From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 2 21:33:25 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 2 May 2009 21:33:25 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do Message-ID: Some very important books not in the Project but are available for downloading from Google Dreiser/ Genius, The 1915 Dreiser/ Jennie Gerhardt 1911 Du Maurier, George/ Trilby 1866 Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 Godwin, William/ St. Leon 1799 James, Henry/ Wings of the dove, The 1902 Lawrence, D. H./ Rainbow, The 1915 From donovan at abs.net Sun May 3 05:13:49 2009 From: donovan at abs.net (D Garcia) Date: Sun, 03 May 2009 09:13:49 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <49FD988D.408@abs.net> Michael S. Hart wrote: > Some very important books not in the Project > but are available for downloading from Google > > Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 > This title is nearly complete at DP and should post very soon. From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 3 06:46:43 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 3 May 2009 06:46:43 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do In-Reply-To: <49FD988D.408@abs.net> References: <49FD988D.408@abs.net> Message-ID: On Sun, 3 May 2009, D Garcia wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > Some very important books not in the Project > > but are available for downloading from Google > > > > Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 > > > This title is nearly complete at DP and should post very soon. Great!!! Thanks!!! Michael > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From bruce at zuhause.org Mon May 4 06:29:23 2009 From: bruce at zuhause.org (Bruce Albrecht) Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 09:29:23 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1241447363.49441.1.camel@nx7400b> On Sat, 2009-05-02 at 21:33 -0800, Michael S. Hart wrote: > Some very important books not in the Project > but are available for downloading from Google > > Dreiser/ Genius, The 1915 > Dreiser/ Jennie Gerhardt 1911 > Du Maurier, George/ Trilby 1866 > Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 > Godwin, William/ St. Leon 1799 > James, Henry/ Wings of the dove, The 1902 > Lawrence, D. H./ Rainbow, The 1915 Trilby is currently going through Distributed Proofreaders. From invitations at youngentrepreneursociety.com Mon May 4 14:02:06 2009 From: invitations at youngentrepreneursociety.com (giacinthom) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 22:02:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Come join me on Young Entrepreneur Society Message-ID: <30680188.1241474526521.JavaMail.xncore@omx> Young Entrepreneur Society: -------------------- Come join me on Young Entrepreneur Society! giacinthom Click the link below to Join: http://www.youngentrepreneursociety.com/?xgi=ficiu3V If your email program doesn't recognize the web address above as an active link, please copy and paste it into your web browser -------------------- Members already on Young Entrepreneur Society erwin Ensing, Lisa goldsmith, Frank Kriticos, ryan donahue, Joy Winning -------------------- About Young Entrepreneur Society An inspirational society that will ignite your mind, lift your soul and get you to take action. . . Say Y.E.S. to your Success! 790 members 665 photos 32 songs 125 videos 72 discussions 127 blog posts -------------------- To control which emails you receive on the corner, or to opt-out, go to: http://www.youngentrepreneursociety.com/?xgo=/51FYaw8ElyCe/j7gZWoDrVGqcGDz7yEhJPqFIMLQnP0CoRWW3p4SfiLVlZNHR/R -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Mon May 4 15:32:29 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (James Adcock) Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 16:32:29 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do In-Reply-To: <1241447363.49441.1.camel@nx7400b> References: <1241447363.49441.1.camel@nx7400b> Message-ID: Sorry, I feel like I lost one of the e-mails -- was anyone tackling Genius? If not, I'd like to take it on -- jimad > Dreiser/ Genius, The 1915 > Dreiser/ Jennie Gerhardt 1911 > Du Maurier, George/ Trilby 1866 > Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 > Godwin, William/ St. Leon 1799 > James, Henry/ Wings of the dove, The 1902 > Lawrence, D. H./ Rainbow, The 1915 Trilby is currently going through Distributed Proofreaders. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d From ajhaines at shaw.ca Tue May 5 09:47:52 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:47:52 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: [pgww] Re: Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do References: <1241447363.49441.1.camel@nx7400b> Message-ID: <4C05DCBB493247CC83C76FE674375164@alp2400> According to David Price's In-Progress list (http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html): Dreiser's "Genius" has not been copyright-cleared by anyone. Dreiser's "Jennie Gerhardt" is in PG-Australia - #219a Godwin's "St. Leon" is in David's list as "Suggested to transcribe", and released by PG-Australia as #1089a Du Maurier's "Trilby" - PG-Australia - #1078a James' "Wings of the Dove" - cleared by someone in 2002, released by PG-Australia - #1368a Lawrence's "Rainbow" - PG-Australia - #34a Al ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Adcock" To: "'Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion'" Cc: "'Project Gutenberg Whitewashers'" ; "'Jim Tinsley'" Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 4:32 PM Subject: [pgww] Re: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do > Sorry, I feel like I lost one of the e-mails -- was anyone tackling > Genius? > > If not, I'd like to take it on -- jimad > >> Dreiser/ Genius, The 1915 >> Dreiser/ Jennie Gerhardt 1911 >> Du Maurier, George/ Trilby 1866 >> Garland, Hamlin/ Son of the Middle Border, A 1917 >> Godwin, William/ St. Leon 1799 >> James, Henry/ Wings of the dove, The 1902 >> Lawrence, D. H./ Rainbow, The 1915 > > Trilby is currently going through Distributed Proofreaders. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > From jimad at msn.com Tue May 5 16:52:03 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 17:52:03 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: [pgww] Re: Re: !@! Some Important Books for PG to Do In-Reply-To: <4C05DCBB493247CC83C76FE674375164@alp2400> References: <1241447363.49441.1.camel@nx7400b> <4C05DCBB493247CC83C76FE674375164@alp2400> Message-ID: I have sent in a copyright clearance request on "Genius" and claim it -- jimad -- thanks! From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed May 6 14:32:48 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 18:32:48 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] larger-format kindle Message-ID: the best thing about the larger-format kindle announced today was that we didn't have to read ten thousand blog entries over the last eight months preannouncing the darn thing. but the stunning thing bezos said was that books for which amazon has a kindle version sell _35%_ of their copies in electronic form... that's up from _10%_ just since _february_, which bezos attributes to kindle2 popularity. that's astounding because there simply aren't too many kindles out there in the wild quite yet. (i still have yet to see one myself, for instance.) yet there is 1 kindle-version sold for every _2_ paper-books sold _if_ there is a kindle-version. so imagine what the ratio will be once there are 10 times as many kindles out there in the world. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Thu May 7 07:19:16 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 08:19:16 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Seattle is a very bookish and techie city but Kindles are very common here, meaning I've seen a half dozen on the streets and when I mention a Kindle to friends I often get the response "Oh -- I've got one too!" Personally I read probably 20 PG books on Kindle, and 100 technical papers, for each book I buy from Bezos -- but I still buy from Amazon. The DX will be a huge win for me because I can read PDF technical documents directly on the DX without having to format convert them nor print them out. I would think the DX will be very popular with college professors who want their students to purchase that professor's texts. Anyone tracking percent book downloads from PG in Mobi vs. EPUB vs. non-Ebook formats? From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 7 07:35:40 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 07:35:40 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 7 May 2009, Jim Adcock wrote: > Seattle is a very bookish and techie city but Kindles are very common here, > meaning I've seen a half dozen on the streets and when I mention a Kindle to > friends I often get the response "Oh -- I've got one too!" Actually, the entire number of Kindles sold worldwide is JUST BARELY ENOUGH for every person in Seattle to have one. . . . Not what _I_ would call a "popular" eBook reader, as the media says. mh > > Personally I read probably 20 PG books on Kindle, and 100 technical papers, > for each book I buy from Bezos -- but I still buy from Amazon. The DX will > be a huge win for me because I can read PDF technical documents directly on > the DX without having to format convert them nor print them out. > > I would think the DX will be very popular with college professors who want > their students to purchase that professor's texts. > > Anyone tracking percent book downloads from PG in Mobi vs. EPUB vs. > non-Ebook formats? > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu May 7 08:17:16 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 12:17:16 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: michael said: > Not what _I_ would call a "popular" eBook reader, as the media says. book-reading itself isn't all that "popular", we must remind ourselves. half the population read one book or less (i.e., zero books) last year... and many book-readers don't _buy_ books, but rather use the library. so i'd say that -- among book-buyers -- kindles are pretty popular... -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 7 08:42:42 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 08:42:42 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Using your own statistics I thus defeat you: Half the US population is 150 million people. MAYBE 1/3 of one percent have a Kindle. . . . iPods [and clones] are popular. iPhones [and clones] are popular. Wolverine is popular. Star Trek is popular. Kindles are, as yet, statistically insignificant. Want to bet me whether they sell just ONE million by Thanksgiving??? On Thu, 7 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: > > Not what _I_ would call a "popular" eBook reader, as the > > media says. > > book-reading itself isn't all that "popular", we must remind > ourselves. > > half the population read one book or less (i.e., zero books) last > year... > > and many book-readers don't _buy_ books, but rather use the > library. > > so i'd say that -- among book-buyers -- kindles are pretty > popular... > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near > you now. > (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > From richfield at telkomsa.net Thu May 7 11:40:26 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 21:40:26 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] All very well, but ... Message-ID: <4A03392A.2050701@telkomsa.net> but what does the new, big Kindle actually cost? I have been looking around and not actually seen prices. I certainly am interested in getting one, but i suspect that it will pay me to wait till the prices of such devices drop. (Having wanted something of the type ever since the technology was proposed over twenty years ago!) Mind you, the main reason *I* need one is for reading in bed... Cheers, Jon From ajhaines at shaw.ca Thu May 7 13:17:20 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 14:17:20 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: All very well, but ... References: <4A03392A.2050701@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: According to an article in my local newspaper this morning, it's around US$489.00. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Richfield" To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 12:40 PM Subject: [gutvol-d] All very well, but ... > but what does the new, big Kindle actually cost? I have been looking > around and not actually seen prices. I certainly am interested in getting > one, but i suspect that it will pay me to wait till the prices of such > devices drop. (Having wanted something of the type ever since the > technology was proposed over twenty years ago!) Mind you, the main reason > *I* need one is for reading in bed... > > Cheers, > > Jon _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Thu May 7 13:29:00 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 17:29:00 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: All very well, but ... In-Reply-To: References: <4A03392A.2050701@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: Remember though that Kindle edition books and newspapers are generally cheaper than their print versions so you'll end up saving in the long run. I have a Kindle 2 (normal sized) and I absolutely LOVE it. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:17 PM, Al Haines (shaw) wrote: > According to an article in my local newspaper this morning, it's around > US$489.00. > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Richfield" > > To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" > Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 12:40 PM > Subject: [gutvol-d] All very well, but ... > > > > but what does the new, big Kindle actually cost? I have been looking >> around and not actually seen prices. I certainly am interested in getting >> one, but i suspect that it will pay me to wait till the prices of such >> devices drop. (Having wanted something of the type ever since the >> technology was proposed over twenty years ago!) Mind you, the main reason >> *I* need one is for reading in bed... >> >> Cheers, >> >> Jon _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Thu May 7 15:32:22 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 16:32:22 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: All very well, but ... In-Reply-To: <4A03392A.2050701@telkomsa.net> References: <4A03392A.2050701@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: >but what does the new, big Kindle actually cost? $489.00 From joshua at hutchinson.net Thu May 7 15:52:16 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 23:52:16 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: <885924044.23084.1241740336871.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joshua at hutchinson.net Thu May 7 15:57:56 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 23:57:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: All very well, but ... Message-ID: <102526192.23131.1241740676357.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dakretz at gmail.com Thu May 7 17:28:37 2009 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 18:28:37 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] larger-format kindle Message-ID: <627d59b80905071828s464a4918i8e166cca617a0700@mail.gmail.com> I also think the biggest part of the announcement was pdf support. I think pdf now becomes a required feature for any competitive reader product. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu May 7 22:46:32 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 02:46:32 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: michael said: > Using your own statistics I thus defeat you: defeat? it's not a contest. it's a conversation. :+) we're all blind men trying to describe an elephant. > Using your own statistics I thus defeat you: > Half the US population is 150 million people. > MAYBE 1/3 of one percent have a Kindle. . . . well, if you look, i said that _among_book-buyers_, the kindle is popular, so i think i described it well... but if you want to quibble over the word "popular", i'll rescind it, in favor of "significant", so it now says: among book-buyers, the kindle is now significant... since this very small percentage of the u.s. population -- 1/3 of one percent, if we use your figure, michael -- now accounts for 1/3 of the books purchased at amazon -- at least for the titles which are available for kindle -- i think it's hard to deny that their impact is "significant"... heck, i thought the 10% figure in february was shocking, but it didn't seem to draw very much comment, i thought. this 35% figure, though, has been written up quite a bit... and everyone seems to think it's just as surprising as i do. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 00:06:20 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:06:20 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <885924044.23084.1241740336871.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> References: <885924044.23084.1241740336871.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: Since Amazon has been keeping them such a secret, it seems obvious they are lower than we thought-- but, given time, they will get to a million. However, compared to iPods, iPhones, and clones, Kindles don't really match up at all. . . . I would guess the combination of Sony readers AND Kindles has now passed a million. . . . Might have done that first of this year. . . . As far as all the PR goes, it's just that, PR. I want to see them claim actual list price SALES of a million Kindles. . . . Now that they added the new one, it might happen by Thanksgiving.... Obviously we couldn't count THAT one earlier. On Thu, 7 May 2009, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Since most estimates I found range between 750,000 and 1 million already ... I'd say that's a good bet to take, Michael.(Example of > one of the pages I found for that statistic: http://ireaderreview.com/2009/04/05/kindle-sales-estimates-kindle-revenue-estimates/For > a tech toy that has an admittedly limited appeal (so few people read books), I'm fairly impressed with the Kindle numbers so > far.JoshMay 7, 2009 12:42:40 PM, hart at pglaf.org wrote:===========================================Using your own statistics I thus > defeat you:Half the US population is 150 million people.MAYBE 1/3 of one percent have a Kindle. . . .iPods [and clones] are > popular.iPhones [and clones] are popular.Wolverine is popular.Star Trek is popular.Kindles are, as yet, statistically > insignificant.Want to bet me whether they sell just ONE millionby Thanksgiving???On Thu, 7 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote:> > michael said:> > ? ?Not what _I_ would call a "popular" eBook reader, as the> > media says.>> book-reading itself isn't all that > "popular", we must remind> ourselves.>> half the population read one book or less (i.e., zero books) last> year...>> and many > book-readers don't _buy_ books, but rather use the> library.>> so i'd say that -- among book-buyers -- kindles are pretty> > popular...>> -bowerbird>>>> ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near> you now.> > (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006)>_______________________________________________gutvol-d > mailing listgutvol-d at lists.pglaf.orghttp://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 00:07:47 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:07:47 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] !@!@!Kindle Message-ID: Has anyone checked out the http://KindleLibrary.org. There are hundreds of thousand of eBooks for kindle owners there. We are interested in getting some feedback on the site. From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 00:51:06 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 00:51:06 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: > > Using your own statistics I thus defeat you: > > defeat? it's not a contest. it's a conversation. :+) > > we're all blind men trying to describe an elephant. > > > > Using your own statistics I thus defeat you: > > Half the US population is 150 million people. > > MAYBE 1/3 of one percent have a Kindle. . . . > > well, if you look, i said that _among_book-buyers_, > the kindle is popular, so i think i described it well... > > but if you want to quibble over the word "popular", > i'll rescind it, in favor of "significant", so it now says: > among book-buyers, the kindle is now significant... that's why I eliminated HALF the population. . . . you want me to eliminate 90%??? That still leaves 30.5 million people, and Kindle ain't gonna ever reach that many. . .which is still NOTHING compare to the number of cellphones at 4.3 billion, or computers at 1.3 billion. You have to reach the masses where they ARE!!! Which is NOT Kindles or Sonys. . .and never will be. I still say the Kindle 1 will never sell a million. I still say the Kindle 2 will never sell a million by Thanksgiving. I'd bet on the new one, but I don't know anything about it yet. However, the REAL point is what we can call POPULAR. When Kindles sell 10% per year of iPhones/clones, which may actually be this year, can we REALLY say they are popular? Just saying they are popular with a small core group is like say something is popular with sports car owners. After all, the Corvette is a "popular" car, but doesn't sell all that many more than 1,000 per month, and there are not usually even 10,000 available for purchase. Thus, using a small sample does not mean anything much on a national or international scale. However, I will also bet that Kindle sales this year will NOT equal 10% of iPhones and their clones. . . . It's just all PR smoke and mirrors paid for by Bezos, until they sall a Bezillion of them. . . . Who wants to bet on when Kindle 2 sells the millionth? Or the new Kindle? Or the old Kindle? > since this very small percentage of the u.s. population > -- 1/3 of one percent, if we use your figure, michael -- > now accounts for 1/3 of the books purchased at amazon > -- at least for the titles which are available for kindle -- > i think it's hard to deny that their impact is "significant"... It may be significant to Amazon, but until it passes 10% of all books sold, period, it is still INsignificant for the whole ball of wax. Anyone want to make a wager when 10% of all books sold are eBooks? > heck, i thought the 10% figure in february was shocking, > but it didn't seem to draw very much comment, i thought. > > this 35% figure, though, has been written up quite a bit... > and everyone seems to think it's just as surprising as i do. I don't think it's shocking because I don't believe Amazon is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. However, IF Amazon is selling 1/3 of all books sold in America, and IF Amazon's Kindle is selling 35% of Amazon's book sales, THEN eBooks, just KINDLE eBooks, are already selling 10%!!!!!!! Of all books sold in the U.S. And if you believe THAT. . .heehee! > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. > (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > From richfield at telkomsa.net Fri May 8 02:23:33 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 12:23:33 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <627d59b80905071828s464a4918i8e166cca617a0700@mail.gmail.com> References: <627d59b80905071828s464a4918i8e166cca617a0700@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A040825.3050005@telkomsa.net> don kretz wrote: > I also think the biggest part of the announcement was pdf support. I > think pdf now becomes a required feature for any competitive reader > product. Yes. this is a VERY important development. On one hand it is nice because there are many free PDF converters around nowadays. But nice though it is, PDF plus proprietary formats are not all one might ask. For instance, I am wondering whether Kindles and similar devices and interfaces will be deliberately obstructive by refusing to read any but their own approved versions of the notation. Though I am tempted (thanks Jim et Al et al. for the pricing info) I also am strongly inclined to vote with my patience and my wallet for waiting till some rival device appears that will read several of the most important data formats, including common word processors AND ABOVE ALL, vanilla TXT. I am not as wedded to TXT as Michael Hart, but I still regard it as the most basic requirement for many purposes. Cheaper also would be nice, but not as important as the other considerations. I may of course have missed something, I commonly do, as I demonstrated with my ignorance about the Kindle price, and if so I should be grateful for enlightenment on the point, but I noticed no such features mentioned in the snippets that I did see. In any case I think it is an important theme and I invite thoughts on the subject. For instance, using a reader for reading is all very well, but I read a LOT of stuff besides ebooks, including HTM, TXT, DOC and a job lot besides. PDF is increasingly important certainly, but I want something that can connect to a flash drive or the like and read most of the stuff I might put on it. That would make the device indispensible to the office user as well as the newspaper reader and the readers of ... (what were those things agian? Poogs? Anyway, fluttery things with scribbly stuff.). Trying to make the device depend on particular formats would be (should be) commercially suicidal and I would contribute my mite to assistance at the suicide of the perpetrators. After all, if they think that no one will ever discover how to make such a device outside the US, I reckon they will discover some painful truths about wishful thinking. Personally I am strongly repelled by a format that I cannot easily read in its internal notation. Many years ago I used to work in the computer industry and I made it my business to be able to read most of the extant file formats. Nowadays I am a user and I neither am interested in investing that sort of time, nor able to cover all the hundreds (thousands?) of formats that are pullulating out there. Any comments (about the Kindle rather than my ignorance, for preference!) Cheers, Jon From traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it Fri May 8 02:54:54 2009 From: traverso at posso.dm.unipi.it (Carlo Traverso) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:54:54 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@!Kindle In-Reply-To: (hart@pglaf.org) References: Message-ID: <20090508105454.88E1D93B61@cardano.dm.unipi.it> >>>>> "Michael" == Michael S Hart writes: Michael> Has anyone checked out the http://KindleLibrary.org. Michael> There are hundreds of thousand of eBooks for kindle Michael> owners there. Michael> We are interested in getting some feedback on the site. It seems to be a collection of pdf, kindle users have to pass through amazon to get a conversion into kindle format. The 255531 english books seem to be in large majority US government publications (Publisher: United States Department of the Treasury, Publisher: Department of Defense, etc) There are 347 books in french, distributed between ebooksgratuits.com and canadian government publications Searching by publisher is possible, it contains 10911 from Project Gutenberg Consortia Center. Do they pay any royalty? (the service is reserved to subscribers, so it is a commercial site). They also have 13619 from blackmask: more from PG. They seem just an attempt to make money from users unaware of the existence of available free books. I will never give them the 8.90$ they want. Carlo PS (added after composing the message) They seem to be from Hawaii, PO Box 22687, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA 96823. This gave me a suspicion, and I found: John Guagliardo Organization: Project Gutenberg Consortia C Address 1: P.O. Box 22687 From joshua at hutchinson.net Fri May 8 05:55:25 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 13:55:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: <747670091.70022.1241790925901.JavaMail.mail@webmail06> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paulette.jenner at gmail.com Fri May 8 06:00:41 2009 From: paulette.jenner at gmail.com (Paulette Jenner) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:00:41 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <747670091.70022.1241790925901.JavaMail.mail@webmail06> References: <747670091.70022.1241790925901.JavaMail.mail@webmail06> Message-ID: I will buy a Kindle (or similar device) when its book collection is DRM free, and not before. I suspect I am not the only one in this position, and I imagine it is hurting Amazon's sales. I want to buy books, not rent them. I have no interest in amassing a book collection in a proprietary format which may not be around in 40 years, and from which I have no legal right to convert. ~P. On May 8, 2009, at 9:55 AM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > Just a quick FYI, the Kindle will read vanilla TXT. Drop the file > across USB to the Kindle and it appears in the list of books as > whatever the file name is. It isn't always pretty to read (that's > the nature of TXT), but it is readable. > > Josh > > On May 8, 2009, richfield at telkomsa.net wrote: > > Though I am tempted (thanks Jim et Al et al. for the pricing > info) I > also am strongly inclined to vote with my patience and my wallet for > waiting till some rival device appears that will read several of the > most important data formats, including common word processors AND > ABOVE > ALL, vanilla TXT. I am not as wedded to TXT as Michael Hart, but I > still regard it as the most basic requirement for many purposes. