April 2005 - PGCanada - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [PGCanada] Last Call for Web Hosting
by Jen Zed 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

On 4/25/05, Russell McOrmond <russell(a)flora.ca> wrote: > > Do you have a domain name you will be pointing at this site? James Linden registered http://www.projectgutenberg.ca/. Until recently, this pointed to a "coming soon" page, but now the URL is dead (and maybe his email address at this domain too?) James? Are you out there? Can you transfer / redirect the domain to the space on Russell's server? > This won't be a > hands-off thing, so you will be able to contact me to do things like that > without problem. I'm offering the space as I think the project is quite > important. [...] > I also will repond differently to legal threats than other ISPs might -- > I won't accept notice-and-takedown on copyright, but instead > notice-and-notice-to-customer-and-CIPPIC.ca ;-) Terrific. That's such a benefit for a project like this - having a host who understands and cares about the project. jen.

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Re: [PGCanada] Last Call for Web Hosting
by Jen Zed 25 Apr '05

25 Apr '05

She shoots...she scores. :) We need PHP and MySQL; probably 10 GB of space would get us going - although, if we make page scans available (which I think we should), the storage requirements will increase a lot. (I'd be willing to kick in the cost of a drive to help subsidize this when the time comes.) I'd like to run PmWiki (http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Requirements) which is powering our current wiki at http://www.jenzed.com/pgcawiki/pmwiki.php - it's really lightweight. I'd also like to run a CMS - maybe Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/) although I'm still not sure if that's the best fit for PG-CA. Drupal (and probably most CMSs) will require some "special" MySQL permissions - like the ability for users to do a LOCK TABLE. (The main reason I've hit the wall with my personal retail web space provider - and therefore don't know if Drupal will work for us - is that they won't allow this permission to be granted to users.) I completely understand your reservations regarding bandwidth. I suspect and hope, though, that when (if) our bandwidth demands get too big, it'll mean we're big enough to get sponsors. thx! jen. On 4/23/05, Russell McOrmond <russell(a)flora.ca> wrote: > > Let me know what is needed. I can offer to help get things started > under the understanding that if bandwidth gets too high then we'd need to > look for other sponsors (funding, bandwidth, whatever). > > I currently run a number of related sites... Most of the volunteer > stuff can be seen at http://newdelhi.flora.ca/ > > > On Fri, 22 Apr 2005, Jen Zed wrote: > > > Does anyone know anyone in a position to donate web hosting to us? I'd > > like to move forward on getting permanent space - my personal sandbox > > is getting kind of cramped, and I'm annoyed at the big, dumb, > > mass-volume hosting company I'm working with. We need Linux, PHP, > > MySQL - the usual stuff. > > > > > > jen. > > _______________________________________________ > > Project Gutenberg of Canada > > Website: http://www.projectgutenberg.ca/ > > List: pgcanada(a)lists.pglaf.org > > Archives: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/pgcanada/ > > > > -- > Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> > Boycott legacy Motion Picture and Recording Industries from April 24-30 > http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/786 >

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Last Call for Web Hosting
by Jen Zed 22 Apr '05

22 Apr '05

Does anyone know anyone in a position to donate web hosting to us? I'd like to move forward on getting permanent space - my personal sandbox is getting kind of cramped, and I'm annoyed at the big, dumb, mass-volume hosting company I'm working with. We need Linux, PHP, MySQL - the usual stuff. jen.

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Toronto Internet Archive kudos and Error Feedback
by Jen Zed 22 Apr '05

