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

Re: spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 May '10

22 May '10

marc said: > a global fuck up, this is - cant tell anything constructive * carbon-overload * earthquakes * floods * hurricanes * icecap-melting * ozone-hole * tornadoes * tsunamies * volcanoes yes, the gods are angry with us... they are certainly very angry with us... -bowerbird

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Re: spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 May '10

22 May '10

it's been over a month now... i am reminded of a recent episode of lost, where jacob holds a beaker with what looks like oil inside it, turning it upside down and comparing that to something about the island, saying that he's the stopper preventing it from escaping and causing damage. the man in black later smashes the beaker which releases the fluid. it makes me wonder if _lost_ caused this big spill, messing around with the space/time continuum... you might've also heard that foucault's pendulum -- the original, in france -- just snapped its cable, causing irreparable damage to its spherical bob... a lost episode from a past season had a pendulum. so again, i wonder if the end of lost is responsible. if there's something in the series finale which will explain the theft this week of those five paintings, well, i think that just might tie everything together. otherwise, i'm not expecting any answers. are you? oh yeah, we also found out this week that b.p. has been lying all along about how much oil is leaking. i was not surprised by that admission... were you? -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 11 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 May '10

21 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's example is from our friend from baltimore, edgar allen poe, in volume 9 of his collected works. here's the scan for page 115: > http://www.archive.org/stream/worksofedgaralle09poee#page/115 here's the o.c.r. for the whole book: > http://ia341307.us.archive.org/2/items/worksofedgaralle09poee/worksofedgara… and here's the o.c.r. for page 115: > > EUREKA 115 > > wme the eight Asteroids (Ceres, Juno, Vesta > PaUas, Astrma, Flora, Iris, and Hebe) at an > average distance of about 250 millioiS Then we > > 90Tinfn^' f^^^^ ^^'^ '¬ª""¬∞¬∞¬´' '^^^ Sat¬´r^! > flnal^ N¬´^. ' then Uranus, 19 hundred millions > finally Neptune, lately discovered, and revolving > at a distance, say of 28 hundred millions. Leav > ing Neptune out of the aecount-^f which a^ vlt > we know little accurately and whichl poSy > one of a system of Asteroids-it will be seenthat > with,n certain limits, there exists el older of > interval among the planets. Speaking loosely > > w ll *^' ^u‚ ¢ ^' '" ^^^ ^¬´^t i¬∞'^er one. May > ofBol"'t''}T '^'=¬∞¬´¬∞ned-mot, not the law > or Bode‚ ¨ be deduced from consideration of the > analogy suggested by me as having place between > the solar discharge of rings and the mode of the > atomxc irradiation? ' > > r‚ ¨~I^^ ""Mt^rs hurriedly mentioned in this sum- > maij of distance, it is folly to attempt compre- > > ^o^}?.^l "" '^i,"* *^' "='‚ ¨¢* "* abstract arithmet- > oni tL ^^^ ^'‚ ^ "¬∞* practically tangible > ^^A 17,.?''¬∞''^^ "" P^'^^'^e ideas. I have > stated that Neptune, the planet farthest from > the Sun, revolves about him at a distance of 28 > hundred millions of miles. So far good:-I > ‚ ¨~Zt f ^1^ mathematical fact; aad, without > comprehending ,t in the least, we may put it to > > ^V^ ¬ªT'"^*'''^"y- ^'it ‚ ¢ mentioning, even, > that the Moon revolves about the Earth at the > comparatively trifling distance of 237,000 miles > I entertained no expectation of giving any one as you can see, this is another one of those hopeless pages... the scan is badly skewed, but you'd think that abbyy would be able to correct for that. but i guess you'd be wrong about that. anyway, hardly worth discussing this page. just go do it again... -bowerbird

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Re: the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 11 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 May '10

21 May '10

don said: > For comparison, here's my undeskewed cut-and-paste abbyy > read of the self-same page. Perhaps their lens was dirty ... they use abbyy 8.0. what did you use? -bowerbird

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!@! Take a look at the new DVD label
by Aaron Cannon 21 May '10

