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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '10

27 Jan '10

joey said: > Bird: You appear to ignoring the approximately > 700 million devices which, since sometime in 2005, > have been able to run the Opera Mini browser, > which is a full-scale browser like Firefox, IE, > Chrome, Safari, or its own big brother, Opera. gawd, it's like talking to a wall. > I have personally been using Opera Mini > on a myriad of devices for almost 4 years now you and who else? oh yeah, those 700 million "devices". but, for some strange unknown mysterious reasons, 99.9% of the people who check their weblogs find that opera (in all its forms) registers under 1% of their visits. and that's my point, here, people, that's my whole point. very few smart-phone users were using their smart-phones to visit the web. so even if it was "possible", in some sense of the word, no matter how sharply constrained, the fact is that very few people actually made use of that "possibility". and the fact that a few of you can come here and say "i did" doesn't change the fact that very few people out there in the real world were using their smart-phones to access the web. not until the iphone came along. even now, years after apple _revolutionized_ the way that smart-phones accessed the web, the small percentage of people who own iphones access the web disproportionately, clocking in at about twice the usage, if i remember correctly. > Maybe next time, you can actually hire a professional to > do your research for you, as you so clearly > dropped the ball here. maybe next time you can actually hire a professional to come here and try to put stupid words in my mouth, because you clearly are incapable of performing the task. > Admittedly, the small screens makes using websites on these > a decidedly sub-optimal experience, but that's only marginally > less true of the iPhone or iPod touch that you seem so very fond of. and evidently -- based on the actual facts of real-word usage -- the "marginally" better iphone screen makes a world of difference. or maybe it's the touchscreen. or the radically-transformed interface. or maybe it's z _combination_ of all of these factors, and even more. and, just to keep the record straight, i'm not "so very fond of" the iphone. the screen is still too small for me, for the most part... but my _personal_ feelings are not of any real importance here... what's important is the revolution that advanced the state of the art to the point where tens of millions of people were suddenly accessing the world wide web from their phones. that made all the difference... if microsoft would've done that, i would be cheering for microsoft... if h.p. would've done it, i'd be cheering for them, and talking about how _they_ made a difference by putting the web in our pocket... so, do you "get it"? it's _not_ who put the capability in place first, putting the first cell-phone-user online. it's who _developed_ it, to the point _tens_of_millions_ of cell-phone-users went online. -bowerbird

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 Jan '10

26 Jan '10

michael said: > there are some browsers on phone that are ugly. > However, if you did your homework on them, > even five years ago, you could get > one that worked pretty much like > whatever you had on your other devices. i "did my homework". the so-called "web-browser" on these "smart" phones was a steaming pile of crap. moreover, the data plans offered were just _traps_ designed to snag you into a _staggering_ phone-bill. which is why nobody actually _used_ these "browsers", not for any kind of persistent day-to-day web usage... > I did. And it was a common garden variety model, > though admittedly expensive to buy new, > so I got a used one, of course. at a bargain price, i am sure, because the older owner realized the game that the phone-company was playing, and decided to opt out of the tar-baby. and you sidestepped the tar-pit by not using it as a phone, per se, so you weren't saddled with the monthly cost. smart. but definitely not typical. > I have yet to see such menus that > didn't just point/click just like the others. i'm not sure what you're saying here. if you want to see some of the sites i was talking about, i can dig 'em up for you. i guarantee they look primitive. and they had no graphics at all. not the web we all know. > Duh? > Because Apple INSISTED you buy into THEIR network. . .!!! um, that's because none of the other carriers would let steve put their phone on their networks, probably because they knew that -- with a real web-browser -- people would use a lot of bandwidth, and they weren't willing to provide it at the time, especially not at the flat rate that steve demanded. of course, in hindsight, they were stupid, because they could have buried at&t, but instead they let a 3rd-place contender remain alive. > I certainly don't know ALL the functions of my phones, > or of the iPhone. . .but as far as surfing the Internet > and downloading/reading PG eBooks, it was all just fine, > except that .zip worked best for downloading and space. i'm perfectly willing to believe you're happy with your phone. i'm perfectly willing to believe most iphone owners are happy with their phone too, and wouldn't trade it for any other phone. i'm happy with my iphone, and wouldn't trade it for any other, but i didn't buy the 3gs when it came out last summer because i didn't want to re-up for another 2-year contract, because i was hoping that by this summer at&t would lose exclusivity, and i want to ditch them. and it looks like i'm gonna get that. i'm perfectly willing to stay off the bleeding edge if it cuts me. > Not like a million other people didn't buy the same phone! except that a million people doesn't make a revolution today. but the 60-80 million iphone/ipodtouch owners certainly do, as do the 8.75 million people who bought an iphone last quarter. you can't ignore numbers like that. none of the big boys are pooh-poohing the iphone any more. they're playing catch-up. > Actually, Mr. Bird, if you go to Europe, you might be surprised at > the phones they have, and the prices, and the price to operate. i have a very good handle on what's happening around the world. and the iphone is neither "late", nor "technologically inferior"... (although the u.s.a. as a whole is dragging its feet quite badly.) -bowerbird