22 Apr '05

Michael Hart forwarded an email to me regarding the Toronto Internet Archive and the "addictive" quality of fast feedback loops. (Email text included below.) Further to our conversation a couple of week ago, maybe a process of fast-feedback error correction would look something like this: 1. The HTML version on the PG Canada site could have "live" links to the associated original page. (DP's jhutch's http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14719 HTML output from TEI puts page numbers along the side of the text.) 2. When a reader spots an error, they click the page link. (They must be logged in, and perhaps have to validate themselves via one of those boxes that display obfuscated letters.) If they validate, it brings up an interface similar to the DP proofing interface (scan above, (HTML) text below). They make the correction. 3. On save, the correction is written the the HTML file but styled in a way to differentiate from the other text. A roll-over pop-up shows the user who made the correction and the original text. Therefore, corrections would be displayed to all readers, but it would be obvious that their post-publication corrections. 4. Editors, working from a dynamic list of pages with "pending" corrections, double-check the corrections, and, if they're okay, port the changes to the source document, update the version history, and re-generate the output versions and the archive file. I like this idea because it tightens the relationship between readers and proofers - it makes it easy for a reader to cross the line into proofing. (And, of course, I like the error-correction aspect very much.) ======================= Email Excerpt: > There are great differences between the Toronto branch of > Internet Archive and the others. In the Dictionary of National > Biography there are scans that are so faint they can not be > read. Others have noted the complete jumble of the indexing > system. Authors appear several times with erroneous spellings of > their names; often under their given name rather than their > family name. > > I have on the other hand found the Toronto books to be of very > high quality. This is my impression too. There are some French dictionaries or encyclopedias scanned in Toronto that look so nice I wish I spoke French. I think that the early parts of the Internet Archive's "Million Books Project" have one mistake in common with the early Project Gutenberg, and that is too long feedback loops. One thing we can learn from Wikipedia (and PGDP) is that short (fast) feedback loops are both addictive (so it draws many contributors) and productive (so that it produces high quality contents). You spot an error, you fix it, the new version is published. That is a matter of seconds on Wikipedia. For PG's e-texts, you have to submit an error report by e-mail, and for IA's Million Books you fill out an error report on the web, but then you can only hope that some editor will attend to it. Any means to speed this process up would be a great help. ======================= jen.

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General IP Issues: Geist on P2P
by Jen Zed 22 Apr '05

22 Apr '05

Michael Hart sent me an interesting article by Michael Geist on the real effect of P2P file copy and music industry revenues. The entire article is at: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/geist/ Abstract: Canada is in the midst of a contentious copyright reform with advocates for stronger copyright protection maintaining that the Internet has led to widespread infringement that has harmed the economic interests of Canadian artists. The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has emerged as the leading proponent of copyright reform, claiming that peer–to–peer file sharing has led to billions in lost sales in Canada. This article examines CRIA's claims by conducting an analysis of industry figures. It concludes that loss claims have been greatly exaggerated and challenges the contention that recent sales declines are primarily attributable to file–sharing activities. Moreover, the article assesses the financial impact of declining sales on Canadian artists, concluding that revenue collected through a private copying levy system already adequately compensates Canadian artists for the private copying that occurs on peer–to–peer networks. Thanks, Michael! jen.

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How To Forward Articles
by Michael Hart 19 Apr '05

19 Apr '05

Sometimes I find articles concerning Canandian copyright, etc., that I would like to forward to Project Gutenberg of Cananda, but they might be quite long. Checking to see if there is anyone I could send them to to make the decision as to whether such things should go to the whole list. Thanks!!! michael

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DP: interesting TEI developments
by Jen Zed 13 Apr '05

13 Apr '05

Some very interesting developments over on DP regarding using TEI markup and sourcing: http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7753 (Check out the latest comments on the thread. jhutch is a deity.) Note that if you click "judith.xml" link in the post (the sample TEI source file) you might get an error if your session can't talk to the TEI DTD on www.tie-c.org (at least, I think that's what's going on - the error isn't verbose enough to be sure). Don't sweat it - just right-click the judith.xml link, save it to disk, and open it in a text editor. sweeeeet! jen.

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Re: [PGCanada] James McIntyre
by Wallace J.McLean 09 Apr '05

09 Apr '05

Ah.... the cheese-poet. He's been the subject of a PGDP discussion thread. One of his books was cleared in August 2003 and is listed in-progress. ----- Original Message ----- From: Andrew Sly <sly(a)victoria.tc.ca> Date: Wednesday, April 6, 2005 11:18 pm Subject: [PGCanada] James McIntyre > > I've run into someone whose poetry I would love to include in > the PG Canada collection. James McIntyre, who is apparantly > "widely regarded as the worst poet in all of Canadian literature." > And his topic of choice was cheese.

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Re: [PGCanada] James McIntyre
by Wallace J.McLean 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/2/9/14293/14293-h/14293-h.htm#Page_11

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Helping With the Technical Docs
by Jen Zed 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

James Linden wrote: Jen Zed wrote: >> (Actually, any info about UniBook would be >> really useful to me, as I've started to think about the site >> front-end, but can't go very far unless I know what the back-end looks >> like.) > I'm still working on the tech docs -- the 6 pages of docs that we put > on the wiki took me almost two weeks -- tech docs are going to be about > 6 pages - per section! Can I help with this? I'm a technical writer - if I can get access to the application, I can probably do a lot of the grunt work just by playing with the app. Or are these specification documents that describe the work that has to be done to UniBook to get it to a usable state? jen.

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