May 2005 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

HandHeld & E-Books
by rvijay07 15 May '05

15 May '05

How convenient are handhelds to read E-books ? Specially in terms of eye strain and power lasting etc., ? Reading E-Books from a desktop is strainful, specially if one is at the PC at work all day. Any other related info. welcome. Thanks in advance. Vijay _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com

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Re: [gutvol-d] An Error, eye strain, solution.
by rvijay07 15 May '05

15 May '05

I am using Mozilla. Pressing Ctrl + did help change the fonts. However, making the background a less brighter color may also help in reducing the strain I feel. Is there a way to do this in the browser ? I am unable to find any options for this in my Mozilla 1.7.2. This Mozilla is a Debian Package. Also are there E-book readers for the desktop for Linux users ? What advantages do they offer ? I would also appreciate their web-sites. Thanks. Vijay --- On Sat 05/14, Jared Buck < JBuck814366460(a)aol.com > wrote: From: Jared Buck [mailto: JBuck814366460(a)aol.com] To: rvijay07(a)myway.com Cc: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 17:47:19 -0700 Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] An Error, eye strain, solution. You can change the font your browser displays such things in. The setting to do so depends on the browser you use. I'm a Firefox user, but other people use IE, Netscape, Mozilla, or even Opera. Which one do you use? rvijay07 wrote on 5/14/2005, 5:31 PM: > > I have beenr eading the E-Books as such in my browser last week. The > fonts were a little extra small. Hence, after three days I endedup > with red, watery and irritated eyes. Maybe I must read the E-Books by > opening them in Open Office with larger fonts. > > Vijay > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. > Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com

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re: rare, which drives the price up
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '05

14 May '05

jon noring said: > Anyway, the proofers did find a couple errors > (and as I noted the text has not been sufficiently proofed yet), and when will "sufficiency" be reached? :+) (sorry, folks, this post of jon's is so juicy, i have to respond twice!) > Anyway, the proofers did find a couple errors > (and as I noted the text has not been sufficiently proofed yet), > which have been corrected in the current online text. > I don't know if they corrected the errors you found as i told you before, no, you still haven't gotten all the errors. you might have found 2. great! but there are still 2 more. :+) > I don't know if they corrected the errors you found > but I don't really care. oh, i think you care _very_much_ about finding every last one. that's why you are still soliciting for even more proofreaders... > And of course, I won't tell you here > exactly what errors the proofers found it's trivial to find the changes you made. > but for $100 I'll be happy to tell you and for $100, i will spell "trivial" for you. :+) > (but I'll be nice and give you a clue: "didn't" and "liked".) > Otherwise you can download the XHTML document again > and run a 'diff' on it -- happy hunting! "hunting"? there's no need to go "hunting". just drop two files on the comparison app. and "diff"? please. what a clumsy-ass tool. in a case like this, with only a couple changes, that will not matter much. but as a programmer, i've written several apps that present the output in a way that's much friendlier than that of "diff" -- not to mention a whole heckuva lot smarter -- absolutely necessary if the comparison gets sticky. (e.g., ok, already, i don't need to see the differences that were created by the change to british spellings.) > You can say what you want, but unless you "show the pudding", > no one's going to believe you. Your credibility is zero. and the flack you're desperately throwing up is trivial to defeat. aside from the two changes that you so generously "hinted" about, i see you also added the character entity for the trademark symbol. gotta get that trademark on "trusted edition", don't you? after all, you want people to be sure which e-texts are "trustworthy", right? as for one correction made, from "liked" to "like", well, that error occurred on page 363, did it not? indeed, it is the very top line on page 363, right? now if you look at the scan i used for my proofing demo, at > http://users.aol.com/bowerbird/proof_wiki.html which i put up a few months back, you'll see i used page 363! what a surprise! but maybe that was just, like, a very rare coincidence, eh?, that the very page on which there is one of the few errors remaining would be the same page -- deep into the book -- that i would use in my public demo of a proofing interface? yeah, maybe it was, jon, maybe it was. or maybe i was merely toying with you. you won't know unless you "call my bluff" on those 2 errors that i say are still in your text, will you? there's a $300 payoff in it for you if i am bluffing, as opposed to a mere $75 payoff for me if i'm not... it's pretty hard to resist a 4-to-1 differential, isn't it? (and for your $75, you'll finally have error-free text, which -- despite your serious efforts -- has eluded you for months. of course, project gutenberg will have the exact same text.) but act fast! this is a limited-time offer! or before you know it, the price of the next-to-last error might jump to $40, and the price of the last one up to $60, for a grand total for the pair of $100. you just never know. after all, these errors are _rare_. that drives the price up... -bowerbird p.s. by the way, a u.r.l. for that d.p. forum i said you should see is: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=128023#128023 (this forum is for d.p. members only, which jon is, but anybody else can visit as well, just by registering as a member first; that's free. heck, stick around and proof a couple pages, and see if you like it...)

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bowerturkey
by Doug Schroeder 14 May '05

14 May '05

bowerturkey, Please just go away on you own this time. How many more cycles of you getting booted and returning should I be expecting? Alternatively, you could just grow up a little. One made-up word for you: vaporware. I'd have no problem with you if you actually DID SOMETHING. I think I know many other people (some coders) with your personality set. They back it up, however, and thus I like their attitudes. (And yes, I have enough to figure you out, every other post is your opinion on something.)

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re: eye strain
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '05

14 May '05

branko said: > What does that mean, "eye strain"? don't worry about it. it's one of those old-people things... ;+) -bowerbird

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Re: HandHeld & E-Books
by rvijay07 14 May '05

14 May '05

Great post. Thanks for sharing. I am a Linux user as well. No windows. Hence, this seems to be a great limitation for products like the rocketreader. Hope they comeup with alternative solutions in the future. Vijay --- On Sat 05/14, Chuck MATTSEN < mattsen(a)arvig.net > wrote: From: Chuck MATTSEN [mailto: mattsen(a)arvig.net] To: rvijay07(a)myway.com, gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 05:33:11 -0500 Subject: Re: HandHeld & E-Books On Sat, 14 May 2005 05:38:48 -0400 (EDT) "rvijay07" <rvijay07(a)myway.com> typed: > Thanks for the helpful response. What kind of a power supply does the > RocketBook reader use and how long does it last ? Also for how long > one has to be a member of the 2 books per month deal to get the > rocket reader ? > > Here is another related question. Are these two books a month > actially E-books ? Can one resell E-Books under copyright on ebay > etc., like regular books ? It's a rechargeable battery system w/adapter included; roughly 8 hours of reading per charge. The deal I took advantage of was through Filament, which is one of the many faces of Fictionwise/eBookwise and a few other incarnations. There may be better bargains out there with respect to getting the RocketBook reader on its own, but I knew that a number of titles I wanted were available through the Filament deal anyway, so I went with it. It's a 12-month commitment for the 2-books-per-month scheme. Works for me -- YMMV. It's www.filamentbooks.com for the 12-month deal, or www.ebookwise.com has the reader for $129 with a $30 credit toward books (which may be a better deal for some folks). Anyway, I'm not specifically recommending either; just mentioning two places I know of ... I'm sure there are others. Of course, the two books are e-books, though your selection may be somewhat limited in comparison to the broader library of e-books available. Beyond the two I get per month, the vast majority of what I've been reading and collecting have either been PG editions or what the Baen sci-fi library makes available, though I've scoured a number of the other sites for titles here and there. As someone mentioned (Greg?), the software to do some of the conversions from other formats to the RocketBook format is for Windows, which pains me no end, since I'd rather reside in GNU/Linux all the time, but I do still have a dual-boot setup so that works for me for now. The transferability of any of the e-Books depends upon their licensing, of course ... I don't profess to be up on the legalities of resale in any venue. -- Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm Mandriva Linux release 2006.0 (Cooker) for i586 kernel 2.6.11-8mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519 Random Thought/Quote For This Message: Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. -- Martin Fraquhar Tupper _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com

