From paul at frixxon.co.uk Wed Nov 10 03:53:11 2010 From: paul at frixxon.co.uk (Paul Flo Williams) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:53:11 -0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Newbie questions about clearances, author attribution and header texts Message-ID: <91aac2136ac7285bfdf64542215e147c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> I've just submitted my first copyright clearance request and have mostly completed proofing my first submission (in advance of clearance, despite the warnings), and I have a few questions. The book I've submitted the request for, "Antigua and the Antiguans", dating from 1844, is, at first appearance, anonymous. There is no author listed on the title page, and the preface is signed "The Author". The clearance request form says that an author should be supplied, so I typed in "Mrs Lanaghan", as that is how the book is attributed in a later work on Antigua, V.L. Oliver's 1894 work. A bad luck would have it, two days after submission, I find that the question of authorship for this work has been resolved, and that the author is Amelia Flannigan. 1. How do I go about changing the authorship information in the clearance request, or is that something that can be fixed later? I can provide evidence from newer works of the authorship, and it seems a shame for this work to be either perpetually marked as "Anonymous" or with a name that was once thought to be correct. The second question concerns a header text that is already on the scans and OCRed text I've started from. This book has been scanned by Google Books, and their header asks that they be credited for doing the scanning. Should I just submit their entire header as the start of the document, or do we have some other way of crediting them? If I've missed answers to either of these questions in the existing documentation on the wiki, I apologise, and pointers will be gratefully received. -- Paul Williams From vze3rknp at verizon.net Wed Nov 10 06:41:19 2010 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:41:19 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Newbie questions about clearances, author attribution and header texts In-Reply-To: <91aac2136ac7285bfdf64542215e147c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> References: <91aac2136ac7285bfdf64542215e147c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> Message-ID: <4CDAAF0F.7030008@verizon.net> You have two options concerning the author. The first is to resubmit the clearance with the corrected author and a note saying that this supercedes your previous request. Since I do clearances in the reverse order of how they come in (that is, most recent first) I'll see the second submission first and can cancel the previous request. The other alternative is not to worry about the clearance, but just make sure that you include the proper author's name when you upload the book to the white-washers. A brief note about why there's a difference name than on the clearance would be helpful there. When you upload the finished version, there will be a place for you to enter a credit line. You can put your name there, if you want public credit, and also add something about the scans being from Google. You can check other PG books to see how it is usually worded. Don't be surprised if the white-washers send the book back to you with requests for changes. It's very rare for someone to get everything right on their first try, particularly for solo producers. Hope this helps. JulietS On 11/10/2010 6:53 AM, Paul Flo Williams wrote: > I've just submitted my first copyright clearance request and have mostly > completed proofing my first submission (in advance of clearance, despite > the warnings), and I have a few questions. > > The book I've submitted the request for, "Antigua and the Antiguans", > dating from 1844, is, at first appearance, anonymous. There is no author > listed on the title page, and the preface is signed "The Author". > > The clearance request form says that an author should be supplied, so I > typed in "Mrs Lanaghan", as that is how the book is attributed in a later > work on Antigua, V.L. Oliver's 1894 work. > > A bad luck would have it, two days after submission, I find that the > question of authorship for this work has been resolved, and that the > author is Amelia Flannigan. > > 1. How do I go about changing the authorship information in the clearance > request, or is that something that can be fixed later? I can provide > evidence from newer works of the authorship, and it seems a shame for this > work to be either perpetually marked as "Anonymous" or with a name that > was once thought to be correct. > > The second question concerns a header text that is already on the scans > and OCRed text I've started from. This book has been scanned by Google > Books, and their header asks that they be credited for doing the scanning. > Should I just submit their entire header as the start of the document, or > do we have some other way of crediting them? > > If I've missed answers to either of these questions in the existing > documentation on the wiki, I apologise, and pointers will be gratefully > received. > From paul at frixxon.co.uk Wed Nov 10 07:40:57 2010 From: paul at frixxon.co.uk (Paul Flo Williams) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:40:57 -0000 (GMT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Newbie questions about clearances, author attribution and header texts In-Reply-To: <4CDAAF0F.7030008@verizon.net> References: <91aac2136ac7285bfdf64542215e147c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> <4CDAAF0F.7030008@verizon.net> Message-ID: <60ecba3af9c100d0c24302bc0192943c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> Juliet Sutherland wrote: > You have two options concerning the author. The first is to resubmit the > clearance with the corrected author and a note saying that this > supercedes your previous request. > The other alternative is not to worry about the clearance, but just > make sure that you include the proper author's name when you upload > the book to the white-washers. Thank you. As tempting as it is to jump to the front of the queue, I'll go with the latter option, as it'll save re-uploading the TP&V images. > When you upload the finished version, there will be a place for you to > enter a credit line. You can put your name there, if you want public > credit, and also add something about the scans being from Google. You > can check other PG books to see how it is usually worded. Excellent, thank you. -- Paul Williams From ajhaines at shaw.ca Wed Nov 10 11:51:04 2010 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:51:04 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Newbie questions about clearances, author attribution and header texts In-Reply-To: <60ecba3af9c100d0c24302bc0192943c.squirrel@g.mail.aaisp.net.uk> Message-ID: Paul, generally speaking, you shouldn't include in your submitted texts material that wasn't part of the book as it was originally published, e.g. the Google header. (Several months ago, I encountered a submission that incorporated the book's owning library's card catalog information--I removed it.) As Juliet says, you can mention the source in your credit line, something like this: "Paul Williams, from scans obtained from Google Books". PG's posting software will prefix this with "Produced by". Occasionally, submitters will include the full URL to the Google (or Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/details/americana) source in a Transcriber's Note, which are described in PG's Volunteers' FAQ, article 7.15 V.97. BTW - I took a look at the PDF version of the source. I noted that immediately following the Contents there were several Errata items. It's quite acceptable to retain these items as printed, and to make the described corrections to the text to which they refer. The fact that such corrections have been made can be mentioned in a Transcriber's Note. Al (one of PG's Whitewashers) > -----Original Message----- > From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org > [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Paul > Flo Williams > Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 7:41 AM > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Newbie questions about clearances, > author attribution and header texts > > > Juliet Sutherland wrote: > > You have two options concerning the author. The first is to > resubmit the > > clearance with the corrected author and a note saying that this > > supercedes your previous request. > > The other alternative is not to worry about the clearance, but just > > make sure that you include the proper author's name when you upload > > the book to the white-washers. > > Thank you. As tempting as it is to jump to the front of the > queue, I'll go > with the latter option, as it'll save re-uploading the TP&V images. > > > When you upload the finished version, there will be a place > for you to > > enter a credit line. You can put your name there, if you want public > > credit, and also add something about the scans being from > Google. You > > can check other PG books to see how it is usually worded. > > Excellent, thank you. > > -- > Paul Williams > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Nov 15 10:30:25 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:30:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] a new era has emerged