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Article On Project Gutenberg Founder
P.J. Hinton writes: "The News-Gazette, a newspaper in Champaign, IL, ran a feature in their Sunday edition about the founder of Project Gutenberg. Besides offering descriptions of his unusual eating habits, it gives an insight into the projects foundations almost thirty years ago and notes some criticism that he's received for his work. Defintiely a good read and a reminder that long before CDA, RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, and the USPTO, there were other entities all too willing to block access to information. "
... a Beowulf cluster of these?
libraries are not librarians.
as a happy Linux IPO taker, I'm willing to
/. interview
donate some bucks back to him.
We don't have to give our last shirt.
But we might give him our recognition
and some kind of "Thank You".
How could we manage to make a minor
collection for this potential
person?
Stop whining about the deaths of "innocent japanese". Go read about Bataan or Nanking. Remember Pearl Harbor? Or Korea? How about all the women raped and forced into prostitution? Or how about their treatment of captives. Chopping the heads off of captured soldiers and civilians was sport for them. Or how about testing biological and chemical weapons on civilians in China? They did things that would have made Mengele cringe, but nobody knows about it.
The Japanese have never apologized for their atrocities in China, Korea, or the pacific rim because they have always been savages and remain so. (They love to eat live fish and other "delicacies" like "drunken prawns".) The reason is that unless you were born Japanese you are nothing more than meat to them. There are people of Korean descent who were born in Japan, have lived their whole lives in Japan, and who were born to people in similar circumstances. Yet they are not citizens, do not have passports, and are treated as sub-human workers. Did you know that the Japanese still have a caste system with untouchables, and that they are fighting for their civil rights? Japanese high school textbooks do not mention WWII, let alone their brutality in Asia. It is as if it never happened.
The atomic bomb ended the war early. Go read about life in the pacific theatre and how horrific it was. Go read about how the Japanese fought to the death or committed mass suicide rather than surrender. That bombing saved huge numbers of US lives and Japanese lives by not requiring an invasion. Did you know that the Japanese government instructed its people to fight the allies using farm implements if necessary? An invasion would have necessitated killing every single Japanese civilian. No other way to pacify the place.
One more thing. Dropping atomic bombs wasn't racist. If the allies had had them in 1942 they would have used them on the Germans. (The Germans were winning, remember?) Ever read about Dunkirk? Go watch Saving Private Ryan. Now think about what would have happened if a few nukes had been dropped on the Germans. Problem is, the bombs just weren't ready in time to save those American lives.
If you want to talk about job sectors getting screwed by the rich, then let's not forget to include the all time poorest profession, the drayman.
Ummm . . . the point is that a hell of a lot of people who used to have decent jobs, don't, and there are damned few decent jobs left in much of the country for anybody in the working class. It's not realistic to tell them that they should become bond traders. What is realistic, is to face the fact that, demographically speaking, the working class in much of the country is in worse shape than they've been in for most of this century. In real dollars, demographically speaking, they have considerably less income than they used to. In real terms, demand on food banks (which have always existed) in some parts of the country has gone way up in the last decade. I've heard right-wing think-tank spinmeisters claiming that people with decent jobs are dropping out to live off the food banks but (a) why didn't they do it before? and (b) I don't believe in the tooth fairy either.
In real terms, no longer speaking demographically, you made up your statistics off the top of your head and I'm calling your bluff. You're like a creationist insisting that the Flood created the Alps: "It must be true, because if it weren't, I'd be wrong!" Heh. Right, you are wrong.
This is not about economic activity moving from horses to cars; this is about economic activity (at the low end of the income scale) moving from Michigan to Mexico.
The point, in any case, which you are artfully dodging, is that
Have you any realistic notion of economics whatsoever?
Considerably more so than you, if you think people with no disposable income can afford to buy anything. If you think the auto industry could have thrived in a nation where 85% of the population couldn't afford to buy cars, take a long cold look at Medeival Europe (or modern Afghanistan) and call me in the morning. The kind of pervasive working-class poverty that Libertarians dream of would come with some problems which, for religious reasons, you are unwilling to recognize.
Hey, that's okay. I respect your faith, even though I disagree with it. It's a free country.
The middle class can go into a bookstore and acquire any of those texts for $4.95.
You've never bought a book, have you?
$4.95 indeed . . .
There are extrememly few destitute people in the nation, and the filthy rich are just as rare.
