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• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 1
• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 2
• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 3

• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 1
• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 2
• Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions -- Vol 3

While I'll admit that many (even most) fundimentalists you'll meet are drooling morons, there are plenty of ones who are very intelligent and well educated (other than their obviously deficient bullshit detection skills).

Precisely. Thus has it ever been with terrorist organisations. Al Qaeda:

Richard Reid ("Shoe Bomber") -> Drooling Booby.
Osama Bin Laden -> Educated guy who's kept his ass safe.

Read "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad sometime, in which a terrorist uses a mentally deficient child to perform his atrocities.

Project Gutenberg is your friend (search on Burroughs).

It's not print, but there are HTML and ASCII versions plus a few in computer-read-audiobook.

Good idea, here's a link to the gutenberg cd project.

-jim

Are you kidding? How the hell do you think ammonium perchlorate propels a rocket? With lovely wonderful thoughts ?

PI, well part of it I guess...close enough.

"the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as I was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the
ocean.

I couldn't find this particular scene in the canon anywhere, although, "A Scandal in Bohemia" from The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes , seems to fit somewhat.

It was Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter

And damn good it is too.

Torrents, ISOs and what have you are linked through the PG site. You can also order a gratis copy of CD or DVD if you like (please consider making a donation in that case).

There used to be a special library archive format (Green thingy something), but I don't see it on the site anymore?

Ray

Well, this piddling 'interface' to Project Gutenberg may have died, but the real PG website is still going strong!

While you wait, you could do something worthwhile. (That is, instead of reading the 10,000 other "Its /.ed already" posts)

Indeed, there are many, many sites that do all sorts of wonderful things with Project Gutenberg eBooks. That's the wonderful thing about PG, you can do anything you like with the books.

While personally I prefer the original and the best... hey, whatever floats your boat!

It is very much worth noting that Project Gutenberg would have nowhere near as many eBooks as it does without the help of Distributed Proofreaders. Sign up there, and proof just a page a day to make your contribution to preserving literary history. You can proofread as little or as much as you like, and do something worthwhile! Distributed Proofreaders is a great way to spend some of your time.

Charles Franks
Founder, Distributed Proofreaders

Interesting idea, I can't get to the website but a feature I'd want is the content shared P2P so you don't have to rely on a central server for the content.

When I go to the Gutenberg site and do a search, it gives me plain text, zipped plain text, and P2P links.

I don't know whether this makes you a genius for thinking of a good idea, or an idiot for not bothering to check to see if it had already been implemented.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

since some seem to have trouble on the index page... here it is:

Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision.
Now, more than thirty years later, Project Gutenberg has the following figures (as of November 8th 2002): 203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001) for a total of 6267 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks. 119 eBooks have been posted so far by Project Gutenberg of Australia.

Click here for the full PG story and here for the latest News , and learn about the Stockholm Challenge Award recently won by Project Gutenberg in the category Culture.

The key link is search page.

OK, the Mazarin site is dead, but if it really contains the whole of Project Gutenberg, then they have 11 books by Martin Luther. Just try this search.

OK, the Mazarin site is dead, but if it really contains the whole of Project Gutenberg, then they have 11 books by Martin Luther. Just try this search.

This joke would be a lot funnier if there were a valid copyright on Alice in Wonderland.

Over the last 5 years, I've used a Palm IIIxe, a low-res b/w Clie s360, and most recently, a Zaurus 5600. Of all of them, I'd pick the s360 as the best device for ebook reading.

The palm was fine on battery life, and replaceale batteries meant you could grab a set anywhere, with NiMH AAA's doing the bulk of the work for me. The s360's battery life was still good, but not as good as the palm. Zaurus battery life, on the 5600, (which has a larger battery than the 5500), is probably 5-6 hours straight with the backlight on a low setting, and several days worth if you only use it a few hours a day.

Pros

• Palm - great battery life, easy to replace, several good readers, like cspotrun.
• Clie - good battery life, good backlight, and most importantly, has the Jog Wheel for scrolling with one hand. This is the nicest feature, IMO. Same software as PalmIII series. The memory stick is great for carrying around more titles
• Zaurus - Nice color screen, very good resolution, decent battery life, WiFi for grabbing new titles from Project Gutenberg, 2 expansion card options (SD & CF), and several good readers, such as QTReader, which supports many formats, and Gutenbrowser, which allows searching, downloading, and reading gutenberg ebooks in one nice little program. Overall, my favorite PDA so far.
  