Message-ID: <7d4de.1530bcd8.3a12d641@aol.com> for those who are interested in what roger frank is doing, a new era has emerged over at http://www.fadedpage.net. gone is the proofing interface -- poof! -- replaced by this: > We are working on a software program > to be used for distributed proofreading. > All known interfaces to distributed > proofreading sites are browser-based. > As envisioned, this one is not. > Instead, it is an application that > runs as a program on the user's machine > and communicates to the server > only for page texts and images, as required. sometimes it amuses me what roger pretends not to know. he has said that he reads my posts here, so he does indeed know that i have programmed such an offline proofing tool. to jog all your memories, my app is called "banana cream"... oh, and based on my experience, i can tell you that it's much more intelligent to download the text and images in a batch, rather than one-by-one "as required" by an individual proofer. (which means roger's model is flawed, but what else is new?) > The client-side application is working. It has > been developed as a proofing/formatting tool. > However with a local copy of text and images for a project, > it has proven effective for post-processing. > In fact, it seems so thorough, > it appears to be very useful as a preprocessing tool. i've been demonstrating for years now that roger should be making changes in _preprocessing_, rather than expecting proofers to do it, or doing checks during _postprocessing_... so i'm glad the message has _finally_ been received... better late than never, that's what they say. roger goes on to show some screenshots, like this one: > http://www.fadedpage.net/c/images/fppromo.png compare that to one of my screenshots from earlier this year, which just happened to be using a book from fadedpage.net: > http://z-m-l.com/go/triple2010.jpg or, if you prefer, go look at the version dating back to 2007: > http://z-m-l.com/go/triple.jpg it's fine to reprogram the wheel. doesn't mean you invented it. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Nov 17 09:54:52 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:54:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] it's groundhog day in november 2010 Message-ID: <7673.52f365be.3a1570ec@aol.com> i only look in on the d.p. forums intermittently these days so i had no idea there was huge amusement there this weekend. a thread started up discussing the generation of .epub files: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=45548 amazingly, it's as if it was their first time through this topic. thus, it strongly reminded me of the movie "groundhog day". among a plentitude of amusing and strange things going on, greg newby is over there saying "p.g. has no _resistance_ to d.p. doing .epub files, i don't know where you got that..." or consider that rfrank added this on page 2 of the thread: > In my opinion the real solution is, > as it has always been, > one source, many outputs > with a generator that both DP and PG can use. > That way, both DP and PG users are > working with one file for now and for always. > A generator would have a back-end > for text, HTML and epub and for whatever > is the next big thing when the time comes. > Importantly, the single source file wouldn't change. > The post-processor's job and the whitewasher's job > would be greatly simplified. Errata handling would be > merely editing one file and regenerating. User-requested > formats could even be generated on-demand. that's right. it's as if you were reading the gutvol-d archives. for 2003... or 2005... or 2007... or 2009... or last february... i kept expecting bill murray and andie macdowell to pop up... but you wanna know what's the funniest part of this scene? it's the _very_next_post,_ where marcello reports that -- for the e-books he makes for his personal use -- he uses restructuredtext, and then converts from that to a number of other formats, including .epub, .pdf, etc. to understand why this is so funny, you need to know that restructuredtext is a form of light markup much like z.m.l. so marcello has come over to my side of the fence. try to wrap your head around that. after insisting for years that i was crazy, to the point that he even put up a "fansite" that makes fun of all my quotes, marcello now uses the approach that i advocated all along. he was wrong. i was right. his own actions scream the truth. so now he's having the same arguments with the d.p. folks that i used to have with them, except where i used to plead to their rationality, he just outright calls them stupid, in his special inimitable marcello way. so there is a certain justice, stemming from that old saying about people who forget their history being doomed to repeat it. you doomed yourself, d.p. *** ah, but my role is also being played by roger frank, the part where it goes, "i believe i can make a master-format work". of course, i have since gone on to _make_it_work_, but that is but a mere technicality, right? if _roger_ says it can work... *** anyway, here's a bit more about restructuredtext... unlike z.m.l., it wasn't developed specifically for e-books, nor was it based on the pg-text-format in its extant form, so it would need to be extended to handle the p.g. library. neither does restructuredtext have the currency or the reach of _markdown_, the most popular light markup these days... but restructuredtext is a solid contender nonetheless... it is used as the master-format for official python documentation, so it has shown its range and versatility during that workout... > http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html (observant observers will notice that light markup and python share the convention that whitespace is considered significant, which is a radical departure from most other forms of markup.) again, once you hack restructuredtext so that it works for p.g., you will end up with something that's strikingly similar to z.m.l. for instance, here's the restructuredtext version of headers: > Section Header > ============== > > Subsection Header > ----------------- not bad. but not necessarily any better than the 4-1-2 style that has been employed by p.g. for well over a decade now... which is why i decided to keep the p.g. convention for z.m.l. *** of course, i always said that it would eventually come to this. once you grok the superiority of light markup for this task, it's _inevitable_... thus i always told you that i'd be here to snort "i told you so". so here i am, folks, listen up: "i told you so." *** by the way, i'm releasing _my_ conversion tool very soon. finally went and bought the domain name for it last week. i'll let you know when it drops... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Nov 18 23:36:11 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2010 02:36:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the best book is the one that's always with you Message-ID: <1b71c.1f580c86.3a1782eb@aol.com> if you're not reading kottke, you should be... > http://kottke.org seriously. the guy has amazing range, daily. here's part of a post of his from yesterday... > http://kottke.org/10/11/kindle-and-kinect-christmas > The cheapest Kindle is now only $139 > (and the one with free 3G is $50 more). > They are going to sell a metric crapload > of these things this Christmas. And > even if they don't, they're going to sell > 50 million metric shitloads of Kindle books > because you don't even need a Kindle > to read Kindle books...Amazon has > readers for the iPad (which is way better > than Apple's iBooks app IMO), iPhone, > Android devices, Blackberry, WinPhone 7, > Windows, and OS X. I never would have > predicted it, but I am a firm convert to > Kindle books...and I don't even have a Kindle. > The killer feature here is Amazon's > multi-platform support. I *love* > reading books on the iPad at home but > when I'm out and about, if I've got my > iPhone in my pocket, I can read a book. > The best book is the one that's always with you. that last line pretty much sums it up. but remember when "the killer feature" for the kindle was instant-download, then the sheer number of books? i love that amazon keeps iterating the process. yes, sir, i'm a big fan of what amazon is doing... -bowerbird p.s. the line traditionally goes: "the best camera is the one that's with you." kottke improved it. twice. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcdh at freeliterature.org Sat Nov 20 15:08:50 2010 From: marcdh at freeliterature.org (Marc D'Hooghe) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 00:08:50 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Hathi Trust Message-ID: Free Literature.org needs help getting two books from Hathi Trust (Michigan University) for doing PG e-texts. Anyone around having full access via affiliated organizations? - let me know ( marcdh at freeliterature.org) - many thanks! -- Marc Freeliterature.