Slashdot Mirror

Not one of the linked titles contains the full text of the book! Each shows only a few pages.
From the "About Google Print" page:

(you can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the titles bibliographic data and brief snippets)

However, it seems to consider every title to be "under copyright". I mean, Romeo and Juliet is centuries old, and surely in the public domain. If it's considered copyrighted, then just about everything will be.

Anyway, if you want free e-texts, Project Gutenberg is a great resource.

A lot of these books have been available online (and easily findable via search engines) for years, courtesy of Project Gutenberg and others. Granted, Google gives them a little higher profile, and maybe they'll be more accessible, but it's not like the publishers of Shakespeare and Stevenson are facing something really new here.

1. Project Gutenberg: Moby Dick
2. Festival Text-to-Speech software
3. ?
4. Listen!

I like to take project guttenburg books then feed them through festival. The voice is slow and awkward, but it is still very clear, and you can listen to just about anything for free.

I was completely zoning:

http://gutenberg.org/ Sorry.

"None of which helps Daimanou with his question: What should I do?"

This question can't actually be answered until what Daimanou want's to accomplish is determined.

For instance. If he wants to maintian his ownership to the code he wrote before taking this job, this will depend on if a subsequent verbal agreement can superseed or modify a prior written agreement and, if so, whether that verbal agreement can be proved.

Right?

If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then he should be able to keep ownership the code he wrote before taking the job. If the answer to either is no and especially if the answer to the first is no, he is unlikely to keep ownership of his code.

Right?

http://www.gutenberg.org/

all the best,

drew

"...it's a list of what the GOVERNMENT can do..."

...yes and no. The Constitution specifies what the government is allowed to do with the consent of the governed.

That portion is rather important

"It says ANY PERSON. That means anyone, anywhere, at any time."

...see, that's what makes me think that you're not reading what you post, because before you went into that bit about "anyone, anywhere, anytime", you yourself posted this:

"...unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;..." (my emphasis added)

Folks, this is what happens when contributors to Slashdot blindly copy and paste. What you just read was more than just a trivial typo or grammatical error. That was a self-documented mis-understanding. If left un-challenged, it could (and probably would) lead to further mis-understanding.

I am not a lawyer (then again neither are you, just a hunch), but if you really want to formulate an educated opinion, do some research about the Constitution on your own.

U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - HTML)

U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - plain text)

"...it's a list of what the GOVERNMENT can do..."

...yes and no. The Constitution specifies what the government is allowed to do with the consent of the governed.

That portion is rather important

"It says ANY PERSON. That means anyone, anywhere, at any time."

...see, that's what makes me think that you're not reading what you post, because before you went into that bit about "anyone, anywhere, anytime", you yourself posted this:

"...unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;..." (my emphasis added)

Folks, this is what happens when contributors to Slashdot blindly copy and paste. What you just read was more than just a trivial typo or grammatical error. That was a self-documented mis-understanding. If left un-challenged, it could (and probably would) lead to further mis-understanding.

I am not a lawyer (then again neither are you, just a hunch), but if you really want to formulate an educated opinion, do some research about the Constitution on your own.

U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - HTML)

U.S. Constitution (Gutenberg.org - plain text)

According to Dante, the lowest levels of hell are actually quite cold (the wind chill is generated by the ever-flapping wings of Satan). The primary torment there is to be encased in solid ice, though there are three in particular who are instead perpetually chewed-up inside the three mouths of Satan.

More info can be found here.

and for those who haven't read Twain's tale of twins switched in infancy (one rich and white, one poor and black), Project Gutenberg has an E-Text and and Computer-Generated Audiobook

and for those who haven't read Twain's tale of twins switched in infancy (one rich and white, one poor and black), Project Gutenberg has an E-Text and and Computer-Generated Audiobook

My apologies for this distraction.

(from the interview) . . . imagine a group of butchers who've spent their lives dealing with cut-up meat. That's the way they understand how to make money, to cut up meat and sell it in the most efficient way. And then they come across a racehorse and, of course, their first intuition is, here's a valuable resource--we'll cut it up and sell it in bits. But all of us recognize that the racehorse is more valuable without being ground into this system of butchery if it gets to be used in this different way.

And that's the way I think we should think about our culture. Their conception of how to make money off the culture is to cut it up and sell it like pieces of dead meat. And that's of course valuable for butchers, but it's not clear it's valuable for society. If all content is locked in these little separate containers and you have to seek permission to do anything with it, then a huge potential, both economic and social, will have been lost.