Again, you're spouting religious orthodoxies as if they were connected in some way with reality. Visit West Virginia, or any old mill town in New England. The destitute are considerably more numerous than the "filthy rich". If you've got some weird kink about worshipping Gaussian distributions, there is a "disproportionate lump" at the low end of the curve. Of course, unlike you I'm agnostic, and the imperfections of graphs don't in and of themselves break my heart. I'm one of those poor unfortunates who takes reality as he finds it, rather than inventing his own as he goes along.
Socialism is the Government mandating the redistribution of resources, in what ever way it sees fit, usually by means of high taxation.
No, you dismal moron, socialism is when the government owns the businesses. It's not about taxing the private sector, it's about there being no private sector, or at best a small one.
The amount of absurd propaganda that you people digest and believe is absolutely phenomenal. And you're so confident of this misinformation that you get in people's faces with it.
I've never had many doubts that the US educational system is being kept at sub-par levels in order to maintain control of an ignorant and bewildered population. Thanks for banishing what few doubts I've had.
this proves that Hemos is a Momos.
No doubt you're working for the Klintonistas, though I can't imagine why. They'll rob and kill you as soon as the rest of us. Most of the hundreds of people they've killed have, in fact, been their own servants and henchmen.
.
The whole idea behind copyright laws is to protect an artist's work for a limited time. Got that? For. A. Limited. Time.
Totally irrelevant. My point is that free information is being given out to people who can't or won't pay for it. This is idiotic. No doubt you walk into bookstores and steal merchandise off the shelves so you can hand it out to the "poor". It's not relevant that William Shakespeare is no longer collecting royalties. What's relevant is that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Got it?
where does socialism come into the picture?
It comes into the picture when you start forcing dependency and irresponsibility on the poor (who aren't any too bright to begin with, and therefore cannot defend themselves) by smothering them with handouts.
He worked damned hard at ripping off the hard work of his contemporaries, you mean. Maybe you want to provide a different example?
This is a slanderous lie. No doubt you think we should all be reading Toni Morrison or some such garbage. Have a look at Allan BLoom's work if you are so desperately lacking in an appreciation of Shakespeare's unique genius. The so-called Spanish Tragedy myth is just that: A revisionist-historical myth, cooked up in the 1960's by radical so-called "semioticians" and other "post-modernist" parasitic pseudo-intellectuals. I will not even dignify it with a detailed refutation. It, and its authors, are beneath contempt.
I didn't get the impression, from the article, that Hart is living off of welfare or anything.
"The kindness of strangers" were the words. Invariably, when people like you and Hart grab the reins of power, this so-called "kindness" is coerced by a paternalistic, "benevolent" government -- otherwise known as a socialist dictatorship. It always comes down to violence with people like you, doesn't it?
You're an American, right? And you've never been educated about different political systems? Yep, thought so. Let me tell you that *Capitalism* doesn't work. Look around you: notice how shitty the world is? Socialism has rarely been instantiated seriously, therefore you have no basis on which to build your argument. You might have philosophical objections, but that's a different matter.
And the open source movement *is* pretty socialist. I don't think it's incompatable with Capitalism, but it certainly has socialistic elements of altruism.
percentage of trolls in this story gets any higher, I am going to start trolling myself.
Just how are they living off my taxes??
One thing that the coders in this group can do is to convert these texts to some sort of "standard" html. The text format as it stands today doesn't really contribute itself to easy reading on modern devices, such as eBooks or palm devices.
If you find having a definition of "character" that vastly differs from everyone else's useful, enjoy.
Out in the real marketplace, competition is passé. Market participants have long since discovered it's far more efficient to prevent competitors from existing than to work to outperform them. It's predation, not competition, that will yield "success" until we as a society really feel the effects of letting it go unchecked.
P.S. Ideas matter; agendas, identities, and "trolling" don't. Bad ideas must be opposed (using good ideas), whatever the circumstances.
GO ILLINI!!!
Hi My name is First Post!
Hi First Post! Welcome to Trolls Anonymous, we are here to help.
We provide services for brown nosing college dropout web site operators like Rob Malda, and believing everything RMS says.
After you get your 100 day non-trolling pin, you can post insightful crap on Slashdot and preach the open source mantra.
How can you possibly believe that corperate domination and monopolization help the world?
By creating wealth, dumbass. You don't like wealth, is that it? No doubt you wouldn't mind if I broke into your house, stole your TV, and pissed on the carpet (not the subjunctivity of it all).
