- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: precisely why i called the bluff
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Sep '11

01 Sep '11

benjamin said: > I use “your lordship” frequently, > often to refer to persons whose > actual lordship I totally do not respect. > So I did not mean by it what you thought I meant. did you mean to put the word "not" in "do not respect"? whatever the case, i am proud to work in the trenches... and i'm proud to have you working alongside me there. i'm also proud of people who work with good intentions, even if their fear of a new workflow causes inefficiencies. but i'm still gonna try to help get them straightened out. > “Their” is plural; “head” is singular. :P / :-) there are a lot of them. each with only one head... :+) which is why it's a shame if they stick it in the sand. > I am more than merely “very” confused. I am > _totally_ confused. I am confused in the extreme. > (I even question whether I am quite conscious > of my own confusion, so confused am I.) ok, maybe you're not as confused as i thought you were. ;+) > Up until now I only knew of one tool, and that is > the one that was being discussed on this list back > in February, of which new demos were being uploaded that was just the latest demo in a series of very many... > I never knew that any such demo allowed feedback > “after-the-fact by the public.” many of the demos i have created were geared to that aim. but i've also had lots of other demos for lots of other aims. all in all, i have covered every single part of the tool-chain. -bowerbird

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Re: precisely why i called the bluff
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Aug '11

31 Aug '11

jim adcock said: > Not exactly sure what would be pulled by who where. well, no, jim, you're "not exactly sure", because you do not have the type of vision or clout michael has, unfortunately. which is not a slam, since few people do. certainly none of the "business as usual" people who are running the show now. they're all just a bunch of sheep. their redeeming quality is that most have good intentions. they're not "bad" people; they just like their familiar ways. it's not even clear that michael still has his old chops, but i'm _certainly_ not going to count him out just quite yet... especially as i dearly hope he'll shake their complacency. > But Google is making progress towards "reasonable" > 100% human-free OCR translation of the body text > of books, not including "the hard parts" such as > TOC, Index, etc. and then only on relatively recent pubs > such as circa 1900s. google will eventually have error-free text throughout. which is what i've said all along. it is fairly easy to see. and the 50,000-item p.g. library will merely be "quaint," a testament to an outdated workflow that wouldn't scale. > One could imagine a system that accepted such > "good enough" OCRs and put them online immediately, > and which allowed real-world readers to propose fixes > as they read the book. You could still require PG volunteers > to review the proposed fixes before accepting them. why would you "imagine" such a system, when you could find it described perfectly, with proof-of-concept demos, in the posts on this very listserve going back many years? i mean, seriously. a lack of imagination is _one_ thing... but a willful ignorance of the past is quite another thing. yet even this scenario is mired in the dated viewpoint that correction of o.c.r. is the main problem that needs solving. d.p. has tons of almost-fully-corrected books languishing... -bowerbird

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precisely why i called the bluff
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Aug '11

31 Aug '11

benjamin said: > I'm afraid they weren't intending to say, bowerbird... which is precisely why i called their bluff, benjamin... because "no fruitful conversation" is their _secret_code_, which translates best as "sour grapes" after "eating crow". but the thing about a secret code is you can't say it out loud. *** jim adcock said: > Good luck on all the good books you make and submit BB > -- because fundamentally that's what it's all about. this idea that "what it's all about" is to become a cog in the inefficient machine that has already been built is a big part of the problem which is why d.p. has now become stagnant, producing what has become its customary 2500 books/year. their traditional workflow will never be able to scale higher, which is exactly what many years ago i said would happen... the good thing about good old whatshisname, you know, the guy who _started_ this project, oh yeah, michael hart, is that he always had his eye on the horizon, he was always looking to ratchet things up; whenever he reached a height (and sometimes even before), he was immediately ready to look to the next horizon, and the next mountain, preparing to proclaim a new goal, giving everyone the next challenge. now the people in charge at p.g. and d.p. want you to march in lockstep with what they did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and the year before that... oy vey... i sincerely hope michael pulls another rabbit out of his hat... -bowerbird

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the year of the e-book
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Aug '11

30 Aug '11

it's the year of the e-book, and the 40th anniversary of project gutenberg, and gutvol-d is a ghost-town... -bowerbird

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Re: year of the e-book
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Aug '11

28 Aug '11

bastien said: > Ask them why! why? -bowerbird

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happy birthday project gutenberg!
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Aug '11