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Re: Holst's Planets
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Jan '10

25 Jan '10

oh geez. i wrote a reply on this thread, but didn't send it, because i was hoping the thread would just die on its own. but evidently not... *** michael said: > You seem to be missing the point as well. well, there seem to be several "points" floating around. one is that _some_ phones could access the web _before_ the iphone came along. technically, that's true, if only for those technically-inclined who opted to subject themselves to the torture of tremendously inelegant, clumsy interfaces. then the iphone came along, for the rest of us, and now literally tens of millions of normal people access the web by using their iphones without dread, or even any angst, and they access the same web they get on their computers, not some hobbled "mobile" version with plain-text menus reminiscent of the 1970s. > iPhones don't account for but a few percent of all cellphones, > or even all web cellphones, or even all web/wifi/cellphones. and yet iphone users account for as much as 80% of the usage on the at&t network, enough to drive it to its knees some places. why? because steve made a web-browsing phone for the masses... which was _not_ a trivial undertaking. it's a massive achievement, one that the old guard in phones were totally incapable of doing. > As I said, I have one much older, > and I never turned it on as a phone, I just used the wifi. . . . you're not a typical user, michael. which is why i love you so... :+) *** marcello said: > The iPhone is late, technically inferior, overpriced > and locked into its vendor. it figures that marcello would say something so stupid, which is why he's in my spam folder. now if only keith stops quoting him. -bowerbird

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Re: on your planet
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Jan '10

25 Jan '10

jim said: > The main issues I can see here are: > > 1) People are split whether or not they can tolerate reading > on LCD display or whether they require e-Ink type of technology. > > 2) People are split on whether or not they like touch-screen > vs. dislike the reduction in display quality that touch-screens entail. > > 3) How big vs. how little you want your reading device to be. > > 4) What file formats and/or DRM and/or other transfer and > download restrictions a particular e-book reader entails. > > 5) real keyboards vs. virtual keyboards. > > 6) how "general purpose computer " vs. "dedicated reader" a device is. > > 7) cost. those are pretty much all personal preferences, and therefore not worth discussing. -bowerbird

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let's do a book
by bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Jan '10

23 Jan '10

been a while since i digitized a book, so i decided to scrape the files from rfrank's roundless experiment and do them... here's the first pass: > http://z-m-l.com/go/frank/frankp123.html same as it ever was. the first pass was to put it in my format; the next pass will be to do preprocessing. i applaud the roundless experiment, but the fact still stands that if you do a good job of preprocessing (which takes an hour or so with a good tool), you can basically _post_the_book_ for smoothreading, or p1, or p2, or p3, or whatever you wanna call a finish pass. the d.p. workflow is archaic and stupid. -bowerbird

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something really stupid
by bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

ok, so after about a year or so when the "dissent" at distributed proofreaders had exhausted itself, and nobody was questioning anything any more, the natives have once again become semi-restless. so there is now a whole handful of forum threads where people are once again thrashing stuff out... (ironically, many of the people who worked hardest to shut me up have now become the loudest voices registering their own discontent. rather amusing.) as usual, the discussions are a rats-nest of quality. some people have good observations and ideas, and other people have lousy ones, and the masses are unable to distinguish the good from the lousy. and nobody knows what they need to do in order to make anything actually _happen_, and by this time, most of them have become acutely aware of _that_, so it's amusing to watch their frustration boil over... and it's still good to see that they are _trying_... i made note of rfrank's test of a "roundless" system, which is one of the more positive things going on... (it's interesting that roger's distaste for open debate, which manifested here on this listserve, extends to his action over there as well, so he does his research outside of the purview of d.p. "proper" so he doesn't have to deal with anyone whose input he doesn't like, so he's kept himself "above the fray" using that tactic. he'll also opt out of a thread if it gets "unproductive" in his mind, and just start up a new thread elsewhere.) at any rate, one of the _worst_ ideas being floated now involves attempts to "reduce" output from p1 proofers. this is one of those awful ideas that keeps cropping up, due to a few people with more persistence than brains... the "problem" is that there are lots of p1 proofers who are churning out lots and lots and lots of proofed pages. now, you can be excused if you ask why that's a problem. after all, isn't the whole idea to proof o.c.r. on the pages? well, yes. which is why this is such a stupid ignorant idea. but nonetheless, because some people at d.p. cannot see past their convoluted ridiculous workflow, this "excess" of p1 proofed pages is considered to be a "problem" that needs to be "solved" so that their workflow can be saved. numerous methods have been enacted to try to _force_ the p1 proofers to "move up" to the later proofing rounds. none of these numerous methods seem to have "worked". at times, the effort seems to even be directed specifically at a handful of people in the "top 10 list" of p1 proofers. each of these people has proofed thousands and thousands of pages, which i consider as a very productive contribution, yet they're being portrayed in an extremely negative manner, as people who are causing problems for the site as a whole... now, i haven't looked at the list of p1 proofers to determine just who these "troublemakers" are, but it seems to me that a very nice "solution" has presented itself for this "problem". specifically, those "problem" p1 proofers should move over to rfrank's "roundless" system, where they'll be appreciated. in a roundless system, the faster a page moves to perfection -- and by all accounts, these "problem" p1 proofers provide _excellent_ proofing results -- the better the system works... moreover, instead of being "blamed" for a bad infrastructure, the roundless system will _laud_ these high-profile proofers. so there you go, my suggestion for d.p. for the day... -bowerbird

