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What about the Gutenberg Project, and similar collections?

They've already got one.

"Now millions of orphan books may get a new legal guardian"

Where in the text of the settlement is ownership transferred exclusively to Google?

"Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information"

Where in this settlement does it forbid anyone else creating an online archive of orphan works, Project Gutenberg for instance. Would one source of this spontaneous concern be out of Redmond?

'at least one party nudging its way into the settlement is an Internet-issues oriented group from New York Law School .. But what does raise an eyebrow is the source of New York Law's funding on this matter: Microsoft. The chief investigator of the New York Law School project is James Grimmelmann. In an earlier career phase, associate law professor Grimmelmann worked as a programmer for Microsoft'

When did you last check? Apparently before 1971 since Project Gutenberg pretty much started back then. :)
http://www.gutenberg.org/

I read Smith, as well Ricardo, Malthus and all the British Classical school when I was a political economy major in college. Smith did not define capitalism, He described a form of it that was in the early stages of development. The word "capitalism" does not even appear in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

You did people a disservice by linking to Amazon instead of to the Project Gutenberg editions of the book. I mean, it was published in 1776. Pretty sure it is in the public Domain everywhere now. This is a great book. Maybe not so well written or funny as Marx/Engels or Veblen, but fascinating and important. More people should read it.

The only ancient culture I've read about that thought the earth was flat is early Babylon. Any people that either had ships on a large body of water, or were in contact with people that had ships on a large body of water, knew that the earth was round. You can't see a ship disappearing over the horizon and miss the implication.

As to Socrates, the Greeks even calculated the size of the earth pretty accurately.

The legend of people believing in a flat earth came from a work of pseudo-historical fiction by Washington Irving about Christopher Columbus, in which the author takes a lot of creative license.

Us modern types manage to have a Flat Earth Society despite this.

You really should read Taylor's book: The Principles of Scientific Management. It's available from http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a2055 Most of his ideas are actually very reasonable. Taylor's ideas were founded not only in scientific measurements, but also in common sense - and he mostly focused on work like assembly lines and simple crafts, not anything resembling knowledge work. I doubt he would have liked this idea as it has several obvious flaws (that have already been pointed out) despite being "scientific".

Here is a pre-1950 reference to the Moon. And you can easily check its veracity. The moon is close enough that a cannon shot can reach it. So, all you need to do to check if this is true or not is to tie yourself to a cannonball and shoot to the moon. Happy landing... er moonings.

Quoting Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood the nation's largest abortion provider): "If, however, a contraceptive is not used and the sperm meets the ovule and development begins, any attempt at removing it or stopping its further growth is called abortion."

Let me introduce you to Mr. Charles MacKay, author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Published in 1852. There is indeed nothing new under the sun.

It's a quote from the play The Maid of Orleans (german) by Friedrich Schiller. It's likely being used as a signature here because of the Asimov book The Gods Themselves that used it as a title.

It's a quote from the play The Maid of Orleans (german) by Friedrich Schiller. It's likely being used as a signature here because of the Asimov book The Gods Themselves that used it as a title.

I think you're misinformed to a small extent. My brother-in-law (just left town before I ask questions) showed me his Kindle 1 - while he was browsing Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ - he was downloading a book from there and transferring to his Kindle via a USB-miniUSB cable, with the Kindle simply mounted as a USB drive.

He claims that it works great. I asked him if it was PDF, and he said it wasn't that, he wasn't sure what it was - it just worked.

I suspect that it's PRC format - see http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:File_Formats_FAQ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle

Further, here's something on converting PDF to PRC - http://www.cottontimer.com/2008/05/06/how-to-convert-pdf-files-to-read-on-the-amazon-kindle/

All in all, it's beginning to sound to me like the Kindle has a lot more capability than people are giving it credit for, and it's picking up more FUD than OS X.

I think you're misinformed to a small extent. My brother-in-law (just left town before I ask questions) showed me his Kindle 1 - while he was browsing Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ - he was downloading a book from there and transferring to his Kindle via a USB-miniUSB cable, with the Kindle simply mounted as a USB drive.

He claims that it works great. I asked him if it was PDF, and he said it wasn't that, he wasn't sure what it was - it just worked.

I suspect that it's PRC format - see http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:File_Formats_FAQ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindle

Further, here's something on converting PDF to PRC - http://www.cottontimer.com/2008/05/06/how-to-convert-pdf-files-to-read-on-the-amazon-kindle/

All in all, it's beginning to sound to me like the Kindle has a lot more capability than people are giving it credit for, and it's picking up more FUD than OS X.

