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Well, there's an epub version too. Why do people have to always make these things so difficult?

Here's the real Project Gutenberg link.

It's on Gutenburg

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm [gutenberg.org]

Why read the wikipedia page, when you can read the whole book?

two books:

left brain — rudolf steiner — philosophy of freedom:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/GPP1916/GA004_index.html

right brain — george macDonald — phantastes:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/325/325-h/325-h.htm

desert island keepers

- - - - Back when.home.computing was stillyoung, years before there was a google, there was.Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org] , where volunteers donated their time and typed in and proofread books. - - - -

Last I checked, however, Project Gutenberg only captured text of books that were clearly in the public domain under the various copyright acts in force in the US and Europe since 1800. The complaint of many authors about Google and its proposed "settlements" is that Google is taking their work that is still under copyright without their permission.

sPh

Back when.home.computing was stillyoung, years before there was a google, there was.Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ , where volunteers donated their time and typed in and proofread books. They are still a prescence on the web, though they've had to take down.books due to.copyright restrictions. It was and still is a noble cause.

An Omnilingual, so to speak?

Don't belittle the above comment unless you have read a very SF good story called Omnilingual, by H. Beam Piper.

It is even available for free:

    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19445/19445-h/19445-h.htm

I rarely see a magazine on those racks that I want to browse. But sometimes I do and read something new to me.

Try accessing this site from your "closed" device: http://www.gutenberg.org/

B&N, and I suspect Amazon, has since modified the TOS to require that the "authors" at least hold the copyright to the vast majority of the submitted work.

The GFDL does allow him to do what he did. But Amazon doesn't have to be a party to this sort of thing.

I wonder, then: Should Shakespeare's work be allowed in the Kindle store? Nobody holds exclusive publishing rights, and it's freely available on the web.

This discussion reminds me of the setup for the Sherlock Holmes story/novella "The Valley of Fear."

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3776

This doesn't involve eating babies, does it?

For those who aren't English majors (or married to one ;-), 93 Escort Wagon is referring to a satirical essay written by Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public". Swift's "modest proposal" is that children of the poor Irish could be sold as food to wealthy English.

I can't tell if the authors of the article we are discussing are alluding to Swift's essay or whether they are thereby flagging their own proposal as similarly ridiculous.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370

There you go. Locke's theory of value goes: "Only through human labour can value be created". That's why I say it's the basis of both communism and capitalism. Indeed Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard share with Karl Marx a fondness for quoting that.

They just disagreed on what to do about it. From this Locke derived his theory of property which goes: "All natural resources are initially in an unowned state. When a man mixes his labour with a resource, he creates value, and this then becomes property".
This is the basis of property laws all over the world now. Trouble is, it was great in the 17th century - but it's ridiculous now (simply because we have 400 years of knowledge he didn't have access to).

For starters: it's decidedly speciecist. I stated that but for the word "man" there is nothing in there that stops a beaver claiming property rights on his dam - after all, with labour he added value to a natural resource (a river).
Nobody is proposing humans should recognize the property rights of other species though - indeed we claim the right to EXERT property rights OVER other species. That's problematic - what we create a truly sentient AI ? Would it never have property rights ? On what basis do we actually claim that the antelope do NOT own the savannah ? They probably think of it as "home" after all ? And do we really think we'll be the only sentient lifeform for EVER ?

Locke lived 400 years ago, before the age of reason (which it must be said -he helped start) - he had no concept that humanity may NOT be special, religion after all teaches that we are the chosen ones.

What's worse is - it fails to recognize the EXISTING value that something may have. A piece of arable land, which you dig gold from - has him accurately turning the gold into property, but what about the land which is decidedly not arable anymore ?
You've reduced it's value, not added to it, so how is that still property ? And if it isn't - what now, since you've basically destroyed it ?

So Locke's philosophy of property is great for it's time, but it's 400 years overdue for an update.

Are the Locke texts you're referring to available on Project Gutenberg or is there another place to find them?

p.s. that was the HTML version. The link to the downloadable ebooks is:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm

Just realized I have seen the film adaptations but had never actually read the original work. Just skimming it, it looks good! It starts out with a guy and a telescope seeing some outgassing from the rim of Mars.. and then discovering an ash-covered cylinder in a crater... that starts unscrewing its end!

