Slashdot Mirror

Project Gutenberg

Did anybody notice that Project Gutenberg does do audio and video files?

The wikipedia suggestions are good, also check out Creative Commons; not quite the same, but useful.

Project Gutenberg

Did anybody notice that Project Gutenberg does do audio and video files?

The wikipedia suggestions are good, also check out Creative Commons; not quite the same, but useful.

Are you seriously comparing tech-skills to construction work? Then you must not have seriously worked in either.

Unfortunately, IT workers think that just because they wasted time in college ... [SNIP]

I worked damned hard at one of the finest Universities in the World, actually.

This bigoted comment is extremely offensive. Are these people skills you are demonstrating here indicative that you work in something management-related, perchance...?

If you are unable to provide value .. DO SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE REAL VALUE IN

But why is it that it's only my profession being affected? Why are they not giving H1B visa's to the really expensive and easily replaced people like management? Oh, I know why! Because the people making these decisions are in management. Well, gee, there's a surprise. Come on, dude. They're hardly going to erode their own incomes.

They want low cost labor .. why is this a problem? ... Wouldnt you complain if gas prices were very high?

Are you comparing a corporation's costs with an individual's? Big fact, my friend: I place more importance on being a citizen than a consumer.

In relative terms, prices are rising for me because my wage is being driven down. So, yes I will complain. But the corporations can look after themselves.

It's interesting to note that Gibbon in his seminal text "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" claimed that "outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries" was a major factor in Rome's downfall. For those of us who care about the country we live in, we consider outsourcing to be pernicious.

In small nations the scrutiny of society penetrates into every part, and the spirit of improvement enters into the most trifling details; as the ambition of the people is necessarily checked by its weakness, all the efforts and resources of the citizens are turned to the internal benefit of the community, and are not likely to evaporate in the fleeting breath of glory. The desires of every individual are limited, because extraordinary faculties are rarely to be met with. The gifts of an equal fortune render the various conditions of life uniform; and the manners of the inhabitants are orderly and simple. Thus, if we estimate the gradations of popular morality and enlightenment, we shall generally find that in small nations there are more persons in easy circumstances, a more numerous population, and a more tranquil state of society than in great empires.

When tyranny is established in the bosom of a small nation, it is more galling than elsewhere, because, as it acts within a narrow circle, every point of that circle is subject to its direct influence. It supplies the place of those great designs which it cannot entertain, by a violent or an exasperating interference in a multitude of minute details; and it leaves the political world to which it properly belongs, to meddle with the arrangements of domestic life. Tastes as well as actions are to be regulated at its pleasure; and the families of the
citizens as well as the affairs of the state are to be governed by its decisions. This invasion of rights occurs, however, but seldom, and freedom is in truth the natural state of small communities. The temptations which the government offers to ambition are too weak, and the resources of private individuals are too slender, for the sovereign power easily to fall within the grasp of a single citizen: and should such an event have occurred, the subjects of the state can without difficulty overthrow the tyrant and his oppression by a simultaneous effort.

Small nations have therefore ever been the cradles of political liberty: and the fact that many of them have lost their immunities by extending their dominion, shows that the freedom they enjoyed was more a consequence of their inferior size than of the character of the people.

--Alexis de Tocqueville

People can read, right now and for free, 16,000 titles at Project Gutenberg http://gutenberg.org/ but they don't. Simply, people prefer to hold the parchment, crease the pages, and bend the spine. If they were going to pay money for ebooks, they would have started by reading the classics for free.

On top of that, reading in front of a monitor at this point in time is not enjoyable.

"no cost of shipping, no middleman warehouse distribution, no physical cost to print/bind, no brick and mortar store paying electricity, rent, stocking risky books at a premium, they'll be dirt cheap!" I was wrong.

They are in HTML or txt only, but you can also find other sites with them in RTF format etc., and sites which will rerender the html/txt files into other easily read formats :)

Here's a linky. The html doesn't look so bad to me :)
(Here's all his other work on gutenberg so far)

They are in HTML or txt only, but you can also find other sites with them in RTF format etc., and sites which will rerender the html/txt files into other easily read formats :)

Here's a linky. The html doesn't look so bad to me :)
(Here's all his other work on gutenberg so far)

I also made a bookmarklet to bookmark a paragraph in any html or text.

