October 2011 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

stop bickering and just go build it for marcello
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Oct '11

12 Oct '11

marcello said: > My vision is > to have every gadget on this earth > sold preloaded with a corpus of > the world's finest literature, > in all languages. what a magnificent vision you have there, mr. marcello. it is compelling and unique, and you are truly a pioneer, a patron of the arts with a finely-honed aesthetic sense, and a humanitarian whose greatest desire is _to_serve_. no wonder this project gutenberg, which you have built, is so stellar, with such a fine and remarkable reputation. i'm not sure why these peons seem to believe that they can challenge the policies which you've clearly dictated. after all, it was you who wrote the code, and gathered the volunteers, and -- most of all -- _had_the_vision_. we should be grateful for your singular wonderfulness, stand in awe of our luck at being your contemporaries, and then buckle down so your _vision_ becomes _reality_. -bowerbird

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the art of the book -- #02
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

ok, back to some real work... p3 has finished with "the art of the book". (proofing goes _fast_ at d.p. it's formatting, and then especially post-processing, that bogs down.) again, this book consists of roughly 2500 lines... ~500 were changed by p1, then ~100 by p2, and now roughly another ~100 were changed by p3... while this p3 count is _much_ higher than normal, reviews of the diffs show that most of the changes were on captions, which were typeset as all-upper. o.c.r. is notoriously bad on words in all-uppercase. so any post-processor would know that those lines needed to be checked closely anyway, so it probably doesn't matter if that close check is done during p3 or during post-processing. in fact, since p3 people just "leave a note" instead of _deciding_ the matter, it's probably less efficient to have p3 leaving a note. this is especially true if you consider the likelihood is high that _both_ p3 and the post-processor will do the "close check", and thus duplicate the effort... but again, this thread isn't aimed at d.p. efficiency. here are 2 actual _errors_ that were caught by p3. > Home has designed three founts, all of them > Horne has designed three founts, all of them > so rich. Characteristic or his art is the headpiece > so rich. Characteristic of his art is the headpiece those were the _only_ o.c.r. word errors that p3 found, as far as i can tell. they caught punctuation errors too, but i didn't think to count them. but all in all, i'd say they probably caught a couple dozen errors p2 didn't... here's a place where p2 corrected a printing-error, but then p3 reversed that, _reinserting_ the printing-error, and then "left a note" that there was a printing-error. > It has been acquired > I thas[**It has] been acquired that probably seems silly to you... i'd guess it was done so the post-processor could note the change. ("note: a printer's error was corrected on page 206.") i've always found such notes to be counterproductive. ("why did you waste my time telling me that you fixed an obvious error? inform me if you _don't_ fix them.") in general, my opinion is that these _notes_ are bad. it takes time to _insert_ them into the text, and then it takes time to _remove_ them later. that's stupid... one of the innovations that roger tested on his site was _separation_ of the notes outside the text itself. he found that it worked well, saving time and energy, and providing general improvements to the product. of course, as it was with all of his findings, the d.p. "powers-that-be" chose simply to ignore it totally... *** oh yes, sorry to keep you hanging, p3 _did_ find and fix those 2 spacey doublequotes, so kudos to them for that. *** anyway... because of the large number of all-uppercase captions in this book, which we know require individual attention, this book probably is not a good candidate for my system. every system will do equally well (or badly) if you're gonna have to look at each line individually. don't need a system. my system _would_ do a good job on the hundreds of pages in this book which do _not_ have all-upper captions on 'em. many full pages went through all _3_ of the proofing rounds without a single character being changed on the whole page, so that was a bunch of time and attention essentially wasted. any system which focuses attention where it is _needed_ will be able to have a cost-benefit efficiency that is much better. -bowerbird

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well, that was certainly amusing
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

oh yeah, that was a blast... marcello, a leader of men, an italian who works in germany, will build a new (and improved!) d.p. now _that_ i gotta see... and he thinks he can still point to the "fan site" he built for me, even though he was defeated, totally, in that he had to adopt light-markup... (besides, when is he going to update that site? practically nothing there from the last 5 years.) and not to be outdone, lee passey chimes in too, and repeats some of his tripe from the old days... hey, it's like it was old-home week, or something. someone musta issued a call for a class-reunion! *** now that michael hart has passed away, you can look for marcello to make a _lot_ of new moves, trying to grab power and control of this library... i'm gonna egg him on, because i would _enjoy_ seeing this library _fail_ after michael's death, because the technocrats came in and ruined it... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] the art of the book -- #01
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

