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

Re: marcello the technocrat, and the p.g. catalog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

andrew said: > As has already been pointed out, > this is not a word that BB made up. i don't agree with the definition that was given in the link provided earlier. i gave the definition that _i_ am using. because i aim to be crystal-clear, and not use the doublespeak of technocrats. > Yes, it is complicated, but no one > needs to use it if they don't want to. right. that's the "choice" that technocrats always give to the users: "take it or leave it." "do things my way, or you hit the highway." > My impression is that opds > is not a tool for end users that's my point. the technocrat doesn't _want_ end-users to be able to do that. the technocrat wants you to hire them (and to kiss their ass) to do it "for" you. > but a tool that the more technically inclined > can use to share information between systems. the "more technically inclined" (did you invent that?) want to make sure that we cannot do it ourselves... if we wanna "share information between systems", we're going to have to hire them, because they've built the kind of system only a technocrat can love. > And in this case I cannot see a way > to deny the fact that this particular tool > has helped to share PG texts > among many more people than than > would have been the case otherwise. you repeated the word "than" there... this is the kind of bogus argument that the technocrats always use. first they make it impossible for anyone else to do anything... then they do a little bit... then they say "look what we did for you!" you'd better be thankful for your gruel! > As someone with cataloging experince you misspelled "experience" there... > As someone with cataloging experince > (albeit as an amateur) I cannot take > the idea seriously that a catalog > should be "just a simple thing". that doesn't surprise me one bit, andrew... you've let the librarian technocrats tell you that cataloging is a very complicated thing. it is. if you _make_ it a complicated thing... which is precisely what they have done... and they did that so you would back off, and decide that you cannot do it yourself, because it is _far_ too complicated, so you will now hire a technocrat to do it "for" you. fortunately we have a good counterexample right here, in front of our very eyes, namely jim's catalog. it's nothing but a list of titles, which are linked to the appropriate files online. that's not complicated. it is drop-dead simple. and jim's catalog "has helped to share p.g. texts among many more people than would have been the case otherwise". does that sound familiar? and jim's catalog has been doing it since 2009. and my goodness gracious, you wouldn't think it is necessary here at _project_gutenberg_ to remind ourselves that if you make it possible for volunteers to do something worthwhile, _they_will_. so let's empower the volunteers, not turn this library over to the technocrats, who will eventually transform things so much volunteers won't be able to accomplish jack. > The more one learns about it, > more detailed it can get. that's always the way it is with bureaucrats and their "regulations" and "documentation" and "specifications" and "manuals" and what-not... that's _always_ the way it is. you _never_ get to the end... all you get when you get to "the end" is even more complication. it's worse than "lost". at least that thing ended. > More complexity comes when you please. i'm not interested in the quicksand, thank you very much... i'm immune anyway. > This seems to be a rather distorted point of view. > Many people have made their own "simple catalogs" > of Project Gutenberg materials, and continue to do so. and a lot more would. if the catalog was available as a plain-ascii file, or better yet, a nice set of files, a set which was constantly being kept fully updated. but it's not. it's wrapped up in some compressed file, which balloons to huge bloatware when uncompressed, mostly because it's stored as a database with a bunch of arcane and obtrusive x.m.l. markup mixed inside of it... that's so the "naive' user won't be tempted to look at it, or be able to do anything with it once they do look at it. > I believe that Marcello's effort was > worth commenting on because > it was immediately shown to be useful, > and was used by other people. and what we failed to see is all of the other efforts, by those "naive" people, to create their own catalogs, which might have been "immediately useful" as well... this is how the technocrats pull the wool over our eyes, by making it so that we cannot see what we have lost... > All the old plain-text gutindex files are still there, > and anyone who wants to can use them. they are outdated even now, and become more and more useless by the day. so that's disingenuous for you to say. > The catalog is in the same basic form that it has > been for years (although the public user interface > has been changed recently). you must mean the p.g. web interface to the catalog, which is not what we're talking about. so that's disingenuous too. you seem to be getting desperate here. > This is BB's creative re-imagining of history. hardly. i wish that what i said was not true. but it is. > I do not know of any PG resource which has been discontinued, > and would be interested to hear if anyone does know of one. i'll go to confirm it. but the last time anyone said anything, the final word was that the gutindex files were discontinued. and there has never been any willingness since then to make a version of the catalog that is available in plain-text form... > and in the time that he has availible you misspelled "available"... technocrats always let you know that their time is short, because they are busy, important experts, yes they are... -bowerbird