Of course this is only a solution for devices that can read html files and plain text and does not offer any special ebook functionalities.

I was actually forced into buying the ebook version, since the hardcover was over 40$ (even used), and the softcover was overpriced, as well.

The ebook was under 10$ and had no need to be shipped. I just downloaded it. Apparently, it's also available in my Digital Locker on amazon.com forever, so if I loose the file, I should be able to download it again... assuming amazon.com doesn't go under.

Bloody hell... $10 for an out of copyright e-book. They saw you coming mate... check it out.

The browser available with on the PSP makes a fantastic e-reader. Combine it with free books in available in html format from http://www.gutenberg.org/ and you've got all the classics you can want.

The nonstandard grammar of "bugs is bugs" was more than likely an allusion to Pigs Is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler.

Project Gutenberg has audio books for download in MP3 format. Currently only 31 are read by a human, but they do have over 350 that sound like they were read by a Speak & Spell.

Project Gutenberg has audio books for download in MP3 format. Currently only 31 are read by a human, but they do have over 350 that sound like they were read by a Speak & Spell.

Project Gutenberg has audio books for download in MP3 format. Currently only 31 are read by a human, but they do have over 350 that sound like they were read by a Speak & Spell.

"You excluding me from using a resource is a violation of my rights, but me taking something from you that you have worked for is a violation of yours. Where do we draw the line?"

Good Question. The best answer I have found is by John Locke (see it here) Chapter 5. in particular. It is not perfect in my opinion, but it is a good start for discussion. (Note: Locke is refuting the 'Divine right of kings' argument, also, for some reason this link only has the first part...)

"In a system of democratically controlled resources, people would be collectively responsible for that resource."

From 'The Incredibles' 'When everyone is special, no one will be.' When everyone is responsible - no one will be. The tragedy of the commons occurs because each person individually gets the bennifits, but collectively shares the cost. So it is in the best interests of individuals to take as much as possible. This is rarely good mannagement, and the net bennifit is usually poor. Even if 90% of the people are prudent, the 10% who abuse the commons makes prudent mannagement impossible. However, if the commons were divided up and individually mannaged, not only do the 90% who are prudent derive a greater net and individual bennifit than before, the 10% who abuse theirs are motivared to better mannagement themselves. Their greed motivates better management, where before even a minority of greed hurts all. This is how greed can motivate resource sustainability.

There is another method of mannaging commons than making it private property. Regulation by government. This is better than a unregulated commons, but is rarely as good as private mannagement, because there is no effective control over greedy individuals manipulating the government control such that they get a greater share of the bennifits, and as before, all share the cost. Because of this, where the commons can be privitized, it should be. We still need an effective means of controling greed in government, as not all commons can be privitized. Ideas?

"Most of us are hard wired genetically to be motivated by ideals of fairness and reciprocity moreso than greed."

Perhaps. I can't think of any counter-examples. However, 'fairness and reciprocity' are not altruism. Fairness dictates that each person who bennifits, share in the cost in equal porporton to the bennifit. While I can think of tons of systems that provide fairness, many far greater than even a true free market could, all of them have two flaws. All are vulnerable to the minority that are greedy. Most much more so than a free market. And all of them unduly restrict the liberty and freedom of the people. The first flaw means that in practice all are much worse than a free market at supplying needs and wants or providing fairness. And the second means that all provide much less happiness than a true free market.

You're right, also it's availble free here: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a507 Project Guttenberg is great for that.

You're right, also it's availble free here: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a507 Project Guttenberg is great for that.

Yes, it's a bad example. Dante's Inferno is freely available from Project Gutenberg even. The copyright long ago expired. I think the 'Copyrighted Material' watermark that Amazon uses is just an automatic gesture on their part.

It's one thing to try to gouge students on books that the teachers wrote themselves, but The Inferno's copyright has lapsed.... a damned long time ago.

Why not point them to one of the free versions out there?

And Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion .

Maybe, but there are plenty of Books in the Public Domain available.

I could think that producing an audio book or two would be an excellent term project for high school or junior college level drama students. All you'd need is a comfortable, sound proof room, a good microphone (or two) connected to a computer, and a simple audio editor and a text to read. If the local library does not have an old public domain book, something can be printed out from Project Gutenberg.