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From answerwitch at gmail.com Sat Nov 20 19:25:05 2010 From: answerwitch at gmail.com (Mjit RaindancerStahl) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:25:05 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Hathi Trust In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Marc D'Hooghe wrote: > Free Literature.org needs help getting two books from Hathi Trust (Michigan > University) for doing PG e-texts. Anyone around having full access via > affiliated organizations? - let me know (marcdh at freeliterature.org) - many > thanks! > > -- > Marc > Freeliterature.org which Michigan university? Mich State Uni or Uni of Mich? (there's also Central, Eastern, Western, and Northern Mich Unis, and Michigan Technical University.) I nitpick because one might have access to *a* MI Uni, but not the one you need. -- Mjit RaindancerStahl answerwitch at gmail.com Michigan native From marcdh at freeliterature.org Sat Nov 20 19:47:46 2010 From: marcdh at freeliterature.org (Marc D'Hooghe) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 04:47:46 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Hathi Trust In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks for the query http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/wayf?target=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb dropdown list with institutions on the left 2010/11/21 Mjit RaindancerStahl > On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 6:08 PM, Marc D'Hooghe > wrote: > > Free Literature.org needs help getting two books from Hathi Trust > (Michigan > > University) for doing PG e-texts. Anyone around having full access via > > affiliated organizations? - let me know (marcdh at freeliterature.org) - > many > > thanks! > > > > -- > > Marc > > Freeliterature.org > > which Michigan university? Mich State Uni or Uni of Mich? (there's > also Central, Eastern, Western, and Northern Mich Unis, and Michigan > Technical University.) > > I nitpick because one might have access to *a* MI Uni, but not the one you > need. > -- > Mjit RaindancerStahl > answerwitch at gmail.com > Michigan native > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > -- Marc Freeliterature.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 23 02:42:06 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:42:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] number one favorite thing ever Message-ID: <7a5c4.1d8e093.3a1cf47e@aol.com> oprah has said that the ipad is her "number one favorite thing ever". (her "favorite things" are what she gives away at her holiday show.) she added that "words cannot describe how i feel about this device." pretty hard to deny handheld general-purpose devices have arrived. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 23 14:47:10 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 17:47:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] the 4th-quarter of 2010 trifecta of "i told you so" Message-ID: ok, so i did the "i told you so" post about roger frank. 1. and i did the "i told you so" post about light markup. 2. which means there's just one more post in this year-end trifecta of "i told you so", with the culmination this month of a 5-year bet back in '05 with the teleread idiot rothman about e-book hardware development from 2005 to 2010... basically, rothman had predicted a $50 e-book-machine, -- wrong! -- and i said it won't happen for 5 years, if then, and that if it did, i'd buy him a tofu turkey for thanksgiving. if you'd like to refresh yourself on the original exchange and my revisitation to the post at the one-year mark, see: > http://www.teleread.com/2005/11/29/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop-for-200/ the teleread post was november 29th of 2005, so i will make my 5th anniversary posting (haven't missed a year!) that day, as my final entry in that series, as i nailed things conclusively. the bottom line is that rothman lost the bet. completely! there is no $50 e-book reader-machine at all, let alone in sufficiently high volume to produce such a low price... you might pick up an off-brand unit on black friday for $99, or for $69. but no guarantee even of that, we'll have to see. and even if so, don't you forget that 2010 was _my_ guess... rothman had the cheap machines arriving _much_earlier_... indeed, he's had $50 machines as "right around the corner" for about a decade now; it was just downright embarrassing. meanwhile, there are all kinds of e-book-machines in stores this holiday season at the kinds of prices that we should have been expecting all along, realistic prices, which would not give "sticker-shock" because we had believed a cracked crystal ball. have a happy thanksgiving, folks! -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Thu Nov 25 21:06:21 2010 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:06:21 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever In-Reply-To: <7a5c4.1d8e093.3a1cf47e@aol.com> References: <7a5c4.1d8e093.3a1cf47e@aol.com> Message-ID: >pretty hard to deny handheld general-purpose devices have arrived. As in $150 at Fry's for a fully functional netbook, BB? And then you can read whatever file format book you want, downloaded free, or purchased from whatever site you choose. From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Nov 26 11:23:28 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:23:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever Message-ID: <16569.7bb0f796.3a216330@aol.com> jim said: > As in $150 at Fry's for a fully functional netbook, BB? exactly like that, jim. although i don't really consider the clamshell design to be a "handheld" form-factor. i never did, actually, but in the wake of the iphone touchscreen revolution, i would say that my sense of that has solidified greatly. i'm still waiting for steve to rip the keyboard half off the macbook air and reveal that as the machine of the future. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From schultzk at uni-trier.de Sat Nov 27 05:37:26 2010 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Keith J. Schultz) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 14:37:26 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever In-Reply-To: <16569.7bb0f796.3a216330@aol.com> References: <16569.7bb0f796.3a216330@aol.com> Message-ID: Ahh, the 13" iPad planned for next year! ;-))) regards Keith Am 26.11.2010 um 20:23 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > > i'm still waiting for steve to rip the keyboard half off the > macbook air and reveal that as the machine of the future. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat Nov 27 16:24:31 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:24:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever Message-ID: <22a9c.7468f25d.3a22fb3f@aol.com> keith said: > Ahh, the 13" iPad planned for next year! ;-))) yes. exactly. :+) my stance -- for many years now -- has been that we will have machines running the entire range of form-factors... every single size from index-card to tabloid (and bigger). consider standard photo-sizes: 4*6, 5*7, 6*9, 8*10, etc. cad/cam makes this range of sizes easy to manufacture... but the 9-inch*12-inch form-factor will be the one that gives the most opportunistic synergy with the real world, since we can map all our 8.5*11 paper in its actual size... once we grok the utility of this one-to-one correspondence, you'll wonder why this wasn't obvious to all of you all along. and i'll be sitting off all my myself, saying "i told you so..." like usual... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Sat Nov 27 17:47:56 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:47:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever In-Reply-To: <22a9c.7468f25d.3a22fb3f@aol.com> References: <22a9c.7468f25d.3a22fb3f@aol.com> Message-ID: there will be smaller ones than 3x5 index cards. . . . Always. . . . On Sat, 27 Nov 2010, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > keith said: > >?? Ahh, the 13" iPad planned for next year! ;-))) > > yes.? exactly.????????? :+) > > my stance -- for many years now -- has been that we will > have machines running the entire range of form-factors... > > every single size from index-card to tabloid (and bigger). > > consider standard photo-sizes: 4*6, 5*7, 6*9, 8*10, etc. > > cad/cam makes this range of sizes easy to manufacture... > > but the 9-inch*12-inch form-factor will be the one that > gives the most opportunistic synergy with the real world, > since we can map all our 8.5*11 paper in its actual size... > > once we grok the utility of this one-to-one correspondence, > you'll wonder why this wasn't obvious to all of you all along. > > and i'll be sitting off all my myself, saying "i told you so..." > > like usual... > > -bowerbird > > From Bowerbird at aol.com Sun Nov 28 13:11:28 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:11:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever Message-ID: <9fe8e.7384a393.3a241f80@aol.com> michael said: > there will be smaller ones than 3x5 index cards. . . . > Always. . . . well, yes, i suppose there already are, and have been. but if we are speaking about a handheld form-factor, one that is icon-oriented and based on multi-touch, then you need a certain amount of screen real-estate. smaller form-factors are probably gonna be operated with a voice interface instead, with audible output too. and yes, that will happen. but it kinda takes us out of the realm that is generally considered to be "reading". i see that form-factor as either an ear-ring (for women and some men) or a stick-on dot that'll be applied just behind the ear, where the jawbone intersects, so that it can pick up vocalizations and be audible to the person. but again, an audio-only interface is going to be _so_ radically different that people will probably consider it to be a completely separate type of machinery, i'd say. quite interesting to think about, however... :+) kinda like a wise person, always in your ear, telling you exactly what you need to know in that situation and in that place and time, notice of danger and opportunities and whatever else is relevant... like i said, interesting... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dakretz at gmail.com Sun Nov 28 15:31:40 2010 From: dakretz at gmail.com (don kretz) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:31:40 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] The changing of the sea Message-ID: http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/11/29/key-success-factors-for-a-tablet-only-paper/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From schultzk at uni-trier.de Sun Nov 28 18:38:40 2010 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Keith J. Schultz) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:38:40 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever In-Reply-To: <9fe8e.7384a393.3a241f80@aol.com> References: <9fe8e.7384a393.3a241f80@aol.com> Message-ID: <82F02AA0-6476-4AE8-8F49-D69D2A9CA5BF@uni-trier.de> Hi BB, I hate to let you in of this. but Am 28.11.2010 um 22:11 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > michael said: > > there will be smaller ones than 3x5 index cards. . . . > > Always. . . . > > well, yes, i suppose there already are, and have been. > > [snip, snip] > smaller form-factors are probably gonna be operated > with a voice interface instead, with audible output too. > > [snip, snip} > i see that form-factor as either an ear-ring (for women > and some men) or a stick-on dot that'll be applied just > behind the ear, where the jawbone intersects, so that it > can pick up vocalizations and be audible to the person. > > but again, an audio-only interface is going to be _so_ > radically different that people will probably consider it > to be a completely separate type of machinery, i'd say. Why not go with the state of art. There are already system that do actually work with brainwaves. That is a person uses certain thoughts to control a cursor or computer. Both person and computer have to trained. Furthermore, there is work on triggering thoughts/sensations by stimulus. Especially, in the field for helping the deaf and sight impaired. > > quite interesting to think about, however... :+) Quite! If it helps people. > > kinda like a wise person, always in your ear, telling you > exactly what you need to know in that situation and in > that place and time, notice of danger and opportunities > and whatever else is relevant... like i said, interesting... The question is whether one has control of the input or it controls you. Scary! regards Keith. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jimad at msn.com Mon Nov 29 15:31:32 2010 From: jimad at msn.com (Jim Adcock) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:31:32 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever In-Reply-To: <16569.7bb0f796.3a216330@aol.com> References: <16569.7bb0f796.3a216330@aol.com> Message-ID: >i'm still waiting for steve to rip the keyboard half off the macbook air and reveal that as the machine of the future. I think there is some argument for the Android Tabs being the machine of the future. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is getting there, as is the ebook reader software available on the Androids. But $600 is pretty pricy for a tablet reader [that actually supports the Android Marketplace] vs. $150 for a netbook offering more storage and functionality. Now, if only one *could* tear off the keyboard. From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Nov 29 17:12:07 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:12:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: number one favorite thing ever Message-ID: <4f1b9.1eb93336.3a25a967@aol.com> jim said: > I think there is some argument for the Android Tabs > being the machine of the future. really? > The Samsung Galaxy Tab is getting there not really. have you read _all_ of the reviews? > as is the ebook reader software available on the Androids. software shouldn't be hard. unless you have to work around a million different permutations of the hardware, a la android... i'm not saying it can't be done... but i _can_ say that it ain't easy. and software shouldn't be hard. > But $600 is pretty pricy for a tablet reader > [that actually supports the Android Marketplace] > vs. $150 for a netbook offering more storage and functionality.? the price-difference indicates to me that you're comparing two different products, with different expectations and so forth... > Now, if only one *could* tear off the keyboard. unless your operating system was built to be touch-oriented from the ground up, it really is a lot more difficult than deleting a keyboard. and that's why apple is now moving _toward_ the place where its i.o.s. can operate the mac. but they aren't there yet. and the copycats are -- as you would expect -- even farther back... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Nov 29 17:24:16 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:24:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] nook color machine has been rooted Message-ID: <5eef7.57ba6fcd.3a25ac40@aol.com> sent that last post 10 minutes too soon. but... speaking of android tablets... the nook color machine has been rooted. nope, doesn't have the type of chip in it that will give you the power you need to make it worth anything more than $250, and rooting will likely void the warranty, but you know, the kids _do_ like to play. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajhaines at shaw.ca Tue Nov 30 11:54:19 2010 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:54:19 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Amazon charging for PG books Message-ID: <41FBB030BC65472082CE4F04E2E5E8DE@alp2400> This link was sent to me by an ebook submitter: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_ kindle_users_fo.html Al From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 30 12:24:57 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:24:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Amazon charging for PG books Message-ID: <8ade4.5213a666.3a26b799@aol.com> oh my goodness, where have you been, al? this sure ain't news. and newby wonders if it's "ethical". spare me the deliberations. here's the thing: project gutenberg could have set itself up as a publisher with amazon, and sold its e-books for whatever it wants to charge, but project gutenberg decided not to do that. you could've also dictated that every page of every one of the books was available under amazon's "look inside this book" functionality. but again, you decided not to go that route. was that a good decision? heck no, it was a _stupid_ decision... but that's the decision that project gutenberg made. so live with it, and live with the consequences... and tell your contributors that _they_ need to live with it too... heck, jim even came here _begging_ you to make things better... he even did the work for you, and mounted the solution himself. but his efforts were ignored. you might wanna read this recent article from time magazine: > http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html the takeaway sentence is this: > It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy. of course, _free_and_easy_ tops everything. but you opted out of that. and now you want to whine. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ajhaines at shaw.ca Tue Nov 30 12:38:18 2010 From: ajhaines at shaw.ca (Al Haines) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:38:18 -0800 Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Amazon charging for PG books In-Reply-To: <8ade4.5213a666.3a26b799@aol.com> Message-ID: <2362F1A053E142E5984CF1EFEEFEBCFA@alp2400> Sigh... I quite plainly said in my original post (which bowerbird didn't bother to include) that the link was sent to me by a submitter, which I reposted to gutvol-d. I'm well aware that Amazon and others are harvesting from PG and reselling. -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces at lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Bowerbird at aol.com Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 12:25 PM To: gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org; bowerbird at aol.com Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Amazon charging for PG books oh my goodness, where have you been, al? this sure ain't news. and newby wonders if it's "ethical". spare me the deliberations. here's the thing: project gutenberg could have set itself up as a publisher with amazon, and sold its e-books for whatever it wants to charge, but project gutenberg decided not to do that. you could've also dictated that every page of every one of the books was available under amazon's "look inside this book" functionality. but again, you decided not to go that route. was that a good decision? heck no, it was a _stupid_ decision... but that's the decision that project gutenberg made. so live with it, and live with the consequences... and tell your contributors that _they_ need to live with it too... heck, jim even came here _begging_ you to make things better... he even did the work for you, and mounted the solution himself. but his efforts were ignored. you might wanna read this recent article from time magazine: > http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_20 32746_2032903,00.html the takeaway sentence is this: > It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy. of course, _free_and_easy_ tops everything. but you opted out of that. and now you want to whine. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 30 13:59:59 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:59:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Amazon charging for PG books Message-ID: <59e47.33750480.3a26cddf@aol.com> al- if i missed your point, what _was_ your point? my point is that p.g. can trump those resellers, if we want to. but i assume i _made_ my point. -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Tue Nov 30 14:19:59 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:19:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] !@! reported in Seattle PI re: Amazon selling Gutenburg Titles Message-ID: http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/230114.asp From hart at pglaf.org Tue Nov 30 14:20:41 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:20:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Amazon charging for PG books In-Reply-To: <59e47.33750480.3a26cddf@aol.com> References: <59e47.33750480.3a26cddf@aol.com> Message-ID: Here's the original: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_kindle_users_fo.html From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 30 14:53:17 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:53:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] the final report on a 5-year-long bet Message-ID: <103655.5fccfb3c.3a26da5d@aol.com> 5 years is a very long time to see how a bet will turn out... further, it's a notoriously difficult time-period for prediction in the tech arena... a common saying is that prognosticators overestimate the changes that will occur in the next 2 years, but underestimate those that will occur in the next 10 years. that's because it's fairly easy to see what's "around the corner", but harder to see the disrupting change that isn't yet looming. 5 years back, facebook was nothing but a little pea in its pod. myspace was the king of the social-networking sphere, with a membership of 80 million accounts -- staggering at the time, leading to a sale to rupert murdoch for a cool $800 million... not the $1.6 billion pulled down by youtube, but still amazing. further, myspace paid for itself, almost fully, in just one year, and all rupert had to do was route search requests to google. now, though, myspace is a vast wasteland, badly mismanaged. and facebook? well, i don't have to tell you about facebook... they have 500 million members. and the capitalists learned the $10/account valuation of myspace "wasn't quite enough", so facebook is valued at $60/account, totaling to $30 billion, and making mark zuckerberg the world's youngest billionaire. that's how much things can change in 5 years in the tech world. and that's why 5 years is a very long time to settle a bet there... so, with all that as deep background, you will understand why i'm glad that today terminates a bet i made exactly 5 years ago. here's the u.r.l. where you can see what actually happened: > http://www.teleread.com/library/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop-for-200/ david rothman said this, talking about the o.l.p.c. machines: > Could U.S. school districts end up with $100 models? > At that price we?re talking serious competition for p-textbooks, > and the effects could be major for publishers. > With prices so low, libraries will easily be able to > lend the machines to patrons. Ahead?eventually: > The $50 e-book-capable computer on sale at Kmart, > in line with my 1992 prediction. rothman had been giving that line about $50 e-book-machines many times in the previous 5 years, and i often called him on it. and i called him on it this time. only this time, he let down his guard, and moved up the timeline: > Folks, tune in a year from now, and we?ll see who?s right. he even said: > I'd bet my money on it. so i said this: > if the m.i.t. laptop is selling for $200 or less > next thanksgiving, i?ll buy you a turkey, david. > and if there?s a $50 computer ? i mean a real computer ? > available on _any_ thanksgiving in the next 5 years, i will > _buy_it_ for you. because the cost of _lunch_ will hit $50 > before there is a $50 computer. and i can buy you lunch? rothman responded with: > Hey, Bowerbird, I?m not a betting guy, and worse, I?m > a vegetarian. We?ll just enjoy gloating privileges?you or I. so first he wants to _bet_, when he's making his big claim. but when someone takes him on, he's "not a betting guy". still, ok, fine, i don't care to take his money, i'll settle for "gloating privileges", as he put it. so i went back a year later to tell him that he was wrong... then the year after that, and every year since, i came here. (because he banned me from his blog. coincidence? right.) and i've been "gloating" since. he was wrong. i was right. stuff your tofu turkey with _that_... *** i also said: > meanwhile, it?s important to note that color touchscreens > are available _this_christmas_. the only problem is that it's interesting that, even years before the iphone came out, i knew that _touch_ would be an important part of the arena. that's because you needed to use the full surface for screen, which meant a hardware keyboard was out of the question... i also said: > high-res screens really _will_ be cheap in 5 years! with the high-res screens on the iphone4, i nailed that. *** in terms of things that i didn't see coming, one of 'em was the crucial importance of wireless in selling the hardware... i _did_ see the importance of the large catalog of amazon, but i missed the vital nature of the instant purchase option. another invisible was the ability of apple to carve out an agreement with chipmakers to customize to their desires, creating a chip that gave good usability under low power. *** in terms of a thing we _did_ see, but which still has not paid off to the important degree we _thought_ it would, we've got to put mary lou jepsen's screen in that category. color-capability indoor, but still useable in direct sunlight, low cost and with a low power draw, this screen _delivers_, but mary lou just can't seem to get it into a commercial use. here's hoping that that situation changes, and soon... *** but now let me talk about bigger issues than the bet... because the problem with rothman is not just that he was/is an idiot. after all, there are lots and lots of idiots out there. the problem with rothman was that he used n.l.p. methods to sucker lots of fools who then believed whatever he said, including some of the people who are on this very listserve. (if you admired rothman, you'll already know who you are.) so rothman was an idiot who had a little bit of _influence_... along with jon noring, another idiot who used n.l.p. methods, rothman was able to make some noise about the .epub format. i won't bother to go through all of the many twists of plot, but suffice it to say that, here in 2010, we are still paying the price for this combined rothman/noring idiocy with their pet format. what comes to mind is the popular saying: > "be careful what you wish for, because you might get it." neither noring nor rothman was smart enough to know that a file-format, in and of itself, doesn't mean very much at all. even if you call it "an _open_ format", and then try to slander any other option with the thinly-coded insult of "proprietary". as long as it _sounded_ good, that's all that they cared about... (noring frequently opined here on this listserve that perception is more important than reality itself. i kid you not, he said it.) and the corporate publishing houses were more than happy to adopt .epub as their favored format. (why anyone really cared what format the corporations wanted is still a mystery to me... did we care if the recorded-music corporations blessed .mp3? i consider corporate blessing to have been _a_warning_sign_.) what nobody ever bothered to do was to create any open-source proof-of-concept _reference_implementations_ for the format... for any e-book format, you need a reference implementation for an _authoring_tool_ (first of all) and for a _viewer-application_... even at this time, years and years later, the world is still lacking open-source authoring-tools for .epub format, which means that self-publishing authors still have to face a stiff learning-curve... even worse, the viewer-program situation is a _complete_ mess. the reason is simple -- d.r.m. -- and could have been predicted by knowledge of the history of the format, since in an earlier life, it'd been sabotaged when microsoft tried to saddle it with d.r.m. both rothman and noring _knew_ of this history of sabotage, but did nothing to rouse their followers to stand up against the d.r.m. rothman even went in the other direction, supporting a thing he liked to call "social d.r.m.", which is code-name for "doesn't work". (which is why the corporate publishers were loathe to support it.) and make no mistake about it, the corporations _wanted_ d.r.m. so the publishers had adobe create a version of d.r.m. for them. (if you know anything about the recent travails of adobe, you'll know that this was an extremely stupid course of action to take; but throughout this scenario, the publishers have been stupid.) now, amazon wasn't gonna pay a per-book fee for adobe d.r.m., so they went off and invented their