• All - No support for MS Reader .lit format.
  To deal with .lit files on other platforms, there's always open c-lit which works quite well.
• Palm - low-res screen doesn't show as much text at a time, only a few font sizes available
• Clie - same as above, plus, if batteries die, you can't pick up a fresh pair at a convenience store
• Zaurus - Battery life only ok, spare batteries are available, but costly. No scroll wheel, or it would get my vote for the best.

"If you have the keys to an encrypted file and you refuse to decode it and a judge issues a warrant for that data"

I would, of course cooperate by producing the plaintext of every encrypted file on my hard drive. I'll be keeping a complete mirror of Project Gutenberg on my hard drive. You never know when having an archived copy of the United States Constitution might prove useful. Like where it says that I'm entitled to a trial by jury within the state where I allegedly committed the offense. I think I could convince a jury that an act that is not a crime under our laws should receive a verdict of Not Guilty. In fact, a good lawyer could probably find grounds to sue the foreign government within our jursidiction.

ARTICLE THREE

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States; --between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Hey, how about a link?

For what it's worth, this technique was mastered by Issac Asimov, who stole it in turn from Socrates. Read -- well, anything Asimov wrote, especially the Foundation books which all follow the dialectic model. The Foundation books are still good, though, because eventually the characters of one book die and are subsequently revered or hated by their descendents in the next book for their role in "psychohistory."

Oh, and to see where it all started, read Plato's "Phaedrus," it won't take too long and it's a really great glimpse of Socratian discourse, if a little boring.

I would thing that the best thing a library could have is a copy, be it a mirror, dvd, cd, of Project Gutenberg. That way, if a book is out, or if you're looking for a specific quote, etc... you could either take the text file home, copy the cd, or print out the book.

A cd of Project Gutenberg books would be a reasonable thing for a library to carry. Staring at a screen isn't the best way to read a book, but I've read quite a few that way.

Some of my favorites (Some of which I read in dead tree format, I'm not masochistic enough to read Les Miserables via CRT):

• George MacDonald
  • The Princess and the Goblin
  • Lilith
  • Phantastes
• Victor Hugo
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Les Miserables
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• The Brothers Grimm Grimm's Fairy Tales
• Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows
• Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• The King James Bible (in html)

-jim

Project Gutenberg already has a section devoted to audio ebooks, but I have to say I'm all for this Telltale Weekly. All of the PG Audio Books I've listened too have been text-to-speech computer generated audio, and have been rather difficult to understand. As long as Telltale Weekly actually has human readers recording, they will be better than what PG currently has. I do hope that Telltale Weekly submits their audio ebooks to be included in PG.

"As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head and saw three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was? They said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till I came within a mile of Lichfield where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, 'Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!' So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It being market day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And no one laid hands on me. As I went thus crying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared what was upon me, and felt myself clear, I went out of the town in peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them some money, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and all over me, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I should or no, till I felt freedom from the Lord so to do: then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again. After this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I should be sent to cry against that city, and call it The bloody city! For though the parliament had the minister one while, and the king another, and much blood had been shed in the town during the wars between them, yet there was no more than had befallen many other places. But afterwards I came to understand, that in the Emperor Diocletian's time a thousand Christians were martyr'd in Lichfield. So I was to go, without my shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the pool of their blood in the market-place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had been shed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets. So the sense of this blood was upon me, and I obeyed the word of the Lord."

Edgar Allan Poe used "hiding in plain sight" as a plot device for one of his August Dupin stories. Poe invented the detective story, paving the way for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

[Yeah. It's offtopic. Neener.]

-Carolyn

Edgar Allan Poe used "hiding in plain sight" as a plot device for one of his August Dupin stories. Poe invented the detective story, paving the way for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

[Yeah. It's offtopic. Neener.]

-Carolyn

All of the serious documentation we have available from the time (and there's a surprising amount of it) indicates that he was considerably more than that.

AFAIK Roman records do not mention Jesus at all (funny, given the miracles he supposedly perpetrated - you'd think that he be talked about all over the place). Do you have any specific cites? The only Jewish historian that I've heard mentions Jesus is Josephus , but my understanding is that the accepted view amongst biblical scholars now is that the few lines in Josephus referring to Jesus were inserted by early Christians to bolster their case.

Archaeologists continue to show that the reliability of these documents when talking about historical events is unparalleled.

The bible isn't even internally consistent in its history, let alone consistent with other records of the period (see for example the genealogies linking David and Jesus in Matthew and Luke).

His tomb never became a shrine - a very natural thing to happen if he was still in it....No-one could produce the body....

These things are equally plausible if Jesus didn't exist at all, except as a myth - Mangasarian's "The Truth About Jesus" does a good job of showing how the Jesus story has far more in common with traditional mythic cycles than it does with factual history.