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say it loud, say it proud
by bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '10

19 Jan '10

happy martin luther king jr. day! i am again being amused by stuff over at distributed proofreaders... you might remember that in the past, i reviewed a lot of work by roger frank. even though he was doing some of the most advanced work over there at d.p., he was still wasting lots and lots of time being donated by the volunteers there, and i pointed out this truth with evidence. roger took all kinds of offense, and ended up calling me all kinds of names before storming out of here without engaging in any discussion. and that's sad, because he coulda learned a lot... as it is, though, he's teaching himself, slowly and surely, and will eventually -- after a long time -- find himself in the positions i advocated all along. it's just that he could have advanced himself to that point a whole lot faster if he would've listened to me. but, you know, everybody chooses their own pathway... anyway, roger's newest project is a test of a "roundless" system for digitizing books. you can see discussion here: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42331 -bowerbird

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help finalizing the January 2010 DVD
by Aaron Cannon 17 Jan '10

17 Jan '10

Hi all. Finally, the DVD is all but done. I just need some help from folks more qualified than I with these last few items: 1. Editorial help: I need a few eyes to look over the main page and other content in the root directory of the DVD. I'm looking for suggestions on spelling/grammar changes, as well as suggestions for text that should be added. 2. Design help. I need someone who knows HTML and especially CSS to create a CSS file for the DVD. None of the HTML elements have class attributes, but I can add those easily. Just tell me where you want them. Also, if other changes need to be made to the HTML, again just let me know what. I believe all of the pages validate, but if you find any that don't, please let me know. 3. Image help. This has 3 parts: A. Some sort of image should probably be added to the main page on the DVD, and optionally to the tops of all of the HTML pages on the disc. Again, just send me the code to add, and I will add it to each page. You don't need to edit all 30,000 files your self. B. It would be nice to have a small .ico file created so that the DVD will display an icon when inserted into a Windows computer. Also, if anyone knows how to do the same for Macs, that would be great. C. There is a DVD label which was created for the original Project Gutenberg DVD. It needs to be updated for this new DVD. ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images/GutenbergDVDCover.psd Also see ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images/GutenbergCD-DVDCover.… You can download a .tar.bz2 file containing all of the content on the DVD minus the books themselves at http://fireantproductions.com/dvdindexes.tar.bz2 It's about 5MB. If you don't have a way to open .tar.bz2 files, you can download the much larger .zip version of the same thing: http://fireantproductions.com/dvdindexes.zip (about 25MB) or you can browse the content online at http://fireantproductions.com/dvd/ Thanks in advance! Aaron Cannon

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What happens to page images these days?
by Gardner Buchanan 11 Jan '10

11 Jan '10

A dumb question... It's been a while since I've submitted a project based on a physical volume (rather than on scans from somewhere online). It seems like once upon a time there was a place the scans were meant to go. The PG submission system does not seem geared to take original page scans. Is there somewhere they would like to be? Thanks, ============================================================ Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana(a)teksavvy.com> Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today.

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Help with the DVD
by Greg M. Johnson 10 Jan '10

10 Jan '10

Hi. I have a current version a DVD with 3850 PG books in HTML format. It's biased towards my tastes, but I did try to use some objective "Best Of ..." lists to choose books, and with a number as high as 3850, it may beyond a bias from my personal tastes. Here is the Wordle for the titles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pterandon/3758402023/in/photostream/ I also did a lot of culling of large MB books in favor of getting a larger selection of high quality material. For example, just about all of Mark Twain is gone, and every one of the "Quotes and Images" creations. :-P I have them accessible by an HTML file, grouped by a genre. One interesting thing is that I used a linux box to burn the DVD, and in so doing was able to remove the Windows thumbnails file-thing, greatly increasing the number of works again. I wanted someone to look at this with a critical eye to see how it affects the usability on a Windows box. I'm guessing that Windows only *needs* those files when you're browsing the folders with Windows Explorer-- something we don't necessarily want to prevent but don't need to encourage either. But will Windows' resources be consumed with making those thumbnail things each and every time the DVD is put in a Windows box? -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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