Socialism failed respectively
That phrase is gibberish. "Respectively"? Do please repeat that in English. French, German, Portuguese, or Italian will do also. Babelfish doesn't do Idiot->English translations, but it can handle the others.
American capitalism fails in giving freedom by making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Au contraire: American capitalism succeeds in giving freedom precisely by making the rich richer and the poor poorer. This is called "creating wealth", and it improves living conditions for everybody (even the riffraff like you who don't deserve it, but every system has a bug or two).
copyright law is designed to give the knowledge back to the people, after a given amount of time.
In some respects, copyright laws is obsolete. It was written at a time when knowledge could not be transmitted or without a physical medium of storage, which had some cost. It didn't matter if you weren't paying an extra 5% for royalties to the author, because the majority of the price was the cost of reproduction and the medium itself. This has changed, and copyright law will have to change to recognize the fact that information can now be transmitted without any wealth being created. If advertising could be irremovably inserted into Project Gutenberg etexts, or if they could be distributed only on a "pay per view" basis, the endeavor would begin to do some good in the world and I'd withdraw my objections.
I couldn't even finish it, because I kept gagging at the thought of all that mayo. If this is what it takes to stay informed, I think I'll stay ignorant! Was the author really so bored with this guy that he had to talk about the food as filler?
The "poor" still have to use a computer and download the books, they also have to read them, which takes little effort but lots of time. If the poor are as dependent and irresponsible as you claim, they surely wouldn't have the capacity to read, let alone read anything more difficult then that which requires a high school education. er...wait, I'm not sure if that's what you were saying. Perhaps your point was that the poor are responsible and independent until we smother them with handouts. This may hold true, but nonetheless in this case, we arn't exactly smothering them with handouts. The poor have to make a concious decision to download, and most importantly, read these books themselves....it's not like we just force knowledge into their minds. I'm not exactly sure what you are saying if you're expressing these first two views, please clarify. However, I also get the impression you might not be attacking the project, or the ideals of the project, but rather Hart's ideals. After viewing the Gutenburg site and downloading some text, Hart (and his organization) seem to be pushing quite heavely for donations. I understand that doing this work cost money, but I can't imagine there is much expense beyond the labor involved. Does Hart deserve to get paid for uploading text to the web, well, no..that just doesn't make sense. If he's doing it out of kindness then he's doing it out of kindness, I don't get paid when I donate all my old clothes to goodwill (though I get a tax redemtion for some reason) and neither should he when he donates his time to give dissimate free information. Anyway, what were you trying to say? Please clarify on these points.
Putting your one single quote up against the entire "Morality of Selfishness" strand of Objectivism doesn't add up to much. That quote's an aberration for Rand, whop deduced, from Objectivist principles, that altruism was anti-life, irrational and evil. If you don't want to be selfish, get the f**k out of Objectivism.
jsm
Perhaps your point was that the poor are responsible and independent until we smother them with handouts.
Not exactly. After all, they wouldn't be poor if they were responsible and independent, would they? No, the poor deserve to be poor, and they choose to be poor. Mostly it's genetic. I think it would be safe to say that on a scale of 1 to 10, the poor are born at 2 and are driven down to 1 by the welfare state.
The poor have to make a concious decision to download, and most importantly, read these books themselves...
The inevitable logic of the welfare state dictates that the poor will eventually be forced to download and read these books, to "improve" them (as if there were anything left to improve after they've been worked over by the Klintonistas).
it's not like we just force knowledge into their minds.
The basic premise of Liberalism is to do exactly that: "Improve" others against their will, by means of armed force.
I also get the impression you might not be attacking the project, or the ideals of the project, but rather Hart's ideals.
The two are inextricable. Hart is certainly a deluded psychotic and a dangerous criminal, and his "project" is just what one would expect from such a source.
what were you trying to say?
I was trying (successfully) to say that Project Gutenberg is a criminal and subversive organization which must be destroyed at any cost. It is a statist attempt to upset the natural order established by free competition. It is a statist attempt to propagandize in favor of an intellectual welfare state. This cannot be tolerated.
oops, sorry about that, I submitted html instead of plain old text. This is the same thing, only now with paragraphs!
The "poor" still have to use a computer and download the books, they also have to read them, which takes little effort but lots of time. If the poor are as dependent and irresponsible as you claim, they surely wouldn't have the capacity to read, let alone read anything more difficult then that which requires a high school education.
er...wait, I'm not sure if that's what you were saying. Perhaps your point was that the poor are responsible and independent until we smother them with handouts. This may hold true, but nonetheless in this case, we arn't exactly smothering them with handouts. The poor have to make a concious decision to download, and most importantly, read these books themselves....it's not like we just force knowledge into their minds.