19 Aug '11

michael said: > Considering the 40th Anniversary of eBooks happy birthday, project gutenberg! > 40 years ago...one title available at Project Gutenberg. perhaps even more amazing: after its first 20 years, project gutenberg only had 100 e-texts in its library -- still more "proof of concept" than anything else... but it took only 12 more years to expand to 10,000, and gain the heft to merit the appellation "library", with this growth fueled by _individual_digitizers_... all this got the attention necessary for larger efforts, such as internet archive and google, and thus we saw the possibility for electronic-books to finally emerge, after a decades-long period of quite painful gestation. and thus, in 2011, we have the "coming of age" time for e-books, when amazon reports that it sells more e-books than p-books, while self-published authors -- always insulted previously with the "vanity" slur -- discovered (quite by accident) that a direct connection to their audience enabled them to make _big_ money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even millions... just as shocking, a wide range of e-book hardware is available in all the digital-gadget big-box stores, and even being touted in slick commercials on television. my word, even barnes&noble is in the e-reader game! so there is definitely cause for celebration! :+) at the same time, however, the news is not all good... and the ugly part of the equation can be summed up in one word: greed. unsurprisingly, leading this side are the corporations, this time in the form of the boys at the publishing houses, who are extremely reluctant to give up their gravy train, so are draggin' their feet... you know all the tactics... copyright legislation, d.r.m., an "open standard" called ".epub" that is a piece of shit, and every fear/uncertainty/doubt issue they can muster. but, hey, we _expected_ those selfish kids to be greedy; after all, it's the object of the capitalist game they play. what really hurt is that they were joined by a group of _authors_, who couldn't see the vast potential in being free of their corporate masters, and thus joined them in suing the google scanning project... and then what _really_ brought the house crumbling down was when google decided to turn evil, and buy out of the lawsuit by throwing some chump change to their "opposition" from extraction via onerous extortion of you and me... google deduced it could get the public and libraries to pay for access to google e-books... so essentially the "global library" we envisioned has been morphed into a "global bookstore", a monopoly with too-high prices. and just today, google announced "iriver story", some e-book tablet "integrated" with its e-book platform... "through which you can buy and read google e-books over wi-fi". thus the bait-and-switch is fait accompli. will future generations even know what a "library" is? or will they have access only to the books they pay for? what about the rest of the world, much of which cannot begin to afford the ridiculous rates google will charge? just how hard will the greedy capitalists fight this fight? i don't know the answers to these questions, but i can say that, at my age, i'm less optimistic than i once was. it is entirely possible that we won the battle for e-books, but lost the war for a global cyberlibrary accessible to all. so again, happy birthday, project gutenberg! but now starts the hard part... -bowerbird

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88 Translations in one PG file???
by Michael S. Hart 01 Aug '11

01 Aug '11

I seem to have lost my memory on this one. Can anyone point me to the right file? If I have the old style URL with /etext##/filename.txt is that supposed to point me to the new file location? Thanks!!! Michael

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catalog.sqlite
by Emilis Dambauskas 28 Jul '11

28 Jul '11

Hi, I converted the RDF catalog into an Sqlite database. You can download it here: http://emilis.info/other/gutenberg-catalog.sqlite.bz2 (22 MB compressed) I have built myself a program for conversion. Could automate the conversion or share the code if someone would really need it. By the way -- how is the catalog stored internally in the website? I am sorry I am writing to the general discussion list, but I noticed that programing list isn't used much lately. Have a nice day! -- Emilis Dambauskas emilis.d(a)gmail.com gsm: +370-686-07732 http://emilis.github.com/ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GAT/CC/MC/GG/O dpu(-) s:- a C++ UBLHS++ P(+) L+++ E-(++) W+++$ N+ o-- K? !w O? M-@ V? PS+(--) PE Y+>++ PGP t- 5? X+@ R- !tv b+ DI++++ D+ G e++ h---- r+++ y++++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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Re: happy birthday project gutenberg
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Jul '11

22 Jul '11

benjamin said: > if you are going to bring Anonymous into this, > we could be forgiven for asking you to explain > what you see as the war. the war is between the rich-and-powerful versus the rest of us. who are the rich and powerful? for a fairly good breakdown, without naming names, go here: > http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html that research is long, but you might focus on this section: > Do Americans know their country's wealth distribution? however, before going there, why don't you first give your best guesses in filling in these blanks: the top 20% of americans controls ____% of the wealth. the next 20% of americans controls ____% of the wealth. the middle 20% of americans controls ____% of the wealth. the bottom 40% of americans controls ____% of the wealth. as for "anonymous", they're just the extremists which the wealthy use as justification for their clampdowns... but everyone gets herded through the metal-detectors. -bowerbird p.s. here are a few more places where you can get info: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026 http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-g raph

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Re: happy birthday project gutenberg
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Jul '11