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d From marcello at perathoner.de Fri May 8 07:38:11 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 17:38:11 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@!Kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A0451E3.5060509@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > Has anyone checked out the http://KindleLibrary.org. There are hundreds of > thousand of eBooks for kindle owners there. > > We are interested in getting some feedback on the site. "This book is copyrighted by the World eBook Library." -- their "free as in beer" version of Alice in Wonderland. Duh! ~$ whois kindlelibrary.org Registrant ID:GODA-040252721 Registrant Name:John Guagliardo Registrant Organization:World Public Library Association Registrant Street1:P.O. Box 22687 Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Honolulu Registrant State/Province:Hawaii Registrant Postal Code:96823 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.8082922068 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:Webmaster at WorldLibrary.net From marcello at perathoner.de Fri May 8 08:13:33 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 18:13:33 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A045A2D.6000206@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > However, I will also bet that Kindle sales this year > will NOT equal 10% of iPhones and their clones. . . . If a body buys an ebook reader you can be pretty confident that she will use it to read books. And you don't spend $300 if you just read a little: You read a lot. If somebody buys an iPhone (which is basically an inflated iPod) you can be pretty confident that he will listen to music on it. The most popular iPhone application is "The Moron Test". Seeing is believing: http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/#paid How it works? If you buy this test, you are a moron. If you show it to your wife, you are a complete asshole... From gbnewby at pglaf.org Fri May 8 09:44:05 2009 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 09:44:05 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Another commercial site Message-ID: <20090508174405.GC7254@snowy.arsc.alaska.edu> Since we're looking at commercial sites, here's a new one. -- Greg ----- Forwarded message from Robert Billing ----- From: Robert Billing Subject: Redistribution You may recall that some time ago I wrote to you asking you if I might redistribute Project Gutenberg e-texts in a suitable format for portable readers. The site is now up complete with search tools and suggested reading lists. I have 21,000 of your texts available for instant download. Please feel free to take a look: http://www.alex-library.com If you could see you way to giving me a link on the Project Gutenberg site it would be much appreciated. Royalties will be coming your way as soon as we have some customers. -- Robert Billing MA Tanglewood Algorithms Limited Phone/Fax 01344-772849 [Software Engineering Consultancy] International +44-1344-772849 64, Pinehill Road, Crowthorne, Mobile 07770-902246 Berkshire, UK, RG45 7JR ----- End forwarded message ----- From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 09:44:21 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 09:44:21 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A045A2D.6000206@perathoner.de> References: <4A045A2D.6000206@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > However, I will also bet that Kindle sales this year > > will NOT equal 10% of iPhones and their clones. . . . > > > If a body buys an ebook reader you can be pretty confident that she will use > it to read books. And you don't spend $300 if you just read a little: You read > a lot. "a lot" is still a relative term. No one seems to expect the average Kindle owner to buy more than a book a month, and even the most wild speculations are based on 3 a month by people who don't say that will actually happen. If people are going to talk in relative terminology, it doesn't really mean anything in terms of numbers, hard numbers, and if Kindle doesn't sell in numbers, hard numbers, it will continue to be more PR than an actual reality. > If somebody buys an iPhone (which is basically an inflated iPod) you can be > pretty confident that he will listen to music on it. I would be even more confident about phone calls. However, if only 10% of iPhone users read eBooks on their iPhones, that's more than Kindle users. Apple will sell 10 million iPhones this year and may have sold about that many last year. Again, I repeat, because no one seems to hear it, WE MUST REACH PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE LIVING!!!!!!! People are living with cellphones. . .67% of ALL PEOPLE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET HAVE A CELLPHONE. 20% of the world population maybe has computers. 0%, in round numbers, have a Kindle or Sony. They have to sell 100 million to hit even 1%. They aren't even TRYING for that kind of market! The REALITY of these products lies in numbers of how many are sold and used. The 4.3 billion number of cellphones doesn't even include those that are not in service, but should still make fine eBook readers. . . . Stop being SUBjective. Start being OBjective. From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 8 10:05:25 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:05:25 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: i'm not sure what you're saying, michael, or why you're saying it. yes, the kindle is a niche product. but the niche product that is kindle is now selling a shitload of e-books. so many that it's outright surprising. lots of kindle owners report that they are reading more now than ever before, _and_ that they are buying more books... honest-to-goodness people are saying that, not amazon p.r. flacks. after literally decades of slow e-book uptake, that surprises me... and i think it's good news. but by all means, you can take it however you like. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 8 10:17:55 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:17:55 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: sorry, i thought i'd sent this earlier, but evidently not... *** michael said: > Since Amazon has been keeping them such a secret, > it seems obvious they are lower than we thought-- a lot of people use that argument. i'm skeptical of it. i think it's just as likely that a business would prefer to keep details of a money-making machine secret, so as not to entice the competition into the arena... the noise-makers get more attention, to be sure, but the stealth ones take more money out of your pocket. but i don't think that's the case in this situation either. the truth of the matter for this is much more direct: the e-ink factory can't make the screens fast enough. amazon sells 'em as fast as the factory can make 'em. but even here, that's not the point. you are looking at the wrong thing. the issue is not the number of kindles that have been sold. we all agree that number is small. what's fascinating is that the small number of people who own a kindle exert a disproportionate influence in the number of units moved. and no, that influence doesn't extend to amazon's bottom line, both because the e-books are priced lower than the p-books _and_ because amazon currently _subsidizes_ the e-books, precisely because it wants to move users to the future. what's important to notice here, though, is that those users are indeed migrating to the future, and quickly. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcello at perathoner.de Fri May 8 10:23:43 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 20:23:43 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <4A045A2D.6000206@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <4A0478AF.8030407@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > Again, I repeat, because no one seems to hear it, > WE MUST REACH PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE LIVING!!!!!!! And that's why we still give them plain vanilla ascii files in the year 2009... There's a "free as in beer" app called "Kindle for iPhone" so everybody is happy. Now somebody just go find out how many of them were sold. (The apple web site keeps telling me to install iTunes if I want to see anything. On my Linux laptop, over my dead body!) From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 10:33:37 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:33:37 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > i'm not sure what you're saying, > michael, or why you're saying it. Just trying to make things clearer, unlike using terms like "shitload," "lots," "popular". . . . > yes, the kindle is a niche product. Then make that clear. The adjectives above do NOT help this. Nor below. . . . "Just the facts, man. Just the facts." > but the niche product that is kindle > is now selling a shitload of e-books. > so many that it's outright surprising. > > lots of kindle owners report that they > are reading more now than ever before, > _and_ that they are buying more books... > > honest-to-goodness people are saying that, > not amazon p.r. flacks. > > after literally decades of slow e-book uptake, > that surprises me... and i think it's good news. It's still slow. . .on a world or national scale. > but by all means, you can take it however you like. No, you can't. . .there is only ONE objective truth. > > -bowerbird mh From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 10:35:04 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 10:35:04 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A0478AF.8030407@perathoner.de> References: <4A045A2D.6000206@perathoner.de> <4A0478AF.8030407@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > Again, I repeat, because no one seems to hear it, > > WE MUST REACH PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE LIVING!!!!!!! > > And that's why we still give them plain vanilla ascii files in the year > 2009... > > There's a "free as in beer" app called "Kindle for iPhone" so everybody is > happy. Now somebody just go find out how many of them were sold. (The apple > web site keeps telling me to install iTunes if I want to see anything. On my > Linux laptop, over my dead body!) Then you will never understand how the rest of the world is, and you will keep speaking from ignorance. mh From richfield at telkomsa.net Fri May 8 11:32:12 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 21:32:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <747670091.70022.1241790925901.JavaMail.mail@webmail06> Message-ID: <4A0488BC.5030202@telkomsa.net> Paulette > I will buy a Kindle (or similar device) when its book collection is > DRM free, and not before. I suspect I am not the only one in this > position, and I imagine it is hurting Amazon's sales. > > I want to buy books, not rent them. I have no interest in amassing a > book collection in a proprietary format which may not be around in 40 > years, and from which I have no legal right to convert. > > ~P. Yep, I can go with those points, big time. > >> Just a quick FYI, the Kindle will read vanilla TXT. Drop the file >> across USB to the Kindle and it appears in the list of books as >> whatever the file name is. It isn't always pretty to read (that's >> the nature of TXT), but it is readable. >> >> Josh Josh, thanks. I had been wondering whether everyone had gone nuts but me. Now I know it was only me... I think... Anyway, what Paulette said. I may or may not be anally retentive, but sure as shelf-space shrinks, I am biblioretentive. Cheers all, Jon From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 8 11:41:07 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 15:41:07 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: michael said: > Just trying to make things clearer, > unlike using terms like "shitload," > "lots," "popular". . . . when 1 e-book is being sold for every 2 p-books, that is officially "a shitload", michael, i looked it up. ;+) and it also means that amazon is selling "lots" of e-books, and that -- to amazon at least -- e-books are indeed becoming quite "popular". and yeah, there are many more cell-phones out there in the world, but i'm not hearing _nearly_ so many people talk about reading e-books on their cell-phone as their kindle. and these days, if i do hear about someone reading an e-book on their cell-phone, it's likely to be someone reading a kindle-book using amazon's kindle-app on their iphone. i said: > > yes, the kindle is a niche product. michael said: > Then make that clear. i think i made it _extremely_ clear, at the outset, when i said i've never seen a kindle in the wild... never. could that be any more clear? never seen a sony machine in the wild either... saw one at a sony booth, at a big book festival, but never in real use out here in the real world. but hey, performance poetry is "a niche product" too, yet i know people making their living off it... -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 12:03:31 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:03:31 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: > > Just trying to make things clearer, > > unlike using terms like "shitload," > > "lots," "popular". . . . > > when 1 e-book is being sold for every 2 p-books, > that is officially "a shitload", michael, i looked it up. ;+) Reminder: This is Amazon talking. Amazon talking about internal affairs. What share of pbooks do they have these days? > and it also means that amazon is selling "lots" > of e-books, and that -- to amazon at least -- > e-books are indeed becoming quite "popular". I'd like some solid numbers please. > and yeah, there are many more cell-phones > out there in the world, but i'm not hearing > _nearly_ so many people talk about reading > e-books on their cell-phone as their kindle. I've heard just the opposite. . . . Even on PDAs. > and these days, if i do hear about someone > reading an e-book on their cell-phone, it's > likely to be someone reading a kindle-book > using amazon's kindle-app on their iphone. > i said: > > > yes, the kindle is a niche product. > michael said: > > Then make that clear. > > i think i made it _extremely_ clear, at the outset, > when i said i've never seen a kindle in the wild... > > never. could that be any more clear? > > never seen a sony machine in the wild either... > saw one at a sony booth, at a big book festival, > but never in real use out here in the real world. > > but hey, performance poetry is "a niche product" > too, yet i know people making their living off it... Kindle just barely exists, except in their PR world. > > -bowerbird mh From lee at novomail.net Fri May 8 12:03:04 2009 From: lee at novomail.net (Lee Passey) Date: Fri, 08 May 2009 14:03:04 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A048FF8.3000402@novomail.net> Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: [snip] > and these days, if i do hear about someone > reading an e-book on their cell-phone, it's > likely to be someone reading a kindle-book > using amazon's kindle-app on their iphone. FWIW, I never read e-books on my cell phone, although I do occasionally make phone calls on my Windows Mobile based e-book reader. It's all a matter of perspective... From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 12:12:11 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 12:12:11 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] The Kindle As A Public Relations Blitz Message-ID: by Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg, Inventor of eBooks Why the Big Flap About the Kindle eBook Reader? It hasn't sold enough to pass 1/3 of one percent, even if you only consider the United States population. I keep reading things about how popular the Kindle is, without much in the way of real numbers to support it. This is much the work of Jeff Bezos PR team spending a million dollars in the hopes of foolling the public to the point where they believe the Kindle is "in," while the FACT is that Amazon has not even sold one million, and is unwilling to even SAY how many they have sold-- following Sony's lead in refusing to give hard facts. The truth is that even counting Amazon AND Sony it was hard to decide if they had sold a million together, at the beginning of 2009, just because of muddy numbers. Oh, yes, we get various prophets, profits, and pundits saying various numbers, but nothing as hard evidence. When Amazon has paid taxes on the sale of a million of the Kindles, THAT will be hard evidence. Defining Our Terms Meanwhile, I hear the word "popular" used more all the time, pretty much as if the media, and my friends, all have read the same public relations blurb and are nice enough to recite it as if Big Brother said to. However, when it comes down to hard numbers, not even, literally, the most paid off pundits will pretend that the Kindles, counting all three models, have sold just one million units, between them all. Not one million. On a United States scale a million is less then just a third of one percent, still zero percent in integers. On a worldwide scale a million doesn't register at all compared to the 1.3 Billion computers, and 4.5 Billion active cellphones were U.N. estimated for this year. The world and U.S. population clocks right now say: 6.778 billion and 306 million Meaning that about 2/3 of all the world has cellphones in active accounts at this very moment. ~66.39% Obviously this is higher in the more developed places. Cellphones are more than popular. . .more ubiquitous. iPods are popular. . .but only ~10 million per year. The iPhone App Store had 60 million downloads a month, right from the first month last year, bringing in lots of cash and new iPhone purchases, as well. What wouldn't Amazon do to hand out 60 million eBooks, in the first month of opening a new eBookstore??? The iPhone App Store brought in a million dollars in a single opening month. . . . iPhone sales were 3.8 million first quarter of 2009. Right in the jaws of the recession. Apple also sold 11 million iPods in the first quarter. Since iPhones and iPods with screens work with eBooks, I say it is far more worthwhile to be addressing those kinds of platforms than Kindle, which supposedly isn't going to need much addressing at all, if it can really handle plain text and .pdfs as well as they say. As for the entire DRM and other proprietary issues the various conversations have brought up, I keep quiet on those issues pretty much, feeling Darwinian pressures, such as they are, will do their thing on that front as well as on the dedicated hardware front, as it did for the Wang word processors, typewriters, and the like. This is the way the world evolves, conservative is not good for evolution. . . . mh From jimad at msn.com Fri May 8 13:25:44 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 14:25:44 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, after spending a couple minutes researching this site: There is nothing particularly "Kindle" about the site--other than the fact they are remarketing previous work in the an attempt to pick up sales to the now-PDF-supporting DX. This is actually a PDF library service, it is essentially the same thing as "World Public Library." http://www.worldlibrary.net/ A "free" subset of their offerings is available at: http://kindlelibrary.net/give-away.htm I happened to pick at random "Jules Verne Journey to the Centre of the Earth" where page 4 it talks elliptically about "Project Gutenberg" without ever actually saying whether or not this copy of the text was copied from there. I would think that even most DX owners will be unhappy reading fixed-format PDF E-Books unless they have no choice. The reason we tolerate PDF for technical articles is because we do not have a good way to convert the tables, formulas, graphs, etc to E-Book floating format. Certainly if I had a DX in my hand today and could not find a E-Book free-formatted copy of some obscure text in a couple minutes, then rather than paying my $8 a year then personally I would go to Google Books where I can get a PDF "photocopy" for free and it will probably be a first or second edition which personally I would find more interesting. Or I can get a free E-Book formatted copy via the Sony/Google free E-book site and in half a minute use Calibre to turn the Sony Format into a Kindle-formatted E-book -- assuming I am willing to tolerate all the scannos in the Google scans in the first place! PS: Personally I have no objection to seeing some college student's thumb show up in the middle of the books I'm reading unless it obscures the text.... ;-) From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 8 15:53:21 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 19:53:21 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: michael said: > This is Amazon talking. > Amazon talking about internal affairs. > What share of pbooks do they have these days? about 14% last i heard. and the other 86% is scared shitless... for good reason. amazon is eating their lunch, abducting their children, and raiding their retirement fund... > I'd like some solid numbers please. all we have are amazon's lies... and sweet lies they are, since they could be about just about anything, but amazon hype decided to tell its lies about electronic-books. i'm sure they are also moving refrigerators, and color tv's too, lots and lots of color tv's, i assure you, "lots" even by your standards, since i have seen many of those "in the wild". but amazon is choosing to tell its stories about e-books. evidently it takes the "bookstore" label seriously. even the p.r. department got the memo. > I've heard just the opposite. . . . > Even on PDAs. that's entirely possible. i'm sure we talk to different people. :+) > Kindle just barely exists, except in their PR world. hey, you know who's been doing all of the kindle hype? the blogs. techcrunch, engadget, mobileread, teleread. they all preannounced the thing for well over a full year, and they haven't stopped talking about it since, jeez i've been so sick of it, for so long, i no longer vomit over it... everyone is sick of hearing about this darned little gadget, but they just won't stop talking about it, i do need to vomit. *** michael said: > Since iPhones and iPods with screens work with eBooks, > I say it is far more worthwhile to be addressing those > kinds of platforms than Kindle, which supposedly isn't > going to need much addressing at all, if it can really > handle plain text and .pdfs as well as they say. of course we don't do any work to "address" the kindle. that's amazon's job. and they're doing a fine job of it... nobody is donating _any_ time to amazon, that's for sure. as for addressing the iphone.ipod, nobody _should_ have to do any work to address those either, since apple is surely capable of doing that work. however, lots of people _are_ doing it, for their own interest, as i'm sure you know. stanza's first big chunk of books was from project gutenberg. same with feedbooks.com, and manybooks.com. appengines, the guy who did the first bunch of iphone e-books, used p.g. texts, as did the guys who did the "classics" app (as shown on t.v.), not to mention bookz and a variety of lesser-known apps. together these ebook iphone-apps have taken in about $1million, i'd estimate, and maybe more. who knows what amazon paid for lexcycle, but i'd guess it would be more than the $3million paid for mobipocket years ago. o'reilly has made a big deal out of their iphone e-book. greg just gave us the example of another guy setting up a "library" consisting in its present entirety of recycling p.g. and finally, here's another iphone e-book app due soon: > http://th.ingsmadeoutofotherthin.gs/eucalyptus/ called "eucalyptus". (google "eucalyptus project gutenberg".) you guessed it, it pulls down e-texts from project gutenberg. by the way, since a lot of these guys tell the blogs that they will be donating some proceeds back to project gutenberg, it's probably time for you to be confirming that they _are_ -- or are not -- so the press of public opinion is on them. all of this in spite of the fact that apple don't need no help. in fact, when apple decides they're gonna step in this mess, they'll sweep all the cash up for themselves. wouldn't you? (no, michael hart, not you, the public "you", typically greedy.) oh yeah, i'll soon start writing my own e-book iphone app. it'll pull e-texts from my website, the e-texts which i have repurposed from project gutenberg, deleting your name, as per your terms... > As for the entire DRM and other proprietary issues the > various conversations have brought up, I keep quiet on > those issues pretty much, feeling Darwinian pressures, > such as they are, will do their thing on that front as > well as on the dedicated hardware front, as it did for > the Wang word processors, typewriters, and the like. i'm with you 100% on all that. the noises that amazon is making about kindle being a purpose-built machine are silly ridiculous. people want that machine to be full-powered, and for $500 they will _expect_ it to provide a completely browsing experience. (unless apple establishes a higher pricepoint, like $800, for that functionality, in which case amazon could stall, and their customers wouldn't abandon them in droves. still, if the kindle keeps a non-color screen, amazon will have to have a lower pricepoint so as to offset that flaw. but you have to also remember that netbooks are there in the mix as well, with their pricepoint and capabilities. so it won't be long until we have a full-fledged computer in a 9*12 form-factor with a good screen at a good price. the "good screen" might be pixel qi, work inside and out, and the "good price" might come in at around $300-$400. look for a huge burst of creativity when all _that_ happens.) > This is the way the world evolves, > conservative is not good for evolution. . . . i don't intend to let amazon stop my growth. or apple. or google. or any of the dinosaurs. but if they do something that's good for e-books, i'm not gonna stand in their way and yell at them... they will die off naturally. no reason for me to kill 'em. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 16:42:52 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 16:42:52 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Several points before replying to individual notes. 