I'm not exactly sure what you are saying if you're expressing these first two views, please clarify. However, I also get the impression you might not be attacking the project, or the ideals of the project, but rather Hart's ideals.
After viewing the Gutenburg site and downloading some text, Hart (and his organization) seem to be pushing quite heavely for donations. I understand that doing this work cost money, but I can't imagine there is much expense beyond the labor involved. Does Hart deserve to get paid for uploading text to the web, well, no..that just doesn't make sense. If he's doing it out of kindness then he's doing it out of kindness, I don't get paid when I donate all my old clothes to goodwill (though I get a tax redemtion for some reason) and neither should he when he donates his time to give dissimate free information.
Anyway, what were you trying to say? Please clarify on these points.
Try searching freshmeat.org for gutenberg.
Umm, last I checked it was alive and well in Canada and Europe. What does socialism have to do with making public domain works such as shakespeare available for free in an online library? Shakespeare's copyright, if ever it existed, expired 400 years ago. Do you know what year those works were written? In what way is capitalism a success in america? Only the rich seem to be 'succeeding' at fleecing the rest of us, thankyouvery much. It looks like a pitiful failure of an economic system to me. Competition no longer exists, innovation is being patented so no one else but the rich can do it . . . it's pathetic.
Let's see, what other grotesque misstatements do we have here?
"Anybody not willing to pay for Shakepeare's works is not morally equipped to appreciate their implications." What the fuck are you on anyway? Do you understand shakespeare? I have a b.a. in english lit. Can you prove to me you've read line one of any shakespeare play? Can you prove to me you understand what the contribution shakespeare made? Do you know the context in which that contribution was made? Do you have any claim to have read/understood the morality plays and comedies of the preceeding literary period?; do you grasp the importance of the closing of the theatres in the years before shakespeare; do you have a firm grasp of the concepts of the renaissance that drove shakespeare's literature into such prominence? Do I have to go on?
You don't even have a mind of your own, so stop pretending you do. There's just a turd occupying your skull and it's just giving off a bad stench. ick.
I type pretty fast. 70-90 wpm. I think I'll get out my shakespeare book (not copyrighted (c) by any Big Dumb Corporation(TM)) and start hammering them out. Just to piss you off.
"The fact that a man has no claim on others....does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance." -Ayn Rand, in "The Objectivist", June 1966.
Well, for one thing, I base my understanding of "Objectivism" on Atlas Shrugged: Recall the incident at Galt's Fortress of Solitude (or whatever it was called
For another thing, until I see a definition of "non-sacrificial", I'll insist on remaining suspicious.
If the canon is self-contradictory, it's real hard for me to see what's so damn "objective" about it.
Please, all you psuedo-Randites out there, stop your ignorant posting.
Not being ignorant, I'll continue, thanks
You damage a great philosopher's reputation.
Rand was a second-rate romance novelist who invented a third-rate pile of reductionist hokum which she passed off as a "philosophy".
If you would like to belong to a cult, try Catholicism, and leave Objectivism to what few serious thinkers haven't yet abandonded it.
"Objectivism" is the most perfect example of a modern, post-theistic cult that I can think of other than socialism, which it closely resembles. Unlike those two, the Church is at least honest enough to admit that it's a religion.
Wired Article: Hart of the Gutenberg Galaxy
Thanks.
--80md
"You can't grep dead trees." Information is fundamentally more useful in forms we have tools to process. We can always print it (in any form we happen to like) if today's monitors don't suffice, and we don't have to carry the mass around in the meantime.
Is that you?
Wasn't Edward Teller the only member of the manhatten project (organization that built/designed the atom bomb druing ww2 for those who don't know) that didn't express grief or remorse for his contribution (although, debatably involuntary and non-intential) to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent japanese?
granted this is sorta offtopic, but, I thought I'd bring it up anyway.
Though, I don't have a cd burner...but I like to think that if I did, I'd still have enough self control to support bands I listen to.
is #bookwarez on EFNet.
It's a good thing that publishers are getting serious about e-books, because it's a lot of extra work to unbind a modern work, run it 10 pages at a time through a sheet-feed scanner, then OCR the entire thing.
If you'd like to join the effort, drop by and request "Book Warezing for Dummies" by IGN.
last I checked [socialism] was alive and well in Canada and Europe.