21 Jul '11

michael said: > I should add that Barnes and Noble also reports > more eBooks sold than paper books. . .but I THINK > that is just from online sales, not sure, but > sounds like it doesn't include over the counter. what's interesting about amazon's announcement is that the boo-birds -- who used to attack _every_ p.r. release from amazon with the charge that it was "not specific" -- have now largely disappeared into "the silence of wrong". it's as if they know that they no longer make any sense. but, as usual, they don't have the balls to just admit that they were on the wrong side of the big trend all along. the march toward electronic-books is unstoppable... of course, it still serves us well to examine the specifics of what amazon is saying in each press release, because it helps us to grasp the nuances of the current situation. in this one, amazon focused on the number of units sold. but this ain't all that surprising, because of the immense number of e-books that are moving at _very_ low prices. when we consider the vast number of e-books which are being sold for $2.99 -- and even $.99 -- it's no wonder that e-books are "out-selling" p-books, quantity-wise... those $.99 e-books are bought in bulk, as impulse items. so an apologist for print can maintain -- correctly -- that p-books still pull in more total dollars. for now, anyway. one of the future announcements, of course, will be that e-books are bringing in more _total_cash_ than p-books. so that's how we realize exactly where we are, right now: e-books outdo p-books number-wise, but not dollar-wise. now, some people (i.e., profit-hungry corporate types) will take that as a sign that p-books still have some life. a much-smarter take, however, is that this is precisely what a long-tail approach would predict, for this time. corporations still have a lock on "the hits in the head", but the tail is exerting itself. and, given sufficient time, the tail will outdo the head even in total dollars pulled. the problem for the corporations is that _they_ won't be the entities who are pulling in those bigger dollars. even if they have the hits in the head, and thus a larger profit-per-book, they'll be dwarfed by the tail's quantity. and given the fact that authors are beginning to realize there is no need to give a publisher a cut of the action, it won't be long before corporations lose even the "hits". and they'll have to profit by selling some other widgets. moreover, this current situation reflects the fact that physical goods are so much more expensive to bring to market than digital goods. so even though the gross take from p-books still remains larger than from e-books, it's not unreasonable to think e-books return more profit. finally, this is yet another indication that the corporate publishing houses priced their product out of its market. they kept raising the price of p-books, until they broke the rubber-band of elasticity, so people stopped buying. cheap e-books brought bulk-buyers back to the market. but the corporate guys can't compete at this price-point. *** still, i made another point in my last post, which is that we mighta won the battle for e-books, but lost the war... if we traded the universal library for a universal bookstore, then i would be of the strong opinion that we lost the war. i'm completely in favor of writers (and all other artists) getting paid. but writer-greed isn't any more appealing than corporate-greed, if we boil them down to the bone. so no, writers should _not_ get rich at the public trough. if you wanna be part of our communal cultural legacy -- a legacy which has benefited _you_ as an artist and _you_ as a member of society at large, like everyone -- you'll need to take your hand out of the cash-register. (of course, in a world where everybody else has their hands in the cash-register, the rule must apply to all.) in this regard, perhaps some people take heart in the recent developments where we're being given some rather broad access to cultural legacy at low prices... for instance, netflix (even with its recent price-raise to $16 a month for _both_ streaming and hard-copy, while each of those things alone is just $8 per month), is still a fair deal for access to our film history legacy. and spotify, which just made its u.s. entry this week, promises access to our musical culture for $10/month. since the greed-boys in the music corporations have been some of the _stupidest_ in this whole revolution, the fact that even _they_ came around is encouraging. so perhaps there is hope the publishing corporations will get smarter too, and offer us some library access. but many of you smart people here will undoubtedly notice that these options are for _streaming_access_. thus, we're simply "renting" an ability to _play_ media, and giving up any claim of "ownership" of that media. so, again, you're smart enough to realize this may be a dirty trick. after all, if we don't "own" that material, our "access" can be revoked any time, for any reason... or -- more likely -- the "rent" can be continually raised. (which is why the recent action by netflix is troubling.) now, maybe you're one of the half-smart people here, who will "counter" with the argument that any media which can be _played_ on your machine is something that you can copy. well, yes, that's true, in large part. but if you copy material you do not _own_, you are technically a criminal. and there might be a way for the authorities to detect your "criminal" activity, and delete the material, or drag you into court or prison. if you think that is far-fetched, you need to wake up. they keep lobbying to get the means to do just that. also, just this week, authorities charged aaron swartz with federal crimes for "hacking" into jstor machines. (jstor, in case you're unfamiliar, is a private company that administers digital copies of academic journals.) aaron -- in what is clearly civil disobedience aimed at shedding light on the question of private ownership of research that was almost-completely public-funded) -- had a right to access the material, since he is a "fellow" at harvard. but he downloaded a large number of files, and evaded jstor's attempts to thwart his downloading, and that's enough for the feds to come after him hard... (the maximum penalty for his "crimes" runs to 30 years.) jstor stated it didn't ask for or want criminal charges, and said it's satisfied how the situation was "resolved" -- saying aaron "returned" the files he'd downloaded -- as it probably just doesn't desire to be in the spotlight, since it is likely to become the target of significant ire. nonetheless, the feds are continuing to pursue the case, since, as one attorney proclaimed, "stealing is stealing". the feds also lodged charges against a handful of people accused of being part of "anonymous" -- the big online tech-savvy collective which has caused lots of ruckus -- trying to paint them with the tired brush of "terrorists". this is because anonymous took action against paypal when paypal washed its hands of any wikileaks dealings. in total, all of these developments are very worrisome... so yes, let us celebrate that we've won the e-book battle. but let us not fail to notice that there is also a bigger war. -bowerbird

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