jim said: > To me the real "interesting" thing is > to take a good hard look at P3 and ask > if and when the changes made there > actually represent "fixes" or if they > represent "divergences" -- i.e. are the > P3 changes actually making things worse? well, jim, everyone knows that _sometimes_ a change made by p3 cannot be considered as a "fix" in any sense of the word, since it raises a question instead of giving an answer. sometimes that's productive. sometimes not. but that's not the point of this thread, jim... this thread is one i might decide to pursue if "the art of the book" looks like a book that would be instructive in terms of evaluating the system that i would build based on the lessons taught in the "sweet grapes" thread. i learned some time back that it was useless to discuss d.p. failings, because the powers over there have no interest in improvement. so let's stay on-topic here, ok? -bowerbird p.s. geez, i wrote this last night, intending to send it out this morning, but now i see there has been an explosion of posts since, including by many people in my kill-filter... so i have to decide if i want to wade through that mess, or if i don't wanna waste my time.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Build our own DP, anybody?
by hmonroe.pglaf＠huntermonroe.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

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Re: [gutvol-d] some questions for brewster kahle and archive.org
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

alex said: > People at the archive seem vaguely interested, i think you probably mean to say they feigned interest. > but not as much as I'd have hoped. which is exactly what i predicted the reaction would be. > Basically, it's "my project" to > manage and "sell" to the upper folx. well, that all by itself says that you're a volunteer... if you were a paid employee, they wouldn't let you "waste" time on such a "frivolous" venture as this... > I suppose we'll see where that goes. which i take it is your code for "it ain't goin' nowhere"... and how could it? if the middle-management people won't even touch it, do you really think you could sell it to "the upper folx"? yeah, good luck with that... especially since this attitude _began_ at the very top... no, brewster isn't stupid, like those mid-level people. it's fairly rare to be stupid and yet get as rich as he is, unless you become a right-wing-radio-talk-show-host. but he's also a practical guy, which does sync with "rich". so i know exactly how and why (and even _when_) he came to his current position on the (lack of) value of digital text. in 2003, when michael hart celebrated p.g. e-text #10000, he did that in san francisco, at the internet archive offices... i went, to join in, and saw their newly-launched operations. one of the things they demonstrated was print-on-demand, the machine they were driving around in their "library van"... i took a look at some of the books they were printing, and soon spotted some errors. i remember one in particular... they had inadvertently dropped a blank page from a book -- because the o.c.r. had recognized no text there, d'uh -- but that meant that the recto/verso ordering got thrown off, and even-numbered pages were suddenly on the right side. that's never a good sign if you're trying to "clone" a p-book. when i brought this up, i could see that it was the straw that broke the camel's back. brewster related how difficult it was, in time and energy, to turn o.c.r. into a finished print pocket, and he bemoaned his ever-growing impression that it would make book-scanning a task that was impossibly expensive... so later on, when he talked about being favorably impressed with a "book-flipper" demonstration at the british museum -- a technology that utilized _pagescans_, not digital text -- i got the very strong feeling he'd choose that route instead... at the #10000 celebration, and several times since, people tried to impress on brewster the importance of digital text, in terms of its flexibility and its small resource foot-print. heck, sometimes _one_ pagescan requires more space than the _entire_ book uses if you store it as digital text instead. plus you can reflow it, and search it, and edit it, and so on. but he'd been scarred by those early experiences of people (who, to tell you the truth, were simply out of their league, and thus incompetent in terms of doing the job correctly) to work efficiently with digital text. plus, brewster lives in a cocoon where disk-space and bandwidth are _unlimited_, so a small resource foot-print is largely meaningless to him. what all of this means is that the basic archive.org approach -- utilizing pagescans in a "book-flipper" viewer-program -- was set rather early on, and has determined their world-view. thus, when the hard cold reality of mobile machines which are severely resource-constrained hit the internet archive, they were unprepared for the winter, and got snowed in... their focus on the pagescans does them no good right now. but they're incapable of shifting their focus to another place. all of this is to say, alex, that i don't think you're gonna have very much luck getting anyone at archive.org to place much value -- if any at all -- on the accuracy of their digital text. as long as it's "good enough for search purposes", it's fine... (i put that phrase in quotes because it seems stupid to me, probably because i expect computer-search to be accurate; but evidently some people think that 92% is "good enough".) now, alex, that's from a more-or-less "objective" standpoint. however, when i add in the fact that i have been _abused_by_ those mid-level people over at internet archive, i can tell you that i have absolutely zero interest in doing _any_ work that might benefit them, no matter how indirect that benefit is... those people aren't going to give me full credit for what i do. heck, they aren't even gonna share _any_ credit they receive! on the contrary, they'll do everything they can to make sure that i don't get _any_ credit, no matter how much work i do... i _love_ the internet archive in general. but those mid-level people there were assholes to me, they were total assholes... so, um, no, alex, i'm not interested in doing anything with you that would be housed at, or based within, the internet archive. i'm sorry 'bout that, but i trust you understand my explanation. i will be setting up a demonstration of an online proofing site, one geared toward taking a book from o.c.r. to e-book output, in the fashion that i just laid out in my recent series of lessons. my site will use content from the internet.archive, or course, and other sites as well, but it will be completely independent. if you'd like to work with me on my site, alex, that'd be fine... i'm not _asking_ for help from anyone, and i won't _need_ it, but i have no reason to turn anyone down who wants to help. even if they're from the internet archive... ;+) -bowerbird