Took 20 seconds to find this information.

The Advancement of Learning
Essays of Francis Bacon
New Atlantis
Valerius Terminus; of the interpretation of nature

Wow, I just found 4 of his books, in complete form. Looks like that reporter didnt do his job very well at all. And Im sure, if I looked more, I'd find more of his works.

One thing I did notoice is that retard-of-a-reporter looked at the 'purty' pictures on top of Google. The second link gives a lonk to the life of Bacon the Philosopher.

Took 20 seconds to find this information.

The Advancement of Learning
Essays of Francis Bacon
New Atlantis
Valerius Terminus; of the interpretation of nature

Wow, I just found 4 of his books, in complete form. Looks like that reporter didnt do his job very well at all. And Im sure, if I looked more, I'd find more of his works.

One thing I did notoice is that retard-of-a-reporter looked at the 'purty' pictures on top of Google. The second link gives a lonk to the life of Bacon the Philosopher.

Took 20 seconds to find this information.

The Advancement of Learning
Essays of Francis Bacon
New Atlantis
Valerius Terminus; of the interpretation of nature

Wow, I just found 4 of his books, in complete form. Looks like that reporter didnt do his job very well at all. And Im sure, if I looked more, I'd find more of his works.

One thing I did notoice is that retard-of-a-reporter looked at the 'purty' pictures on top of Google. The second link gives a lonk to the life of Bacon the Philosopher.

Took 20 seconds to find this information.

The Advancement of Learning
Essays of Francis Bacon
New Atlantis
Valerius Terminus; of the interpretation of nature

Wow, I just found 4 of his books, in complete form. Looks like that reporter didnt do his job very well at all. And Im sure, if I looked more, I'd find more of his works.

One thing I did notoice is that retard-of-a-reporter looked at the 'purty' pictures on top of Google. The second link gives a lonk to the life of Bacon the Philosopher.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever.

The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline.

From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

And the whole jist of this, is COMMUNITY, not government. Yes, I like my community. I'd pick it over free market, or a 5% price difference. Wanna know why? Because the money goes to community, and hence enriches MY enviroment, and my neighborhood. Seems like a better thing than making Ayn Rand or Adam Smith happy.

I find it interesting that throughout this discussion, I have seen no mention of Project Gutenberg. They've been working on this kind of thing for a very long time.http://www.gutenberg.org/

Where are the mod points when I need them...

Public domain information should be free. Governments (both regional and national) should try to provide means to access information for the betterment of their constituencies. But someone always has to pay for the distribution mechanism (bandwidth and disk space, in this case).

I use Dictionary.com all the time (several times just in this post, actually). It is a public good and I hope they can keep it up with just ads but if they can't I sure am hope I can get to a spellchecker somewhere. Maybe it is time for the Library of Congress to be more than just a form of measure (I know they already are, backoff with that flame thrower).

Ask Slashdot...Could the United States government gain good will by hosting (or subsidizing others to independently host) online, FREE resources like dictionarys and encyclopedias? What about other public domain goodies like Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/?

States do have the right to coerce behavior, using force if necessary.

I could, and will, just as easily say that this is an opinion of yours, and not a statement of fact. Such a judgment makes in no less interesting.

That is one of the primary reason people form states: to ensure that they are protected from behavior they deem criminal.

People should be protected from harmful behavior, and so perhaps harmful behavior should be criminalized. My point is that no NATURAL right exists to prohibit behavior that does not harm others.

When does an individual's behavior cause harm to others? If I punch my neighbor in the face, I am probably causing him harm. (It could be that my neighbor would like for me to punch him in the face. Is that acceptable?) But, if I consume a drug in the privacy of my own home, am I likely causing harm to someone? Maybe if I have children, and I abuse them while under the influence of the drug. Or, perhaps if I'm smoking tobacco, and the smoke causing damage to their bodies. But what if I live alone? What harm has been caused?

If you are interested in taking away my natural rights, you must have a very good reason for doing so. Theoretical harm will not suffice.

Most people would appear to support the criminalization orugs [sic].

We are back to the foxes and hen discussing dinner. Was slavery acceptable when over half of the population "supported" it? Was denying suffrage to women acceptable when over half of the population "supported" it?

If you reject democracy, then we have no basis for a discussion.

I do not see why our disagreement about the appropriateness of different systems of government should preclude a discussion about the "right" of the government to proscribe "harmless" behavior. Besides, the government of the United States is a republic, and not a democracy. Furthermore, the United States government theoretically operates under the majority rule/minority rights principle, where the inalienable rights of the few are protected from the tyranny of the many.