The economies of Canada and Europe are in disarray. They can barely feed their people, and everybody who can bribe his way out past the border guards of those countries comes to the USA. Why do you think they make it so hard to emigrate? Because people want to stay? Don't make me laugh.
In what way is capitalism a success in america? Only the rich seem to be 'succeeding' at fleecing the rest of us
Capitalism is a success in the sense that the rich are succeeding at fleecing losers, incompetents, and weaklings like you. This is called "success", and it is the means by which wealth is created. If you've eaten three meals a day for most of your life, you can thank the system you despise -- because nobody but the very wealthiest tyrants in other countries has ever had such good fortune. The people of Stepney, England were reduced to cannibalism this winter. Of course there was no mention of this in the Liberal mass-media. They prefer to keep you anaesthetized and ignorant.
It looks like a pitiful failure of an economic system to me.
DJIA 10680.24, as of 4:00 pm today. It is the greatest success the human race has ever achieved.
Do you understand shakespeare? I have a b.a. in english lit.
Of course you do. That would explain why you are not capable of thinking critically. If you had been trained in logic, science, and math, you would understand economics well enough to see through the ridiculous leftist propaganda you've been fed. You would understand why the populations of Canada and Europe are mired in starvation and despair. You would also have the necessary tools to become a success yourself, and you would stop resenting a system which demands more brains than you can muster.
Of course, if you had the intelligence to graduate with an intellectually challenging major like business, you would have done so, rather than skating through with a Mickey Mouse major like English Lit.
Can you prove to me you've read line one of any shakespeare play?
Can you prove the same? Can anybody, in this context, prove such a thing conclusively?
Do you have any claim to have read/understood the morality plays and comedies of the preceeding literary period?
Frankly, no. It was all tripe. I'm much fonder of the Jacobeans (Ford, Webster, et al.): They wrote tripe too, but at least it was exciting tripe.
You are such a cunt! I would love to meet you to discuss the quality of power. In other posts you suggest that the poor, for instance, are all but inherently incompetent and that they deserve what they get. I feel the same way about physical violence. I suspect that you are a bitch and are incapable of defending yourself. Of course therefore you deserve to be beaten. Like the weakling you are you would run to some power figure greater than yourself for defense or retribution. Isn't that what the broad masses use their democratic political power for? To defend themselves against the arbitrary cruelties of those more powerful than themselves? I think free competition should extend outside of the realm of economics and into every aspect of life! Are you game?
Well, yeah, of course I am.
I've never met an Objectivist who didn't have a style reminiscent of hers (which is understandable, given the Objectivist philosophy on aesthetics).
Yeah, the "Objectivist" "philosophy" on aesthetics, like the "Objectivist" "philosophy" of everything else, is basically "What Would Ayn's Knee-Jerk Reaction Be?" Ugh. "Objectivist philosophy" is neither.
The reason all "Objectivists" sound the same is the same reason they're so easy to imitate convincingly: You've read Orwell, right? Remember his definition of his word "ducktalk"? A party functionary with glassy eyes and a blank face, barking rote-memorized dogma without understanding a word of it.
Bingo.
A-hem.
Last I checked, Objectivism viewed the intellect as among the most important things out there
Rhetoric != practice. When the rubber hits the road, they're into blind dogma all the way. For example, the official Randite view is that Microsoft makes the best software in the world.
You seem to say that money makes right, that a man should be judged by how much he is worth . . . Even Rand herself didn't believe that.
Again, that's the rhetoric, and her books have examples of "bad rich people", like Dagny Taggart's brother (yeah, I waded through that damn thing
Furthermore, Rand was indeed categorically opposed to charity of any description, even when voluntary. The Gutenberg Project would fall into that category, I'm afraid.
(this being from that line about people who don't want to pay for Shakespeare not being morally equipped to handle it)
Heh. That was just a flight of poetic inspiration.
I would love to meet you to discuss the quality of power.
Being well provided with an equalizer, I would be glad to do just that.
I suspect that you are a bitch and are incapable of defending yourself. Of course therefore you deserve to be beaten. Like the weakling you are you would run to some power figure greater than yourself for defense or retribution.
I do not deserve to be beaten because I am not weak. I am quite capable of defending myself, with arms (I am, naturally, armed) or with my bare hands if need be.
Your fear and dislike of violence is obvious. This indicates to me that you, in fact, are a weakling. If you can't defend yourself from violence, you deserve to suffer from violence. That's the law of the jungle. It's called "competition", that law is not subject to repeal.
