:56:28 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: [BP] Stanford Launches Database of Copyright Renewal Records (fwd) Message-ID: <20070405225628.GC17323@mail.pglaf.org> The front page mentioned they use PG's content. It sounds like this is the further-developed version of Michael Lesk's stuff at Rutgers, which we point to from http://copy.pglaf.org/ This looks pretty functional, to me. I tried a couple of simple searches, and came up with correct results. -- Greg ----- Forwarded message from Michael Hart ----- From: Michael Hart To: Greg Newby Subject: !@!!@!!@! [BP] Stanford Launches Database of Copyright Renewal Records (fwd) Reply-To: "Michael S. Hart" FROM: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news http://www.bespacific.com April 04, 2007 Stanford Launches Database of Copyright Renewal Records "The Copyright Renewal Database makes searchable the copyright renewal records received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 for books published in the US between 1923 and 1963. Note that the database includes ONLY US Class A (book) renewals. The period from 1923-1963 is of special interest for US copyrights, as works published after January 1, 1964 had their copyrights automatically renewed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and works published before 1923 have generally fallen into the public domain. Between those dates, a renewal registration was required to prevent the expiration of copyright, however determining whether a work's registration has been renewed is a challenge. Renewals received by the Copyright Office after 1977 are searchable in an online database, but renewals received between 1950 and 1977 were announced and distributed only in a semi-annual print publication. The Copyright Office does not have a machine-searchable source for this renewal information, and the only public access is through the card catalog in their DC offices." Topic(s): --Copyright --Knowledge Management --Legal Research , --Libraries ----- End forwarded message ----- From gbnewby at pglaf.org Fri Apr 6 18:56:53 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 18:56:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: [BP] OCRopus OCR slated for Easter release (fwd) Message-ID: <20070407015653.GD795@mail.pglaf.org> I don't think we'll want to stop using our own favorite OCR packages any time soon, but the software below sounds like it's of interest to the PG community: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:19:53 PDT From: Bill Janssen To: Book People Mailing List Subject: [BP] OCRopus OCR slated for Easter release Just came from a talk by Tom Breuel about OCRopus. Should be released this weekend, and the official announcement will show up on the Google blog on Monday. See . The output of the OCR engine will be in an HTML/CSS3 "microformat" called hOCR. Interesting choice. See . Bill ----- End forwarded message ----- From marcello at perathoner.de Mon Apr 9 09:50:59 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:50:59 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] New York Times article mentioning PG Message-ID: <461A6EF3.8070903@perathoner.de> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/arts/09conn.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From gpdimonderose at hotmail.it Tue Apr 10 06:12:47 2007 From: gpdimonderose at hotmail.it (gpdimonderose at hotmail.it) Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 15:12:47 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [gutvol-d] =?utf-8?q?Un_amico_ti_invita_su_Splinder!?= Message-ID: <20070410131247.E6DF7106511B@splinder118.splinder.com> L'utente gpdimonderose ti ha invitato su Splinder come amico :-) Clicca su questo link http://edit.splinder.com/community/contacts/accept/80ce6e73e717577c3f9db2be2320b744 per accettare l'invito. Registrandoti a Splinder potrai creare il tuo blog gratis, conoscere nuove persone e chattare con loro quando sono online. From ajhaines at shaw.ca Wed Apr 11 21:15:20 2007 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:15:20 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Subscripts/superscripts in text e-books Message-ID: <000301c77cb9$2f2f6e20$6401a8c0@ahainesp2400> Any recommendations on ways of indicating subscripted/superscripted characters (or strings of characters) in text versions of e-books? I've looked through PG's and DP's respective FAQ/WIKIs - both seem to be silent on this. Al From sly at victoria.tc.ca Wed Apr 11 22:17:36 2007 From: sly at victoria.tc.ca (Andrew Sly) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:17:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Subscripts/superscripts in text e-books In-Reply-To: <000301c77cb9$2f2f6e20$6401a8c0@ahainesp2400> References: <000301c77cb9$2f2f6e20$6401a8c0@ahainesp2400> Message-ID: DP Formatting Guidelines describe ^{superscript} and _{subscript}, but this is for proofing purposes, not for the final text. Off hand, I can't think of any particular instances I've seen in PG texts. I belive often for a plain text file, the distinction is lost, but the meaning is still not compromised. (For instance, if I type "H2O", I believe that's quite clear.) If you want to reflect typsetting like this in a text added to PG, you might want to consider using html. Andrew On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Al Haines (shaw) wrote: > Any recommendations on ways of indicating subscripted/superscripted > characters (or strings of characters) in text versions of e-books? > > I've looked through PG's and DP's respective FAQ/WIKIs - both seem to be > silent on this. > > Al > From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 12 01:02:21 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:02:21 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Subscripts/superscripts in text e-books Message-ID: al said: > Any recommendations on ways of > indicating subscripted/superscripted characters > (or strings of characters) in text versions of e-books? i can tell you how my viewer-program works, which reflects the time i have spent mulling over these questions in general. pick some lower-ascii character that doesn't appear in the book, and use it to indicate subscript or superscript, making a notation that encloses the specific formatting inside of the characters, e.g., > the ^ characters indicate ^superscript^. > the |characters| indicate |subscript|. this works for _any_ special formatting, not just sub/superscript: > the # characters indicate #green#. > the & characters indicate &bold&. > the + characters indicate +bolditalic+. the notes should be in a section of their own, preferably with a heading like "colophon" or "formatting", and this section should be toward the top or the bottom of the file, so that the notes will be the very first or very last occurrence of those special characters. it's also the case that if you find a better way, you can use _that_, and i'll be happy to adopt it and implement it into my viewer-app. long-term, if a method is simple and unambiguous, i consider it to be my responsibility to write the routines that can recognize it. so feel free to improvise. *** andrew said: > I belive often for a plain text file, the distinction is lost, > but the meaning is still not compromised. > (For instance, if I type "H2O", I believe that's quite clear.) yeah, in cases like that, you don't need to worry about it... and for footnotes, for example, the superscripting is simply a nice typographical flourish, and serves no real purpose... (besides, the brackets that z.m.l. uses to indicate a footnote give a fully adequate signal to provide the superscripting if the end-user has indicated that she wants to have it done.) there are other instances where formatting can be ignored, like the superscripting of the small "c" in a name like "mccoy". in particular, a good deal of the time when small caps are used, it's a typographical nicety that can be eliminated with no effects. (drop caps at the start of a chapter should always be eliminated; likewise when the first couple words of a chapter are in all-caps.) of course, given the huge number of books that al has done -- thank you for all the hard work you've donated to the cause, al! -- i'm sure he wouldn't be asking if this formatting wasn't vital... *** andrew said: > If you want to reflect typsetting like this in a text added to PG, > you might want to consider using html. well, yes. but al's question as to how to represent it in the _text_ file still remains. just because you've done it in the _html_ file doesn't give you license to ignore doing it in the text file. (and i get the feeling that bad attitude is increasing over at d.p.) take pride in doing the job well. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070412/ca6f192f/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 12 09:57:49 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:57:49 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] the key to the mystery of a great artist Message-ID: i see where some people are saying that cory doctorow is "cheapening" the perceived value of e-books by giving away digital copies of his work. > The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, > he will give? away his energies and his life just to make sure that > one note follows another...? and leaves us with the feeling? that > something is right in the world. > -- Leonard Bernstein -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070412/b8797d56/attachment.htm From f.fuchs at gmx.net Thu Apr 12 12:00:27 2007 From: f.fuchs at gmx.net (Franz Fuchs) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 21:00:27 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Paul Ford on his Harper's website project Message-ID: --- I just launched a new site for work. It took about eighteen months to get it into shape to put it into the world. I had help along the way--especially at the end, when I was able to hire a friend to help me with database work and my fiance to help me wrangle scans--and I re-used a lot of work other people had done. But basically the thing that made the project happen was me beavering away at a stack of books 100 feet tall, trying to turn them into files on a hard disk. --- More: http://www.ftrain.com/SiteLaunch.html I also enjoyed Ford's description of his first Harper's redesign (2003): http://www.ftrain.com/AWebSiteForHarpers.html Best regards Franz Fuchs From davedoty at hotmail.com Fri Apr 13 04:55:42 2007 From: davedoty at hotmail.com (Dave Doty) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:55:42 +0000 Subject: [gutvol-d] History Bookshelf Message-ID: I was about to start trying to organize a History Bookshelf, but I thought before I did, I should check to make sure there's not someone out there halfway through the project themselves.Anyone out there already working on a History Bookshelf?David Doty _________________________________________________________________ It?s tax season, make sure to follow these few simple tips http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/PreparationTips/PreparationTips.aspx?icid=WLMartagline -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070413/72513e77/attachment.htm From j.hagerson at comcast.net Fri Apr 13 05:48:21 2007 From: j.hagerson at comcast.net (John Hagerson) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:48:21 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Subscripts/superscripts in text e-books Message-ID: <000001c77dca$049751c0$1f12fea9@sarek> Al, I was the "post-processor" for some of the mathematics items that are now in PG (9930, 13692, and 13702). I marked them up in LaTeX and submitted both the marked up file and the resulting PDF for distribution. The chemical formula for dihydrogen monoxide would be represented by H_{2}O and Einstein's famous equation would be represented by E=mc^{2}. John Hagerson -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Al Haines (shaw) Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 11:15 PM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: [gutvol-d] Subscripts/superscripts in text e-books Any recommendations on ways of indicating subscripted/superscripted characters (or strings of characters) in text versions of e-books? I've looked through PG's and DP's respective FAQ/WIKIs - both seem to be silent on this. Al _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Fri Apr 13 11:06:20 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:06:20 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] History Bookshelf In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:55:42 +0000, you wrote: > >I was about to start trying to organize a History Bookshelf, but I thought before I did, I should check to make sure there's not someone out there halfway through the project themselves.Anyone out there already working on a History Bookshelf?David Doty Nothing heard of it. You seem to be the first one. Any work on the http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Historical_Fiction_%28Bookshelf%29 is also welcome :-) -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 08:00:50 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:00:50 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Ebooks in Apr 1 Message-ID: <9c6138c50704140800g1a82f09dwd6fe6ab4f4ca77f9@mail.gmail.com> Does anyone have the number of ebooks per language as of April 1? Ricardo From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Apr 16 10:52:19 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:52:19 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] an observation Message-ID: i've noticed that since i put marcello and jon noring and josh into my spam folder, they don't have much to say... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070416/b05e41b5/attachment.htm From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 16 11:14:38 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:14:38 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] an observation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:52:19 EDT, you wrote: > >i've noticed that since i put marcello and jon noring and >josh into my spam folder, they don't have much to say... Unfortunately it is not true for you. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk Mon Apr 16 11:58:25 2007 From: hyphen at hyphenologist.co.uk (Dave Fawthrop) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:58:25 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] National Trust (UK) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9mf723haelojo75aenhm85bvereu9qr258@4ax.com> That Great British Institution the National Trust http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/ together with its counterpart the National Trust for Scotland http://www.nts.org.uk/Home/ have libraries full of old books, which it inherited from the great Land owning families. These range from very important things to books bought by the yard as part of decoration schemes. They also have lots of well off members, who voluntarily act as room stewards to make sure that nobody steals the priceless objects they have in their Country houses. Also to tend the acres of gardens, and other jobs which would be just too expensive to get done if they could pay people. Many members will be in the 50% of UK households who have broadband, or their computers. They are now waking up the value of their books in that they have an exhibition at Lyme Park Cheshire. Has anyone contacted them about scanning in some of their books and turning them into e-books, a job which they could farm out to volunteers via DP? Many of their books are huge complex things! Can anyone recommend a book on PG which I could use as an example of what can be done now, together with software to display it. Can anyone provide URLs to scanners for use on fragile priceless books? -- Dave Fawthrop From gbnewby at pglaf.org Mon Apr 16 12:02:38 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:02:38 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Cool PG viz at alphaworks Message-ID: <20070416190238.GA30210@mail.pglaf.org> You can select different visualizations for the different datasets. Othello and two "top 100" lists are available: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/data?q=gutenberg Not all visualizations work for all datasets. Neat stuff... -- Greg From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Apr 18 10:53:51 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:53:51 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again Message-ID: david rothman just can't help himself. today he's taking another press release -- this time about a $200 machine, cleverly priced however at $199 -- and trumpeting it in such a way that (if you don't read carefully) sounds like: (a) such a product actually _exists_, and (b) it is proof that he was right all along. it's dirt-simple to "make a prediction" that "prices on electronic gadgets will go down". that's why doing that won't impress anyone. if you want to show off your big crystal ball, make the prediction on _when_, and be right. so far, rothman's timeframe has been wrong, wrong again, wrong again, and wrong again. that's why he's damaging the cause of e-books, by creating expectations that are _badly_ false... *** meanwhile, david also engages today in his hype and marketing campaign for e-ink, by reporting that one e-ink company has now subcontracted manufacturing of its displays to another. what it _really_ means, of course, is that the first company has not been able to find any way to produce displays at a cost that is reasonable, so they are desperately hoping the second company has a trick up their sleeve, and can manage to pull off some magic... but, as usual, we shouldn't believe it until we see it. oh yeah, the "timeline" on this "development" is put at "18 months to 2 years", which -- if you've been paying attention to e-ink announcements over the years -- is _always_ what they say it'll be. for the last 8 years, e-ink has been "1-2 years away". the marketing people know us suckers never learn... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070418/ff9ed0dc/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Apr 18 13:47:25 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:47:25 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again Message-ID: no sooner do i post that last message than rothman puts up _another_ article, this time on a reader-machine reportedly from amazon. this thing might well exist -- it's been rumored for some time now, and david has "reported" on each of those rumors quite breathlessly -- but no one outside of a few publishers has seen it. (and who knows _what_ they might have seen, since it's not too hard to mock up a prototype.) at any rate, according to the "source" david used, this amazon reader was _mentioned_ at a bookfair. that's it. no such easy-to-produce prototype, and zero announcement from amazon itself, curiously... it was simply _mentioned_. nonetheless, how does david handle this rumor? he gives it a headline that reads exactly like this: > Amazon Reader hardware > demoed at London Book Fair: > Sony and IDPF beware! what garbage! what might the word "demoed" _mean_ in such a context? certainly not anything that would be even _remotely_ close to how you or i might define the word, or most normal people. this is just shameful. david, go change that headline. oh yeah, the rumor is that this amazon machine will cost upwards of $400. so much for the $50 machine david keeps saying is "around the corner". the fact that some people think this snake-oil salesman is a reliable source of e-book news is simply appalling... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070418/c1e76d27/attachment.htm From davidrothman at pobox.com Wed Apr 18 16:00:47 2007 From: davidrothman at pobox.com (David H. Rothman) Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:00:47 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5eff08fa0704181600n7dd3fcfdv63a5711b70e67a0f@mail.gmail.com> Now you know: Bowerbird is a secret agent for the TeleBlog and the CIA. This post may well get me indicted. I'm too busy looking for e-book news and posting to the blog to flack it constantly on email lists---but here's this TeleOperative knocking himself out for me. Thanks, Bird! Meanwhile I'm grateful that Bowerbird directed people to my post on the $200 laptops that he's so skeptical about being on sale in the near future. That's at http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6451. And remember the wicked Amazon post at http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6454. > the fact that some people think this snake-oil salesman is a reliable source of e-book news is simply appalling.. Oh, the horrors! Everyone knows that OLPC is a secret for-profit and that I'm a majority shareholder in both it and Amazon. Not to mention my hidden stakes in PG and Greg's sled-dog kennel ( http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6066). Truth be known, I also own 100 percent of Bird and his always-on-time ZML projects about which he's ever so careful to avoid hype. Cheers, David (Who really isn't into dialogue with trolls, but who couldn't resist the fun this time) David Rothman | dr at teleread.org | 703-370-6540 TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home http://www.teleread.org/blog On 4/18/07, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > no sooner do i post that last message than > rothman puts up _another_ article, this time > on a reader-machine reportedly from amazon. > > this thing might well exist -- it's been rumored > for some time now, and david has "reported" on > each of those rumors quite breathlessly -- but > no one outside of a few publishers has seen it. > (and who knows _what_ they might have seen, > since it's not too hard to mock up a prototype.) > > at any rate, according to the "source" david used, > this amazon reader was _mentioned_ at a bookfair. > that's it. no such easy-to-produce prototype, and > zero announcement from amazon itself, curiously... > it was simply _mentioned_. > > nonetheless, how does david handle this rumor? > > he gives it a headline that reads exactly like this: > > Amazon Reader hardware > > demoed at London Book Fair: > > Sony and IDPF beware! > > what garbage! what might the word "demoed" > _mean_ in such a context? certainly not anything > that would be even _remotely_ close to how you > or i might define the word, or most normal people. > this is just shameful. david, go change that headline. > > oh yeah, the rumor is that this amazon machine > will cost upwards of $400. so much for the $50 > machine david keeps saying is "around the corner". > > the fact that some people think this snake-oil salesman > is a reliable source of e-book news is simply appalling... > > -bowerbird > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > From lowell at schat.com Thu Apr 19 03:34:08 2007 From: lowell at schat.com (Lowell Prange) Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 03:34:08 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again Message-ID: Bowerbird at trolls PG. From cannona at fireantproductions.com Wed Apr 18 17:22:31 2007 From: cannona at fireantproductions.com (Aaron Cannon) Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:22:31 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again References: <5eff08fa0704181600n7dd3fcfdv63a5711b70e67a0f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000401c78298$18a98070$0300a8c0@blackbox> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160 I did not know that about Greg. Very cool. Aaron - -- Skype: cannona MSN/Windows Messenger: cannona at hotmail.com (don't send email to the hotmail address.) - ----- Original Message ----- From: "David H. Rothman" To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 6:00 PM Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again > Now you know: Bowerbird is a secret agent for the TeleBlog and the > CIA. This post may