I do not know what form of government you would suggest...

I am an anarchist. Unless you have studied anarchism, this probably means very little to you. Anarchism is a poorly understood and much maligned philosophy. I believe in the principles of liberty, equality, and solidarity. If you are interested in learning more about anarchism, consider checking out Emma Goldman's 'Anarchism and Other Essays.' It's freely downloadable from Project Gutenberg.

I do not believe in an elite few who agree with [me] and who coerce behavior that meets with [my] approval. First, I reject the existence of an elite few. Second, I reject the use of coercion and force. Third, I reject that my approval is necessary or desireable for anybody but myself. I apologize if my other posts suggested otherwise.

It seems that one Dr. Moreau had prior art. Maybe that's why USPTO refused it.

Last thing we need is more commercial sites. If you like wikipedia, donate money. I don't want ads on their pages. Last thing I need is big banner ad from google's adsense in wikipedia. I already see enough banner ads a day.

Project Gutenberg has some ebooks done by text-to-speech synths as well as those read by human readers which were donated by www.audiobooksforfree.com. A note about the final site mentioned: if you want their material for free, it requires you to sign up, download low-quality versions, etc. The rest comes at a price.

From there you can burn to a CD, easily playable in any $40 portable player. Heck, you could send 2 or 3 for the price of a PDA if theft concerns are that high.

If you want to send over a real reading experience and PDAs are risky to send and there are no computers, then I dunno how you're going to get around sending either the real thing or the text in microfiche or something along those lines.

Project Gutenberg has some ebooks done by text-to-speech synths as well as those read by human readers which were donated by www.audiobooksforfree.com. A note about the final site mentioned: if you want their material for free, it requires you to sign up, download low-quality versions, etc. The rest comes at a price.

From there you can burn to a CD, easily playable in any $40 portable player. Heck, you could send 2 or 3 for the price of a PDA if theft concerns are that high.

If you want to send over a real reading experience and PDAs are risky to send and there are no computers, then I dunno how you're going to get around sending either the real thing or the text in microfiche or something along those lines.

In a nutshell, Communism and Democracies are great ideals, but tend towards Anarchy.

You say this like it's a bad thing. You must mean 'absence of government, and hence, chaos', and not 'the rejection of hierarchical power structures and the absence of coercion to enforce the will of the privileged.'

Anarchy is considerably more sophisticated than your high school history or government teachers would have you believe. For an excellent introduction to anarchist principles, please consider checking out Emma Goldman's 'Anarchism and Other Essays.' It's a very short and enjoyable read, and it's available at Project Gutenberg. (It looks like the Web Server is temporarily having a problem connecting to the Database Server.)

It seems logical to think that way- but throughout history people have noticed that a work created by one person has a high degree of perfection than works created by a group of people (see Descartes Discourse on Method Part II).
The same probably holds true for organzing a group. Coherent direction, and criticism from one individual is probably more effective than direction and criticism from a group. Hopefully that makes some sense to you.

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a Grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.

Given that this is a story of the fall of the Republic and the Rise of the Empire, Lucas' literary allusion here seems to have all of the subtlety of a high-speed halfbrick to the cranium.

Come on, everyone-- ripping off Shakespeare is a noble literary tradition !

Or, for those with no money to spend on a work that's in public domain, anyway...

Metamorphosis

I don't know if that's a good example or not, though - a giant cockroach with a human brain? Forget Kafka, these guys would be our masters.

OK, so the use of 'irony' in the above post is probably still a misuse (although I'm willing to admit we've lost that one along with latin plurals - especially on fora such as /.). However I checked your site and you're a little too precious regarding the meaning of the word. Specifically you disregard the (accepted) usuage of as in "irony of fate" (something that approaches what I imagine is meant by 'Morisettan irony').

Of "Morisettan," or "dramatic" irony, you write "... I have as yet been unable to find any examples of this misuse of the term irony in anything even remotely authoritarian (sic.) ... going back before the early 1970s." (You mean 'authoritative,' of course, not 'authoritarian.')

Is the mid C17th far back enough for you? Admit it, you've been brave enough to venture into this minefield without even having acess to the full OED, haven't you? Get thee to a library!

irony, n.
...
2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might
naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the
promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)

The examples provided for this usage date back to 1649!

