Believe what? That Moore's Law was never meant to be applied to PG? Yes, I believe that. That Moore's Law is being applied arbitrarily to PG production? Yes, I believe that. That Moore's Law is not being adhered to by our production EXCEPT for the very specific and arbitrary start date chosen by you? Yes, I believe that. Do I believe it is a big deal? No. It is obviously a marketing gimmick with no real value. MOST marketing gimmicks "cook the numbers" in some way, so this just adheres to the grand traditions of marketing/public relations. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Hart" <hart@pglaf.org> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] PT1 History of PG Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:39:15 -0800 (PST)

Just a simple question. . .how many people believe any of this?

Should I really go through the motions of refuting it again, and again, and again?

As I said privately, offline, I don't think even the speaker believes what he is saying. . . .

Michael

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Marcello Perathoner wrote:

...

Michael Hart wrote:

...

Obviously no one ever seriously considered that Project Gutenberg might actually release a million eBooks in 2001, but there were a few examples recently of suggestions that we should have used the 1971 date, and thus the resultant figures listed above when doing our Moore's Law predictions.

[epighraph]

"Contrary to popular claims, it appears that the common versions of Moore's Law have not been valid during the last decades. As semiconductors are becoming important in economy and society, Moore's Law is now becoming an increasingly misleading predictor of future developments."

...

"Indeed, sociologically Moore's Law is a fascinating case of how myths are manufactured in the modern society and how such myths rapidly propagate into scientific articles, speeches of leading industrialists, and government policy reports around the world."

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/index.html

[/epigraph]

Read that page for the sad truth about Moore's "Law".

My suggestion was to stop using arbitrary data to keep up the illusion of Moore's Law (which, if you had read that page, would have known never worked even for computers) but to use real data to show that Moore's "Law" does not fit to PG production.

The suggestion was to use the real date the project started (1971) instead of your fictitious and arbitrary one (1990).

Of course, using real dates, the idea that PG production followed Moore's Law dies a horrible death.

Even looking at the relatively short period of Nov 2003 to Nov 2004 we can prove in a very simple manner that Moore's Law doesn't hold.

1. In Nov 2003 we had 10000 books.

2. Applying Moore's Law, in Nov 2004 we should have had 10000 * 2 ^ (12/18) = 15874 books.

3. Moore's Law does not hold for PG archive size.

QED

The sad fact is: some people with a marketing person's mind prefer to stick to a phony and proven wrong "Law" because it is such a slick formulation.

Why do we need flashy formulas at all? If we say: "we got 15000 books today" isn't that enough? Don't you have faith in the facts?

-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org

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