well get me indicted. I'm too busy looking for > e-book news and posting to the blog to flack it constantly on email > lists---but here's this TeleOperative knocking himself out for me. > Thanks, Bird! > > Meanwhile I'm grateful that Bowerbird directed people to my post on > the $200 laptops that he's so skeptical about being on sale in the > near future. That's at http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6451. And > remember the wicked Amazon post at > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6454. > >> the fact that some people think this snake-oil salesman > is a reliable source of e-book news is simply appalling.. > > Oh, the horrors! Everyone knows that OLPC is a secret for-profit and > that I'm a majority shareholder in both it and Amazon. Not to mention > my hidden stakes in PG and Greg's sled-dog kennel ( > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6066). Truth be known, I also own 100 > percent of Bird and his always-on-time ZML projects about which he's > ever so careful to avoid hype. > > Cheers, > David > > (Who really isn't into dialogue with trolls, but who couldn't resist > the fun this time) > > David Rothman | dr at teleread.org | 703-370-6540 > TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home > http://www.teleread.org/blog > > On 4/18/07, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: >> no sooner do i post that last message than >> rothman puts up _another_ article, this time >> on a reader-machine reportedly from amazon. >> >> this thing might well exist -- it's been rumored >> for some time now, and david has "reported" on >> each of those rumors quite breathlessly -- but >> no one outside of a few publishers has seen it. >> (and who knows _what_ they might have seen, >> since it's not too hard to mock up a prototype.) >> >> at any rate, according to the "source" david used, >> this amazon reader was _mentioned_ at a bookfair. >> that's it. no such easy-to-produce prototype, and >> zero announcement from amazon itself, curiously... >> it was simply _mentioned_. >> >> nonetheless, how does david handle this rumor? >> >> he gives it a headline that reads exactly like this: >> > Amazon Reader hardware >> > demoed at London Book Fair: >> > Sony and IDPF beware! >> >> what garbage! what might the word "demoed" >> _mean_ in such a context? certainly not anything >> that would be even _remotely_ close to how you >> or i might define the word, or most normal people. >> this is just shameful. david, go change that headline. >> >> oh yeah, the rumor is that this amazon machine >> will cost upwards of $400. so much for the $50 >> machine david keeps saying is "around the corner". >> >> the fact that some people think this snake-oil salesman >> is a reliable source of e-book news is simply appalling... >> >> -bowerbird >> >> >> >> ************************************** >> See what's free at http://www.aol.com. >> _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >> >> > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) - GPGrelay v0.959 Comment: Key available from all major key servers. iD8DBQFGJ4vQI7J99hVZuJcRA8+6AJ0aZHDADObeBDpnarbcdzTYd8ovGwCeKtM/ W6k+WCIAkIUcWUykJtvvEmY= =YxXy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 19 12:41:59 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:41:59 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again Message-ID: never miss a chance to try to label me as a troll, do you david? the cynicism you emit -- with your apparent belief that people here are incapable of following a rational discussion -- is simply ghastly. of course, it's the exact same belief that lets you spin away the truth over on your own blog, so it's not surprising in the slightest... the thing that makes me wonder, though, is whether you _know_ what you're doing -- i.e., whether you're doing it _on_purpose_ -- or if your handle on reality is tenuous and you have no awareness. for instance, when you made the headline for that post i mentioned, did you _intentionally_ set out to misrepresent what the other article reported, or did your mind just "fool" itself into making the mistake? do you really honestly _believe_ the amazon reader was "demoed" at the london bookfair? or did you willfully introduce that dishonesty? -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070419/6e03a6cb/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Apr 19 23:23:22 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:23:22 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <790CCEE4-2AC6-4EB3-8804-250E1B56ECCE@uni-trier.de> Come on BOWER, give the poor guy a break. Truth, beliefs and ones perception of reality are all basically the same thing. Does God not exist, just because one believes. What does it mean that God exists and where? The mind, Earth, the universe, everywhere? Do you honestly believe that you will be able to change his mind, attitude, or beliefs? Who is being dishonest with himself here? 2 Euro cents == 2.66 US cents Keith. Am 19.04.2007 um 21:41 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > never miss a chance to try to label me as a troll, do you david? > > the cynicism you emit -- with your apparent belief that people here > are incapable of following a rational discussion -- is simply ghastly. > > of course, it's the exact same belief that lets you spin away the > truth > over on your own blog, so it's not surprising in the slightest... > > the thing that makes me wonder, though, is whether you _know_ > what you're doing -- i.e., whether you're doing it _on_purpose_ -- > or if your handle on reality is tenuous and you have no awareness. > > for instance, when you made the headline for that post i mentioned, > did you _intentionally_ set out to misrepresent what the other article > reported, or did your mind just "fool" itself into making the mistake? > do you really honestly _believe_ the amazon reader was "demoed" at > the london bookfair? or did you willfully introduce that dishonesty? > > -bowerbird > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070420/8d47bbc7/attachment.htm From jon at noring.name Fri Apr 20 08:14:25 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:14:25 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again In-Reply-To: <790CCEE4-2AC6-4EB3-8804-250E1B56ECCE@uni-trier.de> References: <790CCEE4-2AC6-4EB3-8804-250E1B56ECCE@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <1969601838.20070420091425@noring.name> Keith wrote: > give the poor guy [David Rothman] a break. Truth, beliefs and ones > perception of reality are all basically the same thing.? > > Does God not exist, just because one believes. What does it mean > that God exists and where? The mind, Earth, the universe, > everywhere? > > Do you honestly?believe? that you will be able to change his mind, > attitude, or beliefs? Who is being dishonest with himself here? > > 2 Euro cents == 2.66 US cents I suspect I'm next to be dumped on, but BB's attack on David is actually kind of bizarre because it was unprovoked, and it is being posted here (why here of all places? Why not TeleRead, or to MobileRead?) Now I don't believe that BB has been banned from posting comments to the TeleRead blog. So if BB were concerned by the nature of the facts and opinions being expressed by David, he can bring them up in an objective way there in the comments area, and avoid disrupting this forum where David Rothman only rarely posts to. Jon Noring From joshua at hutchinson.net Mon Apr 23 13:00:40 2007 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (joshua at hutchinson.net) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:00:40 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.de texts. Clearable? Message-ID: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Does anyone out there have any familiarity with the texts hosted by gutenberg.de and how they clear their stuff? I'm assuming it's normal European life+70? Does anyone have any contact with those folks to find out what could be cleared for our PG archives (ie, published before 1923)? I'd do the leg work myself, but I don't read/speak a bit of German... ;) Josh From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Apr 23 15:35:07 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:35:07 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: today is "international pixel-stained technopeasant day": > http://papersky.livejournal.com/318273.html this day is meant to be celebrated via authors giving away "professional quality work" on their websites, "inspired" by a piece written by a vice-president of some author's group that labeled authors who post their books freely as "scabs": > http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/10039.html the v.p. did later retract the excessive negativity of the "s" word: > http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/web_tech/exclusive_hendrix_clarifies_scabrous_remarks_on_web_publishing_57032.asp but in the meantime, opposition to his position had kicked in, and among that, this "special day" was proposed, and took off. someone even set up an entire livejournal community for the event: > http://community.livejournal.com/ipstp/ as most people here probably know, the rant stirred up a _lot_ of reaction. the rant was obviously severely luddite in nature, but i'm not sure the opposition was tuned into the future either. specifically, a lot of people -- led from the top by cory doctorow -- seem to subscribe to cory's position that readers are "pervy for paper"; that is, they will continue to demand paper-books long into the future, so authors can "give away" electronic copies without jeopardizing income. i think this is wrong -- and not just a little bit wrong, but _way_ wrong -- because i believe e-books will eventually supplant paper almost entirely, which means the current economics of books will have to adjust radically, but that's an argument for another day. (maybe tomorrow, maybe later.) for today, though, let's celebrate authors who post their work for free... by the way, on that top link in this post, there's a comment that says: > April 23rd is Sant Jordi in Catalunya, where > one gives a book and a rose to loved ones. kinda nice, eh? another comment reminds us today is the birthday -- and death-day -- of shakespeare, who has a _boatload_ of free content on the internet, for which he receives no money at all. oh well, i guess once you leave this material plane, you don't have much need for cash anyway, do ya? -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070423/2e1e5eee/attachment.htm From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 23 20:34:30 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:34:30 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.de texts. Clearable? In-Reply-To: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> References: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:00:40 +0000 (UTC), you wrote: >Does anyone out there have any familiarity with the texts hosted by >gutenberg.de and how they clear their stuff? I'm assuming it's normal >European life+70? > >Does anyone have any contact with those folks to find out what could >be cleared for our PG archives (ie, published before 1923)? I'd do the >leg work myself, but I don't read/speak a bit of German... ;) I will have a look. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From sly at victoria.tc.ca Mon Apr 23 22:05:38 2007 From: sly at victoria.tc.ca (Andrew Sly) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:05:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.de texts. Clearable? In-Reply-To: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> References: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: A decent number of those texts have been adapted for addition to PG in the past. I've helped to get PG clearance and do comparisons for a few. If I remember correctly, interpretation of German law (as seen by Gunther--can't remember his last name) means that gutenberg-de often contains texts transcribed from mid-20th century editions of older classic works. In order to clear texts such as this for PG, you need to have a PG clearable edition to do a comparison with. Andrew On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: > Does anyone out there have any familiarity with the texts hosted by > gutenberg.de and how they clear their stuff? I'm assuming it's normal > European life+70? > > Does anyone have any contact with those folks to find out what could > be cleared for our PG archives (ie, published before 1923)? I'd do the > leg work myself, but I don't read/speak a bit of German... ;) > > Josh From schultzk at uni-trier.de Tue Apr 24 00:21:58 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:21:58 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi There, Am 24.04.2007 um 00:35 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: [snip, snip] > specifically, a lot of people -- led from the top by cory doctorow -- > seem to subscribe to cory's position that readers are "pervy for > paper"; > that is, they will continue to demand paper-books long into the > future, > so authors can "give away" electronic copies without jeopardizing > income. > > i think this is wrong -- and not just a little bit wrong, but _way_ > wrong -- > because i believe e-books will eventually supplant paper almost > entirely, > which means the current economics of books will have to adjust > radically, > but that's an argument for another day. (maybe tomorrow, maybe > later.) > I have to disagree here. Paper books will be around way way into the future: 1) best way to store texts, more durable 2) the majority of readers prefer to cuddle up with a book than a e- book reader, computer, etc. 3) the majority of humans that can read do not have access nor can they use e-books Yes, e-books are comming more and more popular, but lets face it new technologgies take a long time to replace another this process can take centuries. regards Keith. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/97ab301e/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Tue Apr 24 00:29:28 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:29:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.de texts. Clearable? In-Reply-To: References: <27423886.1177358440765.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: Gunter's last name is Hille: Gunther Hille Unless he changed emails. Michael On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Andrew Sly wrote: > > A decent number of those texts have been adapted for addition > to PG in the past. I've helped to get PG clearance and do > comparisons for a few. > > If I remember correctly, interpretation of German law > (as seen by Gunther--can't remember his last name) means > that gutenberg-de often contains texts transcribed from > mid-20th century editions of older classic works. > > In order to clear texts such as this for PG, you need to > have a PG clearable edition to do a comparison with. > > Andrew > > On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: > >> Does anyone out there have any familiarity with the texts hosted by >> gutenberg.de and how they clear their stuff? I'm assuming it's normal >> European life+70? >> >> Does anyone have any contact with those folks to find out what could >> be cleared for our PG archives (ie, published before 1923)? I'd do the >> leg work myself, but I don't read/speak a bit of German... ;) >> >> Josh > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Tue Apr 24 00:55:41 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:55:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > I have to disagree here. Paper books will be around way way into the > future: > 1) best way to store texts, more durable One word and one number: Fahrenheit 451 Once an eBook has been released by Project Gutenberg for a day, it is highly unlikely that even the Powers-That-Be could do the modern day equivalent of a book burning. > 2) the majority of readers prefer to cuddle up with a book > than a e-book reader, computer, etc. Actually, they prefer to cuddle up to something else not named here. > 3) the majority of humans that can read do not have access > nor can they use e-books The majority of humans that CANNOT read do not have access nor can they. . . . > Yes, e-books are comming more and more popular, but lets face it new > technologgies take a long time to replace another this process can take centuries. In the first 50 years of The Gutenberg Press more books were made than in all the previous history of the world. In the first 50 years of recognized eBook production, the same will be true, only it will be eBooks outnumbering paper books. > > regards > Keith. > Thank You!!! Give the world eBooks in 2007!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Apr 24 01:06:41 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:06:41 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: keith said: > I have to disagree here. Paper books will be around way way into the future: i didn't say they wouldn't. we still have horses. and cattlemen still use them to work their herds. (cutting-horse prizes run to $4-million annually.) but very few people use horses for transportation. we'll always have paper-books. but within 10 years, they will _not_ be the way that _novels_ (and the like) are consumed by the vast majority of their customers. when the tipping point is reached such that large runs are not economically feasible (and when you consider 99% of books sell <5,000 copies, we're already there!), paper will lose the only cost virtue it can still claim, and a still-relatively-high price of print-on-demand p-books will drive most everyone to comparatively-cheap e-books. especially since there will be competitive pressures from the bottom bubbling, with authors giving away e-books that can find their niches, thanks to collaborative filtering. the publishers have been disintermediated. hurray for us! breakthroughs -- see http://www.memjet.com videos -- might well help to ameliorate the speed of the shift, and give us the relief of the _option_ of print. but in general, it is a matter of simple -- and inexorable -- economics... > 1) best way to store texts, more durable? > 2) the majority of readers prefer to cuddle up with a book > 3) the majority of humans that can read do not have access inexorable. look it up. no one will buy a $60 paperback novel. -bowerbird p.s. but some idiots will spend $50 printing out a $10 e-book on their inkjet, because they don't realize what they are doing... ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/7e772058/attachment-0001.htm From hart at pglaf.org Tue Apr 24 01:34:29 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 01:34:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Forgot to reply to something hre. On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > Yes, e-books are coming more and more popular, but lets face it new technologgies > take a long time to replace another this process can take centuries. Like the conversion from analog to digital music. . .viynl to CDs. and The conversion from millions of miles of telephone poles to cell phones. The conversion from typewriters to computers. The conversion from slide rules to calcuators. The conversion from archie to veronica to browsers. The conversion of distributors to electronic car ignition, not to mention all the other computerized car features. The conversion from propellors to jet engines. The conversion to plastics, nylon, etc. Please add your own to the list. . . . > regards > Keith. > michael From schultzk at uni-trier.de Tue Apr 24 03:20:26 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:20:26 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Hi, I understand your points and I have stated that e-books will become more and more popular. Numbers of copies are not a adequate measure when it comes to the use of e-books, especially if they are free. How many people have books and of those how many do not have e-books? How many people have e-books? As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats will have evoled by then. I am sure and time will prove me right that the above suggest ratio will need at least another generation to reach 50:50. Personally, I prefer to have texts and books in digital form, unfortunately I can only get about 1% of what I need. How many books that being released to the public for the first time are release also in digital form? How long will it take for a digital form to be released? Sure more and more books are being release in digital form, yet they still are a minority. reagards Keith J. Schultz Am 24.04.2007 um 10:06 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > keith said: > > I have to disagree here. Paper books will be around way way > into the future: > > i didn't say they wouldn't. we still have horses. > and cattlemen still use them to work their herds. > (cutting-horse prizes run to $4-million annually.) > but very few people use horses for transportation. > > we'll always have paper-books. but within 10 years, > they will _not_ be the way that _novels_ (and the like) > are consumed by the vast majority of their customers. > > when the tipping point is reached such that large runs > are not economically feasible (and when you consider > 99% of books sell <5,000 copies, we're already there!), > paper will lose the only cost virtue it can still claim, and > a still-relatively-high price of print-on-demand p-books > will drive most everyone to comparatively-cheap e-books. > > especially since there will be competitive pressures from > the bottom bubbling, with authors giving away e-books > that can find their niches, thanks to collaborative filtering. > > the publishers have been disintermediated. hurray for us! > > breakthroughs -- see http://www.memjet.com videos -- > might well help to ameliorate the speed of the shift, and > give us the relief of the _option_ of print. but in general, > it is a matter of simple -- and inexorable -- economics... > > > > 1) best way to store texts, more durable > > 2) the majority of readers prefer to cuddle up with a book > > 3) the majority of humans that can read do not have access > > inexorable. look it up. no one will buy a $60 paperback novel. > > -bowerbird > > p.s. but some idiots will spend $50 printing out a $10 e-book > on their inkjet, because they don't realize what they are doing... > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/069798e3/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Tue Apr 24 03:29:08 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:29:08 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <87486600-56C6-4703-BE14-3EFA6ED92236@uni-trier.de> You have a point here, but these technological advance(conversion) are driven by economics and efficiency. Not so between books and e- books. Sure you can reduce ditribution costs. But where is the market to drive demand! Books have more appeal and e-books. The change will not come quickly. Of course time will only tell. Hope is given up only in the end. regards Keith. Am 24.04.2007 um 10:34 schrieb Michael Hart: > > > Forgot to reply to something hre. > > On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> >> Yes, e-books are coming more and more popular, but lets face it >> new technologgies >> take a long time to replace another this process can take centuries. > > Like the conversion from analog to digital music. . .viynl to CDs. > > and > > The conversion from millions of miles of telephone poles to cell > phones. > > The conversion from typewriters to computers. > > The conversion from slide rules to calcuators. > > The conversion from archie to veronica to browsers. > > The conversion of distributors to electronic car ignition, > not to mention all the other computerized car features. > > The conversion from propellors to jet engines. > > The conversion to plastics, nylon, etc. > > Please add your own to the list. . . . > > >> regards >> Keith. >> > > > michael > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Apr 24 05:24:55 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:24:55 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: keith, i love you, and i love that you're talking... nonetheless... > I doubt very much PG will be still around! p.g. will be _strong_, you silly thing. leading the pack, as u-sual. > Newer and beter formats will have evoled by then.? 2009 z.m.l. was the ultimate revolution... and z.m.l. was pure p.g. > Sure more and more books are being release in digital form, > yet they still are a minority. 