own. and apple did likewise. and barnes&noble too. while meanwhile, the corporations were financing all kinds of alternative formats as well, like iceberg and blio and who-else-knows-or-even-bothers-to-keep-up-with-this, indicating not even its parent organization really believes in .epub. so now everyone has their own viewer for .epub, and -- of course -- none of these are compatible with each other, or with the standard. thus we are reliving the old "browser incompatibility" nightmares... so now people who make e-book files are finding that they need to "tweak" their files so as to make them work with each type of viewer, which means the "standard" format isn't really a "standard" at all... especially since now publishers are thinking they need to "enhance" their e-books, with audio and video, which .epub does not support. meanwhile, the x.m.l. movement which served as the basis for .epub has now waned, and .html5 is the new kid on the block, so everyone is now babbling about that, which means that now .epub is looking for a facelift to .html5, so we can expect everything to _stay_ in flux, and for mass confusion to reign, probably for many years to come... in one sentence, everything .epub is one big mess. and this "standard format" -- which promised oh-so-many benefits -- has delivered on _none_ of them. all it has done is suck all the oxygen out of the room, so a decent "open standard format" has no chance now. which is pretty much what the corporate publishers wanted all along... they are trying to sabotage e-books because they know e-books spell the end of their gravy train, and they are trying to stall the inevitable... so give it up for rothman. he gave the corporations what they wanted. *** rothman left teleread. installed someone else as the editor, and sold the masthead. nonetheless, the gee-whiz unreality -- the perpetual sucker for a press release -- still permeates the blog on a regular basis, as evidenced by this recent entry... > http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/new-electrowetting-advances-could-lead-to-real-paper-screens-and-disposable-readers/ the article contains the predictable tagline: > Steckl hopes to attract commercial interest for the > next stage of the development process, which could > take three to five years to bring a product to market. another guy, promising the sky, hoping for a big paycheck. anyone care to bet me that, in "three to five years", this line of research will be looking for a new set of funders, and again promising some miracle product "in 3-5 years"? yeah, i thought not... *** and while i'm at it... there's another disturbing post on the teleread blog today: > http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/prominent-authors-claim-project-gutenberg-knowingly-violates-copyrights-wholesale-kidnapping-of-works/ might wanna go over there and do some damage-control... or maybe it's not necessary, since every single one of the commenters on the article have questioned the tone of it. a good example is this comment, from "jb", who says: > The point of saying that PG is ?kidnapping? works > is to imply that they are willful copyright violators, > without actually making the overt accusation. > It?s a slimy tactic. And it?s extremely disappointing > that Teleread took the bait. > Note the vague wording of the original headline: > PROJECT GUTENBERG IMPROPERLY PD?D COPYRIGHTED WORKS, > AUTHORS CLAIM > Teleread got suckered into being part of a smear campaign. > Or, maybe they wanted to jack up page hits with > a more inflammatory headline. Either way, it?s annoying. this is the legacy of rothman. did i mention he lost our bet? *** the good news is that rothman has largely retired. noring too. the bad news is that they have been replaced by a full _army_ of idiots, who have used n.l.p. and social-networking to build a reputation-circle around themselves, and they bond at the "future of publishing" conferences they hold for each other... best place to get acquainted with this daisy-chain is twitter... depending on how much power and influence this little circle is allowed to obtain, they could muck things up _really_ badly. fortunately, i don't think anyone is stupid enough to give them any _real_ power or authority. but, you know, you never know. meanwhile, thank god for amazon. if they hadn't led the way, e-books would still be in the dark ages... -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Tue Nov 30 15:26:51 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:26:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the final report on a 5-year-long bet In-Reply-To: <103655.5fccfb3c.3a26da5d@aol.com> References: <103655.5fccfb3c.3a26da5d@aol.com> Message-ID: YouTube was left out. . .selling for much more than the $800M whopping figure mentioned below. . .$2.65BILLION. . . Not to mention iPods, iPhones, clones, and iPads. . . . You want a five year prediction???!!! We will have reached and passed the midpoint of the S curve growth rate of public domain eBooks, but hardly anyone will realize it and they will still be predicting growth curves, huge growth curves, based on the preceding 45 years growth! Just like before THE DOT COM BUST. . . . However, eventually someone will realize that half of books in the public domain have already been done and that no way can that growth curve continue because now they only eBooks left to make are those based on hard to find paper editions that are going to be harder and harder to find every year-- and "The Glory Days" of making new public domain eBooks are going to be over forever. . .based on current copyrights as they are being extended. Therefore, we will see a new wave of cuteness in eBooks and in their cover art, internal illustrations, indices, etc.-- more and more FEATURES because there won't be many new book titles to work on any longer. People, perhaps only the new generations, will figure drive sizes have gotten so large there is no reason to delete. Cellphones will reach saturation levels, more features. Want more? On Tue, 30 Nov 2010, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > 5 years is a very long time to see how a bet will turn out... > > further, it's a notoriously difficult time-period for prediction > in the tech arena...? a common saying is that prognosticators > overestimate the changes that will occur in the next 2 years, > but underestimate those that will occur in the next 10 years. > > that's because it's fairly easy to see what's "around the > corner", > but harder to see the disrupting change that isn't yet looming. > > 5 years back, facebook was nothing but a little pea in its pod. > > myspace was the king of the social-networking sphere, with a > membership of 80 million accounts -- staggering at the time, > leading to a sale to rupert murdoch for a cool $800 million... > not the $1.6 billion pulled down by youtube, but still amazing. > > further, myspace paid for itself, almost fully, in just one > year, > and all rupert had to do was route search requests to google. > > now, though, myspace is a vast wasteland, badly mismanaged. > > and facebook?? well, i don't have to tell you about facebook... > they have 500 million members.? and the capitalists learned > the $10/account valuation of myspace "wasn't quite enough", > so facebook is valued at $60/account, totaling to $30 billion, > and making mark zuckerberg the world's youngest billionaire. > > that's how much things can change in 5 years in the tech world. > > and that's why 5 years is a very long time to settle a bet > there... > > so, with all that as deep background, you will understand why > i'm glad that today terminates a bet i made exactly 5 years ago. > > here's the u.r.l. where you can see what actually happened: > >?http://www.teleread.com/library/you-can-buy-the-mit-100-laptop- > for-200/ > > david rothman said this, talking about the o.l.p.c. machines: > >?? Could U.S. school districts end up with $100 models? > >?? At that price we?re talking serious competition for > p-textbooks, > >?? and the effects could be major for publishers. > >?? With prices so low, libraries will easily be able to > >?? lend the machines to patrons. Ahead?eventually: > >?? The $50 e-book-capable computer on sale at Kmart, > >?? in line with my 1992 prediction. > > rothman had been giving that line about $50 e-book-machines > many times in the previous 5 years, and i often called him on > it. > > and i called him on it this time. > > only this time, he let down his guard, and moved up the > timeline: > >?? Folks, tune in a year from now, and we?ll see who?s right. > > he even said: > >?? I'd bet my money on it. > > so i said this: > >?? if the m.i.t. laptop is selling for $200 or less > >?? next thanksgiving, i?ll buy you a turkey, david. > >?? and if there?s a $50 computer ? i mean a real computer ? > >?? available on _any_ thanksgiving in the next 5 years, i will > >?? _buy_it_ for you. because the cost of _lunch_ will hit $50 > >?? before there is a $50 computer. and i can buy you lunch? > > rothman responded with: > >?? Hey, Bowerbird, I?m not a betting guy, and worse, I?m > >?? a vegetarian. We?ll just enjoy gloating privileges?you or I. > > so first he wants to _bet_, when he's making his big claim. > > but when someone takes him on, he's "not a betting guy". > > still, ok, fine, i don't care to take his money, i'll settle for > "gloating privileges", as he put it. > > so i went back a year later to tell