21 May '10

Hi all. You can view and/or download the new DVD label for the April 2010 DVD at http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/pgdvd042010-label.jpg Let me know what you think. If it needs different text, let me know, as that's easy to change. Aaron

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 10 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 May '10

21 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's example is from "the massacre at chicago", thanks to gardner buchanan, who pointed it out... here's the scan for page 49: > http://www.archive.org/stream/waunangeeormassa00rich#page/49 here's the o.c.r. for the whole book: > http://ia331420.us.archive.org/2/items/waunangeeormassa00rich/waunangeeorma… and here's the o.c.r. for page 49: > > THE MASSACI^S; AT-CHJCAGO. IftV > > 'engaged in hostilities ‚ ¨ lias Winnebeg not reyealedthi^,?". iM ‚ ,-, ‚ ¨¢tu I. y ‚ !.; > . ! :". Npt; a ‚ ¨¢v(fpj;d," jreplipd ; J^i^itenautliliflj^ley, i^stonislied, in liii*! tu^iij at -the > information. ' .‚ ![.. -^r.^::! ‚ ¨¢‚ ¨¢.‚ ‚ --;; ‚ -'.'. .>' . ‚ ¨¢i : ‚ :‚ ‚ ],‚ .'.:; > > *.' At aqotbi^r .inoraent, .and on an indifferent occasion, this mutual misun- > der^^tauJiiig ^^liglit, afford room for pleasaiitry," continued Mr. McKenzje > Avith a grave smile ; " but if Is not so., ^'inncbeg, I ?ee, iias been trucitp > his tru|5t; |anf],.x'yltI)Oiagh cognizant of tli9/;n;atvfre of tb^;despatphes, reve-uled > the info^'ipation, to no one hut myself, whom, hp regarded, as having not only > ii, right to.^pp.'^sess it at the , Cfirliegt moment, but as, being the most pioper > person to advise withtlie commanding officer, at the earliest moment, on the > measures to- be -adopted. 1 am here for that purpose ; think you 1 slijdl find, > liini alone‚ ¨~ for I wouldn't enter upon the subject before Mrs. IJeiidley,": ‚ ¨¢,-,. > > "I have just said that ]\Irs,. IJeadlej and Margaret are in attendancei on > the unfortunate Ronayne,,"' replied Elmsley.,;; ‚ 'i ;Y,pu,,^i)l,, t^herelore, be .sui-^ > ,to find him alone, aud.no doubt busied,,iu t^i^ for^g^ionjof-iplanS) of opera- > .tipn consequent on this inteJligence.'' . , . j ,..; ,[;;., ; ; ,, ., .;. , ; , : , , > > '‚!"¶Recollect, not a word of this untiljt is p|ficially revealed. , I shall npt > even let Captain Headley know that I am aware of the facts, but, siimply > state that, having heard he was iii the .r^jqeiptcsf-despatches, I had come to > know if there was any ne\ys of irnportance¬ª ;But, pf one ;thing I would wai'n > jou, Elmsley ; there will be a council of war to-morrow¬ª and I could wish > that your view of the subject may, lead you to prefer defending, the fort to > the last extremity ill preference tq.c), long, and uncertain -retreat tq Por[t > Wayne, which I know is suggested in the' despatch." '‚ .,,;) > > . '* I shall have no, difficul^ty in ^rrivi^g, at that; depiijion/V^^tufni^ the > ..officer of the guar^/f',jtor qpmhppn sjensq only, is necessary ,tp. show the > advantages of one course over tlic other. In the meantime,, I shall evince > .no knowledge pf what you have conveyed to me, until the hour of councih > Did no other consideration weigh with me, I would oppose a movement > 'which cuts us off from all hope. of restoring the de.-^r lost wife of,lvQnayae > to Iier distracted husband." , , , : ..‚ ¨¢ ,‚ ]‚ ,: .1 '‚ : > > \ "Good bye, God bless you," answered the trader, as he mpyedto-yrai'd^ > the quarters of Captain Headley. ' .,,..;,.,,. ...,.', ‚ ‚ ‚ ,,'‚ ¨¢‚ , I'tui > > "Then," mused Elmsley, when alone, "arelhe faret)oding^.pf ithat ^sty- > old number of the I)^ational Intelligencer whicH I have thumbed for hours > over and over again for the last three months, at length finally realized^ ‚ ¨ > and Avar is come at last ; well, be it so ! .My chief anxiety is for Margaret, > Would that she and all the rest of the weak women in this forti-ess were safe. > H within the fortifications of Detroit ; but all evil seems to be coming upon us > at once." , '' ' ' " ‚ ‚ ¨¢ ,, ,;; > > " Ah ! Mr, McKenzie^ I laipa.^Y.ery gl^d tp seei ypu," said Captain ileadlej, > rising as the trader entei-eii tbe room set apart for .his library; and the tr^iflSr-. > action of military official business. ^ " 'take a se,at. ; 1 Ypu .0pul,d not have Jf^l^ > me a more opportune visit." , . ,, , ,, ,,.:, . . ' ,.. . , ¬ª,-'[| > > "Ihad understood that \Vinnebeg had just returned with despfatchig^ > from Detroit," remarked the trader, "and am come to learn the news.." ,,,( ,^ > > " Bad enough," answered Capt^ Headley, gravely, as he handej.tc) (hjypa > the despatchyfrom General Hull. "Read tliat !" ^ ‚ ¨¢.' : ',' , - ..',.'1;^ '‚ /‚ ‚ ¨¢' i') the reason for this dreadful o.c.r. is that the page has very bad bleedthrough, where the text from the other side of each page also shows up on each scan. it also has foxing -- brownish spots of various shapes and sizes on the page. and indeed, most of the pages within this book showed these same problems. gardner reports he was able to do some manipulations on this scan such that he was able to get better o.c.r. out of it. but i wonder if that's really worth it. in my opinion, we need to just throw out this scan-set and re-scan that book. (and make sure that we scan another copy of the book to avoid a recurrence.) i'll note, however, that if gardner _can_ get good o.c.r. out of a scan like this, and if the manipulations of the scan can be formulated to the point where they can be applied in a batch process to the full scan-set, resulting in decent o.c.r., that would be fabulous. of course, that will also mean we have yet _another_ version of the scan-set for this book. archive.org already has two versions -- the high-res version and the low-res "flippy" version for their online reading. (can you imagine they have a "high-res" version of these bad-looking pages? what in the world is _that_ good for?, except wasting a whole lotta diskspace.) i originally suggested as a "best practices workflow" that a scanning operation should do o.c.r. immediately on each page, and then spellcheck the results, and -- when there was a high percentage of misrecognized words -- re-do the scan. needless to say, such a workflow would prevent us having scans like this one... for the most part, i will avoid presenting scans like this one in this series, since the takeaway should be that we _can_ correct the o.c.r., in a cost-effective way, and therefore we should pursue that path. obviously, that's untrue of this book. thankfully, books like this are very rare in the archive.org library. -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 09 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 May '10