98.9% of books composed after 1998 were digital from birth. paper is an afterthought, a stillbirth, all pages frozen in time. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/54248741/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Apr 24 05:29:17 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:29:17 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: i said: > paper is an afterthought, a stillbirth, all pages frozen in time. or maybe "an afterthought, a snapshot, all pages frozen in time". every ounce of it was poetic muscle when i wrote it... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/67c5d62b/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Apr 24 05:56:23 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:56:23 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] merriam-webster, in case you were wondering Message-ID: yeah, well here's your google assignment for today. enter this, script kids: > "We put up a dictionary in 1996, free for everyone > and knowing that words people look up fascinate us. > The web site has helped the company reinforce its brand > with a 17% increase in sales. > --John Morse, president and publisher, > Merriam-Webster. Publishers Weekly, December 2001 magic phrase for word-lovers: "words people look up fascinate us", yeah. but hey, here's your big hint: try just the first line first: i got 2 primo hits. > http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm > http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA298147.html i trust you caught that "with a 17% increase in sales" line... i trust you caught that "with a 17% increase in sales" line... i trust you caught that "with a 17% increase in sales" line... a triplet is cool! :+) hey, you know i very rarely ladle out praise, but these cats, they deserve it: if you buy dictionary, buy merriam-webster. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070424/61dfe65c/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Wed Apr 25 00:59:19 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:59:19 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <829160DA-AC7D-4C5D-A6F2-5D1634E69122@uni-trier.de> Am 24.04.2007 um 14:24 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > keith, i love you, and i love that you're talking... > > nonetheless... > > > I doubt very much PG will be still around! > > p.g. will be _strong_, you silly thing. leading the pack, as u-sual. > > > > Newer and beter formats will have evoled by then. > > 2009 z.m.l. was the ultimate revolution... and z.m.l. was pure p.g. > > > > Sure more and more books are being release in digital form, > > yet they still are a minority. > > 98.9% of books composed after 1998 were digital from birth. > paper is an afterthought, a stillbirth, all pages frozen in time. > Where can I buy, acquire the digital form ????? ;-)) Keith. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070425/e0c6551e/attachment.htm From joshua at hutchinson.net Wed Apr 25 13:59:24 2007 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (joshua at hutchinson.net) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:59:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [gutvol-d] Do we have publically available stats on downloads? Message-ID: <28681869.1177534764180.JavaMail.?@fh1035.dia.cp.net> It seems like a remember reading about references to download statistics, but my search skills are coming up dry today.... The Librivox folks were wondering what kind of audio book download stats were seeing now that we have a substantial number of their works on PG. Do we track that information and if we do, is it accessible to Joe Public? Josh From sly at victoria.tc.ca Wed Apr 25 14:45:07 2007 From: sly at victoria.tc.ca (Andrew Sly) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:45:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> References: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! > I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats will > have evoled by then. > Interesting that you would feel that way. One reason that I feel that my time contributing to various aspects of PG is worthwhile is that it shows more potential for long-term durability than just about any other digital text endeavor. PG has a very broad base of support. Any other projects which rely on one particular person or institution are more vulnerable to funding cuts, reorganization, loss of interest, etc. Andrew From gbnewby at pglaf.org Wed Apr 25 17:34:46 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:34:46 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Do we have publically available stats on downloads? In-Reply-To: <28681869.1177534764180.JavaMail.?@fh1035.dia.cp.net> References: <28681869.1177534764180.JavaMail.?@fh1035.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: <20070426003446.GA14806@mail.pglaf.org> On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 08:59:24PM +0000, joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: > It seems like a remember reading about references to download > statistics, but my search skills are coming up dry today.... > > The Librivox folks were wondering what kind of audio book download > stats were seeing now that we have a substantial number of their works > on PG. Do we track that information and if we do, is it accessible to The "Top 100" link at www.gutenberg.org is public. Beyond that, I think we need to have a username+password to get access to the raw daily statistics... -- Greg From hart at pglaf.org Wed Apr 25 18:23:30 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:23:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: I wonder just how many other examples you can find of large file systems that haven't lost a single file. . .not to mention all the way back to 1971. PG is permanent. . .for exactly the reason you think they are not. . .because everyone in the world can convert them to all those newer and better formats. Why do you think you could read PG eBooks on an iPod only a week into release? Same with all the other hardware and software formats. Once a PG eBook is released it will be VERY hard to get rid of all the copies, not to mention all the formats it will be translated into. Unless you expect email to go away int his format, you can't expect PG eBooks to go away either. . .and they will have been converted into so many formats it won't make any difference. The big media hassle about losing data a based on "Limited Distribution" to a very small base of hardware and software, but PG eBooks work on virtually all such combinations on the general market. . .just the opposite philosophy. Michael On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Andrew Sly wrote: > > > On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > >> >> As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! >> I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats will >> have evoled by then. >> > > Interesting that you would feel that way. One reason that I feel that > my time contributing to various aspects of PG is worthwhile is that > it shows more potential for long-term durability than just about any > other digital text endeavor. > > PG has a very broad base of support. Any other projects which > rely on one particular person or institution are more vulnerable > to funding cuts, reorganization, loss of interest, etc. > > Andrew > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Catenacci at Ieee.Org Wed Apr 25 18:29:41 2007 From: Catenacci at Ieee.Org (Onorio Catenacci) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:29:41 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: On 4/25/07, Michael Hart wrote: > > > I wonder just how many other examples you can find of large file systems > that haven't lost a single file. . .not to mention all the way back to 1971. > > PG is permanent. . .for exactly the reason you think they are not. . .because > everyone in the world can convert them to all those newer and better formats. > > Why do you think you could read PG eBooks on an iPod only a week into release? > > Same with all the other hardware and software formats. > > Once a PG eBook is released it will be VERY hard to get rid of all the copies, > not to mention all the formats it will be translated into. > > Unless you expect email to go away int his format, you can't expect PG eBooks > to go away either. . .and they will have been converted into so many formats > it won't make any difference. > > The big media hassle about losing data a based on "Limited Distribution" to a > very small base of hardware and software, but PG eBooks work on virtually all > such combinations on the general market. . .just the opposite philosophy. > Appropriate to all this discussion of what medium our literature will be on 100 years from now: -- Onorio From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Apr 25 23:11:14 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:11:14 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: onorio said: > Appropriate to all this discussion of > what medium our literature will be on 100 years from now: in a hundred years, it'll have been poured into our d.n.a. -bowerbird p.s. and of course we will have migrated to another planet, having made this one uninhabitable (by us humans, anyway)... ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/5dab0643/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 01:01:20 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:01:20 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] equations from god Message-ID: dan cohen, at george mason, announced he's got a new book. > http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/equations_from_god "equations from god", according to cohen, tells the story of > how and why so many Europeans and Americans > came to see mathematics as a divine language, > a way to ascend above the petty differences of mankind > and commune with the mind of the Deity. the book opens with the first telescope sighting of neptune, which "was the first heavenly body found by mathematical prediction" -- two mathematicians independently calculated the planet's location, so an astronomer turned a telescope to that spot, and yep... bingo! cohen goes on about the book: > it is written in a plainspoken way that makes the world > of the mathematician accessible to a general audience, > and it contextualizes that world within the religious, social, > and political upheaval of the Victorian era. And it reveals > surprising ideas from many unpublished works such as > diaries, notebooks, sermons, and letters?ideas that remain > remarkably relevant in today's world. I think it also provides > a good introduction to the intellectual and cultural debates > and tensions of the nineteenth century. that cohen drew "surprising ideas from many unpublished works" -- diaries, notebooks, sermons, letters -- is interesting, i'd say... we have a strong tendency to believe culture has been transmitted via works that were _published_, but that has an air of circularity; things that were published had much greater _visibility_, and thus had more chance to exert impact, and have that impact be noticed. but i suspect -- just as cohen found -- that the unpublished stuff contains a great deal of information we would also deem important if we were to have the ability to access it. except we generally don't. contrast this with our present-day reality, however, and we notice that one of the gifts cyberspace has given us is the ability to make our most individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences accessible to the entire globe, if we choose to do so. (and many people do so.) even if nobody reads the crap you put in your blog, nobody at all, not even your mother, it's still dutifully saved by internet archive, and probably archived by google and microsoft and apple and at&t and ibm and hp and yahoo and disney and murdoch and redstone and most likely at least a couple of dozen other assorted players... our "diaries, notebooks, sermons, and letters" _are_ being retained, and the historians of the future are going to have quite a field day. indeed, because this material is _real_, it's likely to be much more interesting to those historians than the _books_ we're now reading (i.e., which are being marketed down our throats by publishers who often seem to be fairly clueless about what the public really wants), especially since it reflects us as we cross the cyberspace threshold. (it is as if the camera is taking a picture of itself taking its picture.) and if those historians of the future will find our real-life anecdotes more interesting than our manufactured stories, why wouldn't we? when people do have thumb-drives that can hold millions of books, will they put millions of books on 'em? or millions of blogs instead? (or a hundred thousand youtube videos?) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/ccd7e6d4/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 02:07:54 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:07:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] equations from god In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > > when people do have thumb-drives that can hold millions of books, > will they put millions of books on 'em? or millions of blogs instead? > (or a hundred thousand youtube videos?) > > -bowerbird People will put the same things on them as they would put anywhere else, just more and more of whatever it is they want. Just because you give someone book technology never meant they would read. It's the same with all other technologies. . .you have to want to learn. For the person who doesn't want to learn, it really doesn't matter. Computer could literally become the next "boob tube" as TV was called. However, the potential is there, just as it was with television, radio, etc. It certainly appears as if entertainment and infotainment will do big biz. But. . .for those who WANT to learn. . .for those to whom a library is not just a place to get free videos. . .there is a potential as much greater in the world of eBooks as The Gutenberg books gave potential over manuscripts, and manuscripts gave over clay or stone tablets. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. . . . From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 02:21:43 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 05:21:43 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] equations from god Message-ID: michael said: > However, the potential is there yeah, that's right. thanks for the reminder... :+) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/17cf58d7/attachment-0001.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Apr 26 04:08:04 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:08:04 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <87486600-56C6-4703-BE14-3EFA6ED92236@uni-trier.de> <806F5E5C-D955-4B78-89EB-70CE252604F1@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <8FFB9F66-B6A1-4145-AF39-295EEC8FA608@uni-trier.de> Hi Micheal, The reply was suppose to go to the list. I just hit reply. Permission granted. Am 25.04.2007 um 17:33 schrieb Michael Hart: > > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > >> Hi Micheal, >> >> I am fighting an infect and an alergy and I am not quite up to par >> so my argumentation and rebuttals are under par. > > My most sincere condolences. . .I might soon be fighting the same > thing, > as one of my friends I had lunch with yesterday is too. > > I notice you only replied to me personally, not to the list, so I > am also > replying only personally, but, with your permission, will later > send this > on to the list when you are feeling well enough to look it over, > and thus > give your permission. > > By the way, I notice that your reply mode of indentaion is playing > havocs > with the emailer as far as marginations, widows and orphans, etc. > you may > want to change to smaller indents or to the > more commonly used. > > My replies are below. > > >> To come your early post on the advances and fast arise of technology >> during the last century. >> 1) Books have been around for centuries and last. >> The evolved technologies are very short termed copared >> to books. Records replaced by CDs, Cds are already being >> replaced. >> 2) Reading a book is easy. Just grab the book. > > Not quite as easy as all that, you are just so used to it that you > forget > that you have to turn it right side up in respect to the > characters, AND, > in respect to opening the front and not the back. ;-) I read to kids anyway I hold the book even backwards! I do it, honestly. Great fun for everybody. > This was so well pointed out in "Medieval Helpdesk" on YouTube, > which you > all should watch, save, and forward. > > Credit where credit is due. . .I got it from my mother who is > nearly 95. > > > As for saying that eBooks have been around so many fewer years than > paper > books have been. . .what is the point of saying that? No, no no, oh no. What I am trying to say is that paper books are so well established that ebooks will replace paper quickly. Also, that the newer technologies are very short lived. > > So have cell phones, should we not use mobile phones? First there where satellite Telefons big and bulkly. Very few (relatively speaking) use them today. BTW: "Mobile phones" have been around since the 30s-40s. > > So have computers, CDs, DVDs, email, search engines, cars. . . ? Vynl records are pretty much out. Cds and DVDs are starting to leave. (O.K. DVDs are just changing). Remember Laser Disks. > > > Sorry, I'm just not sure of the reasoning behind pointing out that > some inventions are new and some are old. . .and obviously an new > one is not > as old as an old one. . . . > > Is there some point other than that eBooks COULD NOT be as old as > paper > books are? > O.K. My point is that I do not believe that e-books will push paper books soon. Eventually, yes. 1-2 generations. All, I wanted to say was that ebooks are as of yet not accepted by the majority of consumers. > Are you perhaps saying that you don't think paper books will be > replaced > by any other medium in the same way as stone tablets were replaced > by an > order of clay tablets, parchment, papyrus, scrolls, vellum, rag, > etc. in > a progressions over thousands of years? I am saying that it will take ebooks generations to replace paper. > > >> For ebooks I need >> a ebook reader, storage media (and poosibly Internet access). > > > For paper books you need light, you can't really read them in the > dark. > > eBook storage media is so much cheaper than for paper books. > > The 4G FlashDrives out now from $50 to $100 will hold 10,000 eBooks of > a meg each in .zip format, and, if you like, you can buy the same ones > that fit your cameral, MP3 player, etc. > > Not to mention that you don't need to go out and buy shelves for them, > or to buy a larger house to put the shelving in. > > You don't need Internet access, we mail out CD's and DVD's to persons, > all the time, who don't have Internet access, not to mention that they > can make copies for anyone they like. > > > >> Storage formats are always changing. You have to copy the >> digital >> matter to the next storage format. > > The same is true if you move between paperbacks, trade editions, > hardback or > finally decide to get a first edition, but it doesn't take nearly > as long to > copy your eBooks as to go to the bookstore, and it doesn't cost > quite nearly > as much in the process, either in time, effort, or money. I did not say that the advantages of ebooks are worst that those of paper. Yet, the cavets for paper and human nature will not allow for a quick transition. > > Making backups is easier, too. . .much harder to copy a paper book, > or send, > if you want off site backups in case of fire, etc. ditto. > > >> The ebook reader becomes outdated >> you can not use it on newer computers because the programs are >> no longer supported or will run correctly. > > Sorry, you lost me here. . .I can still run my olf DOS text readers > on a new > Windows machine, and the same UNIX text readers as always. I Guess you are lucky. I have had to do the convert of many texts and formats people in the windows and DOS world. > > Sorry, Mac users don't seem to have this advantage, but they can > usually read > plain text eBooks without too much hassle. The above was done with a Mac as the windows machines here at the university just could not do it. (Not Mac formats). I also remember having to travel some 200 km to have a corpus read because we did not have the hardware and appropriate software. (Unix) > > > >> >> 3) Remeber the Apple Newton. It had real ebooks. That was in the >> early >> 80s. Some twenty years ago!. Ebooks are taking an awful lot >> of time >> to establish itself. Almost half a generation. > > > You didn't confuse the eBooks with the eBook readers earlier, so > why now? I did not confuse them. Ebooks are dependant on hardware. The success of ebooks and the switch thereto is, also dependant on the ease of use and avaibility of its hardware. I just wanted to show that ebooks have been around for a long time and that it has taken a quarter century for it to gain a wide acceptance. > > As for how long, research indicates the average successful > invention takes > about 30 years from the time the public is first aware of it until > it will > become a successful market force. > > However, search for "ebook" and "bomb" to see how successful eBooks > are in > the general shape of things, even if not the commercial or hardware > market. > > >> >> 4) The technology for ebooks is sitting in the closet. Ultra thin >> displays not much bigger than a couple pages of paper. I have >> seen >> protypes. Where is the technology. Commerce does not think there >> is a market, yet. > > That's perhaps the one great thing about the way Project Gutenberg > does ebooks, > it's doesn't matter wat the commercial market thinks or does, we > are still in a > current process of giving away THREE MILLION eBOOKS PER MONTH at > just ONE SITE, > ibiblio.org > > Our eBooks are outside the commercial realm. . .perhaps the first > example!!! > > >> I did say that ebooks have their cavets. But: >> 1) How many want to have or carry 1 millions books around with >> them! > > > The same was said of carrying ANY books around when the price of > the average > book was equal to the price of the average family farm, before > Gutenberg. > > Do you remember that the library books were SO valuable that they > were quite > literally CHAINED to the bookshelves in the libraries??? > > The idea of a book you could just stick in your pocket and sit on, > etc., use > for general purposes, not worry about tearing up, was unthinkable. ;-)) I would not sit on my ipod. nor my laptop. nor a dedicated ebook reader. A book is content and display at the same time!! > > When people CAN carry a million eBooks around on their keychains > for cheap, > then they will. . .right now it is still thousands, not millions, > but ideas > of this nature were simply out of the question a short while ago, > and magic > from the POV of the scribes who had a monopoly on book production > before. Sure you can carry it around, but to use it you need a big key-chain. > > > >> 2) The majority do not WANT to look for quotations > > The majority cannot read these books. Since we are talking about books, The majority