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iPhone Questions
by Michael S. Hart 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

As I may be trying out an iPhone in the near future, I thought I should ask for hints, suggestions, etc. Starting with: Is there any way to move apps from one to another? Would that involve syncing the old one and then do a restore to the new one? Many thanks, Michael

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marcello the technocrat, and the p.g. catalog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

andrew said: > It is perhaps worth noting that > Marcello deserves some recognition for this. i'll give marcello the "recognition" he "deserves" for this... *** here's the deal. marcello is a "technocrat". that's a word i made up, to refer to a person who's a _bureaucrat_ working in a _tech_ arena. like their fellow bureaucrats -- in the government and the corporations -- the technocrats operate by taking a _simple_ thing and making it _confusing_, so as to consolidate their _power_ over us people, since they are now the only ones who understand the thing which was formerly simple for all to grasp. the technocrats _love_ their reputation as "experts", just like a man with erection deficiency loves viagra. so complicated is _always_ better for the technocrat. such it is with the p.g. catalog. and with electronic-book catalogs in _general._ for, you see, marcello is not the only technocrat. not by a long shot. there is a whole slew of 'em, and they've permeated the electronic-book scene. these technocrats made an "e-book catalog standard". it's called o.p.d.s., and just like good bureaucrats do, they've built a regulation. technocrats call it a "spec", which is short for "specification", but you get the idea -- it's just like a government regulation, chock-full of the jargon, obtuse language, unnecessary complexities, and acronyms craved by bureaucrats the world over... anyway, i'm sure you can google the o.p.d.s. spec, if you wanna see how they mucked e-book catalogs. let's remind ourselves, because we need reminding, that a catalog _should_ be quite the _simple_ thing. look at the original prototype -- the card catalog -- and see that it's just a set of cards that contain the basic information about a book (e.g., title, author, date of publication, number of pages, and so on), _combined_with_ a pointer to the book in the stacks, so you know where to find the shelf whereon it sits... pretty darn simple stuff. no need to get complicated. unless you're a bureaucrat that is, one who wants to make things complicated, as a bald grab for power... if you look at the o.p.d.s. spec, you'll see complexity. indeed, even the technocrats that built that spec say you will need an expert to create an o.p.d.s. catalog. now go look again at jim's "magic catalog". what is it? it's just an electronic version of a simple card-catalog. it's a list of titles (e.g., information about the books) which are links (e.g., pointers to the books' locations). it should be _easy_ for any person to create a catalog. _pointer_ combined with _information_about_the_book_ _pointer_ combined with _information_about_the_book_ _pointer_ combined with _information_about_the_book_ simple as pie. but if it was _that_ easy, anybody could do it, and thus the bureaucrats would lose their jobs and power, and nobody would ooh-and-ahh about how smart they are. so they had to muck it up, and make it all complicated, so only _they_ can create catalogs, so if they deign to "do us a favor" by making a catalog, we fall at their feet, worship them, and give 'em the thanks and "recognition" that they "deserve" for having been so wonderful to us... so this is a win-win deal for all the technocrats. the ones making the "standard" get their power enhanced because marcello used it, and marcello enhances _his_ power-base, because now he gets the credit for making the p.g. catalog. which is such a hard thing that only an expert could do it. but all of this is just one big hoodwink. because earlier, _anyone_ could have made a catalog, but now you need a _technocrat_ who is familiar with the spec. before, we could have made the catalog do anything that we wanted, because it was simple, and easy to understand. now it's a complex animal, so we have to be happy with whatever the technocrats give us, no matter how lame... they starve us, then give us scraps, so we'll be thankful. and somehow, we are so stupid that we fall for this trick. > Before the form of the catalog that he created, > that made it possible for Stanza to include > the often updated list that you mention, > all that Stanza had on offer from PG was > a static list of texts that never got updated, > and could not be searched in as many ways. this part _really_ made me laugh. that "static list of texts that never got updated" used to be updated all the time, on a regular basis. until, that is, marcello stopped doing updates on it. why did he stop? because he had created a _new_ version of the p.g. catalog, his _technocrat_ version, and he knew the existing "list of texts" -- in plain ascii, which _any_of_us_ could easily understand and use -- would've never been voluntarily abandoned by people. so he had to make it worthless, so we would only have _his_ technocrat catalog, so we'd be dependent on him. the "new" catalog is a great example of x.m.l. bloatware. so of course you must be a technocrat "expert" to use it. but yes, andrew, now that you have given appropriate "recognition" to your master marcello, perhaps he will see fit to serve you an extra-big portion of gruel today. -bowerbird