Isn't that what the broad masses use their democratic political power for? To defend themselves against the arbitrary cruelties of those more powerful than themselves?
The weak, motivated by resentment and jealousy, band together in their swarming millions to crush those who are strong. This is called "democracy", and a moment's thought will suffice to show you what a brutal and misguided system it is. People can and must have freedom to exercise their rights, but that's a far cry from letting them run the government. If the weak are allowed to influence government policy, they will invariably abuse their power to get their "revenge" on the strong. "Revenge" for what, you ask? "Revenge" for their own weakness. "Revenge" for their own incompetence and foolishness. "Revenge" for their inadequacy.
I think free competition should extend outside of the realm of economics and into every aspect of life! Are you game?
I agree absolutely. Violence is the great equalizer because it enables the strong to earn what they deserve, and it deals to the weak what they deserve as well.
the U.S. Constitution only protects authors.
Precisely. This is why it must be changed. Authors are whining weaklings, fake "intellectuals" without the strength of character to succeed in the cutthroat world of business. Books exist because publishers -- businessmen -- publish them. To the creator of the goods should go the profits of the sale.
Your attempt at invoking English (?!) copyright law is absurd and pathetic: England is a devastated socialist wasteland. Their capacity to create wealth is so badly crippled that they cannot even feed their own population.
I didn't get the impression, at least from this article, that I would burn in the fiery halls of hell for daring to purchase a book at a bookstore.
A previous reply to this mentioned the GNU project gets more money. I find this sorta wierd since the GNU project (at least by their webpage) didn't exactly come across begging for donations as the gutenburg website did. but..that might just be testomony to how much money they do get and how few gutenburg does.
in the US, there is no demographic or group that is getting poorer.
Yeah, we're just imagining all the people who used to have manufacturing jobs that paid a living wage with benefits . . . and who now (since the factories are gone) hold down two part-time "service" jobs, work more hours for a lot less money, and just hope they don't get sick. Yeah, they're getting a lot richer.
If this is because the skilled manufacturing jobs have fled overseas, what does that prove? That "the unions killed industry in the US"? Maybe so, but without unionization the working class would have been working ridiculous hours for shit pay (and no benefits) all along, and they wouldn't be "worse off" now because things would have always been bad. Yes, in the capitalist paradise, all blue-collar jobs would be as bad as McDonalds, and the factories would stay right here. Of course, only the wealthiest 15% of the population would be able to buy the products of those factories, but never mind that . . . that wouldn't have any effect on prosperity or anything . . .
if you are looking for work, I hear that there's still quite a bit of money to be made raping third world countries. Those places are full of parasites I hear.
You're right. Most of the world is begging to be brought the benefits of American Capitalism. You wouldn't believe it from hearing the college radicals wailing, but foreigners are desperate to get "low-paid" jobs in American factories overseas. Nike has done more good in the world than all the Liberals combined have done since the Flood.
I distinctly recall studying Faraday's theories last year -- in most ways quite current. (especially his theoretical work on field lines.)
If that's the case, then I'd advise you to pull your head out of the sand and start studying something meaningful. No doubt you attend an East-Coast pseudo-college. May I suggest that you attempt to get an education instead of just filling your so-called "mind" with ludicrious, transparent leftist propaganda like Faraday and heliocentrism?
Did I mention that I'm also an EE?
If you knew a single thing about electricity or engineering, the Liberals certainly never would have given you that toy degree to play with.
THSI SI COLO!!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOL! I NKWO THAT YUO WLIL THSOF THNGIHAB ABOUT IT!!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
I met this guy a few years ago. I really like the idea of what he's doing, but he was pretty abrasive. Kept trying to pick a fight about what I was presenting. Not a fun situation.
Plato, by self admission (and the scrutiny of thousands of philosiphy majors,) wrote in order to enlighten the masses. Several other aurthors did as well. Are we to deny these authors their right to distribute information by only allowing their books to be read by the well off and wealthy?
I sincerly doubt most people write to make money...hell, for the amount of time and money put into publishing a book, they are insanely cheap (compared with, say, cds)
It may be that there was a vacuum fluctuation so great that the universe was born just like that. At least, that is the gut feeling of quite a few cosmologists.
"The gut feeling"? Ha! What a crock of post-modernist pseudo-intellectual shit. The whole vast parasitic swarm of your heliocentrists and carbon-counters have nothing going for them but gall, shamelessness, and a willingness to lie to support each others' irrational "theories".