I'm still at a loss to understand why FAT and ASCII still persist in modern society.

Ask Michael Hart. I think he knows the answer to the ASCII part of your question. It turns out the answer is in some ways similar to the answer for the FAT part of your question.

Hear! Hear!
Very well put.

I tried listening to an audio book from Project Gutenberg. It was a TTS engine, and while it was accurate, I was laughing so hard I couldn't really listen to the book.

As a contrast, I listened to one of David Drake's audiobooks that he recorded himself and it was great.

Well, I'm not a historian, just some guy who likes history, so take it with a grain of salt. Don't think me as some kind of authority by any kind of reckoning.

That said, probably you can just start with their own authors, for example some are on Project Gutenberg. (It's all out of copyright by now ;)

E.g., since the gallic wars have popped up in this thread, Caesar's "De Bello Gallico" is in there, so you can hear it from the man himself how that went. (They have the latin version too, if you're crazy enough.)

Polybius is a good source for the punic wars. It doesn't seem to be on Gutenberg, but you can find it and a bunch of other stuff for example on Livius.org.

Far the actual imperial era, hmm, Ammianus Marcellinus is a good start, though half the books have been lost. A quick googling yields this: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ as the first one which isn't in latin.

And so on.

You have to bear in mind that more modern authors start from the ancient historians too, although some do add actual research into, say, exactly what was the geography of the terrain in a certain battle and where the heck _did_ that Goth cavalry come from. Still, you can't go _too_ wrong with starting at the source, IMHO.

Well, I'm not a historian, just some guy who likes history, so take it with a grain of salt. Don't think me as some kind of authority by any kind of reckoning.

That said, probably you can just start with their own authors, for example some are on Project Gutenberg. (It's all out of copyright by now ;)

E.g., since the gallic wars have popped up in this thread, Caesar's "De Bello Gallico" is in there, so you can hear it from the man himself how that went. (They have the latin version too, if you're crazy enough.)

Polybius is a good source for the punic wars. It doesn't seem to be on Gutenberg, but you can find it and a bunch of other stuff for example on Livius.org.

Far the actual imperial era, hmm, Ammianus Marcellinus is a good start, though half the books have been lost. A quick googling yields this: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ as the first one which isn't in latin.

And so on.

You have to bear in mind that more modern authors start from the ancient historians too, although some do add actual research into, say, exactly what was the geography of the terrain in a certain battle and where the heck _did_ that Goth cavalry come from. Still, you can't go _too_ wrong with starting at the source, IMHO.

Project Gutenberg is already a very good example of what you're looking for, having the advantage of already existing and having thousands upon thousands of works available. It also has the advantage of having an army of volunteers keying in, scanning and proofreading public domain texts.

The Internet Archive is another example, which also hosts video and audio archives, as well as the Wayback Machine and who knows what else.

While neither of these is the all-encompassing resource you might be imaging, they are both well-established extremely good resources.

For the Google-enabled, many, many other resources for public-domain and otherwise free material can easily be located as well. You'll never run out of good reading material without having to pay anything but Internet access charges.

You can literally carry the contents of a small library on your computer wherever you go and have instant access to it.

Around this important group was ranged the Army of Oz, and as Dorothy looked at the handsome uniforms of the Twenty-Seven she said:

"Why, they seem to be all officers."

"They are, all except one," answered the Tin Woodman. "I have in my Army eight Generals, six Colonels, seven Majors and five Captains, besides one private for them to command. I'd like to promote the private, for I believe no private should ever be in public life; and I've also noticed that officers usually fight better and are more reliable than common soldiers. Besides, the officers are more important looking, and lend dignity to our army."

Ozma of Oz

Where do we have slavery in the USA?

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Despoticall Dominion, How Attained
Dominion acquired by Conquest, or Victory in war, is that which some Writers call DESPOTICALL, from Despotes, which signifieth a Lord, or Master; and is the Dominion of the Master over his Servant. And this Dominion is then acquired to the Victor, when the Vanquished, to avoyd the present stroke of death, covenanteth either in expresse words, or by other sufficient signes of the Will, that so long as his life, and the liberty of his body is allowed him, the Victor shall have the use thereof, at his pleasure. And after such Covenant made, the Vanquished is a SERVANT, and not before: for by the word Servant (whether it be derived from Servire, to Serve, or from Servare, to Save, which I leave to Grammarians to dispute) is not meant a Captive, which is kept in prison, or bonds, till the owner of him that took him, or bought him of one that did, shall consider what to do with him: (for such men, (commonly called Slaves,) have no obligation at all; but may break their bonds, or the prison; and kill, or carry away captive their Master, justly:) but one, that being taken, hath corporall liberty allowed him; and upon promise not to run away, nor to do violence to his Master, is trusted by him.