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Re: rendering engines
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

jim said: > Yes different rendering engines, > but consider what else is also different: jim, that's a _classic_ post from you... you manage, right at the outset, as shown here, to give the _impression_ that you're making a counterargument. but, in reality, half your points -- if not more -- actually _support_ my side, rather than refute it. surprise, surprise. and more importantly, all of your points "miss the point", in the larger sense, because your perspective is muddled, and you manage to "miss the big picture" almost entirely. in other words, your shots splay all around the target, but never manage to actually _hit_ the target. rather amazing. so yes, jim... almost every device out there has "a different renderer"... some devices might only require slight modifications of the code-base, but experienced programmers will confirm that sometimes the "slight" changes are the thorniest of 'em all. and devices differ in other ways as well, including all those you mentioned, such as fonts, c.s.s. support, and so on... on all that we agree, despite the disagreement you implied. where we disagree is that you seem to think those differences _matter_, in some important way. they don't matter. at least not in the example i provided. not in the slightest. not at all. yes, the two pages _look_ quite different, in a variety of ways. the backgrounds are different colors, the fonts are different, one page was hyphenated and the other one wasn't, and the leading is different. links have a starkly different appearance. but the two pages also look _the_same_ in one important way: both contain the exact same words, in the exact same order... *** you also then go on to argue that the very _idea_ that the pages should "look the same on two different devices" is "incorrect"... nobody ever seriously argued that, but don't let that stop you... anyway, you're too unclear about what "look the same" _means_. do you mean that the fonts and colors and hyphenation and leading and links should look the same? because if that's what you mean, then i agree with you, completely. they don't matter. but should the words be the same, and be in the same order? they _better_! you also say this: > The trick is in authoring "correctly" such that > an e-book presents "correctly" while at the same time > looking considerably differently on each different > reader device -- including on two "identical" Kindles say > owned by two different customers who have > two entirely different reading preferences. that seems to give a priority to the user's preferences. good. but then you said this: > An e-book SHOULD NOT look just like > a clone of the paper edition, > doing so JUST DOESN'T WORK! so i guess it doesn't count if a user has a preference that the e-book _should_ look "just like the paper edition"... some user preferences are less equal than others, eh? *** so we see how you fall on both sides of the argument... the takeaway, though, is that the important thing here is that the words are exactly the same, in the same order. and the "big picture" -- which you missed entirely, jim -- is that i was having this discussion with _michael_hart_... do you think michael hart cares about fonts and colors and hyphenation and leading and the appearance that links take? is this how _michael_ judges that a "simulator" is not "real"? -bowerbird