And to bring this full-circle I'd like to point out that Hamlet is availiable for free from Project Gutenberg

Just to give you folks some info about what's going on at PG.

First of all, PG is not against any other formats than plain vanilla text. However, because of the accessibility and future-proofness of that format, every text that PG will ever produce will also be published as plain vanilla text. It is the one format we will always produce, of many.

XML formats are being discussed. The idea is that we will produce XML files that will be used as storage format, from which at the very least the plain vanilla texts will be produced, and further more any format we care to support (most likely at least HTML and PDF).

The problem with these technologies is that they require volunteers to implement them.

Currently the biggest producer of ebooks for PG is Distributed Proofreaders (DP). This is a web-based, distributed application for the correction and formatting of ebooks. DP has a long list of guidelines of the sort of information that needs to be retained. At the moment, we keep more information than is required by PG, and a lot of this extra information runs the risk of being discarded. One of the solutions to this problem that volunteers have devised is producing their own HTML and XML etexts. Please read our newsletter article The Illustrated Masterpieces of Project Gutenberg to see some recent examples.

The Distributed Proofreaders would love to see a solution for the conservation problem. We want our ebooks to look good. It's the natural effect of putting ten thousand nit-pickers in the same room.

--Branko Collin

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of a gun."

A singularly appropriate phrase it proved.

I'd love for someone to do an accurate film of the Time Machine. After reading the original book again, I see that there is a far more importnt message in the story than just a machine to travel in time. It appears that Wells was trying to warn of the excesses of technology and the eventual class separation that could result. It appears that his message has gone unheeded for far too long. The middle class is disappearing...

And not the first time.

The same guy, John Guagliardo, World eBook Library, also runs NetLibrary.NET. There is a netLibrary.COM, owned by OCLC, not Guagliardo, which sells access to online books, including framed HTML versions of Project Gutenberg texts, to libraries.

The search at Project Gutenberg 2 takes you off-site to the same search used by NetLibrary.NET.

Do a search for:
yet again

Compare ***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Yet Again, by Max Beerbohm***, at World eBook Library
Yet Again, at World eBook Library, and
Yet Again, at Project Gutenberg. Basically World eBook Library strips out the Project Gutenberg license and slaps their own copyright on it.

Nursie asks:
What gave you the idea that it was going to fund free books or the original project gutenberg? This looks like an attempt to make money from someone else's work to me......

The fact that one of the few restrictions on the Project Gutenberg files is that any use of the files or trademark for commercial sales requires a royalty payment of 20% of gross profits to the project. The exact legalese can be found at http://gutenberg.net/howto/header-howto.txt.

So given that Project Gutenburg(tm) is actually affiliated with Project Gutenburg 2(tm), and that there's nothing on the Project Gutenburg(tm) news page about this... I'd guess the list reponse went something like this:

Michael Hart: PWNED!
Project Gutenburg(tm) volunteers: DOH!

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

A couple of things:

• The Project Gutenberg license requires royalties for commercial use.
• As others have already pointed out, "Project Gutenberg" is trademarked (at least in the US).

It's unlikely that anyone would start a business like PG2 without first establishing a licensing plan with PG, unless they are situated far off-shore or have less than three braincells.

--Bud

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Victorian classics:
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
Moxon's English Housewifery Exemplified

Two interesting early vegetarian cook-books:
The Healthy Life Cook-Book
The Reform Cookery Book

Of historical interest:
The Form Of Cury -- in Middle English.

This is just a sample -- there are many more (search Gutenberg.net for 'cook' or 'cookery').

Every time the Mouse's copyright (Steam Boat Willy for goodness sakes!) almost comes up for expiry, another copyright extention gets past. Disney knows it's in hot water, especially lately because it hasn't had a mega-hit since the Lion King.

What confuses me is the seeming inability for administrations to resort to more rational compromises instead of steamrolling everything.

In the Disney/copyright case, it would have made much more sense to tinker with the copyright renewal process than to extend all copyrights accross the board, including the ones that nobody cares about anymore. There used to be a perfectly good copyright renewal process, described here, that was amended to provide "automatic renewal", probably to cut down on administration costs as much as everything else.

For whatever reason everyone's now decided to focus on simply extending the copyright term for everything instead of requiring those who actually still want to enforce their copyright to actively say so. This means that lots of derelict and abandoned work is simply disappearing because projects such as Project Gutenberg aren't allowed to save them.

Is hilarious. The first chapter is about a fellow who gets a medical textbook and comes down with all sorts of maladies. Try it at project Gutenberg or buy your hard copy here. I am a family physician, and that chapter made me laugh so hard I almost injured myself.