The word slavery applies to prisoners, although it is not commonly used that way anymore. In fact, the 13th amendment does not abolish slavery completely, being written in a manner consistent with the use of the word "slavery" in Leviathan.

Amendment 13
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

While the amendment restricts slavery to those convicted of crimes it does not expressly forbid that slavery to be in service to private interests provided the requirement of criminal conviction is met. This is the situation in the US right now.

The GP made no mention of prison. Lousy strawman there, bub. And there's no "clearly" about the supposed wrongness of making money off of someone else's work to their exclusion.

Making money on something like Sherlock Holmes without paying anything whatever to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or his heirs (he being long dead) is perfectly moral, and, astonishingly, still quite legal. People trying to make cases in favor of copyright often forget that copyright does and is supposed to eventually expire.

Project Gutenberg strives to be 100% legal.

Nothing at all wrong with sharing. There's another venerable organization known as the public library. Sharing is not only good, it is the library's civic duty. Those card catalogs have a lot of links to materials still under copyright that anyone can check out.

Yet another is the used book and record store. Neither publishers nor artists see so much as 1 cent from sales of used media. They already earned their profits from the first sale.

What about people like me, who pick and choose the textbooks to buy?

For most Computer Science classes, all I needed was a language reference. The professors would assign a $90 textbook that was little more than a language reference, and I'd buy the O'Reilly book on the language for $20-50. C, C++, Perl, SML... I even bought one for Java, then never used it, cause I always had Sun's copy of the API reference available online. The only other class I bought a book for was Artificial Intelligence, cause I needed an AI algorithm reference.

Most of my other classes really didn't require buying the books, either. For my Political Science classes, most of the material was public domain anyway (I don't need a hardcopy of the Communist Manifesto). Math was about the only exception, but then you only need one copy among 3-4 friends who do the homework together.

So, if I were a student of yours, I wouldn't buy a Kindle on your logic that I'd save money on textbooks, because I really wouldn't.

Reading a book is a very different experience than reading something online. It requires a greater commitment/attention span, and the reward in return is a greater understanding of the subject (for non-fiction) or immersion in the story (for fiction). This is assuming the books are good, of course.

I read books online at both the Baen free library http://www.baen.com/library/ and Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/. Other than being able to click directly to the chapter I'm at, and to scroll instead of turn the page, I don't consider it a "very different" experience. Perhaps you meant that short-form reading -magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, cereal boxes- is a very different experience from long-form reading. And most web material tends toward essays, articles and short blurbs. There's nothing about the words being displayed as pixels rather than blobs of ink that makes for a different experience, at least for me. I understand that some people find it more difficult to focus on a screen for long periods compared to paper. But then again, some people find glossy laptop screens to be annoying as well.

A simple google search for second amendment slaves

But I guess you can't be bothered to show evidence to support your argument?
You're arugment really does not make since anyway. Why would "we the people" require weapons to put down a slave revolt? Couldn't the police, army or state militia put down a slave revolt? Just the same way the Army put down a city wide riot in the New York Draft Riots. And mind you thoes were not slaves, but full citizens that have a right to bear arms.

Seems to me you're in dire need of reading, in full, The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Just a single sentence from the Declaration of Independence refutes slavery.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Also note that the U.S.A. was the first country in the world to abolish slavery, before France, before England. In fact some African, European, and Asian countries still support slavery today!

Perhaps you should read a bit of history about Abolitionism before you start throwing blame around. Realize the conservitive Republicans' were responsible for abolishing slavery. It's also interesting to note that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex was passed down party lines after Republicans overcame a 54 day filibuster by southern Democrats!

A lot of people don't know this, but Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, he was the first abolitionist president, he fought a bitter civil war to end slavery with Republicans in the north calling themselves The Union and Democrats in the south calling themselves Confederates attempting to cede from the union. Also, there is no refuting the huge role that the Christian Quakers played in the abolition of slavery.

Again, if you can provide me with some solid evidence to back up your claim I'm happy to read it, you claim it's "simple" to find, I did the search and just found a bunch of conspiracy theorist web sites and nothing that actually backs up your claim in the least bit. Our country was founeded on Stoic Natural Law. Stoics emphasized the universal ideas of individual worth, moral duty, and universal brotherhood. The idea of slavery is against Stoic Natural Law.