1. World Public Library is NOT a commercial venue. It is a 501 (c) (4) non-profit corporation. The major, perhaps only, difference from 501 (c) (3) is that they are membership driven, for a maximum of $8.95 a year for unlimited permanent downloading the 500,000 or so eBooks they have, and lower rates from schools and other groups, and even free access to an assortment of people who can't afford it. 2. Most of us are missing the point about this huge discussion, which is that we should be addressing an eBook system that brings eBooks to cellphones. I note the bowerbird had finally addressed this in a most recent message, but somehow misinterpreted what the point is about taking out the PG trademark which is totally unneccessary unless HE is now commerical. 3. Cellphones, USB flash drives and terabyte drives are the wave of the future. . .one really hardly has to even OWN a computer any longer to fill these up. More later, Michael From joshua at hutchinson.net Fri May 8 16:55:51 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 00:55:51 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 16:59:49 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 16:59:49 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Several points before replying to individual notes. 4. Amazon and Sony and many others have apparently taken much of their start up position in eBooks out of Project Gutenberg and The World Public Library. I mention to them from time to time that approaches such as this seem intended to kill the goose laying the golden eggs from which such enterprises take an early start in their development. The responses I get seem to be on the order of: "That's exactly what we WANT to do, kill you off!" After all, someone who wants to make their living, so to speak, from selling gold, doesn't want there to still be a free source of gold to customers. Amazon and Sony, et. al., would prefer that once a start up has begun, to eliminate all competition-- including all that helped them get started. These people now want to be the "deBeers" of eBook transactions and thus to corner the market on such goods as are plentiful enough for everyone to have all they want. Are you not familiar with the fact that there have been enough mined diamonds for years for everyone, literally EVERYONE, to have plenty of them? But deBeers hoards them to artificial scarcity. This artificial scarcity is the founding block out of which the current eBook market is created. That is why copyright gets longer and longer and a name of "pirate" is given NOT to those who steal a public domain of millions of books, but to those I presume only steal a few books. Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks Recommended Books: Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand: For The Left Brain [or both] Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 17:03:55 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 17:03:55 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > On May 8, 2009, joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: > > Yeah, *everybody* I know has a cell phone. > > I know exactly zero that have READ a book on a cell phone.? Even with high end phones, like iPhones, the screens are not > fun to read a whole book on. Admittedly a very small sample, I presume. > I really don't think current phones will ever be a major eBook platform, just like people's computers aren't major eBook > platforms.? Sure, people do it, but not a LOT of people. Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. 20 times more than all dedicated eBook readers, not to mention those reading on computers. However, if Josh is REALLY CORRECT, and no one is reading eBooks on cellphones, that is fault of no one but OURSELVES. . . . We should be making it easier on them to do it! Michael > > Josh > > > On May 8, 2009, hart at pglaf.org wrote: > > > On Fri, 8 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > However, I will also bet that Kindle sales this year > > > will NOT equal 10% of iPhones and their clones. . . . > > > > > > If a body buys an ebook reader you can be pretty confident that she will use > > it to read books. And you don't spend $300 if you just read a little: You read > > a lot. > > "a lot" is still a relative term. > > No one seems to expect the average Kindle owner to buy more than a > book a month, and even the most wild speculations are based on 3 a > month by people who don't say that will actually happen. > > If people are going to talk in relative terminology, > it doesn't really mean anything in terms of numbers, > hard numbers, and if Kindle doesn't sell in numbers, > hard numbers, it will continue to be more PR than an > actual reality. > > > > If somebody buys an iPhone (which is basically an inflated iPod) you can be > > pretty confident that he will listen to music on it. > > I would be even more confident about phone calls. > > However, if only 10% of iPhone users read eBooks > on their iPhones, that's more than Kindle users. > > Apple will sell 10 million iPhones this year and > may have sold about that many last year. > > Again, I repeat, because no one seems to hear it, > WE MUST REACH PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE LIVING!!!!!!! > > People are living with cellphones. . .67% of ALL > PEOPLE ON THE ENTIRE PLANET HAVE A CELLPHONE. > > 20% of the world population maybe has computers. > > 0%, in round numbers, have a Kindle or Sony. > > They have to sell 100 million to hit even 1%. > > They aren't even TRYING for that kind of market! > > > The REALITY of these products lies in numbers of > how many are sold and used. > > The 4.3 billion number of cellphones doesn't even > include those that are not in service, but should > still make fine eBook readers. . . . > > > Stop being SUBjective. > > Start being OBjective. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From hart at pglaf.org Fri May 8 17:17:46 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Fri, 8 May 2009 17:17:46 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 8 May 2009, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: > > This is Amazon talking. > > Amazon talking about internal affairs. > > What share of pbooks do they have these days? > > about 14% last i heard. So, about 1 out of 7 books goes through Amazon. And abaout 1/3 of those are said to be eBooks. If we believe all that. . . . That means 2.x% of books sold are eBooks. . . . Not yet a "popular" medium. . . . > and the other 86% is scared shitless... I doubt it. > for good reason. When and if it hits 10%, then think about it. Most new ventures never make it. Even when done by Google, Amazon, etc. > amazon is eating their lunch, > abducting their children, and > raiding their retirement fund... Amazon is just a few years out of the red, let's see if they ever become a "maturing" industry such as Microsoft. . . . > > I'd like some solid numbers please. > > all we have are amazon's lies... > > and sweet lies they are, since they could be > about just about anything, but amazon hype > decided to tell its lies about electronic-books. > > i'm sure they are also moving refrigerators, > and color tv's too, lots and lots of color tv's, > i assure you, "lots" even by your standards, > since i have seen many of those "in the wild". > > but amazon is choosing to tell its stories about > e-books. evidently it takes the "bookstore" label > seriously. even the p.r. department got the memo. I think the PR dept. WROTE the memo. . . . > > > > I've heard just the opposite. . . . > > Even on PDAs. > > that's entirely possible. > > i'm sure we talk to different people. :+) > > > > Kindle just barely exists, except in their PR world. > hey, you know who's been doing all of the kindle hype? > the blogs. techcrunch, engadget, mobileread, teleread. This is because Amazon provided them the soapbox on which they could be heard even more. . .and no other reason. > they all preannounced the thing for well over a full year, > and they haven't stopped talking about it since, jeez i've > been so sick of it, for so long, i no longer vomit over it... > everyone is sick of hearing about this darned little gadget, > but they just won't stop talking about it, i do need to vomit. I fully admit it is a cute gadget. Period. It just does not have a cute cost/benefit ratio. There are so many other things you could buy for the same amount of money that do so so much more! > > *** > > michael said: > > Since iPhones and iPods with screens work with eBooks, > > I say it is far more worthwhile to be addressing those > > kinds of platforms than Kindle, which supposedly isn't > > going to need much addressing at all, if it can really > > handle plain text and .pdfs as well as they say. > > of course we don't do any work to "address" the kindle. > that's amazon's job. and they're doing a fine job of it... > nobody is donating _any_ time to amazon, that's for sure. > > as for addressing the iphone.ipod, nobody _should_ > have to do any work to address those either, since > apple is surely capable of doing that work. however, > lots of people _are_ doing it, for their own interest, > as i'm sure you know. stanza's first big chunk of books > was from project gutenberg. same with feedbooks.com, > and manybooks.com. appengines, the guy who did the > first bunch of iphone e-books, used p.g. texts, as did > the guys who did the "classics" app (as shown on t.v.), > not to mention bookz and a variety of lesser-known apps. > together these ebook iphone-apps have taken in about > $1million, i'd estimate, and maybe more. who knows > what amazon paid for lexcycle, but i'd guess it would be > more than the $3million paid for mobipocket years ago. > o'reilly has made a big deal out of their iphone e-book. > greg just gave us the example of another guy setting up > a "library" consisting in its present entirety of recycling p.g. > > and finally, here's another iphone e-book app due soon: > > http://th.ingsmadeoutofotherthin.gs/eucalyptus/ > called "eucalyptus". (google "eucalyptus project gutenberg".) > you guessed it, it pulls down e-texts from project gutenberg. > > by the way, since a lot of these guys tell the blogs that they > will be donating some proceeds back to project gutenberg, > it's probably time for you to be confirming that they _are_ > -- or are not -- so the press of public opinion is on them. > > all of this in spite of the fact that apple don't need no help. > in fact, when apple decides they're gonna step in this mess, > they'll sweep all the cash up for themselves. wouldn't you? > (no, michael hart, not you, the public "you", typically greedy.) > > oh yeah, i'll soon start writing my own e-book iphone app. > it'll pull e-texts from my website, the e-texts which i have > repurposed from project gutenberg, deleting your name, > as per your terms... Does this mean you'll be reselling them for a profit??? > > > > As for the entire DRM and other proprietary issues the > > various conversations have brought up, I keep quiet on > > those issues pretty much, feeling Darwinian pressures, > > such as they are, will do their thing on that front as > > well as on the dedicated hardware front, as it did for > > the Wang word processors, typewriters, and the like. > > i'm with you 100% on all that. Thus Kindle will go to join the dinosaurs. . . . > the noises that amazon is making about kindle being a > purpose-built machine are silly ridiculous. people want > that machine to be full-powered, and for $500 they will > _expect_ it to provide a completely browsing experience. > > (unless apple establishes a higher pricepoint, like $800, > for that functionality, in which case amazon could stall, > and their customers wouldn't abandon them in droves. > still, if the kindle keeps a non-color screen, amazon will > have to have a lower pricepoint so as to offset that flaw. > but you have to also remember that netbooks are there > in the mix as well, with their pricepoint and capabilities. > so it won't be long until we have a full-fledged computer > in a 9*12 form-factor with a good screen at a good price. > the "good screen" might be pixel qi, work inside and out, > and the "good price" might come in at around $300-$400. > look for a huge burst of creativity when all _that_ happens.) > > > > This is the way the world evolves, > > conservative is not good for evolution. . . . > > i don't intend to let amazon stop my growth. > or apple. or google. or any of the dinosaurs. > > but if they do something that's good for e-books, > i'm not gonna stand in their way and yell at them... > > they will die off naturally. no reason for me to kill 'em. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. > (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 8 21:50:26 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 01:50:26 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: =?iso-8859-1?q?!=40!_Re=3A=A0_Re=3A_larger-format_kindle?= Message-ID: michael said: > but somehow misinterpreted what the point is > about taking out the PG trademark which is > totally unnecessary unless HE is now commercial. i might charge a fee for my reader-program, just to demonstrate that it has value to people, but it won't be a very substantial price if i do... and i'd probably offer a free counterpart too, to reap the reward that would come from that. my main point would be to push the envelope on the functionality a viewer-app should give, and to demonstrate benefits of keep-it-simple. and very few of the iphone e-book viewer-apps have desktop counterparts, at least at present, so that's another missing-link that i'd provide... but the major capability i see missing at this point -- in terms of the project gutenberg e-texts -- is an ability to download en masse with one click. lots of copies keeps stuff safe, plus it also guards against corporations restoring artificial scarcity... and yeah, all of the books will also be "in the clear", regularized in regard to their zen markup language, on my website, as yet another version in cyberspace. most of the other jokers doing this put the text in a database, whereas my books are totally exposed, with an easy-to-grok u.r.l. file-naming convention, so other programmers can grab all of them at will... i'll probably echo them on my s3 (amazon!) account. the main reason i eliminated the p.g. boilerplate is because it's so ugly, and it just gets in the way. -bowerbird p.s. if i do charge a fee for my iphone apps, i'll set aside a portion of the proceeds, not for p.g. per se, but for health insurance for you, michael. i think you deserve that for the role you've played. ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcello at perathoner.de Sat May 9 01:00:24 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 11:00:24 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% and 0.00000000000000000000000001%. From marcello at perathoner.de Sat May 9 01:13:56 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 11:13:56 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A054954.2010300@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > So, about 1 out of 7 books goes through Amazon. > > And abaout 1/3 of those are said to be eBooks. > > If we believe all that. . . . > > That means 2.x% of books sold are eBooks. . . . If we believe all that, we still must do our math correctly: 1/7 * 1/3 = 1/21 = 4.7% and reason correctly: That means that *4.7%* of books sold are ebooks *sold thru Amazon*. Exercise for the reader: find out how many ebooks are sold or given away thru other channels and add those to the above figure. From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 03:11:39 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 03:11:39 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% and > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. That's why I use terms such as "let's say", "about," "approximately," and "~". . . . Everyone, except you, seems to realize these ARE approximations. I would say that even the U.N. figure of 4.2 billion for the beginning of this year was an approximation, as are most all the other figures, including the world and US populations. In fact, I would have to say, and so should you, that nearly all the statistics we ever get like this are approximations. So, what exactly IS the point? mh From marcello at perathoner.de Sat May 9 03:40:45 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 13:40:45 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <4A056BBD.2010700@perathoner.de> Michael S. Hart wrote: > Everyone, except you, seems to realize these ARE approximations. These are not approximations. These are phantasies. At least, learn the tools of the trade: If you have to make up a number, try a bit harder than "1%". You will fool nobody none of the time with a number like that. Next time say: "0.89%" or "12.27 millions". People will take much longer to realize that you just made those up. From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sat May 9 03:45:39 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 07:45:39 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird please realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never see such an application materalize. So now worry about the PG trademark or anything else he is spewing. Heck, I'm still waiting for his version of DP that he was going to build that was SOOOO much better. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:50 AM, wrote: > michael said: > > but somehow misinterpreted what the point is > > about taking out the PG trademark which is > > totally unnecessary unless HE is now commercial. > > i might charge a fee for my reader-program, > just to demonstrate that it has value to people, > but it won't be a very substantial price if i do... > and i'd probably offer a free counterpart too, > to reap the reward that would come from that. > > my main point would be to push the envelope > on the functionality a viewer-app should give, > and to demonstrate benefits of keep-it-simple. > > and very few of the iphone e-book viewer-apps > have desktop counterparts, at least at present, > so that's another missing-link that i'd provide... > > but the major capability i see missing at this point > -- in terms of the project gutenberg e-texts -- > is an ability to download en masse with one click. > lots of copies keeps stuff safe, plus it also guards > against corporations restoring artificial scarcity... > > and yeah, all of the books will also be "in the clear", > regularized in regard to their zen markup language, > on my website, as yet another version in cyberspace. > > most of the other jokers doing this put the text in > a database, whereas my books are totally exposed, > with an easy-to-grok u.r.l. file-naming convention, > so other programmers can grab all of them at will... > i'll probably echo them on my s3 (amazon!) account. > > the main reason i eliminated the p.g. boilerplate > is because it's so ugly, and it just gets in the way. > > -bowerbird > > p.s. if i do charge a fee for my iphone apps, i'll > set aside a portion of the proceeds, not for p.g. > per se, but for health insurance for you, michael. > i think you deserve that for the role you've played. > > > > ************** > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. ( > http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcello at perathoner.de Sat May 9 05:01:53 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 15:01:53 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Jim Adcock wrote: > I would think that even most DX owners will be unhappy reading fixed-format > PDF E-Books unless they have no choice. I'm experimenting with PGTEI and my Sony Reader and I'm more than pleased with reading PDFs on it. Picture: http://www.gnutenberg.de/pgtei/0.5/examples/pgtei-pdf-sony-reader.jpg I'm starting to believe PDF can beat EPUB on portable reading devices. You cannot scroll on the Sony Reader, just flip pages, and your screen size is fixed, so a pre-paged format makes more than sense. Also, footnotes are a real PITA with EPUB. The link is hard to follow without a mouse and they mostly end up in a different EPUB flow, so they take an eon to load and another one to get back. From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat May 9 09:29:11 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 13:29:11 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: joseph gruber said: > please realize that these are wild fantasies of his > and you'll never see such an application materalize you guys never learn, do you? even when your credibility is completely shredded, you keep telling your lies like you really believe 'em. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sat May 9 12:00:13 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 16:00:13 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Which lies are you referring to? Yours? Like always I'll be waiting here with baited breathed for that application to show up. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:29 PM, wrote: > joseph gruber said: > > please realize that these are wild fantasies of his > > and you'll never see such an application materalize > > you guys never learn, do you? > > even when your credibility is completely shredded, > you keep telling your lies like you really believe 'em. > > -bowerbird > > > > ************** > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. ( > http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat May 9 12:36:35 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 16:36:35 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle Message-ID: joseph said: > Like always I'll be waiting here with baited breathed > for that application to show up. like always, once it does show up, you'll pretend it hasn't... and keep repeating your "vaporware" lies, as if you thought everybody else is just as inattentive to the truth as you are... and meanwhile, i will be giving people the download u.r.l., so they know for a fact you are blowing smoke out your ass. -bowerbird ************** Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 17:40:51 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 17:40:51 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A056BBD.2010700@perathoner.de> References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> <4A056BBD.2010700@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > Everyone, except you, seems to realize these ARE approximations. > > These are not approximations. These are phantasies. > > At least, learn the tools of the trade: > > If you have to make up a number, try a bit harder than "1%". You will fool > nobody none of the time with a number like that. > > Next time say: "0.89%" or "12.27 millions". People will take much longer to > realize that you just made those up. Marcello, do you realize just how foolish you sound? No one here, except possibly you, is trying to fool anyone. However, what you are trying to fool people into is lost in the translation between your irrationality and rationality. The whole idea of "round numbers" and "approximatations" is to make it OBVIOUS that these are not completely accurate-- that they are, indeed just "what ifs," "predictions" and/or "speculative approximations." Do you never wonder that people don't take your ranting and raving seriously? Do you never worry that because you have cried "wolf" over, and over, and over yet again, that when the time comes that you have something serious to say you won't be effective to the degree you would have been without such rantings? From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 19:15:52 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:15:52 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Gruber Re: Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yes, you ARE trying "to stir up an old pot" and I would appreciate it if you stop. Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks Recommended Books: Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird please > realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never see such an > application materalize. So now worry about the PG trademark or anything > else he is spewing. Heck, I'm still waiting for his version of DP that he > was going to build that was SOOOO much better. > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:50 AM, wrote: > > > michael said: > > > but somehow misinterpreted what the point is > > > about taking out the PG trademark which is > > > totally unnecessary unless HE is now commercial. > > > > i might charge a fee for my reader-program, > > just to demonstrate that it has value to people, > > but it won't be a very substantial price if i do... > > and i'd probably offer a free counterpart too, > > to reap the reward that would come from that. > > > > my main point would be to push the envelope > > on the functionality a viewer-app should give, > > and to demonstrate benefits of keep-it-simple. > > > > and very few of the iphone e-book viewer-apps > > have desktop counterparts, at least at present, > > so that's another missing-link that i'd provide... > > > > but the major capability i see missing at this point > > -- in terms of the project gutenberg e-texts -- > > is an ability to download en masse with one click. > > lots of copies keeps stuff safe, plus it also guards > > against corporations restoring artificial scarcity... > > > > and yeah, all of the books will also be "in the clear", > > regularized in regard to their zen markup language, > > on my website, as yet another version in cyberspace. > > > > most of the other jokers doing this put the text in > > a database, whereas my books are totally exposed, > > with an easy-to-grok u.r.l. file-naming convention, > > so other programmers can grab all of them at will... > > i'll probably echo them on my s3 (amazon!) account. > > > > the main reason i eliminated the p.g. boilerplate > > is because it's so ugly, and it just gets in the way. > > > > -bowerbird > > > > p.s. if i do charge a fee for my iphone apps, i'll > > set aside a portion of the proceeds, not for p.g. > > per se, but for health insurance for you, michael. > > i think you deserve that for the role you've played. > > > > > > > > ************** > > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. ( > > http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 19:19:24 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:19:24 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A054954.2010300@perathoner.de> References: <4A054954.2010300@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Sorry, I hit 1/3 of 7 instead of 1/3 of 1/7. . . . On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > So, about 1 out of 7 books goes through Amazon. > > > > And abaout 1/3 of those are said to be eBooks. > > > > If we believe all that. . . . > > > > That means 2.x% of books sold are eBooks. . . . > > If we believe all that, we still must do our math correctly: > > 1/7 * 1/3 = 1/21 = 4.7% > > and reason correctly: > > That means that *4.7%* of books sold are ebooks *sold thru Amazon*. > > > Exercise for the reader: > > find out how many ebooks are sold or given away thru > other channels and add those to the above figure. > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 19:24:16 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:24:16 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 person reading on a cellphone. . . . How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? mh On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% and > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sat May 9 19:38:30 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 23:38:30 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Gruber Re: Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hey when the pot (kettle) is black. Well you know what they say. ;) Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:15 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > Yes, you ARE trying "to stir up an old pot" > and I would appreciate it if you stop. > > Thanks!!! > > > Michael S. Hart > Founder > Project Gutenberg > Inventor of ebooks > > > Recommended Books: > > Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain > Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet > The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird > please > > realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never see such an > > application materalize. So now worry about the PG trademark or anything > > else he is spewing. Heck, I'm still waiting for his version of DP that > he > > was going to build that was SOOOO much better. > > Joseph R. Gruber > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:50 AM, wrote: > > > > > michael said: > > > > but somehow misinterpreted what the point is > > > > about taking out the PG trademark which is > > > > totally unnecessary unless HE is now commercial. > > > > > > i might charge a fee for my reader-program, > > > just to demonstrate that it has value to people, > > > but it won't be a very substantial price if i do... > > > and i'd probably offer a free counterpart too, > > > to reap the reward that would come from that. > > > > > > my main point would be to push the envelope > > > on the functionality a viewer-app should give, > > > and to demonstrate benefits of keep-it-simple. > > > > > > and very few of the iphone e-book viewer-apps > > > have desktop counterparts, at least at present, > > > so that's another missing-link that i'd provide... > > > > > > but the major capability i see missing at this point > > > -- in terms of the project gutenberg e-texts -- > > > is an ability to download en masse with one click. > > > lots of copies keeps stuff safe, plus it also guards > > > against corporations restoring artificial scarcity... > > > > > > and yeah, all of the books will also be "in the clear", > > > regularized in regard to their zen markup language, > > > on my website, as yet another version in cyberspace. > > > > > > most of the other jokers doing this put the text in > > > a database, whereas my books are totally exposed, > > > with an easy-to-grok u.r.l. file-naming convention, > > > so other programmers can grab all of them at will... > > > i'll probably echo them on my s3 (amazon!) account. > > > > > > the main reason i eliminated the p.g. boilerplate > > > is because it's so ugly, and it just gets in the way. > > > > > > -bowerbird > > > > > > p.s. if i do charge a fee for my iphone apps, i'll > > > set aside a portion of the proceeds, not for p.g. > > > per se, but for health insurance for you, michael. > > > i think you deserve that for the role you've played. > > > > > > > > > > > > ************** > > > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. ( > > > > http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sat May 9 19:39:53 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 23:39:53 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Michael -- I would appreciate it if you would stop harrassing the volunteers of PG / DP and resorting to name calling. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." > > Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, > and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. > > The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical > for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 > person reading on a cellphone. . . . > > How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? > > > mh > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% > and > > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 20:25:50 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:25:50 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Michael -- I would appreciate it if you would stop harrassing the volunteers > of PG / DP and resorting to name calling. Look in the mirror. Exactly what you have been doing. > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > > > These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." > > > > Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, > > and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. > > > > The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical > > for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 > > person reading on a cellphone. . . . > > > > How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? > > > > > > mh > > > > > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > > > > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > > > > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% > > and > > > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 20:29:32 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:29:32 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Michael -- I would appreciate it if you would stop harrassing the volunteers > of PG / DP and resorting to name calling. Do you really think you can fool the people here with such? Do you really hold them in such low esteem as to think it? > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > > > These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." > > > > Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, > > and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. > > > > The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical > > for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 > > person reading on a cellphone. . . . > > > > How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? > > > > > > mh > > > > > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > > > > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > > > > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between 100% > > and > > > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From hart at pglaf.org Sat May 9 20:31:08 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 20:31:08 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Gruber Re: Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Hey when the pot (kettle) is black. Well you know what they say. ;) And you think this is going to muddy the waters in the eyes of those reading you here? Do you ever stop to think how silly your comments are going to look in the context of history. > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:15 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > Yes, you ARE trying "to stir up an old pot" > > and I would appreciate it if you stop. > > > > Thanks!!! > > > > > > Michael S. Hart > > Founder > > Project Gutenberg > > Inventor of ebooks > > > > > > Recommended Books: > > > > Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain > > Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet > > The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . > > > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > > > Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird > > please > > > realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never see such an > > > application materalize. So now worry about the PG trademark or anything > > > else he is spewing. Heck, I'm still waiting for his version of DP that > > he > > > was going to build that was SOOOO much better. > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:50 AM, wrote: > > > > > > > michael said: > > > > > but somehow misinterpreted what the point is > > > > > about taking out the PG trademark which is > > > > > totally unnecessary unless HE is now commercial. > > > > > > > > i might charge a fee for my reader-program, > > > > just to demonstrate that it has value to people, > > > > but it won't be a very substantial price if i do... > > > > and i'd probably offer a free counterpart too, > > > > to reap the reward that would come from that. > > > > > > > > my main point would be to push the envelope > > > > on the functionality a viewer-app should give, > > > > and to demonstrate benefits of keep-it-simple. > > > > > > > > and very few of the iphone e-book viewer-apps > > > > have desktop counterparts, at least at present, > > > > so that's another missing-link that i'd provide... > > > > > > > > but the major capability i see missing at this point > > > > -- in terms of the project gutenberg e-texts -- > > > > is an ability to download en masse with one click. > > > > lots of copies keeps stuff safe, plus it also guards > > > > against corporations restoring artificial scarcity... > > > > > > > > and yeah, all of the books will also be "in the clear", > > > > regularized in regard to their zen markup language, > > > > on my website, as yet another version in cyberspace. > > > > > > > > most of the other jokers doing this put the text in > > > > a database, whereas my books are totally exposed, > > > > with an easy-to-grok u.r.l. file-naming convention, > > > > so other programmers can grab all of them at will... > > > > i'll probably echo them on my s3 (amazon!) account. > > > > > > > > the main reason i eliminated the p.g. boilerplate > > > > is because it's so ugly, and it just gets in the way. > > > > > > > > -bowerbird > > > > > > > > p.s. if i do charge a fee for my iphone apps, i'll > > > > set aside a portion of the proceeds, not for p.g. > > > > per se, but for health insurance for you, michael. > > > > i think you deserve that for the role you've played. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ************** > > > > Remember Mom this Mother's Day! Find a florist near you now. ( > > > > > > http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=florist&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000006) > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From dakretz at gmail.com Sat May 9 21:12:18 2009 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 22:12:18 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <627d59b80905092212q55464c2dm199d5a8c9bbd7c23@mail.gmail.com> For at least two reasons I can think of. First, at least in my experience trolling for ebooks on the web, pdf files predominate by a wide margin. Second, it's interesting how almost all sample texts are novels, where page composition is so much less demanding. Yet at least half my ebooks are technical, and pretty much all pdf. Has anyone else had the test case experience with googled sources, where matches offer the text in multiple formats? And how the only satisfactory option seems to be pdf; and how unsatisfactory html is? (I've never seen a technical document offer EPUB in the wild.) On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > Jim Adcock wrote: > > > > I'm starting to believe PDF can beat EPUB on portable reading devices. > > You cannot scroll on the Sony Reader, just flip pages, and your screen size > is fixed, so a pre-paged format makes more than sense. > > Also, footnotes are a real PITA with EPUB. The link is hard to follow > without a mouse and they mostly end up in a different EPUB flow, so they > take an eon to load and another one to get back. > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sun May 10 04:36:21 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 08:36:21 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Trust me Mr. Hart I hold the volunteers of PG/DP in much higher esteem than you have EVER held them in. You can try to muddy the waters of this conversation by trying to slander both myelf and Marcello's names but the volunteers are smarter than that. You talk about history in both replies to myself and Marcello but you forget how history has already looked upon you and will continue to look upon yourself. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:29 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > Michael -- I would appreciate it if you would stop harrassing the > volunteers > > of PG / DP and resorting to name calling. > > Do you really think you can fool the people here with such? > > Do you really hold them in such low esteem as to think it? > > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > > > > > These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." > > > > > > Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, > > > and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. > > > > > > The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical > > > for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 > > > person reading on a cellphone. . . . > > > > > > How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? > > > > > > > > > mh > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > > > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > > > > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > > > > > > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > > > > > > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between > 100% > > > and > > > > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sun May 10 04:41:01 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 08:41:01 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Oh btw, show me where I've been name calling as opposed to these FACTUAL, ACCURATE quotes from yourself: "Marcello, do you realize just how foolish you sound?" "Do you never wonder that people don't take your ranting and raving seriously?" "Do you ever stop to think how silly your comments are going to look in the context of history." I would never resort to name calling of these fine volunteers of PG/DP something you fail to appreciate time and time again. The most I tried to do was provide HISTORICAL CONTEXT of bowerbird from the conversation that was taking place. Thanks!! Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > Michael -- I would appreciate it if you would stop harrassing the > volunteers > > of PG / DP and resorting to name calling. > > Look in the mirror. > > Exactly what you have been doing. > > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > > > > > These figures of yours could NOT be "anywhere between. . . ." > > > > > > Please THINK before your embarrass yourself so extrememly, > > > and apologize to the the list when you are proven wrong. > > > > > > The population of the Earth would have to be astronomical > > > for your latest figure to make any sense, and then only 1 > > > person reading on a cellphone. . . . > > > > > > How can you say such things knowing it reflects on you so? > > > > > > > > > mh > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, 9 May 2009, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > > > > > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > > Let's say Josh is right, and only 1% of cellphone owners do eBooks. > > > > > > > > > > 1% of 4.5 billion is 45 million. > > > > > > > > Will you stop making up "facts" out of pure thin air? > > > > > > > > For all the *research* you have done it could be anywhere between > 100% > > > and > > > > 0.00000000000000000000000001%. > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 10 05:02:47 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 05:02:47 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of just these short range tactics. How about something that will justify the time and effort spent on reading your comments and responding to them. Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. mh From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sun May 10 05:05:33 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 09:05:33 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Of course you do sir -- attack, then go and hide. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds > of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the > previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. > > Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of > just these short range tactics. > > How about something that will justify the time and effort spent > on reading your comments and responding to them. > > Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. > > > mh > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 10 05:23:51 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 05:23:51 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Of course you do sir -- attack, then go and hide. OK, let's make this clear for everyone before ignoring you. You attacked while denying it was an attack, stirring up the old. I pointed out that you were indeed stirring up the old stuff, nothing new in what you have said, then or now. Each thing I say, you just mirror it back as if a schoolboy, saying, "Oh, no, it's YOU who are doing what you have said." There is nothing original in what you said then or now, you could simply be an "Eliza" type program, designed to cut and paste words from some previous message into some supposedly "new" message designed to provoke a response. If you know nothing else about my participation in this list over its various incarnations for 20 years, it has to be obvious that you cannot provoke me. I demonstrate that a person can be rational, responsive and even temperate and moderate in the face of such big trashy fallacious comments, and everyone knows this. Now you know it, too, and you can make as many comments as you like, knowing that I detest censorship even more than I detest what you are saying. You are attacking PEOPLE not ideas. Reply to CONTENT rather than attacking the PEOPLE. Until you come up with something constructive to say it is only in defense of others that I should reply. Everyone here can easily see through your pretenses and see that you just rant that everything YOU do is what I am doing. . .and you expect anyone to BELIEVE that? Oh, how little you think of our readers here. And obviously of yourself, to demean yourself so much. I suggest you stop and think for a while and then come up with something positive to say, for your negativity is not getting you, or us, anywhere. Hoping to thank you soon for your time & consideration Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds > > of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the > > previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. > > > > Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of > > just these short range tactics. > > > > How about something that will justify the time and effort spent > > on reading your comments and responding to them. > > > > Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. > > > > > > mh > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sun May 10 05:32:37 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 09:32:37 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Sigh. It's like talking to a brick wall which is nothing new with you. First, let me start off by stating I was participating in this conversation and merely brought up the point of bowerbird's statements of past. As a smart person you can understand how contextual history would provide enhanced knowledge of the conversation. Now, you bring up the point of me attacking people. Again I request -- let me know where I have done so. You still continue to attack even in this e-mail and have yet to bring anything to this conversation beyond phantasies as Marcello points out. You can try to keep responding to these e-mails and keep this thread going or you can respect that I sent one e-mail providing history on bowerbird that you immediately attacked and when I requested you stop attacking Marcello you started this whole rant and rave pretending that you are this omnipotent dictator who is standing up for your volunteers. Please go back and re-read this conversation and you will see how history see's you sir. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > Of course you do sir -- attack, then go and hide. > > OK, let's make this clear for everyone before ignoring you. > > You attacked while denying it was an attack, stirring up the old. > > I pointed out that you were indeed stirring up the old stuff, > nothing new in what you have said, then or now. > > Each thing I say, you just mirror it back as if a schoolboy, > saying, "Oh, no, it's YOU who are doing what you have said." > > There is nothing original in what you said then or now, > you could simply be an "Eliza" type program, designed to > cut and paste words from some previous message into some > supposedly "new" message designed to provoke a response. > > If you know nothing else about my participation in this > list over its various incarnations for 20 years, it has > to be obvious that you cannot provoke me. > > I demonstrate that a person can be rational, responsive > and even temperate and moderate in the face of such big > trashy fallacious comments, and everyone knows this. > > Now you know it, too, and you can make as many comments > as you like, knowing that I detest censorship even more > than I detest what you are saying. > > You are attacking PEOPLE not ideas. > > Reply to CONTENT rather than attacking the PEOPLE. > > Until you come up with something constructive to say it > is only in defense of others that I should reply. > > Everyone here can easily see through your pretenses and > see that you just rant that everything YOU do is what I > am doing. . .and you expect anyone to BELIEVE that? > > Oh, how little you think of our readers here. > > And obviously of yourself, to demean yourself so much. > > I suggest you stop and think for a while and then come > up with something positive to say, for your negativity > is not getting you, or us, anywhere. > > > Hoping to thank you soon for your time & consideration > > > Michael S. Hart > Founder > Project Gutenberg > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds > > > of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the > > > previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. > > > > > > Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of > > > just these short range tactics. > > > > > > How about something that will justify the time and effort spent > > > on reading your comments and responding to them. > > > > > > Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. > > > > > > > > > mh > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sun May 10 05:58:37 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 05:58:37 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> <4A054628.8030702@perathoner.de> Message-ID: On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Sigh. It's like talking to a brick wall which is nothing new with you. See, even more evidence that you are a program, you are just repeating what I just said. > First, let me start off by stating I was participating in this conversation > and merely brought up the point of bowerbird's statements of past. Then bring them up. . . > As a smart person you can understand how contextual history would > provide enhanced knowledge of the conversation. . . .in the context you so desperately say is required. > Now, you bring up the point of me attacking people. Again I request -- let > me know where I have done so. You still continue to attack even in this > e-mail and have yet to bring anything to this conversation beyond phantasies > as Marcello points out. Again, you are simply mirroring my own comments. Come up with your own if you want any attention, to yourself, or to the points you SAY you should be working with, but are actually avoiding. I couldn't agree with you more that bowerbird is often obnoxious and abrasive, but you should see that you should do something better here. . . . Otherwise you are just getting down into the mud where some people obviously enjoy it. > You can try to keep responding to these e-mails and keep this thread going > or you can respect that I sent one e-mail providing history on bowerbird What history. . . ? What context. . . ? Just in case people have forgotten the origins of the words you are using in your messages, in your Eliza type replies, here are the actual words, in context, where they originate and proper credit given to the originator: Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 16:00:13 -0400 From: Joseph R. Gruber Reply-To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle Which lies are you?referring?to? ?Yours? Like always I'll be waiting here with baited breathed for that application to show up. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com [www.josephgruber.com] On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:29 PM, wrote: joseph gruber said: >?? please realize that these are wild fantasies of his >?? and you'll never see such an application materalize you guys never learn, do you? even when your credibility is completely shredded, you keep telling your lies like you really believe 'em. -bowerbird and where is this "history" and "context" you SO desire? I see YOUR words here, you attacking, no actual context, no actual history. This should be enough for anyone for the purposes of calling your bluffs. Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 07:45:39 -0400 From: Joseph R. Gruber Reply-To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird please realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never see such an application materalize. ?So now worry about the PG trademark or anything else he is spewing. ?Heck, I'm still waiting for his version of DP that he was going to build that was SOOOO much better. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com [www.josephgruber.com] > that you immediately attacked and when I requested you stop attacking > Marcello you started this whole rant No, it is _I_ who asked you to stop in the following message: Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:15:52 -0800 (AKDT) From: Michael S. Hart To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: [gutvol-d] Gruber Re: Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle Yes, you ARE trying "to stir up an old pot" and I would appreciate it if you stop. Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg and who asked Marcello to stop in this message: Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:24:16 -0800 (AKDT) From: Michael S. Hart To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. . . . . > rant and rave Yes, you continue, Eliza-like, to prove my point, yet again, by using my own words and position as if they were yours. > pretending that you are this omnipotent dictator who is > standing up for your volunteers. That is the biggest argument used AGAINST my positions, that I refuse the powers of censorship and to use power I don't want to have. One again you have said "TAILS!" when all see "HEADS!" It is so obvious that this exchange has become a boring one in that you are too obviously replying as Eliza. > Please go back and re-read this > conversation and you will see how history see's you sir. As you can see, I have already beaten you to the punch, already did that. . .and the sound you hear is a defeat of all of your attempts. . ."The Sounds of Silence." ;=) Nothing further need be said, you have done so well at defeating your own stated purpose. You remind me of "The Terrible Trivium" when Rhyme and Reason have fled. . . . In one of the books listed below. . . . Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks Recommended Books: Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . > > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > > > Of course you do sir -- attack, then go and hide. > > > > OK, let's make this clear for everyone before ignoring you. > > > > You attacked while denying it was an attack, stirring up the old. > > > > I pointed out that you were indeed stirring up the old stuff, > > nothing new in what you have said, then or now. > > > > Each thing I say, you just mirror it back as if a schoolboy, > > saying, "Oh, no, it's YOU who are doing what you have said." > > > > There is nothing original in what you said then or now, > > you could simply be an "Eliza" type program, designed to > > cut and paste words from some previous message into some > > supposedly "new" message designed to provoke a response. > > > > If you know nothing else about my participation in this > > list over its various incarnations for 20 years, it has > > to be obvious that you cannot provoke me. > > > > I demonstrate that a person can be rational, responsive > > and even temperate and moderate in the face of such big > > trashy fallacious comments, and everyone knows this. > > > > Now you know it, too, and you can make as many comments > > as you like, knowing that I detest censorship even more > > than I detest what you are saying. > > > > You are attacking PEOPLE not ideas. > > > > Reply to CONTENT rather than attacking the PEOPLE. > > > > Until you come up with something constructive to say it > > is only in defense of others that I should reply. > > > > Everyone here can easily see through your pretenses and > > see that you just rant that everything YOU do is what I > > am doing. . .and you expect anyone to BELIEVE that? > > > > Oh, how little you think of our readers here. > > > > And obviously of yourself, to demean yourself so much. > > > > I suggest you stop and think for a while and then come > > up with something positive to say, for your negativity > > is not getting you, or us, anywhere. > > > > > > Hoping to thank you soon for your time & consideration > > > > > > Michael S. Hart > > Founder > > Project Gutenberg > > > > > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds > > > > of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the > > > > previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. > > > > > > > > Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of > > > > just these short range tactics. > > > > > > > > How about something that will justify the time and effort spent > > > > on reading your comments and responding to them. > > > > > > > > Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. > > > > > > > > > > > > mh > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > From joseph.gruber at gmail.com Sun May 10 06:04:36 2009 From: joseph.gruber at gmail.com (Joseph R. Gruber) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 10:04:36 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: Michael -- you make me laugh. You so obviously want to have the last word you pretend that my own distinct and unique words are yours. Are you claiming plagarism?!? ROFL!! Don't worry as history will have the last laugh when they see your failed attempts. Joseph R. Gruber joseph.gruber at gmail.com http://www.josephgruber.com On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > Sigh. It's like talking to a brick wall which is nothing new with you. > > See, even more evidence that you are a program, > you are just repeating what I just said. > > > > First, let me start off by stating I was participating in this > conversation > > and merely brought up the point of bowerbird's statements of past. > > Then bring them up. . . > > > > As a smart person you can understand how contextual history would > > provide enhanced knowledge of the conversation. > > . . .in the context you so desperately say is required. > > > > Now, you bring up the point of me attacking people. Again I request -- > let > > me know where I have done so. You still continue to attack even in this > > e-mail and have yet to bring anything to this conversation beyond > phantasies > > as Marcello points out. > > Again, you are simply mirroring my own comments. > > Come up with your own if you want any attention, > to yourself, or to the points you SAY you should > be working with, but are actually avoiding. > > I couldn't agree with you more that bowerbird is > often obnoxious and abrasive, but you should see > that you should do something better here. . . . > > Otherwise you are just getting down into the mud > where some people obviously enjoy it. > > > > You can try to keep responding to these e-mails and keep this thread > going > > or you can respect that I sent one e-mail providing history on bowerbird > > What history. . . ? > > What context. . . ? > > > Just in case people have forgotten the origins of the words > you are using in your messages, in your Eliza type replies, > here are the actual words, in context, where they originate > and proper credit given to the originator: > > > Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 16:00:13 -0400 > From: Joseph R. Gruber > Reply-To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle > > > Which lies are you referring to? Yours? > Like always I'll be waiting here with baited breathed for that > application to show up. > > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com [www.josephgruber.com] > > > On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:29 PM, wrote: > joseph gruber said: > > please realize that these are wild fantasies of his > > and you'll never see such an application materalize > > you guys never learn, do you? > > even when your credibility is completely shredded, > you keep telling your lies like you really believe 'em. > > -bowerbird > > > > and where is this "history" and "context" you SO desire? > > I see YOUR words here, you attacking, no actual context, > no actual history. This should be enough for anyone for > the purposes of calling your bluffs. > > > > Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 07:45:39 -0400 > From: Joseph R. Gruber > Reply-To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle > > Not to stir up an old pot but for those who are not use to bowerbird > please realize that these are wild fantasies of his and you'll never > see such an application materalize. So now worry about the PG > trademark or anything else he is spewing. Heck, I'm still waiting > for his version of DP that he was going to build that was SOOOO much > better. > > > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com [www.josephgruber.com] > > > > > > > > > that you immediately attacked and when I requested you stop attacking > > Marcello you started this whole rant > > No, it is _I_ who asked you to stop in the following message: > > > > Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:15:52 -0800 (AKDT) > From: Michael S. Hart > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Subject: [gutvol-d] Gruber Re: Re: !@! Re: Re: larger-format kindle > > > Yes, you ARE trying "to stir up an old pot" > and I would appreciate it if you stop. > > Thanks!!! > > > Michael S. Hart > Founder > Project Gutenberg > > > and who asked Marcello to stop in this message: > > > Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 19:24:16 -0800 (AKDT) > From: Michael S. Hart > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle > > > > Marcello, once again I request you stop being so silly here. > > . . . . > > > > > > > rant and rave > > Yes, you continue, Eliza-like, to prove my point, yet again, > by using my own words and position as if they were yours. > > > > > pretending that you are this omnipotent dictator who is > > standing up for your volunteers. > > That is the biggest argument used AGAINST my positions, > that I refuse the powers of censorship and to use power > I don't want to have. > > One again you have said "TAILS!" when all see "HEADS!" > > It is so obvious that this exchange has become a boring > one in that you are too obviously replying as Eliza. > > > > Please go back and re-read this > > conversation and you will see how history see's you sir. > > As you can see, I have already beaten you to the punch, > already did that. . .and the sound you hear is a defeat > of all of your attempts. . ."The Sounds of Silence." > > > ;=) > > > Nothing further need be said, you have done so well at > defeating your own stated purpose. > > You remind me of "The Terrible Trivium" > when Rhyme and Reason have fled. . . . > > In one of the books listed below. . . . > > > Thanks!!! > > > Michael S. Hart > Founder > Project Gutenberg > Inventor of ebooks > > > Recommended Books: > > Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain > Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet > The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . > > > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > > > > > On Sun, 10 May 2009, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > > > > > > > Of course you do sir -- attack, then go and hide. > > > > > > OK, let's make this clear for everyone before ignoring you. > > > > > > You attacked while denying it was an attack, stirring up the old. > > > > > > I pointed out that you were indeed stirring up the old stuff, > > > nothing new in what you have said, then or now. > > > > > > Each thing I say, you just mirror it back as if a schoolboy, > > > saying, "Oh, no, it's YOU who are doing what you have said." > > > > > > There is nothing original in what you said then or now, > > > you could simply be an "Eliza" type program, designed to > > > cut and paste words from some previous message into some > > > supposedly "new" message designed to provoke a response. > > > > > > If you know nothing else about my participation in this > > > list over its various incarnations for 20 years, it has > > > to be obvious that you cannot provoke me. > > > > > > I demonstrate that a person can be rational, responsive > > > and even temperate and moderate in the face of such big > > > trashy fallacious comments, and everyone knows this. > > > > > > Now you know it, too, and you can make as many comments > > > as you like, knowing that I detest censorship even more > > > than I detest what you are saying. > > > > > > You are attacking PEOPLE not ideas. > > > > > > Reply to CONTENT rather than attacking the PEOPLE. > > > > > > Until you come up with something constructive to say it > > > is only in defense of others that I should reply. > > > > > > Everyone here can easily see through your pretenses and > > > see that you just rant that everything YOU do is what I > > > am doing. . .and you expect anyone to BELIEVE that? > > > > > > Oh, how little you think of our readers here. > > > > > > And obviously of yourself, to demean yourself so much. > > > > > > I suggest you stop and think for a while and then come > > > up with something positive to say, for your negativity > > > is not getting you, or us, anywhere. > > > > > > > > > Hoping to thank you soon for your time & consideration > > > > > > > > > Michael S. Hart > > > Founder > > > Project Gutenberg > > > > > > > > > > > > > Joseph R. Gruber > > > > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > > > > http://www.josephgruber.com > > > > > > > > > > > > On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Michael S. Hart > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Yes, Mr. Gruber, you obviously think that by using my own kinds > > > > > of statements in reverse will convince anyone that has seen the > > > > > previous context. . .just another grade school tactic. > > > > > > > > > > Now. . .after all that. . .how about a real strategy instead of > > > > > just these short range tactics. > > > > > > > > > > How about something that will justify the time and effort spent > > > > > on reading your comments and responding to them. > > > > > > > > > > Until such a time, I reserve the right not to answer at all. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > mh > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > gutvol-d mailing list > > > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > > > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grythumn at gmail.com Sun May 10 06:09:18 2009 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 10:09:18 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50905100709o3c5c9d6dp9fbdb8631f4c6fc8@mail.gmail.com> Would you two mind taking this conversation off-list? Thanks! -R C On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Joseph R. Gruber wrote: > Michael -- you make me laugh. ?You so obviously want to have the last word > you pretend that my own distinct and unique words are yours. ?Are you > claiming plagarism?!? ROFL!! ?Don't worry as history will have the last > laugh when they see your failed attempts. > Joseph R. Gruber > joseph.gruber at gmail.com > http://www.josephgruber.com From richfield at telkomsa.net Sun May 10 06:23:15 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 16:23:15 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: larger-format kindle In-Reply-To: References: <612087955.36672.1241830551416.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> Message-ID: <4A06E353.6020305@telkomsa.net> Fellow listers, some of you anyway: Not enough already, but please, please, too much long ago. I don't (very) much mind the occasional snap at each other, or even a bit of mild needling now and then, but when it gets so that I have to WADE through my inbox to find the minority of messages that actually matter a damn to anyone but the protagonists, I feel justified in a protesting grizzle or so. Please, do not feel called upon to respond either to me or to each other with deathless, deadly repartee, unless it happens to include something actually useful to at least a large minority of the audience. A bit of silence would be gowd enow for a' that. Of course your bandwidth consumption on private channels would attract fewer admirers, but far more heartfelt gratitude. Happy Sunday everybody! Jon From joshua at hutchinson.net Sun May 10 08:05:24 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 16:05:24 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! Message-ID: <1399737374.11516.1241971524064.JavaMail.mail@webmail03> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Mon May 11 05:00:30 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (James Adcock) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 06:00:30 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Message-ID: (re PDF and Sony) >...your screen size is fixed, so a pre-paged format makes more than sense. You must have younger eyes than I have. Kindle users comment on how they often switch font sizes based on time of day, degree of illumination, and how tired their eyes are. One of the markets, I think, for the DX will be to older readers and/or those with limited sight, where the ability to easily get recent info, such as newspapers, and display them in larger fonts, will be a godsend. And NOT just have to read Readers Digest Large Font Edition. From nwolcott2ster at gmail.com Mon May 11 07:48:16 2009 From: nwolcott2ster at gmail.com (Norm Wolcott) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:48:16 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Italilc markkup Message-ID: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Can anyone tell me how to change real italics in MSWord 2003 to html markup (words and the reverse? I do not want to change the document to html, just the italic markup. I used to know how to do it but I have forgotten. nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Mon May 11 07:57:40 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 08:57:40 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Re: Reading on cell phones: Seems that Amazon agrees with you about where the marketplace is: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=128 6678&highlight= Personally I cannot imagine paying $10 for the "joy" of reading on a cell phone! From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Mon May 11 09:06:28 2009 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 18:06:28 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Italilc markkup In-Reply-To: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> References: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: <9c6138c50905111006j7eedb8bdi98ffbab4ac050af@mail.gmail.com> go to edit/replace convert _text_ to text 1st find _^? replace ^& 2nd find ^?_ replace ^& 3rd find _ replace (blank field) convert textto _text_ 1st find replace _ 2nd find replace _ that's how i use to do it. not sure if there's an easier way. ricardo From ajhaines at shaw.ca Mon May 11 09:32:06 2009 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines (shaw)) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 10:32:06 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Italilc markkup References: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: I'm not aware that you can change a font format to an actual character string. It may be that Word Basic can do it, with some programming, but I can't speak to that. You might try this: - load the document into Wordpad, and save it as RTF. - load that file into Notepad (or some other plain text editor) - go to the italicized text--you should see it surrounded by "\i" and "\i0" - globally replace "\i0" with "" - globally replace "\i" with "" - save the file, and reload it into Word (or Wordpad) to see if things look OK. Wordpad uses a much simpler form of RTF than Word. You can use the same technique for bolding (\b and \b0). Note that you may have to deal with unwanted blank spaces before and after these codes and the resulting HTML tags. Experimentation is recommended. Al ----- Original Message ----- From: Norm Wolcott To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org Cc: nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 8:48 AM Subject: [gutvol-d] Italilc markkup Can anyone tell me how to change real italics in MSWord 2003 to html markup (words and the reverse? I do not want to change the document to html, just the italic markup. I used to know how to do it but I have forgotten. nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From azkar0 at gmail.com Mon May 11 09:42:37 2009 From: azkar0 at gmail.com (Scott Olson) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:42:37 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Italilc markkup In-Reply-To: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> References: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: <2362473e0905111042v7346d83i64f330aaa7708bb4@mail.gmail.com> - Pull up the find/replace box. - Make sure you're in the replace tab, and the cursor's in the 'find what' field - Click the 'more' button at the bottom - Click the 'format' button at the bottom of that - Click font - Choose italic, and click OK - In the 'replace with' field: ^& - You can go through the format steps if you want to tell it to strip the italics, as well. Just do as above, but choose 'Regular' instead of italics On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Norm Wolcott wrote: > Can anyone tell me how to change real italics in MSWord 2003 to html > markup (words and the reverse? I do not want to change the document > to html, just the italic markup. I used to know how to do it but I have > forgotten. > > nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon May 11 09:54:18 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 13:54:18 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] too long already Message-ID: jimad said: > I cannot imagine paying $10 for the "joy" of reading on a cell phone! fortunately, nobody will be forcing you to do that... regardless, _lots_ of people have read _lots_ of books on screens (1) which were far and away much smaller than the iphone screen, and (2) which had much lower resolution than the iphone screen. *** this discussion has gone on too long already. sooner or later we'll all be carrying around full-blown computers in our pocket that we use to communicate with the world at large. some will have smaller screens, others will have larger screens, but we'll read off all of them, at least when we're not conversing with them via the verbal interface. (it is, after all, a phone, right?) and then we will be able to finally put down this stupid discussion. in the meantime, it's already gone on far too long. -bowerbird p.s. the ironic thing is, in the end, both sides will claim that _they_ were the side which was right all along. pretty funny. ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcello at perathoner.de Mon May 11 10:14:10 2009 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 20:14:10 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> Jim Adcock wrote: > Re: Reading on cell phones: Seems that Amazon agrees with you about where > the marketplace is: > > http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=128 > 6678&highlight= "Amazon's Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes Kindle customers? bookmarks across Kindle, iPhone and iPod touch, so you always have your reading with you and never lose your place." So now they know not only which books you buy, but which ones you actually read. Must be awful, all those travel agencies calling you while you are trying to read "Around the World in 80 Days" on your iPhone ... From dakretz at gmail.com Mon May 11 10:22:41 2009 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 11:22:41 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <627d59b80905111122s1d2aced7s43d8b4705c175193@mail.gmail.com> Well, one consolation is that it's not random. They know where in the journey you're reading about, so you don't get calls about Hong Kong when you're only as far as India. On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Marcello Perathoner < marcello at perathoner.de> wrote: > Jim Adcock wrote: > > Re: Reading on cell phones: Seems that Amazon agrees with you about where >> the marketplace is: >> >> >> http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=128 >> 6678&highlight= >> > > "Amazon's Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes Kindle customers? > bookmarks across Kindle, iPhone and iPod touch, so you always have your > reading with you and never lose your place." > > So now they know not only which books you buy, but which ones you actually > read. > > Must be awful, all those travel agencies calling you while you are trying > to read "Around the World in 80 Days" on your iPhone ... > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Mon May 11 11:56:34 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 12:56:34 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Italilc markkup In-Reply-To: References: <000c01c9d24f$f5365dc0$650fa8c0@atlanticbb.net> Message-ID: OK, this is what I came up with under WinWord: Bring up the Find and Replace Dialog Under Find What: choose Font Italic -- nothing else Under Replace With: choose Font Regular and then enter this string "^&" -- where "^&" is a special character sequence meaning "that string of text found by "Find What:" So what this does is match a stretch of italic font text, replace it with regular font text, and put the HTML italic markers before and after that stretch of text. From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon May 11 22:18:45 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 02:18:45 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] another overdone topic Message-ID: here's another overdone topic. releasing free e-books stimulates sales of the paper version: > http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2009/05/more-evidence-that-oa-editions-boost.html if you're still surprised at this result, you need to get out more... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From richfield at telkomsa.net Mon May 11 23:47:29 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 09:47:29 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> On the subject of reading on cellphones: I (deliberately) have an old, old, vanilla cellphone that I use for... for... What was it for again? Oh yes, for those conversion, er... conventio.. um... communication thingies. It can't do much, but then I didn't do thingies much, so that was OK. Now people are talking, not so much of intermittent communicating and computing on cellphones, but actual industrial strength, continuous READING on cellphones? I can read a computer screen all day without strain, but can someone tell me what kind of cellphone can give you say half a page of print at a time in comfortable size, steadiness, contrast and readable resolution for hours on end? *Is* it viable? I guess memory capacity couldn't be too bad if you have ram for photos, but what about battery capacity etc? Is it time to jack up my standards and look at modern equipment, or can I still represent my anachronistic foot dragging as simple sanity? Will a new cellphone be a better investment than a new, big Kindle with non-volatile screen memory? (I don't have an old, small one yet!) Nervously, Jon > > >> Re: Reading on cell phones: Seems that Amazon agrees with you about >> where >> the marketplace is: >> >> http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=128 >> >> 6678&highlight= > > "Amazon's Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes Kindle > customers? bookmarks across Kindle, iPhone and iPod touch, so you > always have your reading with you and never lose your place." > > So now they know not only which books you buy, but which ones you > actually read. > > Must be awful, all those travel agencies calling you while you are > trying to read "Around the World in 80 Days" on your iPhone ... > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > From hart at pglaf.org Tue May 12 05:41:01 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 05:41:01 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 12 May 2009, Jon Richfield wrote: > On the subject of reading on cellphones: I (deliberately) have an old, old, > vanilla cellphone that I use for... for... > What was it for again? > Oh yes, for those conversion, er... conventio.. um... communication thingies. > It can't do much, but then I didn't do thingies much, so that was OK. Now > people are talking, not so much of intermittent communicating and computing on > cellphones, but actual industrial strength, continuous READING on cellphones? > I can read a computer screen all day without strain, but can someone tell me > what kind of cellphone can give you say half a page of print at a time in > comfortable size, steadiness, contrast and readable resolution for hours on > end? > *Is* it viable? I guess memory capacity couldn't be too bad if you have ram > for photos, but what about battery capacity etc? Is it time to jack up my > standards and look at modern equipment, or can I still represent my > anachronistic foot dragging as simple sanity? Will a new cellphone be a > better investment than a new, big Kindle with non-volatile screen memory? (I > don't have an old, small one yet!) > > Nervously, > > Jon > > This may be a generational thing. Amazon may be targeting the Boomers who want/need larger fonts, larger pages, read aloud, and all that jazzz. Cellphone makers in general may be targeting the generations of people who grew up with Nintendo GameBoys and thus think it has been just fine to see the entire world through a tiny window. Of course, those tiny windows are getting larger and larger but still not to the point where the Boomers are going to use them. The iPhone, Curve, and other clones are somewhere in between in size, with several times the screen size, perhaps even 8 times, if you consider the smallest screens, as the iPhone is 6 inches compare to just under 1 square inch for the smallest, while the Kindle is that many times as large as the iPhone. However, as seen in the last Newsletter, people ARE using small screens, even only 14 characters wide, to read eBooks, and, the iPod had applications to read PG eBooks in the very first week. It would appear that people, perhaps mostly only people younger than the Boomers, will read eBooks on whatever they have, while the Boomers may more likely insist on something compensating to make up for waning eyesight, something other than just pairs of cheapy reading glasses, such as I am wearing right now, just $1 at our local dollar stores. I buy many of these, leave them in all sorts of strategic locations, including on my computer. iPhones are currently selling 10 million per year, but we don't really know yet how many people are reading eBooks on them, but eBooks ARE available through the iTunes store, and applications to read eBooks, so we must presume some market penetration. On the other hand, both Amazon and Sony are very secretive with their sales figures on eBook readers, and probably won't make a real hardcore announcement on these until they each reach sales of over a million. If so, then they obviously have not reached over a million sales yet, either one of them. However, don't despair, look at how long it took for Apple from 0 to 10 million. . . . Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks Recommended Books: Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury: For The Right Brain Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand: For The Left Brain [or both] Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: To Understand The Internet The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster: Lesson of Life. . . From wvholst at xs4all.nl Tue May 12 05:30:14 2009 From: wvholst at xs4all.nl (Walter H. van Holst) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 15:30:14 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" Message-ID: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Jon: > *Is* it viable? I guess memory capacity couldn't be too bad if you > have > ram for photos, but what about battery capacity etc? Is it time to > jack > up my standards and look at modern equipment, or can I still represent > my anachronistic foot dragging as simple sanity? Will a new cellphone > be a better investment than a new, big Kindle with non-volatile screen > memory? (I don't have an old, small one yet!) Yes, it is. I'm using Stanza (iPhone application by Lexcycle, just acquired by Amazon) to read books from Feedbook (which does markup on Gutenberg etexts) when sitting on the metro/tram. Basically, it is useful for situations where you'd like to do some light reading, don't want to lug piles of paper around but a dedicated reader is too cumbersome. I also have the iRex iLiad, but that is more useful for longer reading sessions (15+ minutes) and when you're having more space, such as on longer train journeys. At the end of the day, it is not relevant which type of reader will prevail, as long as people do read books. I don't get why there such a flamewar about it here. Regards, Walter From answerwitch at gmail.com Tue May 12 05:55:12 2009 From: answerwitch at gmail.com (Mjit RaindancerStahl) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 09:55:12 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> References: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> The prospect of losing access to my books because of proprietary file formatting deflates my tech-lust. That whole DRM thing is big deal-breaker for me. -- Mjit RaindancerStahl answerwitch at gmail.com From hart at pglaf.org Tue May 12 06:10:25 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 06:10:25 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] [PW] Cornell's new permission policy (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 16:47:31 -0500 Reply-To: list at project-wombat.org To: list-open at project-wombat.org Cornell's library has announced a new policy that it will no longer require permission for patrons to use copies of public domain materials that it provides. Since some of us talk about copyright and property rights to published materials every now and then, I thought the announcement might be of some interest. The news release is available at http://news.library.cornell.edu/com/news/PressReleases/Cornell-University -Library-Removes-All-Restrictions-on-Use-of-Public-Domain-Reproductions.c fm I hope other libraries, archives, and museums will come to the same conclusion. Happy trails, David David Haynes San Antonio From dakretz at gmail.com Tue May 12 07:38:35 2009 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 08:38:35 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> References: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <627d59b80905120838s36ed32ecud05f1123dbc2c322@mail.gmail.com> I think we'll only get large numbers only when a device arrives that is the best option (or at least functionally equivalent to the best option) available for its primary purpose. iTunes gets big numbers because it's considered the best option for acquiring, storing, and listening to music (with a babelfish-type device in your ear). iPhone gets big numbers because it's considered the best option for making and receiving cell-phone calls, plus (see iTunes). There's nothing on the electronic horizon (except Kindle) as a candidate for easily acquiring, storing, and reading books in a format equivalent to the printed version (which is why PDF is critical.). Not ebooks, books. Whether it's there or not is debatable (although Oprah seems to think it is, and she sells a few books now and then.) But if it is, or at least to those for whom it is, price is a secondary factor. I think the "acquire" issue is more important than is generally conceded. This is why Microsoft will come in a poor second for any device it puts its name on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a at avenarius.sk Tue May 12 08:13:30 2009 From: a at avenarius.sk (a at avenarius.sk) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 18:13:30 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Reading Books on Cellphones (was: Kindle Library) In-Reply-To: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> On Tuesday, 12th May 2009 at 09:47:29 (GMT +0200), Jon Richfield wrote: > I can read a computer screen all day without strain, but can someone > tell me what kind of cellphone can give you say half a page of print > at a time in comfortable size, steadiness, contrast and readable > resolution for hours on end? HTC phones. I got the largest one a year ago, HTC Advantage, because my priority in using the "phone" is reading books, not making phone calls. (If anything, phone calls serve to interrupt the reading; luckily, there's always the Ignore button.) Here's a review of HTC Advantage, with many photographs: http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/htc-advantage-en.shtml And here's my own HTC Advantage: http://aboq.org/athena/Ebook_on_HTC_Advantage_7500.jpg As you can see, it has Windows on it, rather than Apple's software. And it has Amazon's Mobipocket Reader, rather than Kindle. I find this arrangement perfectly satisfactory and have already read countless novels and short stories on this device. Yeah, the device is slightly bulky, but I wanted it to be: it offers the VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) on a 5-inch screen, and the letters are still comfortably large. (Of course, Mobipocket Reader allows you to increase or decrease the font as you wish.) The screen is so large a typical novel is between 200 and 400 electronic pages, where it would be between 150 and 300 pages on paper. That's *more* than half a page of print at a time. The best thing, compared to Kindle: the lit background. You can read in bed in complete darkness without constantly having to turn both your body and the book to the source of light, something I've always found irritating in paper books. Yet the most vital thing for me is the possibility to highlight passages in books and comment on them in annotations, while all of these get automatically transferred to the desktop PC whenever I synchronize the phone with it. Plus, of course, the option to store all the world's literature in one slim device. As to batteries, a single charge will let you read e-books for a dozen hours or longer (untested, because if you also use the device to browse the Internet and download emails, the battery gets depleted sooner). All of these in combination are so many advantages that I decidedly prefer to read e-books rather than paper books by now. As to comparing the screen resolution of an iPhone with that of HTC Advantage, it's really no comparison (the following 2 screenshots show the text of the same novel, beginning with the same sentence): iPhone: http://www.insidemac-blog.de/bilder/2008/07/stanza01.jpg HTC Advantage: http://aboq.org/athena/Athena-Mobipocket-PRT-FS.jpg (More pictures at http://aboq.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=577 ) PS: And, I first read Jon's email on the cell-phone before deciding to reply to it on the notebook. ;-) -- Yours, Alex. www.aboq.org [processed by "The Bat!", Version 3.80.06] From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue May 12 10:11:00 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 14:11:00 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" Message-ID: jon said: > can someone tell me what kind of cellphone can give you say > half a page of print at a time in comfortable size, steadiness, > contrast and readable resolution for hours on end? no. only you can be the judge of that. "comfortable" and "readable" are highly subjective variables... but it's certainly the case that _some_ people judge the iphone to be acceptable on those dimensions (or the equivalent to those people)... and some smaller percentage of people judged the rocketbook to be acceptable, and some smaller percentage judged the palm acceptable. and some percentage of people judge the kindle to be acceptable, and some larger percentage of people will judge the kindle dx acceptable, although some of _them_ will then start complaining that it's "too big" to carry with them on a regular basis, so that'll be an offsetting factor. but don't focus on _books_ per se, because the number of book-readers in the population is very small. (and it's getting even smaller every day.) book-readers won't drive this revolution. the thing that will drive this revolution will be a growing desire on the part of "ordinary" people to carry a computer-communications device with them wherever they go. the top need, of course, will be the phone. but the iphone with its apps have shown that there are lots and lots of _other_ ways that an internet-connected device can be useful to people as they negotiate their route through their existences in the real world. first of all, making a voice-call is not the only way that people talk with each other these days. they also use text-messaging, twitter, and so on. second, location-based services are proving to be tremendously valuable. since your iphone knows where you are, it can look up handy information for you, like where is the nearest gas station, emergency room, and so on. it will even tell you where you are, when you don't have the foggiest notion, or when you think you're in some other place entirely. and it'll then tell you how to get from where you are to where you want to be. immensely handy. the kind of thing that, once you get used to, you don't want to live without. lastly, as more and more people start carrying around connected devices, the assumption will be that _everyone_ has one, and life will start to grow increasingly difficult for those who do not. for example, see public phones. there used to always be a public phone around. but as cell phones grew in popularity, public phones seemed to vanish. now they are exceedingly rare, to the point where you cannot count on finding one when you do need one. so many people bought a cell-phone when they otherwise might not have... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue May 12 10:37:01 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 14:37:01 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" Message-ID: walter said: > At the end of the day, it is not relevant which type of > reader will prevail, as long as people do read books. what's so important about reading books? considering that most books being published these days are garbage, there's no magic there. better to read an intelligent blog than a stupid book. > I don't get why there such a flamewar about it here. the "flamewar" is because some people refuse to be civil. if the argument doesn't go just the way that they want it to, they'd rather upset the applecart than continue in good faith. the crux of the disagreement, however, is quite simple... some people wanted a _dedicated_ book-reading device, because "that's all i need". other people argued that "dedicated" devices nearly always yield in the long-run to generalized devices that equal the dedicated device in its own arena and surpass it in others... so that was the split -- dedicated machine or generalized? and indeed, one can see this split in the current situation... the kindle is the _dedicated_ book-reading device. the iphone is the generalized machine. and this difference in the _purpose_ results in ramifications. if you're building a dedicated book-reader, you'll use e-ink. if you're building a general-purpose machine, you go l.c.d. however, with mary lou's pixel qi screen, perhaps we see the path that we can take to make everyone happy now... part of the reason for the disagreement was that the people who were arguing for the dedicated-machine had the idea that such a machine would be _less_expensive_. remember how david rothman _insisted_ for _years_ that a machine would be manufactured that cost end-users a mere $50... i always said this idea was ridiculous, because a reader has to have a screen and a chip and an operating system, and those are the most expensive parts of any computer, so if you're going to pay for those for a dedicated reader, you might as well get a full-fledged computer instead... and yes indeed, when the reader-machines _did_ come out, like the kindle, and the iliad, they were definitely not cheap. you paid about $600 for your iliad, didn't you? _not_cheap._ but, you know, when you call someone's opinion "ridiculous", they take offense -- even when it is! -- and, boom!, flamewar. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gpdimonderose at hotmail.it Tue May 12 13:08:02 2009 From: gpdimonderose at hotmail.it (giacinthom plexere) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 22:08:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Reminder to connect with giacinthom plexere Message-ID: <20090512210802.D53E91C0D97@ecmail.ecademy.com> Connect with me on Ecademy I'd like to invite you to be part of my Ecademy network. I use Ecademy to manage my professional contacts, share knowledge and market my business. Take a look - it has paid off for me. * Click here to accept the invitation to join my network! *"; It's free to join Ecademy and it only takes a minute to sign up. giacinthom plexere gpdimonderose at hotmail.it To avoid receiving these emails in the future just reply to invite-unsubscribe at ecademy.com or go to http://www.ecademy.com/blockinvites.php?e=gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org Email:support at ecademy.com Company Registration:3651083 VAT:718 0377 36 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Tue May 12 16:21:25 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 17:21:25 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: >Will a new cellphone be a better investment than a new, big Kindle with non-volatile screen memory? Once you get your first month's cellphone bill including internet access charges for that new cellphone you will have found that the Kindle DX was actually the cheaper buy. Now in my family's case it was actually the teenage daughter who got the new internet-compatible cellphone, and we already had a couple of the Kindles, so, it was "The Worse of All Worlds...." PS: My daughter misunderstood what the cellphone company meant when they said "Free" in their advertisements. From jimad at msn.com Tue May 12 16:47:34 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 17:47:34 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: [PW] Cornell's new permission policy (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Has anyone -- in practice -- figured out a way to get access to more of these Cornell bookscans than the approximately 1,300 at http://www.archive.org/details/cornell ? >>Cornell's library has announced a new policy that it will no longer require permission for patrons to use copies of public domain materials that it provides.... From jimad at msn.com Tue May 12 17:39:18 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 18:39:18 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> References: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Be careful what you say Mjit, or We might ban you: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/impeach-jeff-bezos-for-kindle-swindle >The prospect of losing access to my books because of proprietary file formatting deflates my tech-lust. That whole DRM thing is big deal-breaker for me. From jimad at msn.com Tue May 12 19:01:48 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 20:01:48 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >> "comfortable" and "readable" are highly subjective variables... ..and are going to change depending on where you are in life. I spent 30 years working with computers, doing as I dang well pleased 10-20 hours a day, but eventually the eyes don't take it anymore. Then I started printing more stuff out because it was easier on the eyes. And then I found the Kindle was a compromise my eyes could live with, even if I am somewhat troubled by the Bezos Bozo moves. Still not as easy to read as paper, but, paper tends to pile up around the house, not to mention the Lorax. From walter.van.holst at xs4all.nl Tue May 12 20:56:13 2009 From: walter.van.holst at xs4all.nl (Walter van Holst) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 06:56:13 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> References: <40682.80.127.124.230.1242135014.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> <2f9d57a0905120655j5183501ey10fe655aec9123d2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4A0A52ED.6000002@xs4all.nl> Mjit RaindancerStahl schreef: > The prospect of losing access to my books because of proprietary file > formatting deflates my tech-lust. That whole DRM thing is big > deal-breaker for me. > I don't get this. I was talking about the iLiad, which works fine without DRM and Feedbook, which allows DRM unencumbered downloads of their public domain and creative commons books. Regards, Walter From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Tue May 12 09:17:01 2009 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 19:17:01 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.org now known for TEI samples In-Reply-To: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> Message-ID: <20090512171701.GA20797@ark.in-berlin.de> You wrote > I'm experimenting with PGTEI and my Sony Reader and I'm more than pleased > with reading PDFs on it. Picture: > > http://www.gnutenberg.de/pgtei/0.5/examples/pgtei-pdf-sony-reader.jpg BTW www.gutenberg.org is now referenced from this page: http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Samples_of_TEI_texts ralf From hart at pglaf.org Tue May 12 23:58:11 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 23:58:11 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Reading Books on Cellphones (was: Kindle Library) In-Reply-To: <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> Message-ID: Any mention of prices on thee HTC phones??? From hart at pglaf.org Wed May 13 00:08:00 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 00:08:00 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Reading Books on Cellphones (was: Kindle Library) In-Reply-To: <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> Message-ID: I think I saw a list price of $899, but it did NOT show up when I went thru the link, then found these and I am NOT sure they are for THIS. Dell Home $494.99 Buy.com $508.08 CDW.com $603.99 Unbeatable Sale $672.50 Compare Prices for All 4 Sellers ($494.99 - $672.50) From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed May 13 00:09:44 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 04:09:44 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: gutenberg.org now known for TEI samples Message-ID: ralf said: > BTW www.gutenberg.org is now referenced from this page: > http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Samples_of_TEI_texts go, tei, go! ;+) -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed May 13 00:19:57 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 04:19:57 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" Message-ID: walter said: > I don't get this. I was talking about the iLiad, > which works fine without DRM and Feedbook, > which allows DRM unencumbered downloads of > their public domain and creative commons books. yes, walter, we know the iliad doesn't have d.r.m. that's good. except it means that the iliad doesn't read d.r.m. books. so, no, of course you're not gonna lose any d.r.m. books, because you don't have any of 'em to lose in the first place. and if you lost public domain or creative commons books, you'd just go and re-fetch them, which is exactly what a kindle owner would do if they lost their public domain or creative commons books, which yes, they can read just fine. the d.r.m. books that the kindle-owners have, the ones that don't do you any good, are the ones they worry about losing. i'd recommend backing them up. if amazon does belly-up, you can crack the back-up, future hackers will tell you how. (let's pretend that current hackers haven't figured it out yet.) -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pkiraly at tesuji.eu Wed May 13 00:28:03 2009 From: pkiraly at tesuji.eu (Peter Kiraly) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 10:28:03 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: gutenberg.org now known for TEI samples References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <20090512171701.GA20797@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: <002701c9d3a4$bca0ec90$c502a8c0@amilo> I'd like to mention, that you can find TEI texts with the help of the Anacleto searching of PG as well: http://bookmine.tesuji.eu/gutenberg/searchResults.do?query=format:tei P?ter ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ralf Stephan" To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 7:17 PM Subject: [gutvol-d] gutenberg.org now known for TEI samples > You wrote >> I'm experimenting with PGTEI and my Sony Reader and I'm more than pleased >> with reading PDFs on it. Picture: >> >> http://www.gnutenberg.de/pgtei/0.5/examples/pgtei-pdf-sony-reader.jpg > > BTW www.gutenberg.org is now referenced from this page: > > http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Samples_of_TEI_texts > > > ralf > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From a at avenarius.sk Wed May 13 02:05:12 2009 From: a at avenarius.sk (a at avenarius.sk) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 12:05:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: HTC Phones (was: Reading Books on Cellphones) In-Reply-To: References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> <1693695112.20090512181330@avenarius.sk> Message-ID: <1933819736.20090513120512@avenarius.sk> On Wednesday, 13th May 2009 at 00:08:00 (GMT -0800), Michael S. Hart wrote: >> http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/htc-advantage-en.shtml >> http://aboq.org/athena/Ebook_on_HTC_Advantage_7500.jpg > Any mention of prices on thee HTC phones??? > I think I saw a list price of $899, but it did NOT show up when I went > thru the link, then found these and I am NOT sure they are for THIS. > Dell Home $494.99 / Buy.com $508.08 / CDW.com $603.99 / Unbeatable Sale $672.50 There are lots of different kinds of HTC phones. (And the Google phone with the Android OS is [going to be] manufactured in cooperation with HTC.) I purposefully went for the largest HTC phone, because I'm an e-book fanatic and to me, the 5-inch screen was top priority. This was my dealer: http://www.ebuy.sk/HTC-X7510-Advantage,841.html The price (minus local VAT) is 669 EUR = $915, so a list price of $899 sounds about right. But the special offers might be legitimate, too. (Note that the dealer now sells the updated model, HTC Advantage 7510. However, the update went wrong, IMO, as in a silly attempt to copycat the iPhone, HTC got rid of most of the hardware buttons of the original HTC Advantage 7500 model.) Anyway, most people would probably find a phone of these dimensions (5-inch screen) too large. It doesn't really fit into your shirt pocket. So, there are smaller, slicker models. The lower the resolution, the lower the price -- but also, the lower the enjoyment of reading e-books! Here are 3 other HTC phones: * HTC Touch HD: gorgeous 3.8 inch screen, resoluton of 480 x 800 pixels, that's even *more* than VGA -- but: the letters are necessarily somewhat smaller than on a 5-inch screen device. Still perfectly legible, though. (I tested this one first-hand.) The price (without VAT) is around 490 EUR = $670: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-hd-blackstone-cz-d107046.htm * HTC Touch Pro: would not recommend this one; more expensive than the Touch HD model, yet the screen is a full inch smaller, even though it sports the VGA resolution, too. The price (excl. VAT) is about 510 EUR = $700: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-pro-raphael-d100466.htm Now, it makes a *lot* of difference if you view the same VGA screen (640 x 480 pixels) on a device with a 5-inch screen or on one with a 2.8" screen! On the latter, the fonts will be minuscule. Naturally, you can enlarge the font in your e-book reader, but that makes a 700-pages novel out of a 350-pages novel... * HTC Touch 3G: a traditional phone, meaning it comes with a 2.8-inch screen with the QVGA resolution, that's one half of VGA = 240 x 320 pixels, so that the letters in e-books are nice and large, but again, you get to read a 700-pages novel instead of 350 pages. ;-) The price (excl. VAT) is about 325 EUR = $445: http://www.alza.sk/htc-touch-3g-jade-modry-d104503.htm QVGA is the standard for traditional PDAs (= pocket PCs that are no phones), and I used to read lots of e-books on my previous two PDAs with QVGA, but I confess the frequent turning of pages does not really make the reading as pleasant as enjoying books on paper. The real breakthrough for me, therefore, was the VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels; it was at *this* point I could finally say that reading e-books started to be as pleasant as reading books on paper, and a thousand times more practical (due to the possibility to make highlights and annotations of unlimited length right inside the books, and utilize them later on the desktop PC). So, here's why I wouldn't buy an iPhone: its resolution is smaller than VGA. And that does not seem to me to be quite enough for optimal e-book enjoyment. I'd call VGA (640 x 480 pixels) the minimal threshold. And here's why I wouldn't buy a Kindle: no lit background! You can't read in bed in complete darkness, which would be a terrible nuisance to me. Also, you can't choose to read white on black, as I do. I believe it's been scientifically confirmed that human eyes get less tired when they read white on black instead of black on white. Black letters on a white background indeed produces a *glare*. (Or if there's no glare, deciphering black-on-white letters is alleged to produce more eye-strain than deciphering white-on-black letters.) With white letters on a black background, there's no (noticeable) glare at all! -- Yours, Alex. www.aboq.org [processed by "The Bat!", Version 3.80.06] From joshua at hutchinson.net Wed May 13 05:37:37 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 13:37:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" Message-ID: <407608976.4810.1242221857331.JavaMail.mail@webmail01> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gbnewby at pglaf.org Wed May 13 06:44:27 2009 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 06:44:27 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Please test phone-format eBooks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090513144427.GA22030@snowy.arsc.alaska.edu> Thanks to Janina Sieslack & others at http://www.qioo.de/ , I have a new eBook format option. If you are interested and have a modern Java-capable mobile phone, please give this a try and send feedback. This is my first attempt at adding a new converter (we hope to have more, and Marcello has added several new ones lately). So, you need to use a longish temporary URL. For any given eBook nunber (as long as there is text), try a URL of this form: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/gbn?fk_books=1008 substituting your favorite eBook # for 1008. You might be prompted to type the eBook number if you're viewing an eBook not yet converted to the .jar format. I'd like to go ahead and edit this change into the main catalog page, but would appreciate hearing of success stories (or problems) from a few people first. Thanks in advance! Yes, the URL should work OK from a cell phone. I don't know of a way to get it to display on a regular computer. -- Greg From creeva at gmail.com Wed May 13 06:53:31 2009 From: creeva at gmail.com (Brent Gueth) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 10:53:31 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: [PW] Cornell's new permission policy (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2510ddab0905130753g4c0f0d43nf9f3e1b4219bb24d@mail.gmail.com> I tried to figure it out last night - no luck On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Jim Adcock wrote: > Has anyone -- in practice -- figured out a way to get access to more of > these Cornell bookscans than the approximately 1,300 at > http://www.archive.org/details/cornell ? > >>>Cornell's library has announced a new policy that it will no longer > require permission for patrons to use copies of public domain materials > that it provides.... > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From lee at novomail.net Wed May 13 11:18:37 2009 From: lee at novomail.net (Lee Passey) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 13:18:37 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: <4A0B1D0D.3030209@novomail.net> Jon Richfield wrote: > Now people are talking, not so much of intermittent > communicating and computing on cellphones, but actual industrial > strength, continuous READING on cellphones? I can read a computer > screen all day without strain, but can someone tell me what kind of > cellphone can give you say half a page of print at a time in comfortable > size, steadiness, contrast and readable resolution for hours on end? > *Is* it viable? I read several hours a day on my O2 Flame GSM-enabled PDA, much of it in a darkened bedroom next to my sleeping wife. It has a 3.6 inch diagonal screen at 480x600 resolution and a Micro-SD slot which is currently populated with a 2 gig card full of e-books. At this point, I think the Toshiba TG01 would be an even better choice, with a slightly larger screen and slightly smaller mass. And occasionally I will make or receive a phone call on a pay-as-you-go, 10 cents/minute plan. From dixonm at pobox.com Wed May 13 13:29:11 2009 From: dixonm at pobox.com (Meredith Dixon) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 17:29:11 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A0B1D0D.3030209@novomail.