are those that can read. > > Is there some other point you are trying to make? > > Do you really think people won't look up an interesting quotation > if they > have the source material right there on their person? No. They will if: 1) They have a reader with them. 2) Can easily search, or know how to do it. 3) Have a need to look it up. > > If so, then you think far less of people than I do. No. I understand human nature and its cavets. > > I want to see kids looking up whitewashing the fence in Tom Sawyer, > or to > perhaps look up The Nautilus in Jules Verne, etc. You WANT to see kids looking things up. Evedently, they are not! The real question is: "Do they want, to?" Whose is really thinking less of people. > > > >> 3) You do not need to impress me. As a matter of fact it bores me >> as I have been using comupters since the Apple IIe and >> I am >> a Computer Linguist > > > And this makes it boring for you? Does breathing impress you? > > Sorry, it makes it all the more exciting for me, to have lived > through this > incredible age. Yes, technological and scientific advancement is amazing. I love it and use it. > > >> >> Lets face as far as technology is concerned we are GEEKS. The >> averagre Joe and Jane >> consider ebooks a novelty. Too awkward to use. > > The average people who look at an eBook don't even realize it IS an > eBook, > they just think it is something their search engine found for them > in the > vast expanse of the virtual library. > > They don't confuse form with content, they just read the words without > thinking about how they got into their phone, PDA, laptop, etc. > > >> >> Do not misunderstand me. I have stated before and do again: I am >> all for >> ebooks. But, I do not believe in your optimism. So many >> technologies that >> where promised to be the holy grail have failed or we are still >> waiting. > > > Then how do you explain that people routinely download a million > dollars > worth of books from Project Gutenberg. . .is this failure to you??? Because, it is free, its fun. I have downloaded the entire PG collection several times. Does that make me a millionaire? I also, only have used at the most maybe 1 percent. > > How do you explain more hits for "ebooks" than "bombs" in search > engines? You do not want an answer to this really. You should know the answer such a trivial question. If you truely understood human nature and how the Internet works, you would know how in vane your question is. > > Is this also failure to you? The exact opposite is the truth. Statistics and truth is a very philosophical being. I never said that ebooks or PG is a failure.Nor that ebooks do not have a future. I stated that the enthusiasm how their future is highly exaggerated. > > > My own personal goal for Project Gutenberg was 10,000 > eBooks. . .and all > the people back then said we would never make it. I always knew that PG would make and be a success. Though if it would have done things a bit different the success could have been even greater. But, that is another story. > > We are way past that goal now. > > Is that failure? > > The first time the word "Internet" appeared in a front page or > cover story > in the major media was a story about Project Gutenberg eBooks. > > Is this failure? PG is not a failure. Never said that and would never dream of it. I did state it might not be around in 100 years at least not in its present manifestation. > > > >> AI is pratically dead. > > Tell that to the chess players, or the military, or to your car. Tch, Tch , Tch. Chess programs rarely use AI. A three year old has more intelligents than my car (2003 Honda Civic Coupe). > > Hard to fly the stealth planes or any modern plane without AI > to help you keep it up there. AI is not needed. Ask any stealth pilot. The computers are need to process the vast amount of information and react quicker to the instabilty of the aircraft. > > >> Automatic real time translation on the phone. Inteligent >> data mining. Sure we are seeing more and more smart technologies >> and devices, >> yet they have little to with AI. > > As above. . .trying adjusting your fuel injection without the AI > chip to help, > and you'll find the weather, barometric pressure, etc., are hard to > deal with. That is not a AI chip. It is not that hard to tune a car. If you ever looked into the firmaware of such chip you would be ammazed how simple the programs are. Of course, we call them smart. But I define AI differently and am talking about AI proper. BTW, Since the mechanics of the system are driven by electronics I need the electronic device to tell the machanics what to do. That is way I do tune cars anymore; I just do not have the screw driver. > > > >> >> Human nature and its understanding should not be underestimated. > > Are you saying these are not products of human nature? If you put it that then YES. It is a matter of the definition of human nature. Everything, that has been mention is made by mankind, but I would not say it is a product of human nature. Though, it is human nature to strive for achievement and advancement. So, if you wish they ARE products of human nature, yet in a indirect way. And No, I am not contradicting myself. [snip, snip] regards Keith. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Apr 26 04:12:01 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:12:01 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: Am 25.04.2007 um 23:45 schrieb Andrew Sly: > > > On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > >> >> As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! >> I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats >> will >> have evoled by then. >> > > Interesting that you would feel that way. One reason that I feel that > my time contributing to various aspects of PG is worthwhile is that > it shows more potential for long-term durability than just about any > other digital text endeavor. > > PG has a very broad base of support. Any other projects which > rely on one particular person or institution are more vulnerable > to funding cuts, reorganization, loss of interest, etc. > All of this is true. But, the question of how durable PG and ebooks really are, will be only shown by time and the answer is philosophical. Yet, I am almost sure that time will prove me right. regards Keith. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Apr 26 04:15:20 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:15:20 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <6050B9B2-DBC7-42E8-B033-4B5A9AC8AD65@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <20B4110F-2D81-4459-B236-09BD5BE4D2CE@uni-trier.de> Like I said only time will really tell. regards Keith. Am 26.04.2007 um 03:23 schrieb Michael Hart: > > > I wonder just how many other examples you can find of large file > systems > that haven't lost a single file. . .not to mention all the way back > to 1971. > > PG is permanent. . .for exactly the reason you think they are > not. . .because > everyone in the world can convert them to all those newer and > better formats. > > Why do you think you could read PG eBooks on an iPod only a week > into release? > > Same with all the other hardware and software formats. > > Once a PG eBook is released it will be VERY hard to get rid of all > the copies, > not to mention all the formats it will be translated into. > > Unless you expect email to go away int his format, you can't expect > PG eBooks > to go away either. . .and they will have been converted into so > many formats > it won't make any difference. > > The big media hassle about losing data a based on "Limited > Distribution" to a > very small base of hardware and software, but PG eBooks work on > virtually all > such combinations on the general market. . .just the opposite > philosophy. > > Michael > > On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Andrew Sly wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> >>> >>> As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! >>> I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter >>> formats will >>> have evoled by then. >>> >> >> Interesting that you would feel that way. One reason that I feel that >> my time contributing to various aspects of PG is worthwhile is that >> it shows more potential for long-term durability than just about any >> other digital text endeavor. >> >> PG has a very broad base of support. Any other projects which >> rely on one particular person or institution are more vulnerable >> to funding cuts, reorganization, loss of interest, etc. >> >> Andrew >> _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >> > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 04:21:23 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:21:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day (fwd) Message-ID: On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > Hi Micheal, > > I am fighting an infect and an alergy and I am not quite up to par > so my argumentation and rebuttals are under par. My most sincere condolences. . .I might soon be fighting the same thing, as one of my friends I had lunch with yesterday is too. I notice you only replied to me personally, not to the list, so I am also replying only personally, but, with your permission, will later send this on to the list when you are feeling well enough to look it over, and thus give your permission. [Permission was just granted] By the way, I notice that your reply mode of indentaion is playing havocs with the emailer as far as marginations, widows and orphans, etc. you may want to change to smaller indents or to the > more commonly used. My replies are below. > To come your early post on the advances and fast arise of technology > during the last century. > 1) Books have been around for centuries and last. > The evolved technologies are very short termed copared > to books. Records replaced by CDs, Cds are already being > replaced. > 2) Reading a book is easy. Just grab the book. Not quite as easy as all that, you are just so used to it that you forget that you have to turn it right side up in respect to the characters, AND, in respect to opening the front and not the back. This was so well pointed out in "Medieval Helpdesk" on YouTube, which you all should watch, save, and forward. Credit where credit is due. . .I got it from my mother who is nearly 95. As for saying that eBooks have been around so many fewer years than paper books have been. . .what is the point of saying that? So have cell phones, should we not use mobile phones? So have computers, CDs, DVDs, email, search engines, cars. . . ? Sorry, I'm just not sure of the reasoning behind pointing out that some inventions are new and some are old. . .and obviously an new one is not as old as an old one. . . . Is there some point other than that eBooks COULD NOT be as old as paper books are? Are you perhaps saying that you don't think paper books will be replaced by any other medium in the same way as stone tablets were replaced by an order of clay tablets, parchment, papyrus, scrolls, vellum, rag, etc. in a progressions over thousands of years? > For ebooks I need > a ebook reader, storage media (and poosibly Internet > access). For paper books you need light, you can't really read them in the dark. eBook storage media is so much cheaper than for paper books. The 4G FlashDrives out now from $50 to $100 will hold 10,000 eBooks of a meg each in .zip format, and, if you like, you can buy the same ones that fit your cameral, MP3 player, etc. Not to mention that you don't need to go out and buy shelves for them, or to buy a larger house to put the shelving in. You don't need Internet access, we mail out CD's and DVD's to persons, all the time, who don't have Internet access, not to mention that they can make copies for anyone they like. > Storage formats are always changing. You have to copy the > digital > matter to the next storage format. The same is true if you move between paperbacks, trade editions, hardback or finally decide to get a first edition, but it doesn't take nearly as long to copy your eBooks as to go to the bookstore, and it doesn't cost quite nearly as much in the process, either in time, effort, or money. Making backups is easier, too. . .much harder to copy a paper book, or send, if you want off site backups in case of fire, etc. > The ebook reader becomes outdated > you can not use it on newer computers because the programs > are > no longer supported or will run correctly. Sorry, you lost me here. . .I can still run my olf DOS text readers on a new Windows machine, and the same UNIX text readers as always. Sorry, Mac users don't seem to have this advantage, but they can usually read plain text eBooks without too much hassle. > > 3) Remeber the Apple Newton. It had real ebooks. That was in > the early > 80s. Some twenty years ago!. Ebooks are taking an awful lot > of time > to establish itself. Almost half a generation. You didn't confuse the eBooks with the eBook readers earlier, so why now? As for how long, research indicates the average successful invention takes about 30 years from the time the public is first aware of it until it will become a successful market force. However, search for "ebook" and "bomb" to see how successful eBooks are in the general shape of things, even if not the commercial or hardware market. > > 4) The technology for ebooks is sitting in the closet. Ultra > thin > displays not much bigger than a couple pages of paper. I > have seen > protypes. Where is the technology. Commerce does not think > there > is a market, yet. That's perhaps the one great thing about the way Project Gutenberg does ebooks, it's doesn't matter wat the commercial market thinks or does, we are still in a current process of giving away THREE MILLION eBOOKS PER MONTH at just ONE SITE, ibiblio.org Our eBooks are outside the commercial realm. . .perhaps the first example!!! > I did say that ebooks have their cavets. But: > 1) How many want to have or carry 1 millions books around with > them! The same was said of carrying ANY books around when the price of the average book was equal to the price of the average family farm, before Gutenberg. Do you remember that the library books were SO valuable that they were quite literally CHAINED to the bookshelves in the libraries??? The idea of a book you could just stick in your pocket and sit on, etc., use for general purposes, not worry about tearing up, was unthinkable. When people CAN carry a million eBooks around on their keychains for cheap, then they will. . .right now it is still thousands, not millions, but ideas of this nature were simply out of the question a short while ago, and magic from the POV of the scribes who had a monopoly on book production before. > 2) The majority do not WANT to look for quotations The majority cannot read these books. Is there some other point you are trying to make? Do you really think people won't look up an interesting quotation if they have the source material right there on their person? If so, then you think far less of people than I do. I want to see kids looking up whitewashing the fence in Tom Sawyer, or to perhaps look up The Nautilus in Jules Verne, etc. > 3) You do not need to impress me. As a matter of fact it bores > me > as I have been using comupters since the Apple IIe and I am > a Computer Linguist And this makes it boring for you? Sorry, it makes it all the more exciting for me, to have lived through this incredible age. > > Lets face as far as technology is concerned we are GEEKS. The averagre > Joe and Jane > consider ebooks a novelty. Too awkward to use. The average people who look at an eBook don't even realize it IS an eBook, they just think it is something their search engine found for them in the vast expanse of the virtual library. They don't confuse form with content, they just read the words without thinking about how they got into their phone, PDA, laptop, etc. > > Do not misunderstand me. I have stated before and do again: I am all > for > ebooks. But, I do not believe in your optimism. So many technologies > that > where promised to be the holy grail have failed or we are still > waiting. Then how do you explain that people routinely download a million dollars worth of books from Project Gutenberg. . .is this failure to you??? How do you explain more hits for "ebooks" than "bombs" in search engines? Is this also failure to you? My own personal goal for Project Gutenberg was 10,000 eBooks. . .and all the people back then said we would never make it. We are way past that goal now. Is that failure? The first time the word "Internet" appeared in a front page or cover story in the major media was a story about Project Gutenberg eBooks. Is this failure? > AI is pratically dead. Tell that to the chess players, or the military, or to your car. Hard to fly the stealth planes or any modern plane without AI to help you keep it up there. > Automatic real time translation on the phone. Inteligent > data mining. Sure we are seeing more and more smart technologies and > devices, > yet they have little to with AI. As above. . .trying adjusting your fuel injection without the AI chip to help, and you'll find the weather, barometric pressure, etc., are hard to deal with. > > Human nature and its understanding should not be underestimated. Are you saying these are not products of human nature? > > regards > Keith. > > Am 24.04.2007 um 12:48 schrieb Michael Hart: > >> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> >>> You have a point here, but these technological advance(conversion) >>> are driven by economics and efficiency. Not so between books and e-books. >> >> You think eBook aren't enough more efficient than paper books? >> >> 1. Just try to bring home a million paper books. >> >> _I_ would only try it on one of the new terabyte drives for $400. >> >> BTW, I'm about to order, any suggestions? >> >> >> 2. Ok, try for even a thousand. . . . >> >> 3. Now try searching for a few dozen quotations in them. >> >> 4. Still not impressed enough, now try putting those quotations into some >> writing you are doing. >> >> 5. Still not impressed enough? Try wearing 10,000 paper books as a >> necklace! >> >> I saw a 4G FlashDrive at a store recently for under $100. . .with .zip files >> it could hold 10,000 eBooks at 1 meg each. . .it was HALF the size of my 2G, >> which is HALF the size of most of my 1Gs. >> >> >> >> >> >>> Sure you can reduce ditribution costs. But where is the market to drive >>> demand! >> >> Same place the market was for Gutenberg Press books. >> >> >>> Books have more appeal and e-books. The change will not come quickly. >> >> People will always end up voting with their wallets. . . . >> >> What about when there are millions of eBooks available free of charge? >> >> And each one can be translated into 100 languages? >> >> Paper books won't stand a chance. . .not to mention textbooks, that have >> to be updated all the time, errors corrected, etc. >> >> For usefulness. . .no possible comparison. >> >> Just ask any student who has to buy 100 pounds of books per semester or >> year, >> for $1,000. . .much easier with eBooks. >> >> >>> Of course time will only tell. Hope is given up only in the end. >> >> You may recall that people said Project Gutenberg would never make it, >> Cliff Stoll in "Silicon Valley Snake Oil" probably the most famous. . . >> but if you search for "ebook" versus "bomb" you may be surprised at who >> wins with the most hits. . . . >> >> eBooks are already here to stay, the dinosaurs just haven't admitted it. >> >> michael >> >> >>> >>> regards >>> Keith. >>> >>> Am 24.04.2007 um 10:34 schrieb Michael Hart: >>> >>>> Forgot to reply to something hre. >>>> On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >>>>> Yes, e-books are coming more and more popular, but lets face it new >>>>> technologgies >>>>> take a long time to replace another this process can take centuries. >>>> Like the conversion from analog to digital music. . .viynl to CDs. >>>> and >>>> The conversion from millions of miles of telephone poles to cell phones. >>>> The conversion from typewriters to computers. >>>> The conversion from slide rules to calcuators. >>>> The conversion from archie to veronica to browsers. >>>> The conversion of distributors to electronic car ignition, >>>> not to mention all the other computerized car features. >>>> The conversion from propellors to jet engines. >>>> The conversion to plastics, nylon, etc. >>>> Please add your own to the list. . . . >>>> >>>>> regards >>>>> Keith. >>>> michael >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> gutvol-d mailing list >>>> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >>>> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Apr 26 04:27:21 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:27:21 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Actually, It will be transported by a virus. Though a connection via bio- implant or interface is more likely. Direct DNA-encoding is not likely. We are just beginning the understand the so-called unused part of our DNA and it seems to be used more than previously thought of. Please do not ask for a quote or site, I do not know the source anymore. But, who knows. Anyone care to make a long term feasiblity analysis. Of course not. It has been proven often enough that all long term projections are in error and just a refelection of the current state of things. regards Keith. Am 26.04.2007 um 08:11 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > onorio said: > > Appropriate to all this discussion of > > what medium our literature will be on 100 years from now: > > in a hundred years, it'll have been poured into our d.n.a. > > -bowerbird > > p.s. and of course we will have migrated to another planet, > having made this one uninhabitable (by us humans, anyway)... > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/0a6723e0/attachment.htm From JBuck814366460 at aol.com Thu Apr 26 04:34:44 2007 From: JBuck814366460 at aol.com (Jared Buck) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:34:44 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46308E54.7090102@aol.com> Hi Professor, I noticed this particular question in your rather lengthy reply, I thought I'd add my 2 cents here. > > > My own personal goal for Project Gutenberg was 10,000 eBooks. . .and all > the people back then said we would never make it. > > We are way past that goal now. > > Is that failure? > > The first time the word "Internet" appeared in a front page or cover story > in the major media was a story about Project Gutenberg eBooks. > > Is this failure? > Failure? Hardly :) G has over 20,000 books, most of which I have by now, thanks to the magic of wget. PG's introduced me to authors and books I might not have ever read. Being a Russophile I like to see books by Russian authors in the collection and I haven't been disappointed. I actually accidentally stumbled onto PG doing a website search one day several years ago (after receiving a CD in the mail that came with a magazine I subscribed to back then) and I was quite impressed with the quality of the books even then. Ebooks aren't a novelty to me (my sister has read a number of ebooks herself, she has a laptop machine so it's easier for her to carry around ebooks), they're merely an extension of books as a whole, taking them into the digital realm. Why carry a paperback or two when you can stuff the literal equivalent of 100 paperbacks into an EBook reader that you can then carry around very easily. I would think an ebook reader carrying 100 books in the palm of your hand is much better than carting around 100 paperback equivalents in a large-a** box? The newer readers (like the Sony Reader I want so badly) have greatly improved clarity and long battery life. So don't go telling me they're merely marvels that will fade away with age. Yes, on Star Trek you see a lot of reading material digitized for easy access but also you see a variety of standard books. People will choose what they will when they read, whether it's an ebook or a standard dead-tree book. As long as we can encourage people to enjoy reading and discovering new things about themselves through the power of the written word (PG can actually encourage kids to read, with all the children's books we have), I think our job will have been done if our efforts encourage even one person to really enjoy books in any shape, size or form. Jared From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 10:12:32 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:12:32 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: keith said: > Like I said only time will really tell. there are only 2 things wrong with p.g. e-texts: 1. many still contain errors (small, but troubling ones) in their words. 