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Re: time after time
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

jim said: > So, to see what customers > are really going to experience > one has to get the hardware. what a myopic viewpoint. yes, to see what kindle-hardware-owners are "really going to experience", you might have to get a kindle. or you might not... but to see what kindle-for-iphone users are "really going to experience", you might have to get an iphone. or you might not. and to see what kindle-for p.c. people are "really going to experience", you might have to get a p.c. or you might not. and maybe vista users will see something that might be different from windows7 users, and windows xp might be different entirely, so you'll need to get each of those flavors, and... now that i think about it, you should definitely get every version of the iphone, because there might be differences there, and the ipod-touch might be different too, and the ipad is most definitely different, and... do you see how ridiculous this gets? because i'm willing to bet some good money that in the vast majority of cases, what you'll find is that the app on all these platforms will read in your .mobi file and end up displaying _the_exact_same_words_in_the_same_order_. and that's all that counts, folks. sincerely. when you show us some _real_ differences in display from one machine to the next, i will be happy to pay attention to _that_... otherwise, you're just a bunch of pinheads. so really, go back to trying to decide what a paragraph is, because _that's_ important! -bowerbird

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http://www.gutenberg.m. . .etc.
by Michael S. Hart 02 Mar '11

02 Mar '11

One of our readers asked me to pass on to you his compliments on how well our site works on his mobile devices!!! Thanks!!!!!!!

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Re: time after time
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

tuesday's version is up: > http://76.74.254.239/~bowerbird/a.fcgi refactored code should run faster. (or not.) -bowerbird

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Re: extra gruel
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

hey marcello, make sure jimmy gets some extra gruel tonight too. -bowerbird

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Re: Background Colour for Reading
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

geez. i point out one classic "jim" post, only to find he just posted another one! and this one is even shorter! so let's quote it in full, ok? jim said: > It's amazing how intensely personal > each person's preference for a reader device is, > what display technology, what choice of fonts, > serif vs. sans, text color, background color, > big or small and light, etc. > > And it is amazing how with a little thought > on the authorship side how we can already today > make books using one source format that come > pretty close to meeting customer expectations > re all these choices! that's it. the full post. and what's "amazing" about that post is that jim contradicts his first paragraph with his second... take _that_, internal consistency. off with your head! because the _truth_ of the matter is that "we" do not come anywhere even _remotely_ close to the goal of "meeting customers expectations"... not remotely... and that's _precisely_ because people have a _ton_ of preferences, about which they're intensely passionate. which, by the way, anyone who was _paying_attention_ already knew, about people and reading preferences... but lots of people in the e-book world have _never_ paid any attention to user-preferences, so they have no clue they aren't "meeting customer expectations". furthermore, they fail to realize that the file-formats they've built give very short shrift to user-preference. (and often to the e-book _creators_ as well, ironically.) and even when the file-formats might allow expression of user-preference, the viewer-apps often constrict it... for instance, did you see recently how _emotional_ and _strong_ the preference for curly-versus-straight quotes expressed itself? jana said that curly quotes are "correct", so she didn't care if i even offered the option of straight! on the other hand, two other people said "straight, please", and gave some utterly compelling reasons for that choice. but do any .mobi or .epub viewer-programs let their user _specify_ whether they get straight quotes or curly quotes? not that i have seen. you take whatever the builder put in. double-dash vs. typographic em-dash? no choice at all. you get what the creator of the e-book decided you'd get. indented-pargraphs versus block-style? no choice at all. sometimes not even for the darn creator of the e-book! you get whatever the viewer-app decides you're gonna get. justification? sometimes nobody gets any choice at all. sometimes the creator gets a choice, but not the reader. and sometimes (yay!) the reader gets a choice. (not often.) there are many preference variables that are just like these; opinions run strong, as does user desire to configure 'em. we're not even _close_ to "meeting customer expectations". and if you ever talked to any customers, you would know it. -bowerbird

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rendering engines
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

here's a screenshot showing the first page of jim's catalog as displayed in "kindle for mac" versus that page on an ipad, two devices which obviously use different rendering engines: > http://76.74.254.239/~bowerbird/rendering-engines.jpg i can't tell which one is live and which one is memorex. can you? > but i do know > that i love you > and i know that > if you love me too > what a wonderful world > this would be... -bowerbird

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