19 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's example is from jack london's classic "white fang". here's the scan for page 7: > http://www.archive.org/stream/whitefanglondon00jackrich#page/7 and here's the o.c.r. for the whole book: > http://ia331319.us.archive.org/1/items/whitefanglondon00jackrich/whitefangl… and here's the o.c.r. for page 7: > > THE TRAIL OF THE MEAT 7 > > At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into > a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the water > way and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of > the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, > clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bick > ered among themselves, but evinced no inclination > to stray off into the darkness. > > * Seems to me, Henry, they re stayin remarkable > close to camp," Bill commented. > > Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot > of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he > speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin and be > gun to eat. > > i They know where their hides is safe," he said. > "They d sooner eat grub than be grub. They re > pretty wise, them dogs." > > Bill shook his head. "Oh, I don t know." > > His comrade looked at him curiously. "First > time I ever heard you say anythin about their not > bein wise." > > "Henry," said the other, munching with delibera > tion the beans he was eating, "did you happen to > notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was > a-feedin em?" > > "They did cut up more n usual," Henry acknowl > edged. > > "How many dogs ve we got, Henry?" > > "Six." as we can see here, this book has missing apostrophes, some missing hyphens on end-of-line-hyphenates, and exhibits some problems with opening-doublequotes... you will remember the missing apostrophes and hyphens are caused by a workflow glitch, not by the o.c.r. itself, so we might also expect that the em-dashes are missing too, since that is another aspect of that glitch, and sure enough, a look at other pages (like 10 and 12) show that flaw as well. -bowerbird