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> <4A0B1D0D.3030209@novomail.net> Message-ID: <1242250151.32026.3.camel@zebra.localdomain> On Wed, 2009-05-13 at 13:18 -0600, Lee Passey wrote: > > I read several hours a day on my O2 Flame GSM-enabled PDA, much of it in > a darkened bedroom next to my sleeping wife. It has a 3.6 inch diagonal > screen at 480x600 resolution and a Micro-SD slot which is currently > populated with a 2 gig card full of e-books. My Nokia 770 Internet Tablet isn't a cellphone, but it does have a 4-inch screen. I use FBReader on it and it works fine; I've been using it as an e-book reader for a couple of years now. It'll hold an SD card with a thousand plaintext books. I also use FBReader on my Eee, but its screen is bigger. -- Meredith Dixon Check out Raven Days For victims and survivors of bullying at school. And for those who want to help. From kevin.pulliam at gmail.com Wed May 13 14:17:55 2009 From: kevin.pulliam at gmail.com (Kevin Pulliam) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 17:17:55 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> References: <4A057EC1.4040304@perathoner.de> <4A086AF2.5050508@perathoner.de> <4A092991.4090207@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: <78defb40905131517k6e080a11v4452a12d4441c6c7@mail.gmail.com> On 5/12/09, Jon Richfield wrote: SNIP >but actual industrial strength, continuous READING > on cellphones? I can read a computer screen all day without strain, but can > someone tell me what kind of cellphone can give you say half a page of print > at a time in comfortable size, steadiness, contrast and readable resolution > for hours on end? SNIP > > Jon Well, It's not a half page of text, more like 3/8 at normal font size though it's configurable. (font size, contrast, brightness, etc - everything but resolution) I've been doing 'industrial strength' (~a book or two a week) reading on my Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) for 3 years now. It's a 4 year old phone design, windows mobile, 2.8 inch screen (diag) 240x320 resolution, transreflective LCD (full sunlight or dark of night readable). No longer offered directly from Verizon, but you can get a used one on ebay or elsewhere for between $60 and $90 dollars (I bought a second for my wife 2 months ago). BONUS: You can permanently turn off the cellular internet in 5 seconds by renaming a file, and then use wifi only for internet access. No data contract fees or subscription required. It's always in my pocket, it's got a 4gb SD Card installed, and as a windows mobile device, can read everything except the one device formats (Kindle, and Sony). eReader (plain and encrypted) Mobipocket (plain and encrypted) MSReader (plain and encrypted) PDF (no DRM) Text and and every other open format available. Battery life on the normal battery is 4+ hours of continuous reading (but the battery is swappable) and 6+ hours on the extended battery. This phone shipped with one of each, and the base station can charge one battery to full in 2 hours while you are reading off the other battery. The 2 batteries were enough for 15 hours in airports and airplanes for me last week. (Note: I have 'replaced' the original batteries... I wore them out after 2 years or so - this performance is with 'new' batteries) From richfield at telkomsa.net Wed May 13 11:57:21 2009 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 21:57:21 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? Message-ID: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> First, thanks to all who responded in one way or another. You know who you are (some of the time, I hope!) It seems that Kindle does do most of what I want in ways that I could find usable. My money and I are a bit busy at the moment, so I shall not order one this moment, but my interest is growing, Amazon and rivals are hyperventilating increasingly as I dither over my choice. How long? How long??? You know, I am a bit puzzled about one thing (among many others of course). For most part epaper seems to be the least power hungry choice (not that I am a tree hugger; I am of course, anyway, but in this connection less power means longer battery life etc.) but there is another option that, though it is not power-independent, should get by on very little. I know it exists, but much as epaper did for a couple of decades, it seems to be languishing, or at least limited to special purposes. What I am thinking of is some kinds of heads-up displays that can be worn like glasses, seeing the "screen" through some sort of lens system. I should think them to be perfect for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and accordingly power-conservative. They should be usable hands-off whether walking, driving, lying down, or in the dark. Potentially a 640X 480 or even 800X600 should be cheap. With a modest memory and processor modules they should be nearly everything the Kindles are, or more so. Or am I too optimistic? What am I missing? BB, how about detumescing my optimism? Walter and Michael made good points about screen sizes and changing standards, but the reason for my interest is that it is all very well to be satisfied with tiny screens, but it does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours. Alex made a good pitch, but I think that between simple cell-phone costs and few-inch screens, as Jim pointed out, Kindle currently sounds like the best bet, though his HTC sounds nice for those who need it. BB made some good points as usual, but some rather unconvincing ones also as usual. Eg: " but don't focus on _books_ per se, because the number of book-readers in the population is very small. (and it's getting even smaller every day.) book-readers won't drive this revolution.". See, BB, I do indeed focus on book reading, not because I am selling, but because I read. And reading I may buy. Only if I change my market do I change my focus. I don't much care about the other things the gadgets can do because I don't do them much. That is why my cell phone is only marginally younger than my microscope. It does what I want of a phone, which is damned little. If it offered reading for me as well without a fancy lens attachment, it would be fatiguing, which is where the charm of epaper or the heads-up display would lie. Does anyone know why such heads ups are not common yet? Note that they need not be dedicated machines, any more than PCs are. You say: " i always said this idea was ridiculous, because a reader has to have a screen and a chip and an operating system, and those are the most expensive parts of any computer, so if you're going to pay for those for a dedicated reader, you might as well get a full-fledged computer instead..." But you see BB, we do not all have your thews and sinews and built-in power sockets. We cannot sit and read in the train or in bed or on a hilltop and read a comfortably sized screen or image weighing a couple of kilos for hours on end. So far epaper has it all its own way. I take your point about its price ans a specialised device, but why should it be specialised? It looks to me like a perfectly usable screen for many purposes. Maybe more than LCD...? Who knows, I might yet still make up my mind before i can afford a kindle... Cheers all, Jon From hart at pglaf.org Wed May 13 23:07:02 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 23:07:02 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 13 May 2009, Jon Richfield wrote: [snip] > Walter and Michael made good points about screen sizes and changing standards, > but the reason for my interest is that it is all very well to be satisfied > with tiny screens, but it does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, > comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours. I would check with The Mayo Clinic before commenting on injurious versus non-injurious, they say there is no injury from eye strain. > If it offered reading for me as well without a fancy lens > attachment, it would be fatiguing, which is where the charm of > epaper or the heads-up display would lie. As for fatiging, this also seems to be a generational thing, with the younger generations seemingly willing to spend days looking at tiny GameBoy type screens without ill effects. If you do a Google search on "reading computer eyestrain" one of the first hits you will get is from The Mayo Clinic: Definition By Mayo Clinic staff Eyestrain occurs when your eyes get tired from intense use, such as driving a car for extended periods, reading or working at the computer. Although eyestrain can be annoying, it usually isn't serious and goes away once you rest your eyes. In some cases, signs and symptoms of eyestrain are a sign of an underlying eye condition that needs treatment. Although you may not be able to change the nature of your job or all the factors that can cause eyestrain, you can take steps to reduce eyestrain. From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Wed May 13 23:50:58 2009 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 09:50:58 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: <20090514075058.GA4335@ark.in-berlin.de> Jon Richfield wrote > You know, I am a bit puzzled about one thing (among many others of course). > For most part epaper seems to be the least power hungry choice (not that I > am a tree hugger; I am of course, anyway, but in this connection less power > means longer battery life etc.) but there is another option that, though it > is not power-independent, should get by on very little. I know it exists, > but much as epaper did for a couple of decades, it seems to be > languishing, or at least limited to special purposes. What I am thinking > of is some kinds of heads-up displays that can be worn like glasses, seeing > the "screen" through some sort of lens system. I should think them to be > perfect for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and > accordingly power-conservative. They should be usable hands-off whether > walking, driving, lying down, or in the dark. Potentially a 640X 480 or > even 800X600 should be cheap. With a modest memory and processor modules > they should be nearly everything the Kindles are, or more so. Exactly, that makes one think further. They would be ideal for unobtrusive data representation in mission-critical situations... ahhh don't we know that language from somewhere? might THAT be the reason we don't see such devices: because they are *dual use? ralf From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Thu May 14 00:03:56 2009 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 10:03:56 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <20090514075058.GA4335@ark.in-berlin.de> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> <20090514075058.GA4335@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: <20090514080356.GA4380@ark.in-berlin.de> me wrote > Jon Richfield wrote > > You know, I am a bit puzzled about one thing (among many others of course). > > For most part epaper seems to be the least power hungry choice (not that I > > am a tree hugger; I am of course, anyway, but in this connection less power > > means longer battery life etc.) but there is another option that, though it > > is not power-independent, should get by on very little. I know it exists, > > but much as epaper did for a couple of decades, it seems to be > > languishing, or at least limited to special purposes. What I am thinking > > of is some kinds of heads-up displays that can be worn like glasses, seeing > > the "screen" through some sort of lens system. I should think them to be > > perfect for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and > > accordingly power-conservative. They should be usable hands-off whether > > walking, driving, lying down, or in the dark. Potentially a 640X 480 or > > even 800X600 should be cheap. With a modest memory and processor modules > > they should be nearly everything the Kindles are, or more so. > > Exactly, that makes one think further. They would be ideal for > unobtrusive data representation in mission-critical situations... > ahhh don't we know that language from somewhere? might THAT be > the reason we don't see such devices: because they are *dual use? on second thought, however, I rather believe we WILL see them, but only when we all have bought the clumsier things they have in that pipeline for years to come. and then we will wait a decade for integration of thought-controllability. image that: not even move your arm to turn a page: reader's coma. ralf From joshua at hutchinson.net Thu May 14 06:15:40 2009 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (Joshua Hutchinson) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 14:15:40 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? Message-ID: <195290706.21705.1242310540852.JavaMail.mail@webmail10> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 14 06:35:02 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 06:35:02 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <20090514080356.GA4380@ark.in-berlin.de> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> <20090514075058.GA4335@ark.in-berlin.de> <20090514080356.GA4380@ark.in-berlin.de> Message-ID: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA). . . . How do you rename that file to make it wifi??? Thanks!!! Michael From jimad at msn.com Thu May 14 08:12:24 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 09:12:24 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: !@!@! "Kindle Library" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Also, FWIW, my understanding is that Amazon allows authors to sell non-DRM Mobi formatted e-books through the Kindle site. These Mobi book can also be sold through other E-book readers. What I find troubling about Amazon's positions is that Kindle doesn't support DRM versions of Mobi books, which many people already own, and Amazon [I believe] doesn't allow selling their .awz formatted (DRM'ed) files through 3rd party sites. But, these are basically the same restrictions the Apple MP3 players--iPod and iPhone--have for music. From lee at novomail.net Thu May 14 09:05:38 2009 From: lee at novomail.net (Lee Passey) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 11:05:38 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> Message-ID: <4A0C4F62.5050803@novomail.net> Jon Richfield wrote: [snip] > Walter and Michael made good points about screen sizes and changing > standards, but the reason for my interest is that it is all very well to > be satisfied with tiny screens, but it does bad things to one's capacity > for effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and > hours. Alex made a good pitch, but I think that between simple > cell-phone costs and few-inch screens, as Jim pointed out, Kindle > currently sounds like the best bet, though his HTC sounds nice for those > who need it. It seems to me that the flaw in your argument is (as we say in the business) "it assumes facts not in evidence," to wit, in assumes that reading on PDA-size screens "does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours." In my own case, it has done nothing bad to my capacity for "effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours." And while I have had no direct experience with the Kindle, I can tell you that I prefer reading on my LCD PDA than on my son's e-paper Sony Reader. And the other testimony which has been presented here seems to confirm my experience. It seems a logical conclusion that reading on a Kindle would be preferable to reading on a PDA (including cell-phone-enabled PDAs), but the logical conclusion does not seem to be born out by the evidence. So far, all the testimony presented is that PDA-sized screens are not an impediment to "effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours." Of course, YMMV, but it seems to me that the Kindle's attempt to mimic the paper experience is more important in its marketing than in its use, and the Kindle fails to take advantage of many of the other benefits of reading on an electronic device. From jimad at msn.com Thu May 14 09:34:06 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 10:34:06 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <4A0C4F62.5050803@novomail.net> References: <4A0B2621.2070904@telkomsa.net> <4A0C4F62.5050803@novomail.net> Message-ID: A couple of the big disadvantages of the Kindle (of which I own and use two) * The display contrast is not high unless well-lit. The experience is similar to reading a European Newspaper. * The Amazon DRM policies are far from ideal -- even if one is willing to tolerate DRM. Again, the Kindle works well for none-DRM providers like PG, but if you have to buy a DRM e-book, the latest NYT Bestseller, or what have you, then you are tied to Amazon. Also, most people's idea of "a book" even one with DRM is something you can sell or give to a friend when you are done, and Amazon's DRM policies do not allow that. Amazon's DRM policies also means that one cannot "borrow" DRM books from public libraries -- public libraries DO nowadays have systems to allow patrons to "check out" and "check back in" DRM books over the internet no less, BUT Amazon's DRM policies are not compatible with these library systems. * There is no good way of organizing books on the Kindle, not even using something as simple as a traditional computer directory structure. Some of us end up with 100s of documents and books on our Kindle, which tends to overwhelm the user interface, which is based a simple sorted list, such as "list all by author" or "list all by title", or "list all by newest first." Yes one can keep the Kindle books on one's computer and organize things there, but, you know.... * If you live in the 'burbs like I do getting the whispernet connection to work or not is a hit-or-miss proposition. In the case of the Amazon paid downloads the system is smart enough to keep trying until it succeeds, but for "free" downloads or internet use, if you lose a connection half-way through a download you end up with a broken book file on your Kindle, and there is no way to fix the broken book problem short of attaching the Kindle to your desktop computer and using the file browser on the computer to manually remove that broken book file. From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu May 14 09:54:23 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 13:54:23 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: detumescing optimism Message-ID: jon said: > BB, how about detumescing my optimism? ok, if you think i'm not optimistic, you're crazy. i am extremely optimistic, which is why i haven't given up on e-books even after lo these 30 years. the thing that i am _not_ is _unrealistic_... no sir, i look reality squarely in the eye, even stare it down. but you, jon, you do not. and that is your problem... > What I am thinking of is some kinds of heads-up displays > that can be worn like glasses, seeing the "screen" through > some sort of lens system.? I should think them to be perfect > for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and > accordingly power-conservative.? have you ever seen such a heads-up display in real life? > I know it exists oh really. _how_ do you know it exists? have you ever seen one out in the wild? > I know it exists, but much as epaper did for a couple of decades,? > it seems to be languishing, or at least limited to special purposes.? e-ink didn't "languish". researchers who were very well paid were working very hard on it, for long hours, for a long time. but sometimes the technology doesn't come along as fast as you'd like it to. sometimes you run into problems that were... unforeseen. sometimes the paths you pursue are false starts. the problem with e-ink was very simple: it was too easy to grok. we know what paper is; we know what it can do, and it can do a lot. so it was very easy for us to picture exactly what e-ink (or e-paper, or whatever you want to call it) was. it is something that is exactly like paper, except that it's digital and can be constantly refreshed. and because paper is so very simple, yet so remarkably versatile, as well as being quite easy to understand, given our familiarity, it was quite easy for the e-ink marketers to get us quite riled up. consequently, they started feeding us the hype _far_ too early... and -- to exacerbate the pain -- we bought into it _instantly_... then when the engineers couldn't deliver, immediately, we got impatient, and incorrectly viewed development as "languishing". except technology makes its own timetable; we don't "decide" it. plus then idiots like rothman kept pushing the unrealistic hype, simply because the false promises kept people reading his blog. they wanted to believe, just like you, so they flocked to his blog. he told them what they wanted to believe, and they believed him. he even started embellishing the ridiculousness, with promises that this new wonder e-ink was going to be unbelievably cheap. what a pile of steaming crap _that_ was! anyone with one ounce of sense who read the news about the money being pumped into the e-ink coffers _knew_ -- without any doubt at all -- that this technology would _not_ come cheap. the e-ink companies were financed, and refinanced, then refinanced again, every time at a higher price to a new round of suckers on the basis of bigger and better hype. with that many investors that (still) need to be paid, e-ink ain't gonna become inexpensive for another decade or so... but rothman was busying peddling his lies, to build up his blog. $50 is what he said the things would cost. fifty fucking bucks! he even came to believe that price himself. what a dumb sucker. plus, when the first e-ink came out, the contrast was just _awful_. even rothman himself had to concede that it was plain unusable. and, and it was expensive as all get-out. and it had an ugly flash on every pageturn, _and_ those pageturns were unworkably slow. notice that, in all the hype that had come before, never was it even _mentioned_ that contrast might be a problem, or that there would even _be_ a flash on page-turns, or that pageturns would be glacial. not one word. there's an old saying that the only product that has no flaws is the one that hasn't been released yet. this was that, in spades. we had envisioned e-ink/e-paper that was perfect in every way. unfortunately, there were _lots_ of problems with the real thing. of course, flash forward to 2009, and reality has set in, and hard. we're looking at $300 machines -- $450 if you want a nice size, and that's only the bigger companies with the bigger budgets... (when you look at a little guy like iliad, it's more like $600-$800.) there's still the flash, but it's not quite so bad. and the pageturns, well, they're still not very fast, but people have gotten used to that. because, really, what can you do about it, except whine like a baby. we're still at -- what -- 16 shades of gray? that's pretty pathetic, but color looks to be about 2-5 years away. (for the last 14 years, _everything_ with e-ink has _always_ been about 2-5 years away, as that is a time-period which you can always keep pushing back, but also short-term enough to scare off any competing products.) 