November 2010 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: Amazon charging for PG books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Dec '10

11 Dec '10

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… 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

11 13

Amazon charging for PG books
by Al Haines 04 Dec '10

04 Dec '10

This link was sent to me by an ebook submitter: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_ kindle_users_fo.html Al

3 2

Re: number one favorite thing ever
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Dec '10

03 Dec '10

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

2 1

the final report on a 5-year-long bet
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Nov '10

30 Nov '10

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-lea… 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-gutenber… 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

2 1

Re: Amazon charging for PG books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Nov '10

30 Nov '10

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

2 1

!@! reported in Seattle PI re: Amazon selling Gutenburg Titles
by Michael S. Hart 30 Nov '10

30 Nov '10

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/230114.asp

1 0

nook color machine has been rooted
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Nov '10

30 Nov '10

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

1 0

Re: number one favorite thing ever
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Nov '10

29 Nov '10

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

3 2

Re: number one favorite thing ever
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Nov '10

29 Nov '10

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

2 1

The changing of the sea
by don kretz 28 Nov '10

28 Nov '10

http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/11/29/key-success-factors-for-a-tablet-only-…

1 0