As a feotus, you took nourishment freely from your mother, without her consent. If she did not want to feed you, she would have to starve herself.
As a foetus, I had no choice in the matter. Furthermore, my mother is a woman, and not capable of the kind of objective cost-benefit analysis which would have made clear to her the nature of her options. In her hysterical, simple-minded, emotionalistic way, she merely did as her instincts and hormones bade her to do. It is in the nature of women to live this way. They can no more help it than men can help being rational and objective. It's because women lack upper-body strength, and are unable to hunt.
If your mom is pro-life, congratulations, a Free Lunch
Obviously she is pro-life. I am alive, am I not? The "pro-choice" abberation will end within another generation, as its supporters raise no new adherents to the "philosophy". Any cult or creed which forbids its adherents from reproducing is foredoomed by its own irrationality. This is in addition to the simple, obvious cretinism of the idea of practicing abortion -- merely a surgical procedure, after all -- as an obligatory sacrament and a form of worship.
Imagine how impoverished you would have to be, if you can't even read the children's fables, Aesop's fables, Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales, etc.
What is your point? My parents were perfectly able to afford books. I really don't care (nor should anyone) the dregs of society who are unable to provide for their own needs. Coddling them won't help.
who are the illiterate? Naturally the poor, who can't get the books to read.
I'm aware that you can't justify this laughably outrageous assertion, so I won't embarrass you by asking for a rationale. I'll just mention in passing that while it's true that many of the poor can be trained, doglike, to memorize and parrot back a few words of a simple text, most of them are congenitally incapable of learning to read.
Consider Micheal Faraday, one of the discoverers of the laws of electricity. Apprenticed to a book binder, he read from the books (for free!) and taught himself enough science to enter the Royal Society.
Just as one would expect, Faraday's "work" has since been shown to be utterly fraudulent. He was a con artist, who preyed on the emotionalistic generosity of academic liberals to cheat his way into a fake career as a so-called "scientist". None of his "discoveries" even lasted out his lifetime.
but that doesn't make it right. a certain amount of value is attached to goods. When you force somebody to pay more then this value (say, by holding a gun to their head) that's exploitation. If you fool somebody into paying more then this value, that's manipulation (car salesmen do it all the time.)
manipulation and exploitation are bad, not only because they are unethical, but because over time they will foster distrust in the purchaser. Why should I pay $200 dollors for a used car when it's only worth $10?
manipulation is obviously a trait we hold highly in our way of life, just look at politicians! but, manipulation fails because It fails to find the real truth to things, it's mearly superficial. Is said salesmen a better person then me (read: more deserving of being filthy rich) because he is a better manipulator?
Is said salesmen a better person then me (read: more deserving of being filthy rich) because he is a better manipulator?
I don't care why that salesman is a better person than you: His superiority is objectively demonstrated by his greater wealth. "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?", as the old question goes, and it remains valid for all time: If you're not rich, you are, by definition, an idiot and you deserve even less than you have. The manipulators will helpfully take care of relieving you of the excess.
all the publishers in the world, electronic or not, free or not, wouldn't create a damn bit of wealth without the original creative effort.
Therefore, by your twisted logic, plants and animals are responsible for the dish the chef creates? Plants and animals should reap the rewards?
Your bizarre assertion is patently irrational and contrary to fact.
This shouldn't be extrapolated to support unauthorized MP3 or software distribution, because in the case of Gutenberg, copying is *authorized*. Either the author made it available for free, or the work is long since out of copyright.
Heck, it might *not* be a bad thing for copyright to be extended. It'll give P. Gutenberg time to convert older works that are much harder to find than 20th century works. Such works are, by their nature, at higher risk of being lost.
I enjoy humiliating worthless creatures like yourself.
You're telling me you go around beating people up? I don't believe it -- unless you're posting from the drunk tank
Anyhow, if you're as tough as all that, I'll assume you're tough enough to get a laugh out of the fact that you've been trolled -- especially since you gave me some great material to act crazy with, for which I thank you
--80md
This is being posted anonymously because I dont want the karma for this being modded up - I just want this message noticed.
PS - I've been reading Gutenberg texts since I only had gopher. Now I still read them on my Pilot. It was one of the first and best things about my time on the net. The guy deserves recognition.
libraries are repositories of information. they don't care who uses their information.
It's like Edward Teller said once, "there are no national secrets that the Russians don't already know, quantum mechanics is a greater secret"
If you are not a troll -- or even if you are (and one of the most successful ever, judging by the length of this thread)-- define yourself.