2. plain-ascii files, when viewed as such, lack the class of typography. when enough eyeballs look at the books, problem #1 will disappear, and z.m.l. is making problem #2 go away, even as we speak here right now... the hardware issue is a red herring. everyone, without question, agrees that _sooner_or_later_, the hardware will get as small as we want it to be. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/ba6de98d/attachment.htm From richfield at telkomsa.net Wed Apr 25 13:26:55 2007 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 22:26:55 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc Message-ID: <462FB98F.4000409@telkomsa.net> Hi, I'm new here, so forgive solecisms etc. I saw the discussion concerning the future of books etc. My own view is that the subject is far more complex than anything I have seen in the discussion here so far. I address Keith not because he is the wrong one, but because his was the most convenient item in the digest. Personally, like presumably most of the people involved with PG, I love books with a passion, though my main love is for their content. The physical collector's desire for unblemished copies that he never reads is incomprehensible to me. But that is btw. >I understand your points and I have stated that e-books will become more and more popular. Numbers of copies are not a adequate measure when it comes to the use of e-books, especially if they are free.< Here I agree in detail. I too own far more PG books than I have read (though still fewer than I have hard copy books. >How many people have books and of those how many do not have e-books? How many people have e-books? < Err... Here you lose me. I know more people who have no e-books than have no books, but then I move in venerable circles, not exactly square perhaps, but commonly wrinkly. >As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats will have evoled by then. < Well, surely there will be better formats, but then the conversion will be a trivial matter, whereas conversion from paper to electronic copy certainly is not. (Chorus of dissent from list members... :-) ) In any case, the specific durability of copies of an e-book is one thing (and very low, or not proven at best. Does anyone have a fifteenth century hard drive or CD copy of The Bath of Wife by any chance? Just to prove me wrong? Of course I don't have a paper copy, not from Chaucer's time anyway, though I do have 20th C copies. However, some people *do* have five-hundred-year-old copies, some of them in pretty good nick too. Papyrus and clay tablets even older are still legible. Electronic copies have a lot to prove yet. Mind you, even books have a lot of scope for improvements. Plastic pages, and formats that overcome some weaknesses of the codex format (I have a few modest proposals!) But electronic formats have a lot to prove. The very tapes that we used when PG began (I was not involved with PG in those days, but I was in computing) are not generally readable any more. We have lost a lot of NASA's priceless records of those days. I know people who have lost CD-based records. If an archaeologist unearths a stack of CDs in a century or so, I wonder how he would go about interpreting them, let alone getting them read! The volume of data that has been lost from early PC days alone is shocking. Books are not eternal by any means, but in comparison... >Personally, I prefer to have texts and books in digital form, unfortunately I can only get about 1% of what I need. How many books that being released to the public for the first time are release also in digital form? How long will it take for a digital form to be released? Sure more and more books are being release in digital form, yet they still are a minority.< Sorta-kinda, but the media have a long way to go before they have all the versatility of paper codices. Electronic paper looks like answering a lot of such objections, but not all. Personally I await brain implants as the best format. Cheers, Jon From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 12:02:44 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:02:44 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day (fwd) Message-ID: jared said: > As long as we can encourage people to enjoy reading > and discovering new things about themselves through > the power of the written word (PG can actually encourage > kids to read, with all the children's books we have), I think > our job will have been done if our efforts encourage even > one person to really enjoy books in any shape, size or form. i was thinking just the other day about how much i respect the remarkable quality contained in the insight of michael's slogan: > "Break Down the Bars of Ignorance and Illiteracy" -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/206155e6/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 12:04:08 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:04:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > keith said: >> Like I said only time will really tell. > > there are only 2 things wrong with p.g. e-texts: > > 1. many still contain errors (small, but troubling ones) in their words. Then again, the same can, and has, been said about nearly every book ever, both before and after The Gutenberg Press. I literally can't tell you that last time I read a book without noticing errors in typography, grammar, punctuation, etc., but perhaps that's the result of having proofread so many books. . .still the errors are there, and, it's VERY DIFFICULT to get the publishers to fix them. . . . > 2. plain-ascii files, when viewed as such, lack the class of typography. Since you get to choose the font, font size, margination, pagination, color, and all the other variable in nearly all major text reading programs, it was your own choice, or lack thereof, that created the appearence of no class. YOU CAN make your own eBooks appear very much as you please. > when enough eyeballs look at the books, problem #1 will disappear, and So many people want to START at the END, with "perfection." They forget just how many "editions" it took to get to what they read, and how many more editions there are in the future. > z.m.l. is making problem #2 go away, even as we speak here right now... > > the hardware issue is a red herring. everyone, without question, agrees > that _sooner_or_later_, the hardware will get as small as we want it to be. Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. > > -bowerbird Michael From jon at noring.name Thu Apr 26 12:18:20 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:18:20 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> Michael wrote: > Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for years and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't ebooks already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years ago at about the time PG formally organized? I look forward to Bowerbird's answer to that question.) Clearly, most consumers have certain expectations for what they want in the hardware before they use it for reading full-length immersive-type books. Right now the market is throwing mud on the wall trying to find something that sticks (e.g., Sony's Reader). Jon From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 12:40:34 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:40:34 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: michael said: > Then again, the same can, and has, been said about nearly every book actually, when i was growing up, very few books had any errors in them. the same was true of newspapers. in the last couple decades, however, quality-control standards have slipped, noticeably and considerably... > Since you get to choose the font, font size, margination, pagination, > color, and all the other variable in nearly all major text reading programs not really true, not across the board. but your point is well-taken. > it was your own choice, or lack thereof, that created the appearence of > no class. YOU CAN make your own eBooks appear very much as you please. a person _can_. but most people don't want to do all that work. nonetheless, they still want their books to have nice typography. and who can blame them? that's why people prefer the .html now, even though the browser is a truly awful e-book viewer-program. but z.m.l. will save the day. excellent typography, under user control, combined with a kick-ass highly-capable e-book viewer-application... > So many people want to START at the END, with "perfection." oh, i'm happy to start with whatever i have. but i also want to move the process along to the end of "perfection" as quickly as possible... > Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. well, yeah, i knew as soon as i hit "send" that i should have said "better" -- or some other more generic word -- instead of specifically "smaller". > Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. those are the people coming up from the pda dedicated-hardware side. i'm in the group coming from the multi-purpose full-computer direction. we all know we're gonna end up in the middle. the only question will be how much the machine costs. the pda people are deceiving themselves by acting as if the price could be similar to a pda. (a cheap pda, since we know expensive ones can cost $500.) if it's a full-blown computer, i'll be happy to pay 500 bucks for it, plus $75/month for the cell-phone that'll be included, which would also give you a reasonable amount of time accessing the web. as for the exact size, there won't be a one-size-fits-all-people answer there. so the form-factor might range from an index-card (3*5, or roughly iphone) all the way up to a4 (9*12-inches), or maybe twice that (for the architects)... the kicker is that _every_one_ of these machines will cost the very same price. the small units will entail extra costs, because of the miniaturization required, and the big units will too, because their larger screens will be more expensive. so people will make their decisions about the _size_ of the machine they want, where bigger-is-better because of more screenspace versus smaller-is-better because it's less hassle to carry the thing around. what will be indisputable is that people _will_ carry the thing around, because it will give them web access, and that will increasingly be something that people expect on a constant basis, just exactly like we have all come to "require" ever-present phone connectivity. (the idea that people -- other than the minuscule percentage who are hardcore book-readers -- would tote around a dedicated e-book-machine is laughable, which is precisely why those machines have failed big in the mass-marketplace.) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/44de487f/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 13:25:45 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:25:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: <462FB98F.4000409@telkomsa.net> References: <462FB98F.4000409@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Jon Richfield wrote: > Hi, > > I'm new here, so forgive solecisms etc. I saw the discussion concerning > the future of books etc. My own view is that the subject is far more > complex than anything I have seen in the discussion here so far. I > address Keith not because he is the wrong one, but because his was the > most convenient item in the digest. > > Personally, like presumably most of the people involved with PG, I love > books with a passion, though my main love is for their content. The > physical collector's desire for unblemished copies that he never reads > is incomprehensible to me. But that is btw. I think this is more than a BTW. . .in that so many people claim to be in love with the secondarary characteristics of the books when authors do not write in "typography" or "layout" or "font size", margination-- well. . .most don't. . .hee hee! However, those who talk so much about the smell, the feel, the paper & binding materials, and all that are obviously what would technically-- my apologies--be called fetishes if they are Necessary to enjoyment. Those ivory tower types who say a book has NO value if it doesn't have one certain characteristic, often one that was NOT present in the very first edition[s]. . .these people have substituted something else from other sources than the author. . .or at least made them requirements-- without which they, and their colleagues are unable to partake. Or so they say. > more and more popular. Numbers of copies are not a adequate measure > when it comes to the use of e-books, especially if they are free.< I'm sure they said the same thing about the numbers of copes that Herr Gutenberg turned out when he started. How much are they worth today? > Here I agree in detail. I too own far more PG books than I have read > (though still fewer than I have hard copy books. I have a house so full of printed material that the floors sag, but the truth is that these are only a few thousand at most. Anyone with even one of our CDs we send out as more PG eBooks. . . . > >How many people have books and of those how many do not have e-books? > How many people have e-books? < If you owned a physical bookstore, or even Gideon's Bible distributions, you'd be VERY pleased if you sent out as many books per month as PG. > Err... Here you lose me. I know more people who have no e-books than > have no books, but then I move in venerable circles, not exactly square > perhaps, but commonly wrinkly. Who knows how many people have eBooks, but millions go out every month-- and that's just from one single site--and there are hundreds perhaps the numbers are really in the thousands for some book distributions. By the end of this year, now only 8 months away, half the possible users of cell phones will already have ACTIVE accounts, and most of these have will have cell phones coming with eBook reading capabilities. The total audience will be equal to the total audience for television!!! > >As to the durabilty of e-books, we can talk about it in 100 years!!! > I doubt very much PG will be still around! Newer and beter formats will > have evoled by then. < > > Well, surely there will be better formats, but then the conversion will > be a trivial matter, whereas conversion from paper to electronic copy > certainly is not. (Chorus of dissent from list members... :-) ) In > any case, the specific durability of copies of an e-book is one thing > (and very low, or not proven at best. Does anyone have a fifteenth > century hard drive or CD copy of The Bath of Wife by any chance? Just > to prove me wrong? Of course I don't have a paper copy, not from > Chaucer's time anyway, though I do have 20th C copies. However, some > people *do* have five-hundred-year-old copies, some of them in pretty > good nick too. Papyrus and clay tablets even older are still legible. > Electronic copies have a lot to prove yet. It's a pretty cheap shot to say that anything hasn't proven itself if it has not had the chance. . .I'm sure they said the same thing when firsts were being done in the change from writing in clay. . .after all we will still be saying yadda yadda is "written in stone" in a hundred years. Perhaps someone would also like to say that hand calcuators won't be the same in a hundred years, or wristwatches, or cars, or televisions. Nothing is permanent, except change. However, every year the total quantity and quality of Gutenberg Bibles-- as well cared for as they may be--declines, same the other examples. Just the opposite for eBooks!!! There will be more eBooks and of higher quality every single year. . . . And THAT is probably what scares their opponents so very very much. > Mind you, even books have a lot of scope for improvements. Plastic > pages, and formats that overcome some weaknesses of the codex format (I > have a few modest proposals!) > > But electronic formats have a lot to prove. The very tapes that we used > when PG began (I was not involved with PG in those days, but I was in > computing) are not generally readable any more. Sorry, even paper tape is still readable, and I still have my Teletype for living proof. . .AND. . .the output could still be read in this email, but as all CAPS, in my case. And I still have my 9-track tapes and drive. However, the real point is that all those files were moved off the tape to other formats and will never be lost. BTW, a while back someone said the same thing about floppies, so I booted, literally, from my original DOS 1.0 floppy, ran a batch file to load drive C: [DOS originally didn't know about hard drives], and then proceeded with a reply to all his 10 points, refuting each and every one from the session booted from that original floppy over the email. I didn't mean it to have any effect other than to refute his statements, but he never wrote again-- at least on that listserver. As mentioned earlier, the Project Gutenberg eBooks are even in "Long Now," formats and are supposed to be deposited in space and on the moon. > We have lost a lot of NASA's priceless records of those days. Only due to them keeping them too much to themselves!!! Linus Torvalds, the inventor of Linux, summed up this whole thing about a lost data syndrome of too much secrecy and not enough backups: "Only wimps use backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" - Linus Torvalds Project Gutenberg is perhaps the most well backed up set of files ever!!! I doubt if even the combined efforts of the CIA, FBI, DHS, and all spooks from around the world could delete them all. And every time a new format comes out, POOF! Project Gutenberg shows up. The iPod was only out a week before programs showed up to read our books. People manage to get PG books into nearly ever reader ever made. > I know people who have lost CD-based records. I know people who have lost their dogs, their car keys, their CARS!!! I used to teach a few computer courses around here, and the first thing, even before any other kind of introduction, was the first three rules: 1. Back Up Your Data. 2. Back Up Your Data. and, any guesses??????? 3. Back Up Your Data. I guaranteed them all that if BACK UP YOUR DATA was all they ever found they used from my courses, that the course would be totally worthwhile! > If an archaeologist unearths a stack of CDs in a > century or so, I wonder how he would go about interpreting them, let > alone getting them read! Think about how the read before, during, and after The Rosetta Stone. I still have the first CD I ever got, and it's all scratched u, but it seems to work just fine. > The volume of data that has been lost from early PC days alone is shocking. Again. . .only because people kept it too private!!! "Only wimps use backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" - Linus Torvalds > Books are not eternal by any means, but in comparison... OK, let's do a little thought about this: Of all the paper books published in 1971, how many still exist? However, that first Project Gutenberg file, and all subsequent files still exist and can be downloaded free of charge, mostly with a very serious set of improvements available, if desired. Every year there will be fewer of those paper books. Every year there will be more of those eBooks, and of better quality. Michael From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 13:35:07 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:35:07 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc Message-ID: jon said: > The very tapes that we used when PG began > (I was not involved with PG in those days, but I was in computing) > are not generally readable any more.? > We have lost a lot of NASA's priceless records of those days. > I know people who have lost CD-based records.? > If an archaeologist unearths a stack of CDs in a century or so, > I wonder how he would go about interpreting them, > let alone getting them read! constant migration is the only way to maintain digital archives. the fact that we haven't learned that _quite_yet_ -- as evidenced by the loss of nasa data that you pointed out -- is extremely sad, as is the apparent unwillingness on the part of our "government" to stand up and take responsibility for the full task of digitization. as for the c.d. example, however, i would think that the future will know full well how to build a c.d. player from the available specs, if they think that stack of cd's might have something valuable on it. but again, constant migration is the real answer. the sweet thing is that replication of digital content is almost entirely _cost-free_, unlike the physical mediums that we have relied upon in the past, which means there is almost no good reason _not_ to do migration. further, when everyone in the world can wear the global library in a locket on a necklace, the sheer number of copies guards against loss. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/59190866/attachment-0001.htm From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 13:38:04 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:38:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: >> Then again, the same can, and has, been said about nearly every book > > actually, when i was growing up, very few books had any errors in them. > the same was true of newspapers. in the last couple decades, however, > quality-control standards have slipped, noticeably and considerably... I'll be that if you go back and reread those very same books, you see the errors much more easily now then when you were growing up. Try one. . .I dare you! The thing is that YOU have improved as a reader over that period of time, while the book has not improved as a readee. I find most of the same errors in today's editions of books I first read, or at least tried to read, 50 years ago. >> Since you get to choose the font, font size, margination, pagination, >> color, and all the other variable in nearly all major text reading > programs > > not really true, not across the board. but your point is well-taken. No, not every single program relinquishes control of all the variables in a total across the board of all programs and all variables, but there are BIG numbers of programs that give you all the freedom you need to make reading, or writing, look however you like. >> it was your own choice, or lack thereof, that created the appearence of >> no class. YOU CAN make your own eBooks appear very much as you please. > > a person _can_. but most people don't want to do all that work. This is like saying that a person has a valid point if the buy a 21 speed bicycle and then complain about the one single gear it was in when it came from the store. If you don't shift the gears, or the fonts, it's not the bicycle's fault. BTW, I see people riding all over in just one gear, with the seat in a wrong place for them, same with the handlebars, no air in the tires, etc. This does NOT give them the right to complain about it, at least not when it is no longer their first time with a bike. . . . People who buy computers get out of them in direct proportion to what they put into them. Remember when there were all those courses on how to use computers? Computers are NOT so much easier to use today, but where is the instruction? > nonetheless, they still want their books to have nice typography. > and who can blame them? If they haven't tried to reset their defaults, anyone can blame them. After all, learning to walk and talk were the hardest things ever learned, the rest is easy by comparison. If they don't try. . .they don't deserve. . . . People think it's BAD when you say they should get what they deserve. '=) > that's why people prefer the .html now, > even though the browser is a truly awful e-book viewer-program. Well. . . . mh From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 13:44:09 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:44:09 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: michael said: > BTW, I see people riding all over in just one gear, with the seat in > a wrong place for them, same with the handlebars, no air in the tires, etc. > This does NOT give them the right to complain about it, > at least not when it is no longer their first time with a bike. . . . since when do people have to have "the right to complain" before they complain? :+) > If they haven't tried to reset their defaults, anyone can blame them. um, it takes a lot more than a mere "resetting of defaults" to get good typography. fortunately, z.m.l. will do almost all of it automatically, which is want people want. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/48dc84f2/attachment.htm From gbnewby at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 14:07:36 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:07:36 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) In-Reply-To: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> References: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> Message-ID: <20070426210736.GB1355@mail.pglaf.org> On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 01:18:20PM -0600, Jon Noring wrote: > Clearly, most consumers have certain expectations for what they want in > the hardware before they use it for reading full-length immersive-type > books. Right now the market is throwing mud on the wall trying to find > something that sticks (e.g., Sony's Reader). > > Jon Obligatory Henry Ford quote, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Ford So far, I'd say most of the "readers" are better horses (maybe not better...but still horses). We can think of other historical technological developments that started out as an evolution, but then became something quite different: - Automobile as the new horse - Telephone as the new telegraph - Television as the new theatre - Talkies as just a new soundtrack for silent movies - Cell phones for voice communication (versus texting) - Computers for computing (versus communicating) PG's use of open formats lets us do things other than read books, while most commercial efforts do the opposite (i.e., Google Books, the various readers, and formats like PDF): they make it so that all you can really do is read. As we know, many people think the devices and formats aren't that great for reading...and, worse, disallow some of the things we sometimes like to do with printed books. I'm also reminded of artificial intelligence. No matter how fancy and capable AI systems become, they're never allowed to be called AI...instead, the goal keeps moving. So, we have people like this: http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2006/04/ebooks_should_b.html who basically argue that anything that has capabilities that go beyond a printed book, is no longer a book. ... or even has the appeal of a book (or is allowed to). Granted, PG eBooks are mostly "just" digitizations of printed books. But they can be used as components of next-generation books. What those nextgen books will be is not yet clear, but I figure they'll have as much in common, as be as different, as horses and automobiles. -- Greg From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 14:46:24 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:46:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Henry Ford Quotation Message-ID: I sent this list of quotations out just 10 days ago, but it said "faster horse" not "better horse." Anyway, the whole list is quite interesting per se: If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. . . . Henry Ford Heavier than air flying macines are impossible. Lord Kelvin, President, The Royal Society, 1895 The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular. David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio int he 1920's, Sarnoff later became the Chairman of RCA[Radio Corp. Of America] Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927 I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943 There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. Ken Olson, Chairman and Founder of DEC[Digital Equipment Corp]1977 640K ought to be enough for anybody. Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft, 1981 We should provide an electronic library for everyone. Michael S. Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, 1971 From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 15:06:19 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:06:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) In-Reply-To: <20070426210736.GB1355@mail.pglaf.org> References: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> <20070426210736.GB1355@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Greg Newby wrote: > On Thu, Apr 26, 2007 at 01:18:20PM -0600, Jon Noring wrote: > >> Clearly, most consumers have certain expectations for what they want in >> the hardware before they use it for reading full-length immersive-type >> books. Right now the market is throwing mud on the wall trying to find >> something that sticks (e.g., Sony's Reader). >> >> Jon I have to agree with both sides here. . .the billionaires are definitely struggling with the whole concept of eBooks and not getting it at all. Jon Noring's suggestion that is is like "throwing mud on the wall trying to find out wht sticks" is as good as any. . .though many still feel the way to find out of spaghetti is done is to do something like that. However, what the hundred billion dollar companies have forgotten is the idea/ideal that built the Wrigley fortunes in Chicago was one cent gum! Nobody wants to make their billions that way any more, though if I could have just one cent for each Project Gutenberg file out there I could get past Donald Trump on the wealth list. Don't forget that one of the earliest billionaires in this new China was a lady who was into recycling trashed materials. The problem is that the MegaCorps never think like this any more and the plans they always come up with for eBooks always look like a ripoff. When there are already devices that can read eBooks for $100, you should have a seriously good reason to spend $500, especially when the averaged price all all new computers sold last year was UNDER $500!!! Yes, the Sony has great battery life, but then again, everyone who quite literally charges their cell phone every night can do the same, or which ever kind of ereading device they use. I know two people with the Sony. . .one hates it. . .one loves it. > Obligatory Henry Ford quote, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they > would have asked for a better horse." > http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Ford See my previous message. I suppose if you had asked people about books in Gutenberg's day, they would have said they wanted monks and scribes who could turn out more pages per day. It never occured to them that Gutenberg's little printing shop in no time at all, literally one day, could turn out more pages than the average monastery or scriptorum. The same, of course, is true of any eBook server. > So far, I'd say most of the "readers" are better horses (maybe > not better...but still horses). We can think of other historical > technological developments that started out as an evolution, but > then became something quite different: > > - Automobile as the new horse Esp. if you think of RVs and other luxury cars. > - Telephone as the new telegraph Esp. if you are part of one of the several generations that grew up talking on the phone. > - Television as the new theatre Esp. if you consider the average person works less than watches TV. > - Talkies as just a new soundtrack for silent movies Esp. if you are into THX, DTS, and all that stuff. > - Cell phones for voice communication (versus texting) Not to mention playing music, videos, games, etc. > - Computers for computing (versus communicating) As per the last quote in my previous message. > PG's use of open formats lets us do things other than read books, while > most commercial efforts do the opposite (i.e., Google Books, the various > readers, and formats like PDF): they make it so that all you can really > do is read. As we know, many people think the devices and formats > aren't that great for reading...and, worse, disallow some of the things > we sometimes like to do with printed books. Perhaps the best thing about Project Gutenberg eBooks is that they are SO easy to download. . .one second. . .and then easy to make into your own-- a personalized edition or one for the consumer marketplace: not to leave out scripts for theater plays, songs, etc. Michael From jon at noring.name Thu Apr 26 15:11:18 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:11:18 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1933747762.20070426161118@noring.name> Bowerbird wrote: > constant migration is the only way to maintain digital archives. Yep. > the fact that we haven't learned that _quite_yet_ -- as evidenced > by the loss of nasa data that you pointed out -- is extremely sad, > as is the apparent unwillingness on the part of our "government" > to stand up and take responsibility for the full task of digitization. I was involved with a research project in the late 80's to recover 1970's circumsolar data stored on thousands of 9-track tapes at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Because of limited funding, we could only do a portion of those tapes. They were stored on the tape in a propriety format, and only a small number of tapes we were able to decipher since we had a sort of "Rosetta Stone" for them. The majority of the data, which would be very valuable today for global climate modeling purposes, was lost forever (see note below.) I believe the tapes are long gone, and if still existing, are probably unreadable anyway due to magnetization issues since they were never rewound on a yearly basis as they should be. For the report, see: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/circumsolar/title.html (Btw, I was adamant that the recovered data be in ASCII-readable form, even if strictly formatted. Read the forward. I did not want the data we did recover to be in some proprietary binary database format.) (Note: one reason I am skeptical about the "global warming" issue today is because I worked with the climate modelers at both LBL and LLNL in the 1980's and 90's, and the models are still quite primitive, plus our understanding of the radiative environment in the upper atmosphere is still sketchy. Plus the aerosol state of the atmosphere appears to be critical, and we have almost zero real-world data to plug-in into the existing models -- the Circumsolar data would have provided the first real glimpse into the aerosol state of the upper atmosphere over a large enough area to be useful...) > but again, constant migration is the real answer.? the sweet thing > is that replication of digital content is almost entirely _cost-free_, > unlike the physical mediums that we have relied upon in the past, > which means there is almost no good reason _not_ to do migration. Constant migration of data in ready-to-migrate form (such as on hard-disks and network connectivity) is the best answer, along with redundancy -- lots of redundancy. The LBL tapes I mentioned were not in a ready-to-migrate form, and worse yet were not even in any standard format. Thus the loss of that valuable data. > further, when everyone in the world can wear the global library in a > locket on a necklace, the sheer number of copies guards against loss. Yes, redundancy is critically important for critical content. Jon (hmmm, maybe I should ask NREL if Project Gutenberg could keep a copy of the LBL Reduced Database Circumsolar data. It is in ASCII form. We may not even need to ask for permission, it is public data.) From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 15:15:06 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:15:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: >> BTW, I see people riding all over in just one gear, with the seat in >> a wrong place for them, same with the handlebars, no air in the tires, > etc. >> This does NOT give them the right to complain about it, >> at least not when it is no longer their first time with a bike. . . . > > since when do people have to have "the right to complain" before they > complain? :+) Depends on what world you live in. . . . >> If they haven't tried to reset their defaults, anyone can blame them. > > um, it takes a lot more than a mere "resetting of defaults" to get good > typography. More than anything else that depends on what kind of typography you want combined with what options you have available. I doubt if most people I meet are even aware of what font the book they are reading is in and for our purposes. . .whether is is any different that the last book. I think most people see the words and not the fonts. But, I have at least one good friend who says I am wrong. > fortunately, z.m.l. will do almost all of it automatically, which is want > people want. If that's what people wanted, then there would be no cars sold any more for those who want "standard transmissions". . .but it seems that, like paper-- hee hee--the clutch and standard shift have not gone away at all. Automatic is one thing. . .getting what you want is something else. > > -bowerbird Michael From JBuck814366460 at aol.com Thu Apr 26 15:14:58 2007 From: JBuck814366460 at aol.com (Jared Buck) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:14:58 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) In-Reply-To: References: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> <20070426210736.GB1355@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <46312462.1080701@aol.com> > > Perhaps the best thing about Project Gutenberg eBooks is that they are SO > easy to download. . .one second. . .and then easy to make into your own-- > a personalized edition or one for the consumer marketplace: not to leave > out scripts for theater plays, songs, etc. > > > Michael Well, not exactly one second, our books differ in size and variation. Take the audio books for example - the mp3 files can take over an hour to download in some instances. And some of the text files are over 1 MB, dial up users can't download 1 MB in one second, y'know. The goal here is being accessible to anyone, even those on crappy dial up connections like my grandmother. Jared From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 15:29:16 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:29:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) In-Reply-To: <46312462.1080701@aol.com> References: <727443481.20070426131820@noring.name> <20070426210736.GB1355@mail.pglaf.org> <46312462.1080701@aol.com> Message-ID: There are exception to every average, but well over 50% of households in the US have high speed connections, and the average eBook is not a huge file, unless it has been converted into some "bloatware" format. I, personally, do not call audiobooks eBooks. I'm not even sure I like calling the other bloatware editions eBooks. ;-) PS I have a really flaky connection, but when it is working, I can download a plain text eBook of median size in less time than it takes for me to get a handle on how long it is going to take by watching the download process. Michael On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Jared Buck wrote: >> >> Perhaps the best thing about Project Gutenberg eBooks is that they are SO >> easy to download. . .one second. . .and then easy to make into your own-- >> a personalized edition or one for the consumer marketplace: not to leave >> out scripts for theater plays, songs, etc. >> >> >> Michael > > Well, not exactly one second, our books differ in size and variation. > Take the audio books for example - the mp3 files can take over an hour > to download in some instances. And some of the text files are over 1 > MB, dial up users can't download 1 MB in one second, y'know. The goal > here is being accessible to anyone, even those on crappy dial up > connections like my grandmother. > > Jared > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Apr 26 15:39:44 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:39:44 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) Message-ID: michael said: > I have to agree with both sides here. . .the billionaires are definitely > struggling with the whole concept of eBooks and not getting it at all. that cluelessness is intentional. they understand quite well that digital reproduction means an end to scarcity, and _scarcity_ is the _crown_jewel_ around which they built the economic system that lets them turn the masses into wage slaves for exploitation. scarcity promotes greed, and greed is what they see in the mirror, so if course they are going to structure the world in that image... so right now they're trying to reposition the legal system such that they can establish "ownership" over this new cost-free production, as nothing increases profits like a production realm with no costs... once they can take their "ownership" for granted, it'll spin your head how fast they will jettison us slaves. because slaves need to be fed, and housed, and kept healthy so they can continue to do the work... once we are no longer needed as slaves to keep their factory running, though, we'll be as useless to the ruling class as the homeless people, and we'll be treated with the same callous neglect, thank you very much. > When there are already devices that can read eBooks for $100, > you should have a seriously good reason to spend $500, especially > when the averaged price all all new computers sold last year was > UNDER $500!!! yeah, but those computers were not portable, not for the most part. and their batteries -- even fully-charged -- wouldn't last for 8 hours. furthermore, once again, here are just two of the statistics from poynter: > 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school. > 42% of college graduates never read another book. with so few people even reading books, a dedicated e-book-machine is an exercise in folly. until these machines access the web, they ain't even close to becoming the "requirement" that makes 'em ubiquitous. they _could_ make the machine i'm talking about, right now, and sell enough millions of them to make it worth their while, but they won't, not until they are sure the genie i talked about above is in the bottle... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/743b5bbe/attachment.htm -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Michael Hart Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] readers (Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:06:19 -0700 (PDT) Size: 6450 Url: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070426/743b5bbe/attachment.eml From hart at pglaf.org Thu Apr 26 15:42:32 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:42:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Best Text Reading Programs Message-ID: Speaking of text reading programs, choosing fonts, colors, etc., please send me your lists of favorites with various options. Thanks!!! Michael From schultzk at uni-trier.de Fri Apr 27 02:27:06 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:27:06 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Am 26.04.2007 um 22:35 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > jon said: > > The very tapes that we used when PG began > > (I was not involved with PG in those days, but I was in computing) > > are not generally readable any more. > > We have lost a lot of NASA's priceless records of those days. > > I know people who have lost CD-based records. > > If an archaeologist unearths a stack of CDs in a century or so, > > I wonder how he would go about interpreting them, > > let alone getting them read! > > constant migration is the only way to maintain digital archives. > > the fact that we haven't learned that _quite_yet_ -- as evidenced > by the loss of nasa data that you pointed out -- is extremely sad, > as is the apparent unwillingness on the part of our "government" > to stand up and take responsibility for the full task of digitization. > > as for the c.d. example, however, i would think that the future will > know full well how to build a c.d. player from the available specs, > if they think that stack of cd's might have something valuable on it. BEEEEEEEEPPP! If they dig up the CDs, they probably do NOT have the specs. Also, I remember the times were I bought a audio CD and it did play or completly on early CD-players as they could not handle the length of the CD. I also remeber when the first CD-burners came for PCs that people had problems exchanging them because they were burnt at the wrong speed!!! Furthermore, How will they know of it has anything of value on it. CDs do deteriate and so their labels. In the computer world you HAVE to migrate. > > but again, constant migration is the real answer. the sweet thing > is that replication of digital content is almost entirely _cost-free_, > unlike the physical mediums that we have relied upon in the past, > which means there is almost no good reason _not_ to do migration. > > further, when everyone in the world can wear the global library in a > locket on a necklace, the sheer number of copies guards against loss. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/1d0b9dcf/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Fri Apr 27 09:52:59 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:52:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: again and again and again and again In-Reply-To: <20070426234623.GD5647@mail.pglaf.org> References: <20070426234623.GD5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: My apologies for my not replying sooner, I did not receive Mr. Noring's messages of the past week, and had to have them forwarded to me. Jon, if you would be so kind as to cc: directly to hart at pglaf.org I would appreciate it. Not sure why your messages didn't get here, I have not set any filters. More below, Thanks! Michael Hart > From: Jon Noring > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] again and again and again and again > Reply-To: Jon Noring , > Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Keith wrote: > >> give the poor guy [David Rothman] a break. Truth, beliefs and ones >> perception of reality are all basically the same thing.? >> >> Does God not exist, just because one believes. What does it mean >> that God exists and where? The mind, Earth, the universe, >> everywhere? >> >> Do you honestly?believe? that you will be able to change his mind, >> attitude, or beliefs? Who is being dishonest with himself here? >> >> 2 Euro cents == 2.66 US cents > > I suspect I'm next to be dumped on, but BB's attack on David is > actually kind of bizarre because it was unprovoked, and it is being > posted here (why here of all places? Why not TeleRead, or to MobileRead?) I find that BOTH Mr. Rothman's and Mr. Bird's messages are provoking a great deal of the time, and must consider them both as intentional. As for why here and not on Mr. Rothman's home field, or MoibleRead, I think that is all too obvious. . .Mr. Bird does not want to make any contributions to Mr. Rothman's home situation, nor does he feel he gets a fair deal there. . .still, this is only my viewpoint, and I am sure Mr. Bird might have his own clarification. However, I, myself, do not care to post my comments on all sites, so I can understand how others might feel the same way. > Now I don't believe that BB has been banned from posting comments to > the TeleRead blog. I think there has been some previous discussion on that point, and I seem to recall that some lack of Mr. Bird's postings being mentioned. > So if BB were concerned by the nature of the facts > and opinions being expressed by David, he can bring them up in an > objective way there in the comments area, and avoid disrupting this > forum where David Rothman only rarely posts to. "The nature of the facts and opinions" as you say, is different to different people. . .as referenced by your "bizarre" comment above, which is hardly "an objective way" of phrasing a response. In fact, I don't find that YOU, Mr. Noring, have expressed yourself concerning "the nature of the facts and opinions" in this case, and have therefore been gulty of "disrupting this forum" here and now. If you would care to actally address "the anture of the facts and opinions being addressed by David" and Mr. Bird, that is one thing, but to simply categorize them as "bizarre" and "disrupting," well, to do that you are simply adding yourself as another log to a fire that you are guilty of both feeding AND complaining about. > Jon Noring The real point is to give the world eBooks in 2007!