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the art of the book -- #01
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Oct '11

11 Oct '11

as i said last week, i am considering whether to mount another demonstration here, using "the art of the book", a book that's currently over at distributed proofreaders, where it's now gone through the second proofing round. here's a brief preliminary report on the progress so far... the book consists of about 2500 lines in the o.c.r. preliminary indication is that ~80% were correct, as roughly 20% -- about 500 -- were changed by p1... and some 20% of those, ~100, were changed by p2. i haven't examined any diffs yet -- just counted 'em, but i can report 214 spacey quotes were in the o.c.r. p1 found and fixed 208 of those, missing a mere 6. p2 found and fixed 4 of the 6 that were present, 66%. of course, since almost every single one of them could have been found and fixed by automatic pre-cleaning, all of the time and energy that was spent was _wasted_. but i've already proven that fact here countless times, so there's no reason to go over the details once again. the main point is that a large percentage of the o.c.r. -- even full pages -- was totally correct to begin with. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] just sayin'
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 10 Oct '11

10 Oct '11

greg said: > Paranoia averted. have you noticed how "scenario" and "paranoia" share so many letters? -bowerbird

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just sayin'
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Oct '11

09 Oct '11

very interesting. this list has gone without spam for what, about 8 years? now it supposedly gets hit with 2 pieces within 5 days? i was suspicious after the first, but didn't say anything. i will now, though. you will remember that i said that the attack-pack here tried many times to get me "banned" from this listserve. those were the _public_ efforts. there were also several _backchannel_ efforts, because two of the favorite tools of any attack-pack are the back-stab and the blind-side. (new posters to this listserve over the years have _often_ e-mailed me to report they got several "warnings" about me backchannel from people on this list. imagine that!) but michael hart always protected me from "ban" efforts. so naturally, i always wondered what would happen when he passed away. the attack-pack would surely strike back. the lobsters had fallen silent, but we all know their _rage_ was still there, and it grew every time i turned up the heat. so now, with the water at full boil, it is extremely intense... and now michael hart has gone to his reward. so i've been waiting for "the move". with that as background, let me lay out a scenario for you. *** more spam hits the list. people ask "hey, what's up with this spam?" the people in charge of the list -- you know, the ones who ask you for your password if you wanna see the archives -- say "we'll probably have to have a moderator to pre-approve any posts from new subscribers"... and one will be chosen... the moderator will draw up a "policy" on how the decision is made as to whether a post by a new subscriber is permitted. this "policy" will have a raft of bland legal/moral boilerplate. then someone will ask "why are new subscribers subjected to a standard that doesn't also apply to the existing members?" there will be sage agreement amongst the people in charge that this is a good question which can only be answered by an application of the policy toward existing members too... because -- you know -- we want to be "fair" and everything. and thus will be born a tool to let the attack-pack "ban" me... and you, if you have the audacity to challenge their authority. because if they cannot silence their critics with sound logic, they will stoop to silencing them by use of the "ban" tactic... -bowerbird p.s. on another front, distributed proofreaders just installed a "code of conduct". i guess misconduct over there is rampant.

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Just looking around
by gutvol-d＠pglaf.org 09 Oct '11

09 Oct '11

ciao, my best man! Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other. www.matchforyou.ru Hello sweetheart! I'm very fragile, delicate girl. Have hazelnut color eyes, thin lips and beautiful little nous, dark-cherry hair with shortcut like a boy. Have ear piercing. Actually I'm not very romantic person. Usually I have to be strict in the office cause I have a management position. But when I'm at home I like to relax a little, and to be subordinated to someone. It is so hard to be strong business woman all the time. I want to find a man who will be able to protect me and make my life easier! I would like to meet my beloved one, special one, best friend and loving person, who is merry, kind, tender, affectionate and liberal. sweety, thanks and have a good day

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