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improve scanning on color docs?
by Kimo Crossman 19 May '10

19 May '10

love comments from anyone who knows about this: Improve OCR Accuracy on Color Documents This white paper confirms that industry-standard practices to clean color document images can be improved to produce higher OCR accuracy. Image Detergent™ from Accusoft Pegasus improves OCR accuracy by 5-10% more than a standard Smoothing filter. This white paper leads the reader through the testing that proves it.

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 08 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 18 May '10

18 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's sample is from the ever-popular "the art of war". here is the page-scan for page 54: > http://www.archive.org/stream/artofwaroldestmi00suntuoft#page/54 here's the o.c.r. for the entire book: > http://ia331333.us.archive.org/3/items/artofwaroldestmi00suntuoft/artofwaro… here is the o.c.r. for page 54: > > 54 > > the four seasons make ^ay for each other in turn. > Literally, "have no invariabl, seat>>> > > There are short days a^ long; the moon has its periods > of waning and waxing. > > Cf. V. 6. The purport of the passage j s s i mp iy to illustrate the want > of fixity in war by the chang s constant i y taking place in Nature. The > comparison is not very happ.^ however, because the regularity of the > phenomena which Sun Tzu m n ti ons i s by no means paralleled in war. this particular edition mixed ideographs in with the text, so i could've picked virtually any page and presented some hairy-looking o.c.r., but i decided to focus instead on a page with no ideographs whatsoever... -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 07 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 18 May '10

18 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's sample comes from "gods and fighting men". here's the page-scan: > http://www.archive.org/stream/godsfightingmens00greguoft#page/17 and here's the o.c.r. for the entire book: > http://ia341017.us.archive.org/0/items/godsfightingmens00greguoft/godsfight… and here's the o.c.r.: > > '^f// THE COMING OF LUGH 17 > > ,^ Vf X W r^J^^*" ""* brass." " We have a worker in brass > oui's I\ s, that is Credne Card." > > Then Lugh said : " Go and ask the king if he has any > one man that can do all these things, and if he has, I > will not ask to come into Teamhair." The door-keeper > went into the king's house then and told him all that. > "There is a young, man at the door," he said, "and > his name should ue the Ildanach, the Master of all > Arts, for all the things the people of your house can > do, he himself is able to do every one of them." " Try > him with the chess-boards," said Nuada. So the chess- > boards were brought out, and every game that was > played, Lugh won it. And when Nuada was told > that, he said : " Let him in, for the like of him never > came into Teamhair before." > > Then the door-keeper let him pass, and he came into > the king's house and sat down in the seat of knowledge. > And there was a great flag-stone there that could hardly > be moved by four times twenty yoke of oxen, and > Ogma took it up and hurled it out through the house, > so that it lay on the outside of Teamhair, as a challenge > to Lugh. But Lugh hurled it back again that it lay > in the middle of the king's house. He played the harp > for them then, and he had them laughing and crying, > till he put them asleep at the end with a sleepy tune. > And when Nuada saw all the things Lugh could do, he > began to think that by his help the country might get > free of the taxes and the tyranny put on it by the > Fomor. And it is what he did, he came down from > his throne, and he put Lugh on it in his place, for the > length of thirteen days, the way they might all listen to > the advice he would give. > > This now is the story of the birth of Lugh. The > time the Fomor used to be coming to Ireland, Balor > > B we have several problems in the first few lines, which are bad on the scan as well, so we cannot fault the o.c.r. here, but whatever the cause, the text is botched nonetheless... -bowerbird

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