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org From hart at pglaf.org Fri Apr 27 10:15:22 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:15:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: Another, more substantive, comment by Mr. Noring. On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Greg Newby wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from Jon Noring ----- > > From: Jon Noring > To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day > Reply-To: Jon Noring , > Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Michael wrote: > >> Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. > > It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in > that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for years > and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't ebooks > already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years ago at > about the time PG formally organized? Twenty years ago. . .1987. . . . I had thought you meant the Apple Newton, but that wasn't until 1993, wasn't it? 1987 was not a particularly great year for eBooks, as the Oxford Text Archive was trying to take over the eBook world and get everyone from here to there to give them all their eBooks, ostenstibly for storage, but really to resell at the ridiculous price of $30 minimum fee, with the most obnoxious EULA [End User Legal Agreement] I've ever seen. 1987 was just getting to the point of "Alice in Wonderland" which did change the entire face of the eBook world [and was also heisted by an above mentioned Oxford Text Archive and resold, so I hesitate to find that Mr. Noring is actually referring to 20 years ago. Perhaps some specific instances from Mr. Noring would be helpful. > I look forward to Bowerbird's answer to that question.) I look forward to Mr. Norings' answers to today's questions. > Clearly, most consumers have certain expectations for what they want in > the hardware before they use it for reading full-length immersive-type > books. Right now the market is throwing mud on the wall trying to find > something that sticks (e.g., Sony's Reader). When it comes to "dedicated devices" for specific tasks, we tend to find that such "niche evolutionary sidetracks" do not usually last long as to their "dedicated" identity. . .they either become extinct or they should find either they and/or their functions have combined with others. iPod functions are now in many other devices, and iPods are how sharing, if not taking over, the functions of other devices, a la the iPhone. What most people don't realize is that just building the power supply in a box that can hold the electronics and screen is half the cost of these devices [as well as with other home electronics, such as stereos] so the cost of adding more functions to ONE device is much less than making, or buying, a SECOND device. Thus the role of the "dedicated device" is usually a "niche" role, only, and sadly to say for some, for the "niche" user. . .such as in separates systems of stereo equipment where you have a separate box, power supply, front panel, knobs, switches, etc., for a tuner, preamp, power amplifier and perhaps an equalizer [tone control] or other features such as a nice Carver hologram. . .however, you can also get all these feature in quite a nice single box for half the money, one quarter of the space, and bill quite a bit less for plugging in all those wires, not to mention getting rid of that rat's nest of wires behind the scenes. I'm not sure everyone remembers the days of "dedicated word processors," or even the Mergenthaler Typesetting Machines, but these are now just an element in the larger sets of functions in everyday computers, and those huge, and hugely expensive, machines are now extinct. My prediction: 99% of such "dedicated devices" will have their function included in other devices that are much more efficient in terms of cost, space utilization, power consumption, etc. > Jon Michael From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Apr 27 10:26:46 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:26:46 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] =?iso-8859-1?q?Fwd=3A_Re=3A=A0_again_and_again_and_aga?= =?iso-8859-1?q?in_and_again?= Message-ID: noring goes into my spam folder, along with a couple other people, so i don't waste time and energy responding to posters who have squandered all their credibility... and i'm not gonna respond to him when somebody else quotes him and i just happen to read it either. except to say "attack? -- you ass!" :+) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/a121094a/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Fri Apr 27 10:39:38 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:39:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwile, message about the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., but it is worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. Mr. Noring has underscored all I have said against proprietaryness in file storage formats and media for years and years!!! Thank You, Mr. Noring!!!!!!! As mch as he has hit the nail on the head, and the particualars, the resume, and the common sense to be heard, I am afraid that I am going to hear all this again, that yet another set of data of million and billion dollar projects has vanished due to the lack of foresight by these million and billion dollar idiot savants. Sadly to say, it's like when we lost that billion dollar probe-- someone forgot to convert English to metric properly? It's going to happen again until we develop "foresight" teams in our projects, as well as "oversight" teams. Hopefully they won't be as ignored. Once again I leave you with the comments of Linus Torvalds, who, along with Richard Stallman and myself, should receive much of a whole world of credit for The Open Source Movement: "Only wimps use backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" - Linus Torvalds Michael Hart From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Apr 27 10:50:56 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:50:56 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day Message-ID: again, this idea that one form-factor will make everyone happy is simply bogus. our machine must come in a multitude of sizes, from 3*5 index-card fits-in-a-shirt-pocket, to 4*6, to 5*7, to 5*8, to 6*8, to 6*9, to 7*10, to 8*11, to 9*11, to 9*12, and maybe 12*18, with all of them (except the last one, of course), costing the exact same. line them up on a store-shelf, and it'd be difficult to pick the best-seller. however, if i _were_ to pick one sweet spot, it would mimic a paperback. weight under a half-pound, with batteries that last all day _and_ a cord, so people can plug in at every opportunity, to offset a worse battery-life. (not a bulky charger, just a cord, which auto-retracts back into the shell.) and it needs to be an _affordable_ price, which -- for a dedicated e-book machine -- would be about the $100 level. (add web access and it's $400, which just goes to show you how unimportant books are in this equation.) that's for a monochrome screen. add another $100 for color, which is likely to be a "requirement" in this day and age, especially if you offer web access. let me know when this form-factor is out, because it'll sell tens of millions... but don't hold your breath waiting for it, because the hardware industry has a lot of intermediate steps between now and then to wring the profits out of. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/ca0716ff/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Apr 27 10:58:47 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:58:47 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc Message-ID: michael said: > Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwhile, message > about the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., > but it is worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. actually, i believe it was jon richfield who made the post about the data nasa lost, not jon noring. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/e2167e54/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Fri Apr 27 11:07:23 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:07:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: oops. . .sorry, it was forwarded to me in a set of Jon Noring's email that somehow ever got here directly. . .my apologies!!! Michael On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: >> Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwhile, message >> about the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., >> but it is worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. > > actually, i believe it was jon richfield who > made the post about the data nasa lost, > not jon noring. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************************************** > See what's free at http://www.aol.com. > From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Apr 27 11:12:20 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:12:20 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc Message-ID: keith said: > BEEEEEEEEPPP! If they dig up the CDs, they probably do NOT have the specs. then you'll need to specify the exact conditions of this little hypothetical scenario. do they know what a c.d. is? do they know what we used them for? do they have any access to any of the paper we left behind, or our libraries? are they human? or some "anthropologists" from another galaxy? can they decipher our languages? just exactly what _is_ on the c.d.'s, and why would it be of any value to them at all? if it's "music" (but without any videos) from the pussycat dolls, will that be of value? is there electricity available to run a c.d.-player if they _do_ build one? or can they use their advanced expertise to build a player that wouldn't require any electricity? are these computer c.d.'s or audio c.d.'s? can these anthropologists actually _hear_? is there any string of connection between their present and our day, or was there some cataclysm that wiped out all of their knowledge of our so-called "civilization"? fill me in on all of these details, and then we can probably figure out together what these anthropologists would do. but in the meantime, under my scenario, they are quite smart enough to build a "primitive" c.d. player if they feel there is some need. > In the computer world you HAVE to migrate. oh good, well i'm glad we agree on that. maybe we can forget those anthropologists. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/9dade553/attachment.htm From jon at noring.name Fri Apr 27 14:03:19 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:03:19 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1543812509.20070427150319@noring.name> Bowerbird wrote: > michael said: >>?Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwhile, message >>?about the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., >>?but it is worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. > actually, i believe it was jon richfield who > made the post about the data nasa lost, > not jon noring. Yes, it was not me, but another Jon (sorry, didn't read the original message). I did post a message yesterday talking about the loss of 90% of the data collected in the 1970's and early 80's as part of the Circumsolar project run by Lawrence Berkeley Lab, a sister lab to Lawrence Livermore (which I also happened to work for in the 1990-1995 time frame.) Jon Noring From jon at noring.name Fri Apr 27 14:20:29 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:20:29 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <903840079.20070427152029@noring.name> Michael wrote: > Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwile, message about > the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., but it is > worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. > > Mr. Noring has underscored all I have said against proprietaryness > in file storage formats and media for years and years!!! > > Thank You, Mr. Noring!!!!!!! Well, as Bowerbird noted, the particular data was mentioned not by me, but by Jon Richfield (sp.?). But I did post about the Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Circumsolar Project Reduced Database where I took the 10% data we were able to recover and reformatted that into a fully readable ASCII database. I worked on this in the late 1980's, so at that time took a path pretty much like Michael took with digitized books. Btw, I just got feedback from NREL on this data and would like to submit it to Project Gutenberg as an example of putting scientific data into a text encoding for long-term archiving. The compressed ZIP file is 56 megs in size, so it's not that large. > "Only wimps use backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff > on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" - Linus Torvalds Laugh, I've always liked this quote. the other Jon (Jon Noring) From jon at noring.name Fri Apr 27 14:28:08 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:28:08 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <754502908.20070427152808@noring.name> Michael wrote: >> It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in >> that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for years >> and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't ebooks >> already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years ago at >> about the time PG formally organized? > Twenty years ago. . .1987. . . . > > Perhaps some specific instances from Mr. Noring would be helpful. Well, my comments were mostly focused on when PG really began to take off in the public consciousness which is 1989 to 1990 -- almost 20 years ago. Certainly others were digitizing books well before the late 80's. Books were digitized in the late 60's for text research purposes (not for end-user reading). There were commercial ventures in the late 80's as well selling book content in various forms. > My prediction: 99% of such "dedicated devices" will have their function > included in other devices that are much more efficient in terms of cost, > space utilization, power consumption, etc. I've been open to the possibilities of "dedicated ebook readers", but overall have felt for a while the future will be multi-purpose/integrated hardware. How that will shake out is anybody's guess. The current sexy fad are cellphones with larger screens, but even here we don't know where things will go. Jon From gbnewby at pglaf.org Fri Apr 27 15:08:19 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:08:19 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] "giveline" charity Message-ID: <20070427220819.GD25777@mail.pglaf.org> Has anyone encountered these folks before? I got a solicitation, so signed up PG. http://www.giveline.com/default.asp?v=V007947946 It's an online store or store consolidation service that routes donations to organizations. Here's the button version: Support Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation by Shopping at Giveline If it seems to be relatively harmless, we can put a note in our newsletter and on our "Donate HOWTO". -- Greg From desrod at gnu-designs.com Fri Apr 27 17:28:06 2007 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 20:28:06 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] "giveline" charity In-Reply-To: <20070427220819.GD25777@mail.pglaf.org> References: <20070427220819.GD25777@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <1177720086.30875.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Fri, 2007-04-27 at 15:08 -0700, Greg Newby wrote: > It's an online store or store consolidation service that > routes donations to organizations. I'm more partial to donorge, because you can deem a percentage of incoming donations that will be directed to other related projects. For example, I maintain pilot-link, and KPilot relies upon pilot-link. KPilot can say that 5% of every donation to their project, goes to pilot-link (and I can do likewise, or donate 75% of our donations to FSF, and so on). I'm a fan of the "Pour water in the harbour, all boats rise at once" kind of methodology when it comes to donations. Nothing is successful in a vacuum. -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070427/d35232ee/attachment.pgp From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 00:59:37 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:59:37 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <55DF6252-B4ED-40B3-894C-CCCF174CEAB2@uni-trier.de> Am 27.04.2007 um 19:15 schrieb Michael Hart: > > Another, more substantive, comment by Mr. Noring. > > > On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Greg Newby wrote: > >> ----- Forwarded message from Jon Noring ----- >> >> From: Jon Noring >> To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day >> Reply-To: Jon Noring , >> Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion >> >> Michael wrote: >> >>> Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. >> >> It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in >> that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for >> years >> and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't >> ebooks >> already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years >> ago at >> about the time PG formally organized? > > Twenty years ago. . .1987. . . . > > I had thought you meant the Apple Newton, but that wasn't until 1993, > wasn't it? No mid 80s. I had my Newton When I was in K-Town. I had one of the first. regards Keith. From hart at pglaf.org Mon Apr 30 01:06:31 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:06:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: <55DF6252-B4ED-40B3-894C-CCCF174CEAB2@uni-trier.de> References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> <55DF6252-B4ED-40B3-894C-CCCF174CEAB2@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: If you have your dates right, and I have no reason to presume you don't, that's just another of MANY reasons I have NOT to trust Wikepedia, which I where I think I saw that date of 1993. Interesting that the Newton was such a big failure. How much was it? Also interesting that I was just looking at my first Palm, and you can literally hardly do ANYthing with it, yet was so successful they made a dozen more models, or more. . . . Michael On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > Am 27.04.2007 um 19:15 schrieb Michael Hart: > >> >> Another, more substantive, comment by Mr. Noring. >> >> >> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Greg Newby wrote: >> >>> ----- Forwarded message from Jon Noring ----- >>> >>> From: Jon Noring >>> To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >>> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day >>> Reply-To: Jon Noring , >>> Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion >>> >>> Michael wrote: >>> >>>> Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. >>> >>> It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in >>> that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for years >>> and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't ebooks >>> already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years ago at >>> about the time PG formally organized? >> >> Twenty years ago. . .1987. . . . >> >> I had thought you meant the Apple Newton, but that wasn't until 1993, >> wasn't it? > No mid 80s. I had my Newton When I was in K-Town. I had one of the > first. > regards > Keith. > > From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 01:10:50 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:10:50 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <8B45D568-4C86-4F8B-8559-83CDA1CBABC9@uni-trier.de> Am 27.04.2007 um 19:39 schrieb Michael Hart: > > Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwile, message about > the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., but it is > worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. > > Mr. Noring has underscored all I have said against proprietaryness > in file storage formats and media for years and years!!! Let us not forget, that computing was more or less a sibling in those years and nobody thought that computers would advance so fast. Do not forget all the data on punch cards. It is not loss just unaccessable. > > Thank You, Mr. Noring!!!!!!! > > As mch as he has hit the nail on the head, and the particualars, > the resume, and the common sense to be heard, I am afraid that I > am going to hear all this again, that yet another set of data of > million and billion dollar projects has vanished due to the lack > of foresight by these million and billion dollar idiot savants. > > Sadly to say, it's like when we lost that billion dollar probe-- > someone forgot to convert English to metric properly? > > It's going to happen again until we develop "foresight" teams in > our projects, as well as "oversight" teams. Not forsight! Check, and double check. Oversight is the best description. Differents teams need to comminicate more often and make sure the others are doing the right thing. Also, in institutes one tends to forget the projects that have ended. The result loss of data. Who pays for the work of migrating old data, that nobody is currently using. regards Keith. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 01:17:12 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:17:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2AF1990F-4B28-4E29-958C-2EC508FF3515@uni-trier.de> Am 27.04.2007 um 20:12 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > keith said: > > BEEEEEEEEPPP! If they dig up the CDs, they probably do NOT have > the specs. > > then you'll need to specify the exact conditions of this little > hypothetical scenario. > do they know what a c.d. is? do they know what we used them for? > do they have > any access to any of the paper we left behind, or our libraries? > are they human? > or some "anthropologists" from another galaxy? can they decipher > our languages? > just exactly what _is_ on the c.d.'s, and why would it be of any > value to them at all? > if it's "music" (but without any videos) from the pussycat dolls, > will that be of value? > is there electricity available to run a c.d.