September is still far enough away that an audio book project could be planned easily. There are far fewer technical distractions in producting audio than with video.

http://podiobooks.com/ -- several audio books
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1 -- Audio books including Sherlock Holmes
http://escapepod.info/ -- Sci-Fi

Ironically, all this tech stuff was supposed to allow us to make better-informed decisions.

I disagree on your "no longer rational" argument - the stock market was always irrational, and always will be.

But there is a third category: an informed group can be much more than the sum of its parts. If you need proof, go look up collaborative intelligence in the wikipedia.

No, wait, you've got it the wrong way 'round. See, for example, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds", which you can buy from Amazon. Or, you can save a few trees and get it free from Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/636

A poster farther up asks "how many tin foil hat types think theres a connection with today's bombings"... All things considered, I find the coincidence of today's bombings somewhat disturbing. If history is to be considered, then there is good reason to question whether or not there is a connection.

How much farther does this idiocy have to go before the proles wake up. Aside from a new and improved Asshole Act, I wonder what monstrous retaliation awaits the next targets of our country's arrogant and foolhardy wrath.

If knowledge is power, then ignorance must be impotence. So I beg you to do what you can in that regard, at least. Share the knowledge. Encourage the ideals. Stand by your neighbors. Voice your opinion. Be disobedient if you must.

Need some red pills for your trapped friends and family? Perhaps these will help:

The Law, Frederic Bastiat http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

No Treason, by Lysander Spooner http://www.lysanderspooner.org/notreason.htm

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, by Lysander Spooner http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1201

Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

The Declaration of Independence http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.h tml

Civil Disobedience http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine http://www.bartleby.com/133/

Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Ettiene de la Boetie http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/laboetie.html

The Discovery of Freedom, Rose Wilder Lane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_Lane

Law of Nations, Vattel http://www.constitution.org/vattel/vattel.htm

Best luck to us all.

C

No, it's not a simplified DIY copyright kit. Creative Commons is about simplified licensing of copyrighted works. One of the hardest things about getting permission to use someone else's copyrighted work (and Dvorak's arguments about fair use should be read in light of Ivan Hoffman's fair use article and the realization that "fair use" varies greatly from legal jurisdiction to legal jurisdiction) is actually tracking down the owner of the approriate rights in order to ask them for permission.

Don't believe me? Check out the copyright clearance section of Project Gutenberg. Who has control over which rights is not always clear, nor is it clear how to contact them. A Creative Commons or similar license removes the need (under appropriate conditions) for explicitly obtaining permission from the rights holder.

Now, it's true that the early CC site wasn't very clear as to the purpose and use of the CC licenses. But not anymore.

I must say, I don't know if the author of this article has ever tried to write any satire before. If so he needs to work on it. But anyway...

I would suggest that anyone taking his op-ed seriously needs to read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. It's a fantastic piece about dealing with 18th Century England's population/poverty/crime problems by eating the poor. It also is not The Idiot's Guide to GTK+ or some such book.

Although I use the web for a huge amount of my research and entertainment reading these days, I still also depend heavily on "textbooks" for more in-depth treatment of material. While I'm sure that using good old-fashioned books will not actually stop, I wonder if the lack of emphasis is a bit of a slippery slope: less demand for textbooks will lead to less production of good textbooks which will feed back to less demand for textbooks. Even with such projects as Gutenberg, Wikibooks, and others, is it possible to have the same quality of material online? Different types of material surely (e.g. multimedia), but I think that the format, physicality of books is something that we need to hold onto.

"I am amazed to see the cost to maintain dusty municipal libraries while I have still no way to get all those music and novels which are in the public domain."

For novels visit:

http://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg eBooks are free as in beer.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are also free as in speech - mostly.

i.e. You may copy them, give them away and use them in any way you like.

There are 16.000 titles available already, and more are underway - you can also volunteer your time to grow the project!

"Um as an English Major I must warn you Gutenberg sucks."

When will they teach you about logical fallacies?

"It has massive massive editing errors"

For those who wish to do more than whine about the errors in Project Gutenberg etexts, please report errors you come across and help improve PG's texts. You will find instructions at http://www.gutenberg.org/faq/ under R.26 - R.28.

Why do you have to warn someone about Gutenberg due to being an English Major?

With this attitude you shouldn't read any old books, in fact I would recommend not to read a lot of today's new papers that are very poorly edited.

