- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: A new DVD?
by Christa & Jay Toser 18 Jul '09

18 Jul '09

Hi, Time for me to put my two cents worth in. I do a good-sized chunk of the international mailings for the Gutenberg project. These are the physical discs that are sent out, not any of the internet downloads. Point One: We cannot abandon the legacy of a CD. Most of Africa, and many ex-Soviet satellite nations, do not have personal computers that can read DVD's. For instance, the One Laptop Per Child computer can only read CD's. Perhaps the Gutenberg Project can update their CD to include the 630 most popular books from 2009 (instead of from 2003), but we must maintain a CD. Point Two: We must update the DVD. Folk in India have noticed that the current DVD holds about 10,000 fewer books than are on-line. They wonder why we are behind the times. Point Three: On the internet downloads, yes we can have a dual-layer or Blue-Ray disk image. Wonderful. BUT in the physical world, we will have to stick with the standard DVD format. We must understand that much of the world will continue with older legacy formats for at least the next decade. Which means, the next release of the DVD will probably have to be a set of two discs. Point Four: Mailing of discs. Currently, I mail two copies of the DVD (or CD) for every request. The philosophy has always been: "Keep one copy, and give the other copy to your local school or library." This has worked pretty well at the current postage costs. However, if I have to mail four discs, then costs of mailing will go up. I propose this change: Any requester may ask for one single personal copy of the two DVD's. _AND_ there should be an additional checkbox for them to ask for a second set of DVD's for them to give away. That way, I would normally send out only the two DVD's (for the single personal copy) -- unless the requester wants more -- and then I would spend the greater postage to send the extra discs. Critics may ask: "If I send a second set of discs, will that extra set be personally delivered to the other destination?" I say, Oh yes, I GUARANTEE IT. Americans simply do not realize just how much the rest of the wold values books. If someone says they will deliver the duplicates -- then they WILL. It would be worth it to the Gutenberg Project to pay the extra postage for the duplicate DVD's. Point Four-and-a-Half: No, DVD BURNERS are not as common as you think. Lots of folk across the world can READ a DVD, but not so many can BURN a DVD. As much as these requesters would want to make copies -- they just can't. Point Five: Download time. The debate I have read in the last couple days, does not seem to take into account internet access. They seem to think just anyone can download the DVD (or Blue-Ray) images easily. That is not the case in most of the world. I currently have 56K dial-up. If I were to download a (hypothetical) 2-DVD set, that download would complete, oh, about October. And yet, I do not experience the incredible delays seen in the Palestinian Territories, or some of the emerging Communist nations, or much of Africa -- there the best speed can be as low as 9600 baud (2.4K). Whenever Project Gutenberg creates the be-all-end-all Blue-Ray DVD disk which contains everything in the project -- then about 2/3rds of the world will not have the bandwidth to access any of it. So, I recommend moderation in whatever you create. Please keep in mind the legacy DVD & CD standards that are already in place; that the world currently can read; and try to create the new discs so that (almost) anyone can read them. Hope this helps, Jay Toser P.S. Should any of these new discs be created, will someone remember to mail to me, a hard copy? As I've said, I'm not going to be able to download a copy. That's why I do the international mailings.

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Hey, I've been working on a DVD!
by Greg M. Johnson 17 Jul '09

17 Jul '09

Hi. I'm getting the email from this list but am not sure if I'm able to send to the list. Anyway, I've been working on a DVD. I've got 3500 of your HTML files on it organized into 21 different genres. It's *everything* under the sun, but from my own editorial stance, I'm most interested in Christian sermons, scifi, old sea tales, and the (US) Civil War, so there might be too much in those genres there for some's taste. At one point I was trying to avoid controversial material (eugenics, slavery, women's suffrage), but then thought it would be more valuable to include all kinds of viewpoints, even ones universally understood to be wrong today. The files are HTML, which i find to be the best way to read the material. I've stressed those files which are <1MB, but of course granting waivers to image-rich classics like Beatrix Potter's work. I've seen the DVD you put out with 19000 zipped txt files on it. That DVD probably the thing you want to have in every home basement in case civilization needs to survive a nuclear war, but it's not very user friendly. I entitled mine, "Some of the Best of Project Gutenberg." So, I'm planning to start distributing it to all my friends and every local nursing home. But I'd gladly give the current draft up to your group under a CC zero license. ADVENTURE IN THE AGE OF STEAM SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURE NOVELS FOR YOUTH BEDTIME STORIES MANUALS & HOW-TO BOOKS SCHOOLBOOKS & EDUCATION THEORY ENGLISH LITERATURE DRAMA POETRY MYSTERY RELIGION- CHRISTIAN RELIGION-OTHER, MYTHOLOGY, & PHILOSOPHY SCIENCE- MEDICINE, PHYSIOLOGY, & PSYCHOLOGY SCIENCE- NATURAL SCIENCE- PHYSICS & ENGINEERING SOCIAL SCIENCE, THE ARTS, WORLDWIDE HISTORY U.S. & THE AMERICAS HISTORY & CULTURE EUROPEAN HISTORY & CULTURE ASIAN & AFRICAN HISTORY & CULTURE MAGAZINES -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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A new DVD?
by Aaron Cannon 17 Jul '09