Maybe: https://thepiratebay.se/
More likely: http://ebooks-shares.org/
Always good to look through: http://www.gutenberg.org/

An habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they never lie, but it is not soâ"and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody liesâ"every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deceptionâ"and purposely. Even in sermonsâ"but that is a platitude.

On the Decay of the Art of Lying, by Mark Twain.

And this is how your home would look some 200 years ago, when security was a bigger issue. This is a typical home in Costa Rica today. And this is how a web server looked 200 years ago, It could withstand an attack from an army of 5 year olds! Just because you outsourced home security to the local police dept does not make your analogy a good one.

So now that you've taken over the task of the original poster, I point out that what you quote is in support of preventing the private circulation of paper money:

"Where paper money, it is to be observed, is pretty much confined to the circulation between dealers and dealers, as at London, there is always plenty of gold and silver. Where it extends itself to a considerable part of the circulation between dealers and consumers, as in Scotland, and still more in North America, it banishes gold and silver almost entirely from the country; almost all the ordinary transactions of its interior commerce being thus carried on by paper. [..] To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker [violates liberty for the common good.]"

Other than allowing that Smith was for some regulation, especially in regards to paper money, that doesn't support what the original poster said, and for which you asked for quotes:

It's worth noting that Smith strongly advocated market regulation. He warned that inadequate or incompetent regulation of the market would lead to exactly the sorts of problems we're having now. He further warned against anything like corporate personhood as that would remove moral thinking from economic decisions.

Smith warned against government interference in the market:

"But the policy of Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occasions other inequalities of much greater importance.

It does this chiefly in the three following ways. First, by restraining the competition in some employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them; secondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment, and from place to place."

Also, if you want to copy and paste, there's an HTML version on Project Gutenberg/ebooks/3300

Just bullshit scenarios with no basis in fact and useless hyperbole.

Check out Public Opinion. Written nearly a century (90 years) ago it seems eerily relevant.

The world is chock full of content. If somebody doesn't like selling to you or a group you belong to, perhaps it would be in your interest to react and take your business elsewhere. Don't enable such suckers. Say no to abuse!

Fuck Hulu, goto http://vodo.net/film/allfilms
Fuck Amazon, goto http://gutenberg.org/

Inspired by the tapestry on pg 560 of Skylark III I wanted to build a art piece that contained thousands of suspended beads -- as you walked around it, the beads would align into images that could only be seen from that one spot; it would be a random (although attractive) array of colors otherwise.

This work here seems similar, although infinitely more practical and realizable. Very nice work.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661

All the books you like (use plain text format).

See my other more extensive post as to why considering pairs is pretty flawed.
If you feel it has some validity for your tping speed, feel free to consider it. In the other post I examine the distribution by finger and why Dvorak makes no sense for me personally, with my typing style and speed.

So I can choose not to provide any funds to the state if I don't like their actions?

Thoreau did. I mean the state will pretty much ruin your life in return, but you can choose.

Okay, so let's see Bill Gates didn't understand the internet so why would he understand tablets? Frankly the man has an ego the size of his checkbook and the common sense and experience of a three year old. A keyboard is a lousy input device unless you are talking about western european languages. Oh and doodles and graphs are more important in learning than "natural" language go look it up.

Hypothetical 1 learning about Shakespeare, teacher has kids act out scenes. New methodology? nope. Place for computer equipped with keyboard? nope. Tablet with stage design and script annotating software that Bill Gates can't conceive of potentially useful? You bettcha.

Hypothetical 2 Students collaborating on an outdoor physics lab? I have them measure angle versus distance of "Stomp Rockets". So not a new methodology. Place for keyboard? not really they are inconvenient I have them use graph paper and clip boards. Could a tablet help? actually it's no worse than graph paper and can help kids with disabilities.

Hypothetical 3 Students taking notes in history class. New Methodology? nope. Place for computer with keyboard? nope... just let's them pass notes more easily. Tablet potentially helpful? Not now because the ease of making diagrams versus the difficulty of entering "natural" language make it a wash. It also allows even more dumb note passing. (I was in high school once the notes I passed were dumb). But students can also now have all of Project Gutenberg on the tablet at home? so maybe the tablet helps outside of class.

Conclusion Bill Gates had a keyboard and because he fails to interact with the world at large he thinks everybody else only needs a keyboard. And while tablets are the greatest thing since sliced bread if you are a tech reporter they may or may not be useful in a classroom situation depending on how creative a teacher one may be.

_not_ Scalzi's reboot.