14 years ago, jon noring was claiming that cheap hi-res screens would be available "in 5 years". about 10 years ago, he was still claiming that they were "5 years off". when i finally pointed out, 6 years back, that he was _still_ predicting they were "5 years out", just as he had been doing for the _previous_8_years, he stopped... ironically, about the time he finally stopped spouting the nonsense that's when hi-res screens started appearing. just as i had predicted, -- not that this "prediction" was anything more than common sense -- they first appeared in expensive early-adopter toys, things like g.p.s., and also in commercial settings, such as cash-registers at mcdonalds. because that's how it happens in the world of commercial products. the first iteration of _everything_ is going to be priced far too high. ostensibly this is "to recover the research-and-development costs", but that's just a rationalization. the fact is they charge a premium because they know that they can extract one from early adopters... they charge a lot because they can. they always have. always will... then, over the course of the next 5 years or so, they drop the price. they do this like clockwork. you can depend on it. so it's _easy_ to see what technology is going to be available, cheap, in 5 years. it's the technology that is available _now_, but only at a premium. ergo, that's the answer to your question about heads-up displays... are they available now? do you see them on _any_ products now? if not, then the technology isn't there yet. sure, just like e-paper, it's easy to _grok_ heads-up. we have no trouble _visualizing_ it... but just because _we_ can "visualize" it doesn't mean the engineers can _build_ it, let alone build it at the kind of price we'd like to pay, let alone build it at the price we want without performance flaws... you want to know where the heads-up displays are right now? they're in jet fighter-planes. the military is paying _huge_ dollars for 'em. so if you're a company that's making heads-up displays, you're going to keep selling them for huge dollars to the military. it's only when the military starts ordering the stuff in _buik_lots_ that the manufacturers will drop the price, and start trotting out the technology to other lower-margin users. but again, they'll be the early adopters, from whom the companies can get a premium. if you're wanting it to be _affordable_, to the masses, wait 5 years... (in case you're curious where the hi-res screens pulled down their huge money at their outset, it was in medical imaging equipment. why sell hi-res color screens to the public for pennies when you can instead sell 'em to hospitals who will pay exorbitant prices?) > Or am I too optimistic?? What? am I missing?? you're being unrealistic. that's what you're missing. realism. reality doesn't care one whit about your optimistic "hopes". (then again, it also doesn't care if you do pessimist "doubt".) *** > it is all very well to be satisfied with tiny screens, but > it does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, > comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours. i was going to comment on this earlier, when someone made a point about a 300-page book turning into a 600-page book when the screen is only half as big. now, on the one hand, who cares how many "pages" there are? the machine itself doesn't get any "heavier" with more pages, and pageturning is simple enough, so why should that matter? well, it ends up that the one place where it _does_ matter is in whether you can "disappear" into the book, and not even notice the machine. the more often you turn pages, the harder that is. it's not really a _deal-breaker_, but it does impact _comfort_... (this is "comfort" over and above the "eye strain" factor. i don't get eye-strain, but that doesn't mean that nobody else suffers. i _do_ have the problem that most old people have, which is that my eyes need bigger letters, so that's yet another "comfort" factor.) but the fact remains that some people do fine with small screens. > BB made some good points as usual, gee, jon, that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me... > but some rather unconvincing ones also as usual. that's more like it... ;+) but i'm sure if you're not convinced, you just weren't reading closely... > Eg: " but don't focus on _books_ per se, because the number > of book-readers in the population is very small.? (and it's getting > even smaller every day.) book-readers won't drive this revolution." that's absolutely true, jon... if you think that is "unconvincing", then there's not very much i can do to get you to see the light... > See, BB, I do indeed focus on book reading, > not because I am selling, but because I read.? well, that would be fine if you were producing the products. but you're not... the sellers are... so _their_ interest is what brings products to market, or leaves them in the back room. > Only if I change my market do I change my focus.? > I don't much care about the other things the gadgets > can do because I don't do them much.? but it's not _about_ you or your focus, jon. it's about making money, and if you're not a part of a critical mass that can make them money, then they aren't going to produce the products that serve your focus. so, when i said "don't focus on book-reading", what i meant is that book-readers don't have enough purchasing power to produce the kind of product that they need, so they're going to have to suffer with the "leftover" use of some other product that _does_ fill a mass need... > Does anyone know why such heads ups are not common yet?? here we go again... > Note that they need not be dedicated machines, any more than PCs are. this doesn't really make sense... the p.c. is the prototype of a non-dedicated machine. > You say: " i always said this idea was ridiculous, because a > reader has to have a screen and a chip and an operating system, > and those are the most expensive parts of any computer, > so if you're going to pay for those for a dedicated reader, > you might as well get a full-fledged computer instead..." that's right. > But you see BB, we do not all have your thews and sinews > and built-in power sockets.? We cannot sit and read in the train > or in bed or on a hilltop and read a comfortably sized screen > or image weighing a couple of kilos for hours on end.? i don't really know what all of this means. you _might_ be saying that a full-fledged computer would be _heavier_ than a dedicated book-reading machine, but that is not true. at least it doesn't _have_ to be true. you might also be saying that a full-fledged computer would need more electricity than a dedicated book-reading machine, but again, that's not true, or at least it doesn't _have_ to be true. i know that it's really hard for people to _grasp_ these facts, so i will try to explain it to you so that it becomes obvious... let's take the kindle as our example, ok? the kindle has a chip and an operating system and a screen. in that sense, it _is_ a full-fledged computer. or _could_ be. except that it has been neutered. the operating system has been hacked so that it will present a very limited appearance. all of the regular o.s. possibilities have been sandboxed out. some enterprising crackers have reversed this hacking and uncovered the linux underpinnings. but the fact remains that you can't just install linux programs and run them effortlessly. yet if amazon simply decided to let you do that, you _could_. but -- obviously -- amazon doesn't want to let you do that. indeed, amazon had to _pay_ techies to _do_the_neutering_... that's right, the kindle costs _more_ because amazon _paid_ to make it _less_useful_ to the customer. think about _that_... so, for the very same weight, and with the very same screen, and the very same cost (or _less_), amazon could've handed customers a full computer instead of a "dedicated" machine. indeed, with wireless bundled into the price, the kindle could be an _awesome_ computer, at least in some ways, although the chip in the thing would be a little pokey for some apps... and sure, the battery juice would go faster if you were doing word-processing or web-browsing, not just book-reading, but that's one of those laws of nature that we cannot repeal. but do you understand what i'm saying now? the only reason we can now build a $350 e-book machine is because we can now build a $350 _computer_. voila... (because an e-book reader-machine _is_ a computer!) if we could build some kind of an e-book reader-machine that was _not_ a computer -- an e-book machine which didn't have a chip or an operating system -- then maybe we could make one that was _cheaper_ than a computer. but we can't, not given the model of e-books we're using. (you might be familiar with jon jermey, who has argued for a long time that -- by converting our books into _images_ -- we could build a much simpler _image-viewing_machine_ that would indeed be cheaper than a "real" computer, but nobody has really followed up that good idea in a big way. closest thing was "juicebox", which woulda done the job... however, with google serving up 10 million scan-sets now, it might be productive to seriously consider jon's suggestion. no, you can't search images, but google does search for you.) > So far epaper has it all its own way.? I take your point about > its price ans a specialised device, but why should it be > specialised?? It looks to me like a perfectly usable screen > for many purposes.? Maybe more than LCD...? well, no, you haven't "taken my point" about the price of e-ink. it's expensive. and it's not going to get any cheaper very soon. l.c.d. is much less expensive, which is why it's in more products. and e-ink looks to me like it could end up as a stinky stinker, because mary lou and her pixel qi screen can do _both_ day _and_ night viewing, and -- because it's made in l.c.d. fabs -- it's gonna be significantly cheaper than e-ink from the get-go. but again, it hasn't been released yet -- at least not any wider than the o.l.p.c. distributions -- so we don't yet know its flaws. that's the lesson: don't believe anything until you actually see it. -bowerbird p.s. if mary lou does get her pixel qi screens out to the world, i would seriously nominate her to receive the nobel peace prize. she shortcircuited the whole american corporation greed thing, in both the _development_ of these cheap-and-green screens, and in their _roll-out_. since that corporate greed is the _main_ fire that fuels anti-american sentiment on our planet, thereby leading to global unrest, the fact that mary lou derailed greed might be the biggest reason we have a peaceful future, if we do. ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.pulliam at gmail.com Thu May 14 14:59:24 2009 From: kevin.pulliam at gmail.com (Kevin Pulliam) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 17:59:24 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? Message-ID: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> Just to be clear, the phone in question 'already' has Wifi built in. (This is one of the few touch screen, PDA, Wifi, Bluetooth, Cellular internet, and qwerty keyboard phones that Verizon ever released. Sorry no Camera.. but to some of us, that's actually a feature too). The trick is to avoid the hefty dataplans to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership to a fraction of what it costs to buy a modern PDA/phone which don't have a way to turn off the Cellular Internet. The procedure: I slightly exaggerated for effect (it's not quite a 5 second procedure), but it's really quite easy and most folks can follow these one time instructions in under a minute or so. ------------- Step 1: In File Explorer (on the phone), browse to MyDevice/Windows/Startup Step 2: 'Cut' (using the right hand 'Menu' Then 'Edit' then 'Cut' choices) the file named "CDMACSP" from the directory. Step 2a: Go up one level and 'paste' (using the right hand Menu then Edit, then Paste) the file to the windows directory. (This step is optional if you want an easy way to put the program back in the startup folder, or to temporarilly re-enable the cellphone internet). Step 3: Now, on the phone menu, go to 'Settings'. Then choose 'Connections' tab, then choose 'Connections' icon, lastly choose 'Manage existing connections'. Step 4: Edit each of the two shown connections and change the phone number to #### (or anything really) instead of #777 and #7772. -------------- That's it, you are done. The phone is now incapable of connecting to the cellular internet system. NOTE: Verizon does require you to 'select' a data-plan when you activate this phone. Simply select the (outragous) per Kb charge of 'pay as you go' or something similar (but remember, you've already disabled internet. - there will be no 'as you go') You now have a $75 ebook reader / cell phone with no data plan, that is WiFi enabled, a full function PDA, and a windows mobile device. This phone will also work just fine with the cell phone radio turned completely off. If you just want a cheap portable ereader/wifi device, you don't even need to signup for anything with verizon. Verizon also offers a 'Data-block' option that you can ask for via customer service, but I don't trust them to always/continue to offer that, or to get a tech on the phone that knows how to enable it on their system. This way, all the control is on your end of the data pipe. For those technically interested, the program we removed from startup 'fixes' the phone numbers at startup if you ever mess them up. If you are ever stuck somewhere and MUST get internet, and there is no 802.11b wifi available. you can go back to the windows directory, run the CDMACSP program, and then connect to the internet through the cellular network. Change the numbers back to something useless when you are done. I learned this trick (and many others) for this phone here http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/samsung-i730-i830-i830w/ I recommend this website for any discussion of 'how do I do what I WANT to do' with just about any brand of phone or PDA. There are updates and software packages to allow playback of DivX, WMP, and Tivo recorded TV shows. You can even load your unencrypted itunes or amazon music purchases. The only true limitation is that it cannot read an SD Card larger than 4GB, and it also doesn't have a 'slick' iphone/ipod like interface. At the moment I have 4 hours of TV from my tivo, 8 hours of Divx video files, 4-5 albums of music, and 460 ebooks loaded; The card is 75% full. Amazon and Apple do have one thing figured out. The ability to grab a book on the fly is 'priceless'. There is nothing so futuristic, yet here today (here for several years actually), than browsing to a website (feedbooks.com, fictionwise.com, webscription.net) and downloading a new book straight to your reader (no cables, cards, or laptops required) while sitting in an airport because you want to read the next book in a series, or another by the same author. Cheers Kevin On 5/14/09, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA). . . . > > How do you rename that file to make it wifi??? > > > Thanks!!! > > > > Michael > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 14 17:08:02 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 17:08:02 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> References: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: You mentioned calling Verizon and setting up a no data plan, or the like, but if you don't want cell service, this is not necessary??? You don't need activation, right? Just to do wifi. Michael From hart at pglaf.org Thu May 14 17:17:11 2009 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 17:17:11 -0800 (AKDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: References: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Can this be also looked up on eBay under the Verizon name? The name in the subject line doesn't seem quite right. . . . From kevin.pulliam at gmail.com Thu May 14 18:00:49 2009 From: kevin.pulliam at gmail.com (Kevin Pulliam) Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 21:00:49 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: References: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <78defb40905141900r2eb8d72eq40a6290de5eedb10@mail.gmail.com> If you don't want cell service, you don't have to call anyone. You can even turn off the phone radio so it doesn't use any battery power looking for a signal. As for finding it on ebay or elsewhere, search for "SCH i730" There is also flip phone that uses the i730 'name' from Motorola that would be a horrible reader phone, so make sure you get one that says 'SCH' or 'Samsung'. Once you see the pictures, you will know you are looking at the right one. Google finds prices as low as $40.00 up to the original new price of $650.00. Ebay finds buy it nows prices of $53.00 up to $99.95 on the first page of results. One last note. This phone originally shipped with windows mobile 2003, but there is a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 5 available on the verizon website and elsewhere for download. I highly recommend the upgrade if you get one that still has the 2003 software on it. - Kevin On 5/14/09, Michael S. Hart wrote: > > > > Can this be also looked up on eBay under the Verizon name? > > The name in the subject line doesn't seem quite right. . . . > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From desrod at gnu-designs.com Fri May 15 09:56:05 2009 From: desrod at gnu-designs.com (David A. Desrosiers) Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 13:56:05 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: About the Samsung i730 (Verizon, 3G, CDMA) Re: Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm? In-Reply-To: <78defb40905141900r2eb8d72eq40a6290de5eedb10@mail.gmail.com> References: <78defb40905141559p629d61d1w675bb76185745048@mail.gmail.com> <78defb40905141900r2eb8d72eq40a6290de5eedb10@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 14, 2009 10:00 pm, Kevin Pulliam wrote: > If you don't want cell service, you don't have to call anyone. You can > even turn off the phone radio so it doesn't use any battery power looking > for a signal. Actually, almost every single handset sold today still communicates with the towers, even when you interactively tell them to disable the radio. Some handsets even visibly show the radio as off (i.e. no "antenna" icons or similar), but they're still sending and receiving commands from the towers directly. Also, you might as well disable GPS on the device as well, because that communicates with the towers also (A-GPS, or "Assisted GPS"). The GPS will triangulate your position through the use of nearby cellular towers, even when the radio is off! So yes, you can disable the radio and feel safe, but the only way to be sure, is to pull the battery, because most handsets will lie to you. From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue May 19 11:00:34 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 15:00:34 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] brewster kahle weighs in on the google book "settlement" Message-ID: brewster kahle weighs in on the google book "settlement": > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051802637.html he is opposed to google's boondoggle... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu May 21 20:48:26 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 00:48:26 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] remember eucalyptus? Message-ID: remember i told you about eucalyptus, an iphone e-book viewer-program that loads in e-texts from project gutenberg? it's been rejected by an apple reviewer, because the app was able to download the kama sutra, which is a naughty book. yeah, yeah, this isn't the first time that apple's review process has been an ass, and it'll get straightened out eventually, but the p.g. connection is pretty funny... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 01:16:59 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 05:16:59 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] kerpoof Message-ID: wanna see what the e-books of tomorrow will look like? see what the kids of today are playing with: > http://www.kerpoof.com they won't even realize this is a kick-ass authoring tool. they'll just know they are having fun... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 08:57:49 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 12:57:49 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: d.p. hit 15,000 e-texts a while back when i wasn't paying much attention... congratulations to the volunteers who've worked so hard on this vital task! i and many others appreciate deeply the time and energy you've contributed. i recently hit a milestone myself. for the first time ever, i have now installed guiguts on my mac. (after having first upgraded from tiger to leopard.) yay! and boy, what a hassle it was. (not to mention all the earlier failed attempts.) these kinds of installation difficulties are _not_ what us mac users are used to. of course, this crap isn't unique to guiguts in any way, shape, or form. i chuckle at _all_ of the open-source programmers who think that just because a linux program _can_ be inflicted on a mac, they can call it "mac compatible"... maybe it will _run_. but we mac users expect a much higher standard than that. we expect a program to be _friendly_ to us, very friendly, not outright _hostile_. and any time we have to scrounge around in "terminal", that is _hostile_. (and no, it's not because we're incapable of doing that. no, it's because we know that it's not _necessary_ that one has to deal with crap like that.) but those poor people over at d.p. are used to being abused... they just sit and take it. and every once in a while, make a little pipsqueak. lately, for instance, lvl wondered it he could skip a round if he used an independent digitization to compare against the output from a round... after the tons and tons of research that i've shared about that method, both over on the d.p. forums and in _countless_ posts on this listserve, you'd think that they'd be past the asking stage on that particular matter. and meanwhile carlos is still whining because there's no .html generator. first of all, there _is_ one, in guiguts. and donovan scripted another one. and i've programmed my own, and shown that it's _not_ all that difficult, and have even offered to make mine available to distributed proofreaders. and i'll repeat the offer again, right now. but they won't take my help. they're too stubborn. they'd rather whine. still, i continue to offer it. indeed, here's my newest pledge. i'll create a clone of guiguts, one with these installation instructions: download, decompress, and double-click. (if you want to know how radical that is, read any one of a _large_ number of d.p. forum threads where people have battled with guiguts installation.) the only catch is that 1.5 dozen people have to say they'd like such a tool. just 18 people, sending messages to this listserve, saying "please make it". that's all i need to start working on it... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lostspaces at yahoo.co.uk Fri May 22 09:06:21 2009 From: lostspaces at yahoo.co.uk (christine travers) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:06:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: <747716.41949.qm@web26307.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Don't talk about it, don't wait for post-processors to ask for it. If you know what is needed, write it, test it, share it on sourceforge near guiguts and wait for the feedback. If the tool is good, it will find takers, if it isn't, they will stick to their old method. Christine (aka Lostpaces) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 09:25:54 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:25:54 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: nice try, christine. but i won't waste a substantial amount of time programming a tool that nobody is gonna use. what would be the point? current status: 0 requests. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 09:31:08 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 13:31:08 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: remember eucalyptus? Message-ID: it ends up that having the app rejected (stupidly) by apple is probably the best thing that could've happened to eucalyptus. twitter is atwitter, with tweets coming about one per minute... and the news is on a number of blogs, including boing boing. that's a ton of publicity you couldn't buy... :+) the app hasn't even been released yet, and people already love it. good thing lexcycle sold out while stanza still had the spotlight... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 14:01:13 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 18:01:13 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: got the skeleton done on my guiguts clone, which i've named "gutsgooey" to be clear... for the p.c.: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.exe for linux: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.x86 for mac o.s.x.: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.zip put it in its own folder, because it will download the images associated with the embedded text... (it has its own scan-image-viewer built-in, so you don't have to fiddle with an external viewer, like guiguts requires you to do. more convenient, since it automatically synchs the text and image.) type a number into the top box and press return to jump automatically to the text for that page... no testing done on it yet, but it runs on my mac... current status:? 0 requests. installation instructions: 1. download. 2. decompress (mac only). 3. double-click. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Fri May 22 21:26:11 2009 From: jimad at msn.com (James Adcock) Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 22:26:11 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: If it is a tool that takes less than a day on my end to reverse-engineer what is going wrong with it or with its installation then I'm interested. From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Bowerbird at aol.com Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 10:26 AM To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org; Bowerbird at aol.com Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help nice try, christine. but i won't waste a substantial amount of time programming a tool that nobody is gonna use. what would be the point? current status: 0 requests. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc ntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri May 22 22:28:42 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 02:28:42 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: jim said: > If it is a tool that takes less than a day on my end to reverse-engineer > what is going wrong with it or with its installation then I?m interested. well, jim, as i said, this is just a _skeleton_. none of the routines have been written yet. (after all, i only just made the offer today.) i mounted this merely to show that i am operating in good faith, and ready to go, just as soon as i get those 18 statements. i'll consider your download to be the first. current status:? 1 requests. -bowerbird p.s. even in this skeletal form, however, the app does indicate how the user can traverse through the pages of the book, with the text and scan for each in sync... just click the arrow-buttons at the top, or use the cursor-keys on the keyboard. it also shows how the app will download each of the scans from a remote source as it becomes needed to perform the job. ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlcntustrav00000002) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue May 26 13:31:04 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 17:31:04 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help Message-ID: jim said: >?? what is going wrong with it or with its installation guiguts installation requires a mac user to drop into "terminal" -- the linux command mode -- where a number of dependencies need to be taken care of. this is not something that your "typical" mac user does too often, if at all, so they aren't experienced with it. and because some of the dependencies have dependencies as well, it can get thorny. and since debugging linux thorniness can be thoroughly convoluted, it's very easy for everyone -- helper and helpee -- to get frustrated... to get an idea about all of this, just visit the wiki pages on installation: > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Windows > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Mac > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Linux the problem is largely circumvented for windows users, since a binary is offered to them that shortcircuits a lot of the work. (although they still have to install perl, and several "helpers", e.g., aspell, aspell dictionaries, a graphics viewer, and jeebies.) as a result, d.p. consistently finds itself short on "post-processors" -- the stage where guiguts is used -- and not just because of the trouble with guiguts (which is, once you get it going, not too bad), but rather because the whole workflow is such a patchwork of crap, and the post-processor is the person who has to clean up all of that. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ?Hotel California? and the ?Seinfeld? diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed May 27 00:02:55 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 04:02:55 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] macworld review of eucalyptus Message-ID: ok, who can tell me why this review is important? > http://www.macworld.com/article/140796/2009/05/eucalyptus.html?lsrc=rss_main -bowerbird ************** We found the real ?Hotel California? and the ?Seinfeld? diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed May 27 10:55:23 2009 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 14:55:23 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: macworld review of eucalyptus Message-ID: i said: > ok, who can tell me why this review is important? nobody wants to bite, eh? that's ok, i understand... it's this phrase: > What sets the app apart from most of its competition > is how it takes the cold, forbidding, and ugly type so > typical of public-domain e-books and makes it gorgeous. there you go, folks. eucalyptus takes your "cold, forbidding, and ugly type" and turns it into something that is "gorgeous". what the reviewer doesn't say, because he probably doesn't recognize the significance of it, is that eucalyptus does this transformational process without the aid of any _markup_... that's because the programmer has realized the zen of the "non-markup" inside project gutenberg's plain-text format. of course, you guys all understand this very well, because i have patiently explained it to you over and over for years. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ?Hotel California? and the ?Seinfeld? diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: