October 2004 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

English and request
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

I don't know what European language is spoken in Somalia; in the past parts of it have been colonized by British, French, and Italians. I met a Somali refugee today, one of a good many that our Church has "adopted." Catholic charities are also working with some of the Somalis in Salt Lake City, and I'm sure that other churches I don't know about are doing the same. In this small group, there is one adult male, who speaks broken English; two young adult women, one of whom speaks broken English and the other of whom speaks only a few words; an older adult woman who speaks very little English; and four children. They are all Muslims, and their first language is Somali. The man got a job about two days after he got here; the young adult women are both starting work tomorrow, even though one of them had a miscarriage only yesterday. The grandmother will be caring for the children while the other adults are working. They all want desperately to learn English. PG has a lot of children's books, and I can prepare a CD of them. But T and I don't have a spare computer. Does ANYBODY have an extra laptop or notebook that could be given to them? If so, let me know, and I'll find out whether it should be sent directly to them or to me to get to them. I think the grandmother could learn a lot more English in a hurry if they had a computer and if the two adults who speak reasonably good English would read and translate. Uh . . . what was that about people in Africa don't need books in English? We gave them some paper reference books, but we long since gave all our children's books to the shelter for battered women and their children. We'll probably be able to get them some books through the library's book sale, but having a whole CD of children's books and a way to read them would help them so much. I am a scholar. I have written reference books, and I am very grateful to those who post scholarly material, especially Pepys's diaries, which are some of the most fascinating books I have ever read. But to my mind, it is these people, and others in unfortunate situations or locations, to whom PG should be mainly aiming. Scholars are going to get their books one way or another, if they have to hitchhike to the closest good library. I grew up in a town without a library; when I went to visit my grandmother she knew that the first place she had to take me was the library. What a blessing it would have been to me to have computers and PG then! Anne

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] barriers to XML posting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

> If you can't accept that I am debating these issues in good faith, > there is no point in continuing this discussion. oh c'mon, jim, "good faith"? from marcello? yeah, i got a good laugh out of that one... :+) -bowerbird

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Best of Bowerbird
by Marcello Perathoner 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

New "Best of Bowerbird" fansite at: http://www.gnutenberg.de/bowerbird/ -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] re: coming to michael doorstep with hat in hand
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

starner said: > So does that mean you're going to stop pushing ZML on us? pushing? that's a rather loaded term, don't you think? and inaccurate too. z.m.l. is a solution to problems with the library. i will be the person who implements that solution. i came here to _show_ you that solution, so if y'all were _smart_ enough to see it as such, y'all could help me with that implementation... but i didn't count any chickens before they were hatched, so it is no loss to me that y'all are unable to see clearly. i was always willing to implement the solution myself, and i still am. what _i_ got out of the whole deal was a much more detailed picture of how to make it happen, by virtue of having explained it some six ways to sunday. meanwhile, same rule as day one: the proof is in the pudding. > Or are you going to argue over the definition of the word "is" again? what? -bowerbird

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] re: coming to michael doorstep with hat in hand
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

marcello said: > I heard your program still crashes after printing the headline ... i've heard not a single report of that, confirmed or unconfirmed. but if you can report that, take it to my beta-test listserve. the people signed up to this listserve don't want to hear it... -bowerbird

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] re: coming to michael doorstep with hat in hand
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

mar cello said: > Dissed and cussed, yes, but not discussed. actually, i think you would be hard-pressed to find even one place where i have said something bad about project gutenberg. i give it very high praise. even on my upcoming blog, where i fully intend to speak frankly about some bad decisions that i think are being made here by some people around michael, i will continue to say good things about the library, and especially about michael. as many people recall, you tarking naugshlocks here have often accused me of "kissing michael's ass". no one's ever said that about me, not in regard to anyone, but i do think michael is a genius, so i'll continue to say good things about him and his library. but some _other_ people might not get such rosy treatment... > So its better to give them a reader that > freezes on them the first time they use it and > takes their whole machine down if they press ctrl-alt-del. beta-test software can do that sometimes. but i've had not one report of my program doing that, if that's what you are trying to imply here, marcello. if the tester can't report or replicate the crash, and describe the conditions of its occurrence too, i'll believe it's a problem unique to their machine. most likely with their windows operating system. maybe you've heard there are a few bugs in that... > Thats what you think: take a look here > if your decrepit Macintrash can handle videos: you think you're cool insulting someone because their machine is old, don't you? but yeah, my mac can "handle videos" just fine, thank you. so can the authoring-tools that i _program_ on this old mac. of course, they also work fine on the circa-1989 mac that i used before this one, thanks to a thing called quicktime, have you heard of that?, so i guess it's not too surprising... -bowerbird

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] re: coming to michael doorstep with hat in hand
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

marcello said: > Have you got any data to sustain your theory, like, uhm, > a representative poll of pg user population? first of all, let me say that i think it would be _great_ to have some way to survey project gutenberg users! might open a lot of eyes around here. (or probably not.) i've talked to a lot of people about project gutenberg, and discussed it on a lot of listserves over the years. since i'm not involved in it, and because i'm curious, i learn what people think; i hear the good and the bad. and you know what the biggest eye-opener was for me? it was last december, at the 10,000th-e-text gathering, when michael gave a talk at the berkeley public library. many of the attendees seemed to be just learning about the project; they were excited, but had some questions. the most frequent one revolved on how to read the e-texts. in other words, these people didn't even know how to open and read a text-file, or an .html file. and when greg had to try and explain a "zip" file, their eyes started to glaze over. we overestimate -- and that word is an understatement -- the sophistication of the audience far too frequently here. so i think it'd be great to open a communication pipeline between us and them, so we got to know them a bit better... anyway... my view on the factors that have made project gutenberg a success is based on listening to what michael himself says, coupled with some very-long-term observation of the many different e-book projects that have _failed_ along the way... the more they depended on tech not yet in the mainstream, the faster they plummeted. the more they depended on having the newest hardware, the faster they plummeted. the more they depended on special knowledge by the user, the faster they plummeted. the more they cluttered up the text with extraneous stuff -- including everything from proprietary formats to d.r.m. -- the faster they plummeted. yet michael's project -- which michael himself considers to be successful exactly because he stripped down to basics -- maintained its ground and grew just as he predicted it would. and today, most computer owners have grown totally weary of the need to constantly update, to buy new hardware and/or install complex new software. they are digging their heels in, deciding to make do with what they have. p.c. sales have been in _decline_ for years, after a decade-plus of yearly increases. and the situation will only get worse as things go from here. software has always grown the must-upgrade pie in the past, but there's just no money in it now, so the decline will spiral. when billy g. talks to his shareholders these days, he doesn't talk about his software; nope, he talks about his i.p. patents. "innovation" used to be his buzzword (albeit a very big lie), but now it's "licensing" (and this one we can surely believe). when the 800-pound gorilla decides to get in your way, beware. an absence of reasons to upgrade will make users dig in deeper. they'll live with what they've got, and we'll have live with that. and this is _not_ -- as some techies would have you believe -- because they are stupid, or don't want to "grow", it's because they don't want to always have to be updating their computer. just like some people like to tinker with their car -- great! -- but other people just want to get in it and drive somewhere... i'm from the mac side, where the mantra has always been "it just works", so maybe i'm biased, but it just _amazes_ me how much time the rest of the world spends _fiddling_. but guess what? you've used up all of the users' patience. if what you give 'em won't work without fiddling, forget it. and i'll kick this up to another level of abstraction as well. the reason _books_ -- paper ones -- have been so successful is because they are utterly and completely _simple_ to use. a child can learn how to use a book. the more difficulty that you tack onto electronic-books, the more you buck history... books have also been an instrument that let people _rise_. it's part of the philosophy underlying public library systems. when you move books out to a place where only new machines can access them, you're making a very bad political decision. instead of books closing the gap between the rich and the poor, they become another wedge making that gap bigger and bigger... e-texts "too cheap to meter" is michael's bedrock philosophy, and moving this library to a technological methodology that won't run on the trailing-edge -- let alone one that cannot even prove itself to _work_ -- does that philosophy grave disservice. in conclusion... what this means is that the new imperative is to "make it work" using the existing infrastructure, or you too will plummet, fast. and _that_ means that if you want to introduce some innovation, the obligation should be on you to prove that it works, first... the end-user is tired of being your guinea pig... -bowerbird

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] Re: barriers to XML posting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

marcello said: > He has *25* titles marked up in 3 languages. have you run out the .html and .txt versions, and put them online, so i can evaluate them? > Go to > http://www.gnutenberg.de/search/titles/results/ > and eat crow, Bowerbird. actually, i'm tired of being a guinea pig, so i won't be going anywhere today, thanks. if you say you've got 25 titles done, i'll believe it. but you could have 250 done and it wouldn't change my point. let me know when you get to 2,500, marked up and converted to .html and plain-text. because that number will impress me. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] re: coming to michael doorstep with hat in hand
by D. Starner 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

Bowerbird(a)aol.com writes: > what this means is that the new imperative is to "make it work" > using the existing infrastructure, or you too will plummet, fast. > > and _that_ means that if you want to introduce some innovation, > the obligation should be on you to prove that it works, first... So does that mean you're going to stop pushing ZML on us? Or are you going to argue over the definition of the word "is" again? -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] 126 messages in one day
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Oct '04

21 Oct '04

david said: > Excuse me, "Listserve" is the trademarked name > of a product owned and created by L-Soft International, Inc. right. and amazon has a patent on one-click web purchasing. and various companies now "own" pieces of the human genome. if l-soft wants to come after me, they know my e-mail address. -bowerbird

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