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

google e-bookstore is open for business
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Dec '10

06 Dec '10

google opened their e-bookstore today... since it has been delayed for quite a long time -- i believe it was promised for last christmas -- you could have expected that they'd get it right... and in a number of ways, they did. but there are still some embarrassing glitches that reveal themselves with very little prodding. for example, 2 of the 4 books on the top shelf at the site are lacking proper paragraph indents. that's the kind of thing you should see right away, and fix immediately, certainly before release-day. the one search i tried took me to the wrong page. the flowing-text display gives a nice 2-up display, so you see facing-pages. but scanned-page mode only shows one page at a time, so that's inefficient. in an interesting twist, the text-reflow display mode shows you the pagenumbers from the original book, which means google is keeping track of that variable. (but they don't show you where the pagebreaks are.) the text-resize feature gives some very odd results. in addition to resizing the text, it changes the rule. (the "rule" is the body-text width between margins.) when text-size is increased, the rule is increased too. in and of itself, that's ok, perhaps even to be praised. except that the rule is increased _too_much_, so that not only are the words on the line bigger, but there are _more_ words than there were at the smaller size. this is very bad, both from a typographic perspective, and from a user-expectation perspective. we expect -- based on experience with other text software -- that bigger text-size means _fewer_ words per line... my research has also shown that it's good if you can reproduce the linebreaks and pagebreaks of the scan, but google hasn't given itself the capability to do that. it'd be nice if at least _one_ of the text-resize options gave the end-user the same linebreaks as the p-book, so that we could easily compare the two render-modes. as it is, it's difficult to check if google's o.c.r. is good... (even more so because they don't give you a combined display-mode, where the text is shown next to the scan.) *** there are some other things which are not "problems", but which aren't as full-featured as we'd like 'em to be. google only lets users choose between a miserly 4 fonts. there are only 3 leading choices; 2 are fairly unusable. the text-size choices won't help the visually challenged. *** google claims to have 3 million e-books available now. but i'd bet you they won't give anyone a complete list... oh, and they'll keep your books in the cloud for you... which means they can cut you off any time they want. in sum, at least the thing is out and we can bang on it; but it certainly could've made a more impressive debut. *** ironically, in light of one of the recent threads here, 1 of the 4 books on that top shelf was a republishing of dickens, by penguin, with "enhanced-book" extras. $7.99. those "enhancements" better be damn good... -bowerbird

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Re: choke-points on the internet
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Dec '10

06 Dec '10

michael said: > You didn't know they would??? well, as i just said, i always knew they'd do it, eventually, once their interests started to get impacted badly enough. but i thought it would take something rather _serious_... of course, i don't know how serious wikileaks will eventually become. what has been released so far is embarrassing, yes, and somewhat revealing, but very little of it has been "shocking". but only about 1,000 of the 250,000 cables have been put out. and the power-holders do know what's in the other 249,000... so the fact that they're trying to do a preemptive strike _now_ has to be a telling sign that there is still a lot of dirt to come, and that some of it will undoubtedly be extremely damning... -bowerbird p.s. by the way, michael, i sent you a present last friday... you should get it this week, they guessed thursday or friday. i sent it u.p.s. if you want the tracking number, i can send it. it's a present for december 10th, which i remember is a day that is special for you... just a little something from a fan...

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Re: PG vs Amazon
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Dec '10

06 Dec '10

jon said: > That is the most practical response to the situation that I have seen. > The rest of the excahnges have been 90% self-indulgent inbox clutter. this list never ceases to amuse me. when i suggest that p.g. should beat the harvesters to the punch by selling p.g. e-books at amazon, it's "self-indulgent inbox clutter". when linda suggests the same thing, it's "the most practical response". bless your little heart, jon... :+) it's all moot anyway, because google is about ready to blow the doors off the joint... they've just announced that google editions will go live "before christmas", and they have well over 30,000 e-texts, my friends. yeah, yeah, your accuracy is better. and betamax was better than vhs. -bowerbird

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Re: PG book for sale with license intact
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Dec '10

06 Dec '10

carlo said: > No cease-and-desist notice can be sent. did you think i was serious? :+) -bowerbird

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Re: PG book for sale with license intact
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Dec '10

06 Dec '10

andy said: > Where should this be reported, if at all? ok, who wants to volunteer to be on the team that sends out the cease-and-desist notices? don't all step forward at once, now... -bowerbird

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PG book for sale with license intact
by ahwang＠pglaf.org 05 Dec '10

05 Dec '10

It appears that PG etext #33283 (Calculus Made Easy) is being sold by myebook.com with its Gutenberg license intact: http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=47492 I'm guessing this contravenes the PG license, though I don't know who to ask about whether a third-party seller is paying royalties to PG. Where should this be reported, if at all? Thanks, Andy

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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

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Re: Amazon charging for PG books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Dec '10

03 Dec '10

so let's boil the question down to the hard case, shall we? suppose that amazon -- or anyone else -- offered up that project gutenberg could veto a republisher selling e-texts that "reasonably" look like they were repurposed from p.g., and amazon (or that anyone else) would respect the veto... do you think project gutenberg should exercise that veto? consider the matter carefully, my friends, _very_ carefully... -bowerbird

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

03 Dec '10

jim said: > The only android permutation that I see as being "hard" are > perhaps the touch variations of capacitive vs resistive vs no-touch. well, touch-screen versus not, that's a pretty big start, isn't it? your touch-screen program won't work on a non-touch phone. the carriers spec the phones, so there are no required features, which means there are none that you can depend on to be there. and if a piece of software doesn't find all the features it needs, it's not going to end up pleasing the customer very much, is it? the first generation android phones are what?, 18 months old, and they've already been orphaned, unable to upgrade to the current version of the operating system, let alone future ones... i wish android the best of luck... apple needs a good competitor to help push along the state of the art at more than a snail's pace. i just think programming android is gonna be building on sand... -bowerbird

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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

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