1649 G. DANIEL Trinarch., Hen. V, cxcviii, Yet here: (and 'tis the Ironie of Warre Where Arrowes forme the Argument,) he best Acquitts himselfe, who doth a Horse praefer To his proud Rider. 1833 THIRLWALL in Philol. Museum II. 483 (title) On the Irony of Sophocles. Ibid. 493 The contrast between man with his hopes, fears, wishes, and undertakings, and a dark, inflexible fate, affords abundant room for the exhibition of tragic irony.
... etc.

The clincher, IMO, apropos any weight carried in literature, it the title of Thomas Hardy's 1894 work Life's Little Ironies .

The open * movement cannot accurately be called either capitalist or communist. It more accurately fits what was in the early 20th century been called distributism. Essentially, the idea was (and is, again) that a economic unit large enough to sway the market singlehandedly, whether a for-profit organization or a state bureau, will not actually succeed in serving the public interest. In other words, beyond a certain point, the private motives of those who manage large economic interests prevent potential economies of scale from actually being realized by the public.

A good starting treatise for the would-be distributist is G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World .

Actually, Thoreau went to a small college in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the name of Harvard College.

In his time, it *was* pretty much a small college, best suited for turning out ministers. He was most definitely not representative of the average product of Harvard, either then or now. Luckily, Harvard did little to dull his still unique intellectual approach.

Read Walden to get a clearer picture of Thoreau's opinions on education. In particular:

To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! -- why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.

Hosting the 3.85GB Gutenberg DVD image would be a bit costly for the Gutenberg folks. Without BT or something like it, it would be much less convenient for volunteers like me to help them out by spreading the load around.

Yeah, ever since Gutenberg, we've been printing out large works from the internet and calling them books.

It was just a matter of time before a project of this scope got off the ground. I would like to see them team up with Project Gutenberg (and perhaps archive.org) to provide images of the material. Throw in the little transcoder and perhaps wikipedia and we will soon have a killer information resource that can be cross-referenced to silly proportions. This is a boon for research. Projects like this and the public library of science will add much to collective knowledge. It would also be nice to see them team up with the newspaper project! Next stop--public domain LOC!!!

And how many times have you seen an elderly person on the internet, or on a computer for that matter? I know my grandparents don't even have a computer.. so it makes it easier for them to actually 'pick' up the audio books. And if you want to read books online you can always check out Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/.

Considering war of the worlds is supposed to be based in england it would seem to make more sense using british talent and locations.. but spielberg seems to have decided to change the location and all that entails as well as the time period.. what a disaster.. wonder if thunderchild will be a stealth bomber?!

I hope at least he left the martians in it!

For anyone that does not know the story I recommend you head over to project gutenberg and download the free ebook.. its an entertaining yarn..

http://www.gutenberg.org/license

Is this just? Would you like it if all judges were like this?

If the judge were omnipotent, he'd grow me a replacement arm in 3 seconds, and that would be justice, and I'd like it a lot. (He could also go and punish the guy, but only proportionally to the harm done, which means years in jail, not millenia in Hell)

Human traditions of justice only make sense because we have a need to deter crime, as we lack the power to completely heal its effects. God allegedly has that power.

And so, we have Jesus , the son of God, who takes our place and our punishment.

If what you just wrote was the actual Christian dogma, it'd be fine. But they don't claim that- they say Jesus only takes your punishment if you call on him. A perfectly loving Jesus would save even those who don't love him back, instead of demanding reciprocity... which is exactly the line I started the big thread with. (Have you read ToTC? Good book, with a strong anti-Christian parable for the climax)

I think if you really want a good explanation for this, you should check out this web page.

That says nothing. It's based on using the older definition of sacrifice- today it means "give up something of value", but it once meant "to make sacred or holy". I already explained how the cruxification didn't meet definition 1. It doesn't meet definition 2 either, because Jesus was already sacred, holy, and belonged completely to God (Himself).

That wasn't a sacrifice, because you can't pay a man with something he already owns. If you try and he lets you get away with it, then he's essentially decided let you off without payment at all, which is something you claimed God's sense of justice won't let Him do.

Not much of a promo, since the books they're "giving away" are public domain. They probably just copied the text from Project Gutenberg.

The Internet Public Library has a catalog of over 20 000 online, publicly available books and has cataloged a comparable number of online, publicly available magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately, that part of the database is down for a time while the back-end is moved to a new provider. (The old provider stopped on too short notice.)

If you feel you must spend money on e-books, then at least make that a good investment in the form of a donation to Gutenberg, Runeberg, etc. or to EFF or another group to make copyright laws more reasonable once again.

Project Gutenberg has had a free ebook every day for 33 years now. Beat that!

uhm, 2000 books is very few.