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re: [gutvol-d] Examples of the difficulty of auto-discernment of document structure/semantics (was Heebee Jeebees on Gutenberg)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '05

14 May '05

geoff said: > FWIW, I am not envisioning coming up with > anything that can replace human eyeballs. nobody is. don't be confused by noring's straw-man. > As has been mentioned by others (probably Jon, > but I'm too lazy to go back and find out), I'm > looking for tools to help those eyeballs work better. right. by, for instance, directing those eyeballs to the places where they _need_ to focus, and by _not_ directing their attention to the places where they _don't_ need to focus (false alarms). that's patently obvious to anyone with a brain. but the thing about straw-men is _no_brain_! of course, eyeballs aren't the only things that must do work in this progress. fingers do too, in the summoning of files, correcting of text, and subsequent saving of files. all that work is rather inconsequential if you're doing it for a single file. but if you're doing it for 15,000? then you need tools that do that automatically. otherwise, your error-correction workflow becomes subject to errors itself, as well as something worse -- administrator burnout. -bowerbird p.s. got schiz on the spelling of your name, eh?

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re: [gutvol-d] Re: HandHeld & E-Books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '05

14 May '05

chuck said: > Unfortunately I don't have an eBookwise-1150 to test it out. > Anyone care to try it and let me know how it works for them? actually, considering all that chuck has done for rocketbookers, perhaps y'all should chip in together and buy him a test machine. -bowerbird

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HandHeld & E-Books
by rvijay07 14 May '05

14 May '05

Thanks for the helpful response. What kind of a power supply does the RocketBook reader use and how long does it last ? Also for how long one has to be a member of the 2 books per month deal to get the rocket reader ? Here is another related question. Are these two books a month actially E-books ? Can one resell E-Books under copyright on ebay etc., like regular books ? Thanks. Vijay --- On Fri 05/13, Chuck MATTSEN < mattsen(a)arvig.net > wrote: From: Chuck MATTSEN [mailto: mattsen(a)arvig.net] To: rvijay07(a)myway.com, gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 22:31:01 -0500 Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] HandHeld & E-Books On Fri, 13 May 2005 20:29:58 -0400 (EDT) "rvijay07" <rvijay07(a)myway.com> typed: > How convenient are handhelds to read E-books ? Specially in terms of > eye strain and power lasting etc., ? > > Reading E-Books from a desktop is strainful, specially if one is at > the PC at work all day. FWIW, I have e-books on the PC, the Palm Tungsten E PDA and the RocketBook e-book reader. I have a lot of eye strain with both the PC and the PDA, but I absolutely /love/ reading on the RocketBook reader. Very easy on the eyes, at least for me, and a convenient size. In fact, I also got it free by joining one of those 2-books-per-month for $19.95 deals where they throw the reader in gratis. Turned out to be a good deal for me, but of course YMMV. (I added a $20 256MB SmartCard and I can't imagine wanting/needing more storage, really.) -- Chuck MATTSEN / mattsen at arvig dot net / Mahnomen, MN, USA MT Lookup: http://eot.com/~mattsen/mtsearch.htm Mandriva Linux release 2006.0 (Cooker) for i586 kernel 2.6.11-8mdk-i686-up-4GB / RLU #346519 Random Thought/Quote For This Message: Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. _______________________________________________ No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com

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Re: [gutvol-d] Re: HandHeld & E-Books
by Jon Niehof 14 May '05

14 May '05

--- Chuck MATTSEN <mattsen(a)arvig.net> wrote: > The transferability of any of the e-Books depends upon their > licensing, of course ... I don't profess to be up on the > legalities of resale in any venue. In the US, doctrine of first sale has yet to be overturned, despite many attempts to do so and many licenses that ignore it. Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html

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