17 Jul '09

Hi all. I'm sorry for disappearing for a while. I've been dealing with some health issues, work, and school, but mainly health. Anyway, I think it may be time to create a new DVD. The latest one is 3 years old this month. However, the project has obviously grown drastically in that time, so I'm wondering if one DVD still makes sense? The drawbacks to creating a 2 DVD collection that immediately come to mind are: 1. In the DVD/CD mailing project, we have consistently been sending two copies of the DVD, or a DVD and CD. This will either have to change, or we will have to pay more for postage. 2. It takes twice as long to download. On the other hand, if you can download 4GB, it's probably not that big of a stretch to download 8. 3. It's not as elegant as one DVD. This is probably the least important, but just thought I'd mention it as it might prove important to some. It is of course possible to stick with just one DVD, but it will require leaving out a lot. Any thoughts/ideas? Aaron

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happy birthday, project gutenberg
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Jul '09

03 Jul '09

so let me be among the first to say "happy b-day" to project gutenberg on this sunny 4th-of-july weekend. the longevity of this cyberlibrary is due to the intelligent vision of its founder michael hart who saw the power of keep-it-simple philosophy with insistence on plain text, baby... so it is not without massive irony that we mark a new development: the w3c working group for xhtml2 will stop work at the end of 2009... > http://www.w3.org/News/2009#item119 instead, there'll be a new emphasis on html5 -- as "the future of html". in other words... all those technocrats telling you that "xml is the future" for the last decade were just plain flat-out purely wrong. good thing you didn't listen to 'em, eh? thanks, michael, for your vision and for the tenacity of your persistence... -bowerbird ************** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222585087x1201462804/aol?redir=htt… bcd=JulystepsfooterNO62)

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Has anyone noticed that the gutindex files for this year haven't been updated since January?
by Jared Buck 03 Jul '09

03 Jul '09

I'm perfectly willing to help update these files if the person who usually does the gutindex file updating doesn't have time to do it. I get all the latest postings of new books and it would be an easy thing to do to look through the posted-list archives to grab all the listings, and insert them into the gutindex file. Jared -- Yogi Berra <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/y/yogi_berra.html> - "I never said most of the things I said."

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Re: Has anyone noticed that the gutindex files for thisyear haven't been updated since January?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jun '09

29 Jun '09

there's something here about how a service can be discontinued without any public discussion or decision or even _notification_... but i'm not too inclined to figure out what it all "means", since nobody'd be interested in the outcome of that analysis anyway. the rough image i'm getting, though, is a bunch of volunteers who spin themselves off to a place where they are very busy making something that nobody uses any more, because the volunteers lost touch with the feedback loop from the public. -bowerbird ************** A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221823281x1201398699/aol?redir=htt… bcd=JunestepsfooterNO62)

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Guidelines for putting "PG" on own compilations
by Greg M. Johnson 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