Project Gutenberg sports over 13,000 books (these are legal)

if you go to your local alt.binaries.ebooks or just #ebook you can easily double or triple Gutenberg count (my current library has around 30,000 books). Ofcourse would not so legal to download/own as they still would technically be under a copyright. But then, some of the books are easier to download illegaly than to get them at a library (as soon as I found out that my library has Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card I signed up and was waiting for over 7 months till I downloaded it).

and if are a maniac (as I am) of reading, but prefer to read legal things, then you could/should go with the lower quality writtings that are provided through various BBS archives various pr0n archives, as well as fan finction. Heck, there is even wikibooks.

What is needed is some project that makes a global internet library out of all of these resources. Where we have things rated per genre (tied with the iblist or, ugh, amazon) But for all the texts, not just published/bookstore works.

I know, I know, you can't make money putting things in ASCII. My real point is to encourage consumption of Free stuff.

Subtle, huh.

There are over 14,000 uncopyrighted eBooks available from Project Gutenberg, and you can help create more by proofreading a page a day.

Actually, consider Saddam Hussein a libertarian. He set up a system where you have the choice to love him or not. It's your call. In Bagdad, Al-Sharaf is simply remarking the obvious: all of us have chosen at some point not to love Saddam.

It's just that He loved us enough to give us the choice of loving Him, and when we choose to walk away He has loved us enough to die in our place so that we can walk back.

A perfect being would love unconditionally, instead of demanding reciprocity.

Does this make sense?

It makes sense insofar as you feel happier by believing good things will happen to you. The inaccuracy of your beliefs is unlikely to be revealed before your death, so it's overall a plus.

Thus, copying old artistic works/abandonware could be detrimental to current creation. For instance, if copyright law was 42 years, most black&white film archives would be out of copyright --- I'd expect a lot of reruns of those instead of recent creations on TV.

(To be clear, I'm poking at this particular point; I agree with the general message of the poster.)

Indeed. Of course, if you can't come up with anything better than 42 year old media, maybe you suck and need to create something better. There are plenty of books in the public domain; you can get thousands online for free from Project Gutenberg. They can read new books for free at their local library. Yet the publishing industry continues to do just fine. People want new shiny things now They might be willing to wait a few years for a cheap or free version, but they're not going to wait 42 years. Any copyright length of more than, say, 20 years, will protect the vast majority of the market value of both the original work and newer competing works.

"This was the original basis for modern anti-abortion agitation. Not that killing a fetus was immoral, but that white middle and upper class families were having fewer children."

Well, you could also say that among the original basis of the pro-abortion agitation was the fear on the part of people like Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) of what they perceived as the reproduction of inferior people, as she put it (in this 1924 article) "those parents who are least fit to reproduce the race." (That article also lists the conditions without which, in her view, children should not be born; granted, most people can probably come up with some conditions under which they'd prefer children not be born, but "most people" aren't also in favor of involuntarily sterilizing those deemed unfit, so it's necessary to think of her conditions not as idle chatter, but as rules she would have been willing to enforce :) (As the state of Indiana did.)

From The Pivot of Civilization:

"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism." That damn sentimentalism! If not for that, we'd have had the morons long ago segregated and sterilized, so the New Race could prosper without being burdened by them (or the yellow hordes)! Right? Wait ... that sounds like racist eugenics!

(The Pivot of Civilization is available from Project Gutenberg, along with Sanger's "Woman and the New Race")

timothy

"This was the original basis for modern anti-abortion agitation. Not that killing a fetus was immoral, but that white middle and upper class families were having fewer children."

Well, you could also say that among the original basis of the pro-abortion agitation was the fear on the part of people like Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) of what they perceived as the reproduction of inferior people, as she put it (in this 1924 article) "those parents who are least fit to reproduce the race." (That article also lists the conditions without which, in her view, children should not be born; granted, most people can probably come up with some conditions under which they'd prefer children not be born, but "most people" aren't also in favor of involuntarily sterilizing those deemed unfit, so it's necessary to think of her conditions not as idle chatter, but as rules she would have been willing to enforce :) (As the state of Indiana did.)

From The Pivot of Civilization:

"Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism." That damn sentimentalism! If not for that, we'd have had the morons long ago segregated and sterilized, so the New Race could prosper without being burdened by them (or the yellow hordes)! Right? Wait ... that sounds like racist eugenics!

(The Pivot of Civilization is available from Project Gutenberg, along with Sanger's "Woman and the New Race")

timothy