him that he was wrong... > > then the year after that, and every year since, i came here. > (because he banned me from his blog.? coincidence?? right.) > > and i've been "gloating" since.? he was wrong.? i was right. > > stuff your tofu turkey with _that_... > > *** > > i also said: > >?? meanwhile, it?s important to note that color touchscreens > >?? are available _this_christmas_. the only problem is that > > it's interesting that, even years before the iphone came out, > i knew that _touch_ would be an important part of the arena. > that's because you needed to use the full surface for screen, > which meant a hardware keyboard was out of the question... > > i also said: > >??? high-res screens really _will_ be cheap in 5 years! > > with the high-res screens on the iphone4, i nailed that. > > *** > > in terms of things that i didn't see coming, one of 'em was > the crucial importance of wireless in selling the hardware... > > i _did_ see the importance of the large catalog of amazon, > but i missed the vital nature of the instant purchase option. > > another invisible was the ability of apple to carve out an > agreement with chipmakers to customize to their desires, > creating a chip that gave good usability under low power. > > *** > > in terms of a thing we _did_ see, but which still has not > paid off to the important degree we _thought_ it would, > we've got to put mary lou jepsen's screen in that category. > > color-capability indoor, but still useable in direct sunlight, > low cost and with a low power draw, this screen _delivers_, > but mary lou just can't seem to get it into a commercial use. > > here's hoping that that situation changes, and soon... > > *** > > but now let me talk about bigger issues than the bet... > > because the problem with rothman is not just that he was/is > an idiot.? after all, there are lots and lots of idiots out > there. > > the problem with rothman was that he used n.l.p. methods > to sucker lots of fools who then believed whatever he said, > including some of the people who are on this very listserve. > (if you admired rothman, you'll already know who you are.) > > so rothman was an idiot who had a little bit of _influence_... > > along with jon noring, another idiot who used n.l.p. methods, > rothman was able to make some noise about the .epub format. > > i won't bother to go through all of the many twists of plot, but > suffice it to say that, here in 2010, we are still paying the > price > for this combined rothman/noring idiocy with their pet format. > > what comes to mind is the popular saying: > >?? "be careful what you wish for, because you might get it." > > neither noring nor rothman was smart enough to know that > a file-format, in and of itself, doesn't mean very much at all. > > even if you call it "an _open_ format", and then try to slander > any other option with the thinly-coded insult of "proprietary". > > as long as it _sounded_ good, that's all that they cared > about... > (noring frequently opined here on this listserve that perception > is more important than reality itself.? i kid you not, he said > it.) > > and the corporate publishing houses were more than happy to > adopt .epub as their favored format.? (why anyone really cared > what format the corporations wanted is still a mystery to me... > did we care if the recorded-music corporations blessed .mp3? > i consider corporate blessing to have been _a_warning_sign_.) > > what nobody ever bothered to do was to create any open-source > proof-of-concept _reference_implementations_ for the format... > > for any e-book format, you need a reference implementation for > an _authoring_tool_ (first of all) and for a > _viewer-application_... > > even at this time, years and years later, the world is still > lacking > open-source authoring-tools for .epub format, which means that > self-publishing authors still have to face a stiff > learning-curve... > > even worse, the viewer-program situation is a _complete_ mess. > > the reason is simple -- d.r.m. -- and could have been predicted > by knowledge of the history of the format, since in an earlier > life, > it'd been sabotaged when microsoft tried to saddle it with > d.r.m. > > both rothman and noring _knew_ of this history of sabotage, but > did nothing to rouse their followers to stand up against the > d.r.m. > rothman even went in the other direction, supporting a thing he > liked to call "social d.r.m.", which is code-name for "doesn't > work". > (which is why the corporate publishers were loathe to support > it.) > > and make no mistake about it, the corporations _wanted_ d.r.m. > > so the publishers had adobe create a version of d.r.m. for them. > (if you know anything about the recent travails of adobe, you'll > know that this was an extremely stupid course of action to take; > but throughout this scenario, the publishers have been stupid.) > > now, amazon wasn't gonna pay a per-book fee for adobe d.r.m., > so they went off and invented their own.? and apple did > likewise. > and barnes&noble too.? while meanwhile, the corporations were > financing all kinds of alternative formats as well, like iceberg > and > blio and who-else-knows-or-even-bothers-to-keep-up-with-this, > indicating not even its parent organization really believes in > .epub. > > so now everyone has their own viewer for .epub, and -- of course > -- > none of these are compatible with each other, or with the > standard. > thus we are reliving the old "browser incompatibility" > nightmares... > > so now people who make e-book files are finding that they need > to > "tweak" their files so as to make them work with each type of > viewer, > which means the "standard" format isn't really a "standard" at > all... > > especially since now publishers are thinking they need to > "enhance" > their e-books, with audio and video, which .epub does not > support. > > meanwhile, the x.m.l. movement which served as the basis for > .epub > has now waned, and .html5 is the new kid on the block, so > everyone > is now babbling about that, which means that now .epub is > looking > for a facelift to .html5, so we can expect everything to _stay_ > in flux, > and for mass confusion to reign, probably for many years to > come... > > in one sentence, everything .epub is one big mess. > > and this "standard format" -- which promised oh-so-many benefits > -- > has delivered on _none_ of them.? all it has done is suck all > the oxygen > out of the room, so a decent "open standard format" has no > chance now. > > which is pretty much what the corporate publishers wanted all > along... > they are trying to sabotage e-books because they know e-books > spell > the end of their gravy train, and they are trying to stall the > inevitable... > > so give it up for rothman.? he gave the corporations what they > wanted. > > *** > > rothman left teleread.? installed someone else as the editor, > and sold the masthead.? nonetheless, the gee-whiz unreality > -- the perpetual sucker for a press release -- still permeates > the blog on a regular basis, as evidenced by this recent > entry... > > >??http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadows/new-electrowetting-advanc > es-could-lead-to-real-paper-screens-and-disposable-readers/ > > the article contains the predictable tagline: > >?? Steckl hopes to attract commercial interest for the > >?? next stage of the development process, which could > >?? take three to five years to bring a product to market. > > another guy, promising the sky, hoping for a big paycheck. > > anyone care to bet me that, in "three to five years", this > line of research will be looking for a new set of funders, > and again promising some miracle product "in 3-5 years"? > > yeah, i thought not... > > *** > > and while i'm at it... > > there's another disturbing post on the teleread blog today: > >??http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/prominent-authors-claim-proj > ect-gutenberg-knowingly-violates-copyrights-wholesale-kidnappin > g-of-works/ > > might wanna go over there and do some damage-control... > > or maybe it's not necessary, since every single one of the > commenters on the article have questioned the tone of it. > > a good example is this comment, from "jb", who says: > >?? The point of saying that PG is ?kidnapping? works > >?? is to imply that they are willful copyright violators, > >?? without actually making the overt accusation. > >?? It?s a slimy tactic. And it?s extremely disappointing > >?? that Teleread took the bait. > >?? Note the vague wording of the original headline: > >?? PROJECT GUTENBERG IMPROPERLY PD?D COPYRIGHTED WORKS, > >?? AUTHORS CLAIM > >?? Teleread got suckered into being part of a smear campaign. > >?? Or, maybe they wanted to jack up page hits with > >?? a more inflammatory headline. Either way, it?s annoying. > > this is the legacy of rothman.? did i mention he lost our bet? > > *** > > the good news is that rothman has largely retired.? noring too. > > the bad news is that they have been replaced by a full _army_ > of idiots, who have used n.l.p. and social-networking to build > a reputation-circle around themselves, and they bond at the > "future of publishing" conferences they hold for each other... > best place to get acquainted with this daisy-chain is twitter... > depending on how much power and influence this little circle > is allowed to obtain, they could muck things up _really_ badly. > fortunately, i don't think anyone is