The books on Gutenberg are not edited, but preserved as close as possible to their original content. I find it very interesting and educating to read those books despite any mistakes or odd spellings authors and printers may have done. I find often a lot more wisdom in those "badly edited" books than in the very shallow books you find today (btw. often not better edited due to fast turn-arounds).

But then ... that are only my 2 cents worth...

Project Gutenberg

Distributed Proofreaders

Distributed Proofreaders Europe

Actually, Gutenberg does have On The Origin Of Species.

This one, yes? I can only assume that it was produced before Gutenberg started using alternate encodings for its texts. They're still not using Unicode, I don't think, which is why Greek gets transliterated (tau-epsilon-chi becomes "tekh" or something like that, for instance). A few books use Unicode, and many HTML versions use the HTML entity equivalents. Non-english text could, alas, be better. But it's a technical restriction---this is why Gutenberg proofs texts that are all or almost all in the Latin alphabet. It's not sloppiness; it's a technical limitation. I suppose when they get Unicode support running on PGDP, they'll redo some of these. I hope.

Slashdot does allow ISO 8859-1, though---ÿáý for àçcêñts, I suppose.

--grendel drago

This one, yes? I can only assume that it was produced before Gutenberg started using alternate encodings for its texts. They're still not using Unicode, I don't think, which is why Greek gets transliterated (tau-epsilon-chi becomes "tekh" or something like that, for instance). A few books use Unicode, and many HTML versions use the HTML entity equivalents. Non-english text could, alas, be better. But it's a technical restriction---this is why Gutenberg proofs texts that are all or almost all in the Latin alphabet. It's not sloppiness; it's a technical limitation. I suppose when they get Unicode support running on PGDP, they'll redo some of these. I hope.

Slashdot does allow ISO 8859-1, though---ÿáý for àçcêñts, I suppose.

--grendel drago

• Jules Verne
• Conan Doyle

• Jules Verne
• Conan Doyle

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Newton's Principia Mathematica is now in PGDP in the original Latin. The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species . I'm kinda surprised that Euclid's not in there at all. Maybe a dearth of old translations?

Too bad there's not much SF in there, either. An unfortunate consequence of it being a relatively recent genre. Stupid copyright terms.

--grendel drago

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Newton's Principia Mathematica is now in PGDP in the original Latin. The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species . I'm kinda surprised that Euclid's not in there at all. Maybe a dearth of old translations?

Too bad there's not much SF in there, either. An unfortunate consequence of it being a relatively recent genre. Stupid copyright terms.

--grendel drago

"Massive massive editing errors"? Holy shit! Can you point out one of these massive massive errors?
Or are you possibly referring to errors which were in the original text, which the Project explicitly refuses to correct, since their stated goal is to preserve the original author's intent, even if that original author couldn't spell?

The "bizzare [sic] formatting system" Gutenberg uses is Plain Vanilla ASCII for a reason---longetivity. They say it better than I could; read their rationale. They're more interested in making the text stable for the long term, than in compiling it for your device-of-the-week. Besides, as other users have pointed out, you can, with little to moderate effort, derive your proprietary format from the ASCII plaintext.

Not to mention that Gutenberg provides some titles in RTF format. Or HTML, including formatting, illustration, and so on. Or that they have a whole section about reading their eBooks on PDAs.

When was the last time you used PG? 1985? They have over 16,000 etexts, with more being added every day---how is this falling "far short"? What great and towering public-domain works does their catalog lack?

--grendel drago

"Massive massive editing errors"? Holy shit! Can you point out one of these massive massive errors?
Or are you possibly referring to errors which were in the original text, which the Project explicitly refuses to correct, since their stated goal is to preserve the original author's intent, even if that original author couldn't spell?

The "bizzare [sic] formatting system" Gutenberg uses is Plain Vanilla ASCII for a reason---longetivity. They say it better than I could; read their rationale. They're more interested in making the text stable for the long term, than in compiling it for your device-of-the-week. Besides, as other users have pointed out, you can, with little to moderate effort, derive your proprietary format from the ASCII plaintext.

Not to mention that Gutenberg provides some titles in RTF format. Or HTML, including formatting, illustration, and so on. Or that they have a whole section about reading their eBooks on PDAs.

When was the last time you used PG? 1985? They have over 16,000 etexts, with more being added every day---how is this falling "far short"? What great and towering public-domain works does their catalog lack?