Charming, stand-alone story which is a part of his ``Terro-Human Future''.

In the public domain, so available from Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18137

If you're travelling at some point in the near future, the version on Librivox:

http://librivox.org/little-fuzzy-by-h-beam-piper/

is absolutely professional in its production quality and would make a great story to listen to in the car.

William

(and I second the suggestions of Verne, Ender's Game and the Heinlein juveniles)

Did I miss a memo? When did charitable giving become a bad thing?

Don't you know charity is cruel and hurts the people it is supposed to help?

I think you are approaching the mining problem from a wrong perspective:

From all that you say, the conclusion should be that we need a small solar panel factory first. And in order to mine its raw material, we need to tape a shovel to its side so the astronauts can shovel regolith dust into its input funnel.

No need to start launching or building something like Bagger 293 until you have a need for 240 000 m^3 of raw material per day!

Assuming the production needs are for one or two buildings and a dozen small rockets per year, a "fool's stick" (metal shovel on one end and a fool on the other) should suffice for the ore collection phase.


Maybe a small table-top factory that can produce a crude amorphous Silicon solar cell the size of a large button, with Calcium or Aluminium wires, can be built somehow(*). Then you need a small robot to arrange and solder the solar cell buttons outside in the sunlight and presto, you've got a growing power source.
Time is probably much cheaper in the beginning than raw power. Germany built those Bagger (in German) things because their heavy industry in the Ruhrgebiet had a large need for "Braunkohl" in the '70s. On the Moon you only need industry for your own base and maybe to launch volatiles and fuel to Moon orbit where they can be tugged to orbital destination or attached to a large (Mars) rocket.

Apropos, anybody here on Slashdot who actually read De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricola? I'm a bit too lazy, but that level of technology (16th century) probably gives hints for energy-appropriate resource extraction methods. Although fire and water are probably hard to come by on the Moon :-)
I've got the modern English translation from Project Gutenberg but haven't got around to studying it yet.

(*) Please disregard the hand-waving.

No, they correspond to spoken Dumbarseyankish.

Is that so, Mr. Snooty Anonymous Coward? Have some Charles Dickens:

"May 12, 1827. Joseph Smiggers, Esq., P.V.P.M.P.C. [Perpetual
Vice-President--Member Pickwick Club], presiding. The following
resolutions unanimously agreed to:"

In English, people say "4th of June".

I speak English, and I don't say that.

...If real, usable, economic warp speed spacecraft propulsion is ever invented, that doesn't mean the "star trek" writers should get credit...

Although I agree that making up shit that happens to be correct (the stopped clock analogy) isn't worth of credit. Perhaps you are taking the analogy too far. I wouldn't hesitate to give Star Trek writers some credit for the cell phone (Martin Cooper of Motorola has stated that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him to develop the handheld mobile phone), so it's not too much of a stretch on the warp drive.

As a prelude to how this might credit chain might go in the future, apparently Dr Miguel Alcubierre (who published the paper The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity. in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity), even tips his hat to Star Trek***

Many true techies (not all of whom are trekies) that make things happen often credit the people that give the inspiration.

***To be pedantic about giving credit where it is due, it appears that Gene Roddenberry mentions that got the idea for warp drive from Star Trek tech consultant Harvey Lynn (a scientist with the Rand Corporation) and John Campbell (the writer of the short story Islands of Space which appeared in Astounding Stories in the 1930's, and later as its own book in 1956 available here)...

What's disgusting and sad is how much a little human proofreading would have prevented, or at least lessened, this sort of thing.

Here you go. Not all Gutenberg books are flawless, but most are pretty damn good, and a high-profile work like this has surely been perused by enough eyeballs that it's likely to be the most correct version available in any form. Also, its ID is 2600 :)

That was non-informative. Which episode? What was it about? I'm guessing you meant this one:

WATCHBIRD http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29579/29579-h/29579-h.htm

Real anarchism at its core is about the recognition of the basic rights, ie the right to self ownership of one's own body, and the descendent right to property. All other rights spring from those two rights.

These so called "anarchists" recognize no rights, and as such have debased themselves to the level of wild animals. I can't put into words the depth of my contempt for such "people".

I would suggest you read "The Conquest of Bread" for a different perspective on what anarchy means. It's available on Project Gutenberg for free

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23428

Do you really want to see how well the human race gets along with one another when there is nowhere left for us to spread and nothing left to eat but each others precious little babies?