stupid enough to give them > any _real_ power or authority.? but, you know, you never know. > > meanwhile, thank god for amazon.? if they hadn't led the way, > e-books would still be in the dark ages... > > -bowerbird > > From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 30 16:33:26 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:33:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the final report on a 5-year-long bet Message-ID: <109f87.19e99b5b.3a26f1d6@aol.com> michael said: > YouTube was left out. . . no, i included it. right there. you just missed it. > selling for much more than the $800M > whopping figure mentioned below. . . > $2.65BILLION. . . my memory said, and still does say, $1.6 billion. either way, it's a lot of money, no doubt about it. and yes, in terms of a surprise, youtube was that. > Not to mention iPods, iPhones, clones, and iPads. . . . iphone as an actual _computer_, yes, that too was something that caught people by surprise. they had little sense before that a phone could browse the web, let alone execute programs... but the ipod touch wasn't surprising after that; it was just an iphone without the phone part... and early ipods per se weren't a surprise at all. no indeed, they were originally condemned as being nothing that hadn't already been before. but if you want to put the itunes store in there, especially once iphone apps hit, i'd buy _that_... > You want a five year prediction???!!! sure! :+) > We will have reached and passed the midpoint > of the S curve growth rate of public domain eBooks, > but hardly anyone will realize it and they will still > be predicting growth curves, huge growth curves, > based on the preceding 45 years growth! > Just like before THE DOT COM BUST. . . . that's a general error you've commented on before. you're right that people are incapable of seeing that. > However, eventually someone will realize that > half of books in the public domain have already > been done and that no way can that growth curve > continue because now they only eBooks left to make > are those based on hard to find paper editions that > are going to be harder and harder to find every year-- > and "The Glory Days" of making new public domain eBooks > are going to be over forever. . .based on current copyrights > as they are being extended. hard to disagree with that. but one dissenting note is that -- even though some people talk as if the public-domain is now fully digitized (for example, recently brewster kahle) -- there still seem to me to be some rather huge holes there... i regularly turn up empty on searches for books i know exist, but they aren't at google and they aren't at internet archive... i think we're being sold a snow-job. > Therefore, we will see a new wave of cuteness in eBooks > and in their cover art, internal illustrations, indices, etc.-- > more and more FEATURES because there won't be > many new book titles to work on any longer. yeah, but to me, that's just a bunch of wasted energy. > People, perhaps only the new generations, will figure > drive sizes have gotten so large there is no reason to delete. already there. > Cellphones will reach saturation levels, more features. already there. > Want more? yes! please! -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Tue Nov 30 16:45:38 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:45:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the final report on a 5-year-long bet In-Reply-To: <109f87.19e99b5b.3a26f1d6@aol.com> References: <109f87.19e99b5b.3a26f1d6@aol.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 30 Nov 2010, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > michael said: > >?? YouTube was left out. . . > > no, i included it.? right there.? you just missed it. > You've got to learn to cut and paste the proof in, or at least provide search phrases. . . . > > >?? selling for much more than the $800M > >?? whopping figure mentioned below. . . > >?? $2.65BILLION. . . > > my memory said, and still does say, $1.6 billion. Typo. . .$1.65BILLION > either way, it's a lot of money, no doubt about it. > > and yes, in terms of a surprise, youtube was that. > > > >?? Not to mention iPods, iPhones, clones, and iPads. . . . > > iphone as an actual _computer_, yes, that too > was something that caught people by surprise. > they had little sense before that a phone could > browse the web, let alone execute programs... > > but the ipod touch wasn't surprising after that; > it was just an iphone without the phone part... > > and early ipods per se weren't a surprise at all. /even when people wrote programs to read PG ebooks??? > no indeed, they were originally condemned as > being nothing that hadn't already been before. > > but if you want to put the itunes store in there, > especially once iphone apps hit, i'd buy _that_... > > > >?? You want a five year prediction???!!! > > sure!??????? :+) > > > >?? We will have reached and passed the midpoint > >?? of the S curve growth rate of public domain eBooks, > >?? but hardly anyone will realize it and they will still > >?? be predicting growth curves, huge growth curves, > >?? based on the preceding 45 years growth! > >?? Just like before THE DOT COM BUST. . . . > > that's a general error you've commented on before. > you're right that people are incapable of seeing that. > > > >?? However, eventually someone will realize that > >?? half of books in the public domain have already > >?? been done and that no way can that growth curve > >?? continue because now they only eBooks left to make > >?? are those based on hard to find paper editions that > >?? are going to be harder and harder to find every year-- > >?? and "The Glory Days" of making new public domain eBooks > >?? are going to be over forever. . .based on current copyrights > >?? as they are being extended. > > hard to disagree with that.? but one dissenting note is that > -- even though some people talk as if the public-domain is > now fully digitized (for example, recently brewster kahle) -- > there still seem to me to be some rather huge holes there... I just said we would reach or pass the 50% mark in 5 years, leaves room for LOTS of holes!!! > > i regularly turn up empty on searches for books i know exist, > but they aren't at google and they aren't at internet archive... > > i think we're being sold a snow-job. Please don't confuse MY answers with THEIRS. . . . > >?? Therefore, we will see a new wave of cuteness in eBooks > >?? and in their cover art, internal illustrations, indices, etc.-- > >?? more and more FEATURES because there won't be > >?? many new book titles to work on any longer. > > yeah, but to me, that's just a bunch of wasted energy. That's what everyone says. . .about everything. . . . Until someone comes up with a new USE for the wasted energy. > >?? People, perhaps only the new generations, will figure > >?? drive sizes have gotten so large there is no reason to delete. > > already there. No. . .the FACTS are already here, the public hasn't figured it out yet. . . . > >?? Cellphones will reach saturation levels, more features. > > already there. No, not quite. . .give it a few more years.. . . > > > >?? Want more? > > yes!? please! > > -bowerbird > > From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Nov 30 17:41:49 2010 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 20:41:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the final report on a 5-year-long bet Message-ID: <10f363.ae2384e.3a2701dd@aol.com> michael said: > You've got to learn to cut and paste the proof in, > or at least provide search phrases. . . . search my original message for "youtube" and you'll find this: > leading to a sale to rupert murdoch for a cool $800 million... > not the $1.6 billion pulled down by youtube, but still amazing. it was also included right there in your reply... *** michael said: > Please don't confuse MY answers with THEIRS. . . . i don't. but the problem is that it is the internet archive who has been doing all the scanning, except for google. most p.g. e-books come from internet archive these days. if they stop scanning because they think they've done it all, the public-domain is going to be unnecessarily truncated... but maybe i've misunderstood what brewster is saying: > http://internetarchive.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/books-in-browsers-keynote-speech-by-brewster-kahle/ -bowerbird -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hart at pglaf.org Tue Nov 30 21:26:49 2010 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael S. Hart) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:26:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: the final report on a 5-year-long bet In-Reply-To: <10f363.ae2384e.3a2701dd@aol.com> References: <10f363.ae2384e.3a2701dd@aol.com> Message-ID: "if they stop scanning because they think they've done it all, the public-domain is going to be unnecessarily truncated..." Wherever anyone chooses to stop because it's getting too hard, there will always be those who think they should go farther... Obviously things will slow down after the world hits 50%. . .! Why? The easiest 50% of books will already be done. . . . It will only get harder to find the other 50%, even though the tools for doing it will be more powerful. All this new power may keep the curve going up to 55%, even to 65%, but it will have to slow down when public domain is hard, harder, hardest to find or to identify.