--grendel drago

"Massive massive editing errors"? Holy shit! Can you point out one of these massive massive errors?
Or are you possibly referring to errors which were in the original text, which the Project explicitly refuses to correct, since their stated goal is to preserve the original author's intent, even if that original author couldn't spell?

The "bizzare [sic] formatting system" Gutenberg uses is Plain Vanilla ASCII for a reason---longetivity. They say it better than I could; read their rationale. They're more interested in making the text stable for the long term, than in compiling it for your device-of-the-week. Besides, as other users have pointed out, you can, with little to moderate effort, derive your proprietary format from the ASCII plaintext.

Not to mention that Gutenberg provides some titles in RTF format. Or HTML, including formatting, illustration, and so on. Or that they have a whole section about reading their eBooks on PDAs.

When was the last time you used PG? 1985? They have over 16,000 etexts, with more being added every day---how is this falling "far short"? What great and towering public-domain works does their catalog lack?

--grendel drago

"Massive massive editing errors"? Holy shit! Can you point out one of these massive massive errors?
Or are you possibly referring to errors which were in the original text, which the Project explicitly refuses to correct, since their stated goal is to preserve the original author's intent, even if that original author couldn't spell?

The "bizzare [sic] formatting system" Gutenberg uses is Plain Vanilla ASCII for a reason---longetivity. They say it better than I could; read their rationale. They're more interested in making the text stable for the long term, than in compiling it for your device-of-the-week. Besides, as other users have pointed out, you can, with little to moderate effort, derive your proprietary format from the ASCII plaintext.

Not to mention that Gutenberg provides some titles in RTF format. Or HTML, including formatting, illustration, and so on. Or that they have a whole section about reading their eBooks on PDAs.

When was the last time you used PG? 1985? They have over 16,000 etexts, with more being added every day---how is this falling "far short"? What great and towering public-domain works does their catalog lack?

--grendel drago

Conveniently, Project Gutenberg has a nice selection of his works here

Yes.

It may not be Hellraiser, but the term "Fairy Tale" has been pretty whitewashed since the Brothers Grimm chronicled them. If you go expecting stories about Jack jumping over the candlestick, you'll be surprised.

Modern times differs only in our ability to graphically depict gore without actually hurting anybody; the fascination isn't new.

Because of their vanity. They're all so very vain, just like the Remarkable Rocket. But vanity is a sin, as God doesn't like vanity (he's rather full of himself, that God). Fireworks die, because God kills them for their sins.

You have a point, but it's still a hasty inaccurate generalization of a point.

The only thing I've use bt for, so far, is getting Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/) stuff.

volume 1 is available for download, from ibiblio.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12655

You're right; Gutenberg isn't good for readability. I've read a few books onscreen, and while I don't mind that much, I'd rather have them in dead-tree.

That said, Gutenberg has a much larger selection than Wal-Mart. (Not to mention that the Wal-Mart books are sold for more like $6 to $11.) Some of their 16,000+ books are things like "a million digits of Pi" or "an electronic-speech version of some popular book", but some of them certainly aren't. The "stuff that wouldn't be worth printing in the traditional way", as you say.

To do some testing-out, I downloaded Kinko's stupid 10MB tool to get some pricing information. I picked a random but popular etext (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)... and discovered that getting plain pages printed at Kinko's is grotesquely expensive. Okay, let's say you're a school and you own a printer. Let's say you own a duplexing printer, even. Paper is as cheap as $25/5000, so a 350-page book printed on both sides of the page would actually use about eighty-eight cents of paper. Toner runs something like $30/5000 sheets' worth, so the total materials cost would be about $1.90.

Binding at Kinko's runs something like five bucks for spiral-bind.

Pfah. Well, who knows. It could conceivably be worth the price at some point. Maybe if the pages were chopped in half to make the book more paperback-shaped.

--grendel drago

Gutenberg was ahead of its listed release dates for some time. Note that before they reached 10,000, some texts had release dates long after their completion dates. (That one was actually released in 2003, for instance.)

Gutenberg release dates are only accurate after 10,000; before that, they're overly pessimistic. The project had planned to release etexts at a certain rate, but when they'd completed their planned quota through 2006 by 2003, they gave up on that idea.

Common mistake, though.

--grendel drago