Jonathan Swift already thought of this.

"The great misconception of the democracies is that they can see the active participation of the people only in the form of plebiscites according to the principle of majority. In a democracy the people does not act as a unit but as a complex of unrelated individuals who form themselves into parties ... The new Reich is based on the principle that real action of a self-determining people is only possible according to the principle of leadership and following."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14058/14058-h/14058-h.htm#NATIONAL_SOCIALISM

Godwin's Law strikes again.

http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/16493

Philip K dick had a story where this was essentially part of the plot line -- a man from the past arrives in the future and is able to actually...fix things (The Variable Man)

In one scene, children are playing with a toy and it gets broken. The main character starts to fix it and the kids are wondering what he is doing and why he doesn't just throw it out and get a new one.

The book is free on Project Gutenburg here

"This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.'"

As James Boswell noted of Samuel Johnson in his Life"(1791):" Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."(p.253).

This is also in Project Gutenberg. I know. I had it scanned and submitted (though, as usual, lots of other people did the work of getting it proofed and assembled).

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283

Get 'em right here.

Oh yeah, there's music there too. Have I said enough to get Slashdot shut down for linking, and armed men in black uniforms sent to my house to terrorize me? No? Well, how about a few more links:

• Project Gutenberg
• MusOpen
• Library of Congress
• A used bookstore
• An audio file format with no DRM
• The Pirate Bay
• The Pirate Bay via an IP address
• A porn site
• An Arabic news site
• A hacker magazine
• Wikipedia article on 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

To be fair, I'm not sure this sort of endless litigation is necessarily caused by patents, it's more a result of the legal system we have, and the perverse incentives for lawyers to keep themselves in work. Jarndyce v Jarndyce is a good place to start for an example of this which doesn't involve patents.

Well Played, Mr. MacIan

He ploughed her, and she cropt

Anyone wondering where this is from it is from the play Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw. You can find the full script on Gutenberg.

Bay takes on Wizard of Oz remake

Funny you should mention this. I recently read the original Frank Baum story (available free on Project Gutenberg), and it's not very much like the movie at all.

The general framework is there, but there are substantial additions/changes going from the book to movie, and not just the ruby/silver slipper thing. The non-Oz part of the movie, for instance, is whole cloth addition. "... and you were there, and you were there ..." - not part of the book, and the whole "and it was a dream" thing that is implied is also not there. In the book, Oz is as real as Paupa New Guinea.

And the role of the good witches is completely different, too. There isn't any "Wicked"-esque ass-hattery by Glinda in the book - in fact, we don't actually meet Glinda till the last few chapters. (We see the other good witch, but her attitude is more "you want to go to the Emerald City? Okay, just keep following this road. What the fuck do I care?")

Also, the flying monkeys aren't evil in the book. Instead they're somewhat peaceful, but compelled to serve the Wicked Witch of the West by a magical object. (Which Dorothy then uses to get assistance from them after the witch is defeated.)

Basically, if we just had the book, and the story was still widely known and beloved, a person trying to make the Judy Garland film today would be accused of doing a hatchet job to it.

H.G. Wells concurs. The First Men in the Moon

In the race to Mars, Gulliver Jones got there first and was probably the inspiration for John Carter.

Lieutenant Gulliver Jones: His Vacation by Edwin Lester Arnold is also available on Gutenberg as Gullivar of Mars .

The other "father of space opera' whom nobody remembers - and I mean, at all - these days is Edmond Hamilton. Six of his books are available through Project Gutenberg. Really terrific stuff.

Also, E. E. Smith's original "Skylark of Space" novel was begun in 1915, and finally completed in 1920. It wasn't published until 1927, when it was serialized in three parts in Amazing Stories. That's pretty much the definitive beginning of space opera as a genre. The final Skylark novel - "Skylark Duquesne" - was serialized in four parts in Worlds of If in 1965. I remember very well what an amazing experience reading that serialization was for me, at the age of 12.

Smith actually died in late August, 1965, just as the "Skylark Duquesne" serialization was ending (If was actually distributed the month prior to its nominal month of publication). It was heartbreaking to read of his passing just as "Skylark Duquesne" - the capstone of a series that lasted nearly 40 years - reached publication.

Another author you might check out is Charles Williams, whose novels straddle science fiction & Fantasy (though heavily slanted towards the latter). These can be found on Project Gutenberg Australia.