If I've failed to sway your opinion perhaps our friend Thomas Paine can. Just read the first few pages of this book and then tell me what you think of the 2nd amendment.

5. Swirl in a basic selection in the language of the region from http://gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] and http://www.wikipedia.org/ [wikipedia.org] you have a decent pedagogic resource

To your point 5 I'd like to add that a lot of the content from the Gutenberg project is produced by the Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders volunteers.

*YOU* can be one.

It's all very old books though, so for sciences that are still young, such as computer science, this wouldn't help much.

1. Form factor: Fabulous screen but the keyboard only allows those with small hands to use it. It loses value for high-school aged kids and needs to be 3cm wider.

2. The Windows direction is bullshit. We all know that Linux is not just the better choice, it's the one with momentum.

3. We also know that, when it comes to costs, what could be cheaper? Negroponte's Microsoft argument is spurious at best and a sellout at worst.

4. Each recipient country should have been directly involved in pre-loading their entire curriculum and pretty pictures of their current despotic leaders on every desktop of these little machines. This would have increased buy-in - big-time.

5. Swirl in a basic selection in the language of the region from http://gutenberg.org/ and http://www.wikipedia.org/ you have a decent pedagogic resource

6. Negroponte's reluctance to mass market the device to the home-town crowd was foolhardy. At the onset of the program, the First World consumers had credit to burn to buy a funky 'toy' computer for their kids from, say, Amazon. Forget buy on get one. Just sell one to you and me and make a profit to support the organization. At the time of it's introduction, the eagerness to get one's hands on the device was very high - a huge opportunity lost. Furthermore, the program should have been rolled out to the victims of Katrina (for example). The optics would have been excellent.

7. Distribution - the biggest flaw and a huge fiasco. Local aid groups should have been tied into the program rather than sending ONE GUY to set up all the machines for Peru. Training and distribution could have been piggy-backed onto existing NGO infrastructures.

8. Sugar: This should have come as phase two of the project, not from the get-go. Though simple and intuitive, it was not mature enough for prime-time. Don't try to be Apple and make an iPhone without zillions of bucks behind you.

9. Play well with others - it's obvious from all the spin-offs and rifts that Negroponte lacks the ability to work well with others. Some major big-bucks philanthropist should step forward and take the reigns.

10. Get the thing into University labs. Create a feedback loop to improve the software and usability experience. Use the world's educational resources rather than locking it down to a select few.

All in all, I'm incredibly disheartened by the slow, agonizing winding down of this very creative concept. How long it will take to die is anybody's guess.

Copyright is not intended to "protect" works that are deemed "personal".
Copyright is not intended to combat privacy.

Of course, if somebody distributed private photos of me you can bet that I'd be going after them with copyright suits but it isn't how it's supposed to work.

As for a larger picture of how society would benefit with artists losing their rights, the issue is not the cost to the artist, but the relative cost to the society. If copyrights were shortened, would most artists continue producing works? I'd say most would. After all, the value of a work after like 100 years is not something people would think about compared with the profits that they would/might receive in the first few years/decades.

There are benefits to society too. Limits on copyright on literary works, for example, would greatly benefit society. Ever heard of Project Gutenberg? I've grabbed a few texts there. I wonder how many authors would rather have their ideas be heard by a larger population than to rake in that last penny 50 years after his/her death.

Don't be such a control freak. That's the trait of many artists I've seen, but it's not how society grows and develops.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1232

This is one of the things I don't understand about America and Americans. My understanding is that your Constitution includes the Right to bear arms so you can rise up against an oppressive or corrupt government.

The 2nd amendment prevents the government from taking the right to the ability to rise up, it does not imply that the government must tolerate armed insurrection. Those who bear arms against the government have placed themselves outside the rule of that government and become an enemy. If they prevail and form a new government they will presumably not have themselves punished. If they do not prevail they will either be killed as an enemy or forcibly brought back under the rule of the government through the courts and prison system.

So you have the right to keep and bear arms but waging war on the government is only legal if you win. LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes gives an explanation of unalienable rights under the title "Not All Rights Are Alienable" which would probably help your understanding of this. It is available at Project Gutenberg you can search for the title without the quotation marks. It's worth reading the whole book though.

Surely you have enough people with guns to force the issue.

From the Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Have a read of the list of things they put up with before the Declaration of Independence was made (the list is in the Declaration, also at Project Gutenberg).