-player if they _do_ > build one? or can they > use their advanced expertise to build a player that wouldn't > require any electricity? > are these computer c.d.'s or audio c.d.'s? can these > anthropologists actually _hear_? > is there any string of connection between their present and our > day, or was there > some cataclysm that wiped out all of their knowledge of our so- > called "civilization"? > fill me in on all of these details, and then we can probably figure > out together what > these anthropologists would do. but in the meantime, under my > scenario, they are > quite smart enough to build a "primitive" c.d. player if they feel > there is some need. Hey, you said they have the specs. Not me! Far as building the "primitive" CD I do not know. When knowledge is lost, anthopologist have trouble copying or inventing the knowledge. > > > > In the computer world you HAVE to migrate. > > oh good, well i'm glad we agree on that. maybe we can forget those > anthropologists. We agree on far more than you think. Above, you more or less elaborated on my Beep! regards Keith. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070430/fa71d9dc/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 01:22:12 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:22:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: <903840079.20070427152029@noring.name> References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> <903840079.20070427152029@noring.name> Message-ID: Am 27.04.2007 um 23:20 schrieb Jon Noring: > Michael wrote: > >> Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwile, message about >> the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., but it is >> worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. >> >> Mr. Noring has underscored all I have said against proprietaryness >> in file storage formats and media for years and years!!! >> >> Thank You, Mr. Noring!!!!!!! > > Well, as Bowerbird noted, the particular data was mentioned not by me, > but by Jon Richfield (sp.?). Did you just give BB credit?!!!! > > But I did post about the Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Circumsolar Project > Reduced Database where I took the 10% data we were able to recover and > reformatted that into a fully readable ASCII database. I worked on > this > in the late 1980's, so at that time took a path pretty much like > Michael took with digitized books. > > Btw, I just got feedback from NREL on this data and would like to > submit it to Project Gutenberg as an example of putting scientific > data into a text encoding for long-term archiving. The compressed ZIP > file is 56 megs in size, so it's not that large. Can you get the specs on the file format, data format? When it is converted to text it is liable to be a lot larger. Back then storage was not cheap. Sounds like a interresting project. write if you want help. regards Keith. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 01:43:46 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:43:46 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> <55DF6252-B4ED-40B3-894C-CCCF174CEAB2@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: Am 30.04.2007 um 10:06 schrieb Michael Hart: > > If you have your dates right, and I have no reason to presume you > don't, > that's just another of MANY reasons I have NOT to trust Wikepedia, > which > I where I think I saw that date of 1993. > > Interesting that the Newton was such a big failure. I believe it was the price and poor marketing and support by apple. It was a beautiful tool. 1) After a learning period near perfect handwriting recognition 2) Adress book, calendar, notes, Alarms 3) datbase, text processing, spreed sheet 4) infra red interface. 5) programms could be written on a computer and uploaded. It is sad that it died. I never understood why. There are just a few things Apple has not had success with as their speech recognition technologies. Never quite got of the ground. > > How much was it? It was quite expensive can not remember. regards Keith. From hart at pglaf.org Mon Apr 30 02:00:09 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:00:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: <8B45D568-4C86-4F8B-8559-83CDA1CBABC9@uni-trier.de> References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> <8B45D568-4C86-4F8B-8559-83CDA1CBABC9@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: I guess Mr. Schultz and I live in different semantic worlds, what he describes as "oversight" I think requires much more in the way of "foresight" than most oversight efforts do. Communications? Definitely! But that's not "oversight" that will make that happen. . .it's "foresight". . .to me. They say that missed communications is the greatest error. mh On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > Am 27.04.2007 um 19:39 schrieb Michael Hart: > >> >> Not repeating Mr. Noring's long, and very worthwile, message about >> the lost NASA, weather, Lawrence Livermore data, etc., but it is >> worth saving. . ._I_ have saved the message. >> >> Mr. Noring has underscored all I have said against proprietaryness >> in file storage formats and media for years and years!!! > Let us not forget, that computing was more or less a sibling > in those years and nobody thought that computers would advance > so fast. Do not forget all the data on punch cards. It is not loss > just unaccessable. > >> >> Thank You, Mr. Noring!!!!!!! >> >> As mch as he has hit the nail on the head, and the particualars, >> the resume, and the common sense to be heard, I am afraid that I >> am going to hear all this again, that yet another set of data of >> million and billion dollar projects has vanished due to the lack >> of foresight by these million and billion dollar idiot savants. >> >> Sadly to say, it's like when we lost that billion dollar probe-- >> someone forgot to convert English to metric properly? >> >> It's going to happen again until we develop "foresight" teams in >> our projects, as well as "oversight" teams. > Not forsight! Check, and double check. Oversight is the > best description. Differents teams need to comminicate > more often and make sure the others are doing the right > thing. Also, in institutes one tends to forget the projects > that have ended. The result loss of data. Who pays for the > work of migrating old data, that nobody is currently using. > regards > Keith. > From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 02:13:10 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:13:10 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> <8B45D568-4C86-4F8B-8559-83CDA1CBABC9@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: Am 30.04.2007 um 11:00 schrieb Michael Hart: > > I guess Mr. Schultz and I live in different semantic worlds, > what he describes as "oversight" I think requires much more > in the way of "foresight" than most oversight efforts do. Actually, oversight and foresight are not good words here. see below. > > Communications? Definitely! But that's not "oversight" > that will make that happen. . .it's "foresight". . .to me. Foresight is what you plan and set up ahead of time. Now, if party A does something and party B ask if did you think of X and party A says no. It is not foresight of party A, but oversight!. For party B it is "forsight" by checking. Pick you point of view. > > They say that missed communications is the greatest error. I can not agree with you more. Asking if something got done or continually reporting tasks and how it was done is not mistrust but good communication even if it seems to be trivial. regards Keith. From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Mon Apr 30 01:05:47 2007 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:05:47 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs Message-ID: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> Hello, there are a few math books in PG using LaTeX, usually with normal PDF format suitable for reading on a desktop PC. For reading with my Iliad device, I have experimented with producing PDFs using a bigger font (20pt), getting good results. I cannot use Plucker on the Iliad, but my understanding is big font PDF is usable on many PDAs, too. So, how can I upload my big font PDFs at PG? ralf FYI: Producing big font PDFs from LaTeX involves giving some word breaking hints so that linebreaks will happen at the right place, but the most work is splitting long math formulae over several lines. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Apr 30 03:31:37 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:31:37 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs In-Reply-To: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> References: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: Please, make sure the font is embedded, so that it will display correctly. regards Keith. Am 30.04.2007 um 10:05 schrieb Ralf Stephan: > Hello, > > there are a few math books in PG using LaTeX, usually with > normal PDF format suitable for reading on a desktop PC. > For reading with my Iliad device, I have experimented with > producing PDFs using a bigger font (20pt), getting good results. > I cannot use Plucker on the Iliad, but my understanding is > big font PDF is usable on many PDAs, too. > > So, how can I upload my big font PDFs at PG? > > > ralf > FYI: Producing big font PDFs from LaTeX involves giving some word > breaking hints so that linebreaks will happen at the right place, > but the most work is splitting long math formulae over several lines. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From grythumn at gmail.com Mon Apr 30 04:17:00 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:17:00 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: international pixel-stained technopeasant day In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234611.GC5647@mail.pglaf.org> <55DF6252-B4ED-40B3-894C-CCCF174CEAB2@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50704300417i1d13cc1as2adb14f87b344f2c@mail.gmail.com> If you don't believe wikipedia, will you believe archived New York Times news articles? http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D6143CF933A05754C0A965958260 If the above link doesn't work, search for the title: Stakes High in Apple's Bet on PC By JOHN MARKOFF, Published: July 30, 1993 Which is dated just before the release at the Macworld Expo, in Boston's Symphony Hall. If Keith had a Newton in the 80s, he had a very early prototype. Seriously; consider Wikipedia as a _start_ for research, and then go back and check primary sources. It's not all that hard for something that made as a big of a splash as the Newton. R C On 4/30/07, Michael Hart wrote: > > > If you have your dates right, and I have no reason to presume you don't, > that's just another of MANY reasons I have NOT to trust Wikepedia, which > I where I think I saw that date of 1993. > > Interesting that the Newton was such a big failure. > > How much was it? > > Also interesting that I was just looking at my first Palm, > and you can literally hardly do ANYthing with it, yet was > so successful they made a dozen more models, or more. . . . > > > Michael > > > > On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > > > > Am 27.04.2007 um 19:15 schrieb Michael Hart: > > > >> > >> Another, more substantive, comment by Mr. Noring. > >> > >> > >> On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Greg Newby wrote: > >> > >>> ----- Forwarded message from Jon Noring ----- > >>> > >>> From: Jon Noring > >>> To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > >>> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] international pixel-stained technopeasant day > >>> Reply-To: Jon Noring , > >>> Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > >>> > >>> Michael wrote: > >>> > >>>> Actually, from what I hear, people want the hardware to get larger. > >>> > >>> It seems like there's a wide range of needs. Bowerbird is right in > >>> that the hardware is *already* here to read ebooks -- it has for years > >>> and years and years (which again begs the question, why haven't ebooks > >>> already taken off if the hardware was there almost twenty years ago at > >>> about the time PG formally organized? > >> > >> Twenty years ago. . .1987. . . . > >> > >> I had thought you meant the Apple Newton, but that wasn't until 1993, > >> wasn't it? > > No mid 80s. I had my Newton When I was in K-Town. I had one of the > > first. > > regards > > Keith. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070430/badc727d/attachment.htm From desrod at gnu-designs.com Mon Apr 30 04:45:16 2007 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:45:16 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs In-Reply-To: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> References: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: <1177933516.9630.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Mon, 2007-04-30 at 10:05 +0200, Ralf Stephan wrote: > I cannot use Plucker on the Iliad, but my understanding is > big font PDF is usable on many PDAs, too. Why can't you run it on the Iliad? What language do they use on their device? Plucker runs on Palm OS, Windows Mobile/PocketPC, and Linux. If you can manage to make the Iliad understand any of those platforms executables, then it should be a very minor bit of work to port it to the Iliad. Barring that, the source is out there, just do a clean port to the Iliad. -- David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070430/95d5e685/attachment.pgp From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 30 06:24:44 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:24:44 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs In-Reply-To: <1177933516.9630.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> <1177933516.9630.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:45:16 -0400, you wrote: >Why can't you run it on the Iliad? What language do they use on their >device? Plucker runs on Palm OS, Windows Mobile/PocketPC, and Linux. > >If you can manage to make the Iliad understand any of those platforms >executables, then it should be a very minor bit of work to port it to >the Iliad. > >Barring that, the source is out there, just do a clean port to the >Iliad. Mobipocket is also an alternative. The release for the iLiad is only days away. Mobipocket has created a core reader in Java so further ports should be easier. For ports of any programs to the iLiad best join http://www.mobileread.com There are already several experts porting various Linux programs to the iLiad. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From jon at noring.name Mon Apr 30 06:44:59 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:44:59 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> <903840079.20070427152029@noring.name> Message-ID: <5177517.20070430074459@noring.name> Keith wrote: > Jon Noring wrote: >> Well, as Bowerbird noted, the particular data was mentioned not by me, >> but by Jon Richfield (sp.?). > Did you just give BB credit?!!!! Well, just stating the truth on this particular issue. I give Bowerbird credit or praise or whatever when, as I see it, it is called for. >> But I did post about the Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Circumsolar Project >> Reduced Database where I took the 10% data we were able to recover and >> reformatted that into a fully readable ASCII database. I worked on >> this >> in the late 1980's, so at that time took a path pretty much like >> Michael took with digitized books. >> >> Btw, I just got feedback from NREL on this data and would like to >> submit it to Project Gutenberg as an example of putting scientific >> data into a text encoding for long-term archiving. The compressed ZIP >> file is 56 megs in size, so it's not that large. > Can you get the specs on the file format, data format? > When it is converted to text it is liable to be a lot larger. > ack then storage was not cheap. Sounds like a interresting project. > write if you want help. Not sure I need any help. :^) The data was written in ASCII form, plus in a way to allow simple sorting to put the whole database back together should the lines get shuffled. I also focused on making the data directly readable. Doing all three greatly increased the size of database. I got some flak back in the late 80's for doing it this way, but time has shown my approach to have been the right one. With compression, the 280 Mb text files scrunch down to 56 Mb. So it is pretty manageable these days. The report behind the data, including the format for the data in ASCII encoding, is found here: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/circumsolar/ (I'm sure I could reformat the report into a single, high-quality XHTML file.) The actual data files (11 in total) are found here: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/circumsolar/ The value of PG archiving them is threefold: 1) It helps to better preserve the data which may end up being important for global climate modeling and solar energy research. 2) It makes the data more publicly available. 3) It's a demonstration of the power of archiving scientific data in an easy-to-use UTF-8 (ASCII-limited) text encoding, and that is quite readable. But I'll leave it up to Michael and Greg to determine whether it makes any sense to add this data to the PG archive. I definitely will submit it to the Internet Archive. Jon Noring From hart at pglaf.org Mon Apr 30 08:58:53 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:58:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Concerning Keith Schultz's points on durability etc In-Reply-To: References: <20070426234557.GA5647@mail.pglaf.org> <8B45D568-4C86-4F8B-8559-83CDA1CBABC9@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: Actually, foresight is thinking of those situations, problems, and advantages, even before they start to become obvious. . . . Oversight does not include much foresight in my experience, but I can see that it could do so if applied in a more ideal manner than it usually is. Michael On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > > Am 30.04.2007 um 11:00 schrieb Michael Hart: > >> >> I guess Mr. Schultz and I live in different semantic worlds, >> what he describes as "oversight" I think requires much more >> in the way of "foresight" than most oversight efforts do. > Actually, oversight and foresight are not good words > here. see below. >> >> Communications? Definitely! But that's not "oversight" >> that will make that happen. . .it's "foresight". . .to me. > Foresight is what you plan and set up ahead of time. > Now, if party A does something and party B ask if > did you think of X and party A says no. It is not foresight > of party A, but oversight!. For party B it is "forsight" > by checking. Pick you point of view. > >> >> They say that missed communications is the greatest error. > I can not agree with you more. Asking if something got done or > continually reporting tasks and how it was done is not mistrust > but good communication even if it seems to be trivial. > > regards > Keith. > From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Mon Apr 30 09:23:43 2007 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:23:43 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs In-Reply-To: References: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> <1177933516.9630.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <20070430162343.GA11228@ark.in-berlin.de> > ...Plucker... Having just tried to convert LaTeX to HTML using latex2html and plucker-build I can attest that the result is unusable. The formula images are nearly unintelligible and placed awkwardly within the text. > Mobipocket is also an alternative. I'm looking forward to that, understanding that it somehow converts an already given PDF, probably losing accuracy in the process. Thanks, I'm happy with my bigfont PDFs, and if you don't want them, so the less work for me... ralf From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 30 10:28:16 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:28:16 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs In-Reply-To: <20070430162343.GA11228@ark.in-berlin.de> References: <20070430080547.GA6049@ark.in-berlin.de> <1177933516.9630.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20070430162343.GA11228@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:23:43 +0200, you wrote: >> ...Plucker... > >Having just tried to convert LaTeX to HTML using latex2html and >plucker-build I can attest that the result is unusable. The formula >images are nearly unintelligible and placed awkwardly within the text. LaTeX is a page description language just like PDF so any conversion into a reflowable format like HTML is bound to lose formatting. You do not want to master the problems of such a conversion therefore you are bound do fail. >> Mobipocket is also an alternative. > >I'm looking forward to that, understanding that it somehow converts >an already given PDF, probably losing accuracy in the process. Probably not much better than the conversion to Plucker. It is the same principle and the HTML renderer of Mobipocket is probably inferior. >Thanks, I'm happy with my bigfont PDFs, and if you don't want them, >so the less work for me... PDF as an ebook format sucks. PDF is a description language for static pages and ebooks need to be displayable on different devices with differend screen (page) sizes. Only a reflowable format like HTML can do that. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From hart at pglaf.org Mon Apr 30 10:48:49 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:48:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] !@! Recovered Livermore Data Message-ID: We would love to post this recovered data on our servers as an example. . . . Please advise!!! Thank You!!! Give the world eBooks in 2007!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Apr 30 10:55:12 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:55:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] !@! Recovered Livermore Data In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:48:49 -0700 (PDT), you wrote: > >We would love to post this recovered data on our servers >as an example. . . . > >Please advise!!! Huh? What is this about? Please give context. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Apr 30 12:18:21 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:18:21 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] LaTeX big font PDFs Message-ID: robert said: > You do not want to master the problems of such a conversion > therefore you are bound do fail. well, i think someone is missing the point here, in that ralf already has a conversion strategy that works for him. you want him to use a different one, which does not work. and then you dare to berate him because he doesn't "want to master the problems of such a conversion". geez! > PDF as an ebook format sucks. PDF is a description language > for static pages and ebooks need to be displayable on > different devices with differend screen (page) sizes. > Only a reflowable format like HTML can do that. again, you completely miss the point. he has an iliad. his iliad is a piece of equipment that has a fixed size. he has absolutely zero need for a "reflowable format". what he _needs_ are .pdf that utilize a bigger text-size than the one that's used in the .pdfs now in the library. that's a problem with the latex-made .pdfs in the library. and even though that problem is not one that he caused, he stepped up to the plate and did the solution himself. now he's offering to donate his solution to the library, so other iliad owners can benefit from the work he has done. that's the type of volunteerism that needs to be supported, accepted graciously, encouraged, and congratulated heartily. instead, you berate him because he didn't do what you'd do. in my opinion, that's the wrong thing to do. if you want to make some kind of political-correctness point about the deficiencies of latex, go talk to the people using it. but they're going to tell you it is the only straightforward way of doing math texts, and tell you where you can stuff yourself. so if i were you, i'd be prepared for that if i did that. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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