Hi. I think there was a Tim Robbins novel where someone got into all kinds of trouble by indexing. That's what I've done: I made my own compilation DVD. I stuck to html files and have the material categorized by genre. I've got grown-up adventure (Verne/ Conrad), kid adventure (Appleton/ Hope), books for small children (Garis), education primers, how-to manuals, mystery, drama, general literature, natural science, physical science, religion: Christian, religion: Other & philosophy, 3 kinds of history, and magazines. about 3000 titles. I started with a custom DVD right off the Alaska server but completely revamped the index and added a hundred or so more ones. I'm considering giving physical copies of these out to everyone I've ever met and encouraging them to do the same. I of couse have not modified any of the html files provided by PG. Q: What are the guidelines for putting "PG" on the index and cover page? I can imagine scenarios where I rudely don't give you enough credit, or rudely get you blamed for my taste & choices in the idex. (I've split religion into "Christian" and "Other & Philosophy", as one example.) -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Project Gutenberg Facebook page (fwd)
by Michael S. Hart 28 Jun '09

28 Jun '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:57:18 -0400 From: Rachael Kauffung <rachaelakauffung(a)gmail.com> To: hart(a)pobox.com Subject: Project Gutenberg Facebook page Hello, I started a facebook group for PG some time ago, with the intention of informing my friends of the website. It has since grown to almost 850 members with me doing absolutely nothing with the group. I was wondering if someone at PG might want to adopt the page and run it. These members are purely a result of viral spread, so I think there is potential to extend this in a way very beneficial to PG. I have had a number of members tell me they would be interested in proofreading and helping with the project. Please let me know how you would like to proceed. Thanks! Rachael Kauffung

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Re: Kindle DX, etc.
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

jim said: > at some point in time in the near future > using human beans to make txt files > will no longer represent the best technological approach > to making PD books available to the public considering the millions of public-domain books google already offers up, i'd say that that time has already come. most people only want to read the books, and perhaps extract small passages of text every once in a while, and google's production process facilitates those activities... it'd be nicer if all their text was completely cleaned, but one has to appreciate how far they have moved the bar... there's no longer a pressing need for volunteers to do this. of course, many of us enjoy it, so we'll continue doing it... > some Google books have only page images no OCR at all. can you give me the u.r.l. of some of those? > where does google do a "slice and dice" -- > can you provide a pointer? in their mobile interface. for example: > http://books.google.com/m#Read?id=rYIhAAAAMAAJ&page_num=123 click on any bit of text to reveal the underlying scan... then click again to toggle back to the digital text copy. -bowerbird ************** An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222585065x1201462786/aol?redir=htt… bcd=JuneExcfooterNO62)

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Re: Kindle DX, etc.
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jun '09

27 Jun '09

jim said: > the Google Books approach of simply digitizing the page images of a book > is a perhaps reasonable approach where the readership for that book is > small compared to the effort required to take the Gutenberg approach of > producing a clean digital text. If one is going to simply digitize the > page images of a book then one needs a reader with a screen big enough > to display that page image legibly -- unless one imagines a technology > to slice and re-dice the page image in an intelligent manner so that > snippets of the page image fits readably onto an iPhone. ok, where do i begin here? just pick a spot and jump in, i guess... i believe the google book "settlement" should be rejected. it gives far too much to google -- a virtual monopoly -- and would thus shut down experimentation prematurely... but what you have said here, jim, doesn't do google justice. you seem to think that google is just scanning the books, and displaying those scans to people. that's not the case. google is doing o.c.r., and is using the results of that o.c.r. further, they show indications they'll be cleaning that o.c.r. contrary to what you have implied here, it does _not_ take a great deal of time or effort to create "a clean digital text". i have shown here -- repeatedly -- that the vast majority of o.c.r. errors can be corrected with little or no human effort, using rigorously-applied computerized correction routines. and google knows how to create, test, and refine those routines. i have also shown here -- again, repeatedly -- that one attains high accuracy by comparing different digitizations to each other, and minimizes the human attention required in the process... google can use this, as it is scanning lots of books multiple times. so why does distributed proofreaders work so hard to do its books? because it's stupid, with its head in the sand, ignores what i prove, and doesn't mind wasting the energy and time of its volunteers... next, one doesn't have to "imagine" a technology that will slice and re-dice a page-image to fit it onto a certain display-size... bill janssen over at parc demonstrated such a system long ago. and if you look, google is currently using its own variant of that. finally, there are a lot of page-images that fit nicely on an iphone even without being sliced and diced. for instance, navigate here: > http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp123.png this page-image displays quite nicely on an iphone, thank you. -bowerbird ************** Make your summer sizzle with fast and easy recipes for the grill. (http://food.aol.com/grilling?ncid=emlcntusfood00000004)

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