The copyright problem is likely transient, ie temporary. The people who have been voted out will leave office. Things can still be dealt with in court and through other legal means. The situation isn't so bad that it is worth the suffering a civil war would cause. Having guns doesn't mean you give up easily on peaceful methods.

There is of course some context to these quotes, which you can check out for yourself - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt

And you took those quotes completely out of that context. Sadly, even thought you provided a link, the moderators who marked you "Insightful" didn't bother to read the link.

This reply puts those quotes in context. Two of your quotes were attempts by the author to address criticisms that others make against Communism, not central tenets of Communism itself.

It's also ironic that the things you accuse Communism of, "the use of public education as an instrument of social control, the destruction of the traditional family and the destruction of traditional religion," have also be attributed to U.S. style Capitalism; for example, some people would point out that a "traditional family" is multi-generational, not the nuclear family we see commonly in Western nations today.

Communism like capitalism is an economic model and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, religion or human rights.

Communism as espoused by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto required the use of public education as an instrument of social control, the destruction of the traditional family and the destruction of traditional religion.

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis"

"The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention"

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."

There is of course some context to these quotes, which you can check out for yourself - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt

I don't think it is unreasonable to use the Communist Manifesto to answer the question "What is communism?". The answer most definitely has everything to do with freedom of speech, religion and human rights.

curl http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-8.txt >/dev/your/new/toy

I prefer the "new new media": Pride and Prejudice from Project Gutenberg, on any damn media I please, whenever I want, for free.

Indeed. Swifts Gulliver's Travels is in incredible gem (see, I'm posting on topic!). Even after more than 200 years it has astute, applicable and biting political commentary and LOL scenes. Lilliputian royalty looking up and seeing what G's threadbare clothing was no longer hiding as their carriage passed between his legs had me in tears, as did his methodology for extinguishing a file in their palace. Seriously geeky reading entertainment, you can get it FREE. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/829

I love the idea, and anything that promotes literacy is a winner in my books. However Project Gutenburg will be where I get my FREE classics. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Who would buy this when every one of those books is in the public domain. It's cheaper and better to use a homebrew app like Moonshell http://www.ds-xtra.com/MoonShell and download as many public domain works as you want from the Gutenberg project http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page.

The "official" answer is that a current version of something like Ulysses is going to have lots of notes at the back trying to explain what on earth the author was on about, and that the text of these notes will have been added recently.

If you want to read the pre-1923 version of e.g. Ulysses, feel free:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4300

Isn't that just the old "buggy and whip" argument, all wrapped in a different packaging?

By this argument, Project Gutenberg is a bad thing as well, as you should just go and find a used book store that has the books you're downloading from there.

Given the life length of copyright in the US (thanks, Mickey Mouse!), the kind of book you describe is likely to be found at the Project Gutenberg archives.

Yeah, but, despite the fact that some of best works ever written are available there, you'll not see many here taking advantage of it: Simple written words are SO boring, don't you know?

And, worse - the best of them require effort on the part of the reader to understand: That's 'way too much like, you know, effort.

And while, for me, having access to such on demand, whenever I wish, is nothing short of miraculous, what I've seen from Gen X and later generations? They don't care about it, at all: It's less than nothing to them.

Hell, many of them don't even possess the reading skills necessary to even approach them.

It's sad, really: They've access to the accumulated knowledge of humanity via the Internet, for free, and such grows at an ever-increasing rate, yet the most that many of them do is use it as a means to infringe copyright.

You've only to look at the furor that articles about the RIAA/MPAA here generate to see this: Apparently, being a "nerd", these days, isn't about doing neat and cool things with computers, et al, from one's own skill, knowledge and intelligence, but is how to use them to obtain copyrighted works for free, and to gripe here when thwarted in so doing.

For myself? I'm happy that I was born before before the Internet, and happier still that I grew up with it: It was, and remains to me, something wonderful and unique.

Given the life length of copyright in the US (thanks, Mickey Mouse!), the kind of book you describe is likely to be found at the Project Gutenberg archives.

Perhaps, but it appears that God Himself is a carnivore:

4:2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of
sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

4:3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the
fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

4:4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of
the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his
offering: 4:5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

4:6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy
countenance fallen? 4:7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be
accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto
thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

4:8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when
they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother,
and slew him.

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext90/kjv10.txt

Stories that are told that are retold become our culture. If the stories are owned and cannot be retold they might be lucrative, but they can't become culture. Copyright is the theft of culture from the future. Copyright must be abolished because as implemented it prevents the fair use of works long in the public domain.

This is a good place to thank Larry for keeping up the good fight. God Bless you Larry, I hope you win and I'm glad to continue to donate to your cause.

Seems similar for Islam...

The design flaw with Communism (or at least the popular implementation plan) is that the Communist Manifesto states that violence (force) is acceptable[1] for implementing Communism.

When you say violence is OK, what tends to happen is the person capable and willing to exert the most violence rises to the top. That person then becomes Dictator.

Thus violent revolutions are more likely to lead to Dictatorships. And since the popular Communist implementation plan involves violence, it should be no surprise that (all?) Communist Revolutions have led to Dictatorships.

It is rare to find a Dictator who once having obtained great power will gladly relinquish it to the people.

[1] See: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
Look for "sweeps away by force" "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions". The German version does not appear to be more "peaceable" ;).

when there are better options available

Like the irex iliad..

Open source; drm-free; supports non propietary formats including pdf, text, html, mobi, etc..

It's not perfect but it's a joy to use. Check out the thought that's gone into the (physical) user interface. A conveniently-placed flip-bar vaguely mimics the action of turning a page in a dead-tree book. Has a built-in wacom tablet so you can point, annotate. Has wifi allowing downloading of updates and books from their servers or from a share at some ip address you specify. Should you find some vast source of drm-free books (one example of which is project gutenberg) the hardware (which incidentally has a great look, feel and somewhat bizarrely, smell) may be your last book-related expense!

Disclaimer: I own one so am biased.

Generally, browse the Project Gutenberg without any feelings of guilt or worries of lawlessness ;)

http://google.com/
http://amazon.com/
http://gutenberg.org/

these things are old enough there are lots of translations available. go nuts.

oh look. Project Gutenberg has Electra:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14322

http://google.com/
http://amazon.com/
http://gutenberg.org/

these things are old enough there are lots of translations available. go nuts.

oh look. Project Gutenberg has Electra:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14322

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/v#a60

'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm
strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

'So you would carpet your room - or your husband's room, if you
were a grown woman, and had a husband - with representations of
flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'

'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.

'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and
have people walking over them with heavy boots?'

'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if
you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very
pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy - '

'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite
elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are
never to fancy.'

'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated,
'to do anything of that kind.'

'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!'
repeated Thomas Gradgrind.

'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the
gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of
fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people
to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard
the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You
are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a
contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you
cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find
that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your
crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and
butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds
going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented
upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these
purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of
mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and
demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is
taste.'

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hardt10.txt

You've probably read it, but let's reference The Federalist Papers, shall we?

The rest of this post assumes that "we" are citizens of the USA.

Our constitution recognizes that the authority of government is derived from the consent of the governed. That's us. When our government does stupid things, it putatively does them on our behalf. Presumably the actions of our government are an expression of the common will, and so it is right and proper that foreigners might dislike us individually for the actions we take collectively. So it is that tourists in foreign lands feel some coldness when the actions of our government are received badly, as R.A.H. wrote about in "Expanded Universe". (Gary powers was "shot down" while the Heinleins were touring Russia.) When our government does smart things (WPA, the space program, etc.) we enjoy the benefits.

Here at home we don't worry much about what happens in foreign lands as long as our troops and tourists come home OK. That might be a mistake. The genocide in Rwanda that we turned a blind eye to years ago has turned into genocide in Congo. In a few years it may spread. As Men (and this is the usage that includes women too) we are diminished by the heinous injustices that occur anywhere in the world. But are we - can we - be the World Police? Can we do anything about it?

Our laws including the constitution have been sorely tested these last few years, it's true. Part of this is the cold press of events, as the cauldron of strife distills new truths from the mash of common ideals. Part is the intrusion of money represented by special interests who ply our representatives with education campaigns, astroturf campaigns, and flat cash. We do bear some responsibility for this. If we were not so susceptible to advertising there would be no incentive to accept the funding for advertising that drives reelection campaigns. As it sits now the candidate with the most money doesn't always win but like the race to the swift and the battle to the strong, that's where the smart money lays their bets. If we cared more it would not be so.

Protesters can do a lot, but the sad fact is that in the modern market protesters can be hired. For a million bucks you can shut down a major city for a number of hours with protesters who care not for your cause but who'll show up and protest for a buck. Some of them are quite clever. If you mix in with them because you believe in the cause of the day is your zeal real, or is it a network effect purchased by the protest organizer?

Sigh. Go vote.

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