I am in fact a troll, and you're very kind
Anyhow, I have a BA in English Lit (hence my glee at mindlessly slandering the other guy, who appears to know the English Renaissance better than I do) but I do software development for a living.
What is a "real education?"
IMHO, a "real education" is primarily that which teaches you how big and groovy the world is and how much there is to learn, and secondarily that which provides at least a general grounding in damn near everything that's interesting, not excluding the arts and sciences. I spent half of my six years as an undergraduate watching my fellow liberal arts majors mindlessly and unjustly slander science/engineering people, and I spent the other half of that time in the terminal room watching the others slander right back with an equal lack of sense. Of course, we all slandered the business majors, and I still can't quite manage to feel bad about that even though I probably should . . .
--80md
- Some people aren't equipped for electronic distribution yet (in fact, library terminals are probably the most important service we can offer these people).
- Libraries can use tax money to buy copyrighted works, whereas publishers have no practical way to accept micropayments from communities of readers.
(Some people also have a dead tree fetish, but they should pay for their own jollies.)Thriving in a cut-throat world demands tactics that demonstrate a marked absence of character.
Bullshit. The only valid measure of character is success in competition. By definition, your statement is hopelessly self-contradictory and irrational.
If the market won't stand up and demand ethical competitors, they deserve what they get.
Ethics? You seem to think that your mindless, weak-sister concept of "ethics" has something to do with character. You are wrong. True "ethics" is an awareness that nothing can be done to save the weak, and that the best course is to let them die off in their own way. If weaklings choose to make themselves into a meal for true competitors, so be it. I will not object.
Heh. Good to see you again.
I bet you'd get a kick out of Schopenhauer.
Uhhh . . . is that good or bad?
I've got three short books of his essays on my web page, two of which that haven't been proofread, hint, hint.
Hint taken. I'll email you.
All people, no matter how oppressed by poverty (OK I'm pushing it there - oppressed by poverty, yet with Internet access!) should have the opportunity to study and learn from this ground-breaking, magnificent work of economic theory.
You can't hand me a straight line after letting on that you know it's a troll! That's like, against the rules or something. You can't break the fourth wall. What are you, some kind of Brechtian radical-leftist, eh? We'll have none of that effete post-modernist legerdemain on my watch, thank you very much.
Oh, yeah, here's the punchline of the week: I keep a Project Gutenberg KJV both at home and at work, and consult it whenever I do religious trolls
--80md
What has PG to do with socialism? Answer : nothing... Oh well trolls *sigh*
No shit socialism doesn't work. but socialism is rather diffrent from the idea behind project gutenberg. Socialism is the Government mandating the redistribution of resources, in what ever way it sees fit, usually by means of high taxation. Individuals redistributing resources, be they physical of information, is not socialism. if project gutenberg is socialist, than so is the open source movement, not to mention any kind of charity organization
I don't think he's making any money off his books.
Piracy is about hijacking ships and steal from people before killing them off. You don't steal anything from anyone by copying, information is free. It's just a mindset that publishers wants to impose on us so that they can make more profits on our willingness to bend over..
For more information check out: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philoso phy.html
If you actually read some of those texts, I'm sure you'll see the insane limitations corporations and governments are trying to impose on the net and society as a whole. And do you think they'll ever stop or give up on this? Of course not, they're in for the money and power! There are no limits to greed, but we got to draw a line somewhere.
When I first heard of the word "Piracy" regarding software from "Software Houses" as they were called then, I was perhaps 10-11 years old and read it in a "Microcomputer magazine". They even had a picture of a pirate ship with pirates onboard! Nedless to say I laughed at that. Today 13 years later, the word as well as the mindset has become mainstream, and I'm not laughing anymore..
Just because publishers are reluctant to find alternative ways of distributing, doesn't mean we should support them in everything they do. I'd much rather live in a free society with slightly worse products, than in a society where just a selected few elite got to have it all. When companies or governments act badly, we should _act_ on it ourselves. Anything else is irresponsible. It's our duty to think beyond stupid laws and limitations and do what's rational according to our own morals. Teach and share with others, learn what we do badly ourselves. Diversity and information sharing is the key to evolution.
Do you really think a crippled demo along with its inevitable ads for the final release tells you everything you need to know to spend so much money on a game? That game-magazines touts informed decisions? For one thing, no game is worth over $25, and I'm tired of being disappointed over and over again. There's too much hype to wade through to ever hope finding the best titles before your money runs out.
"Don't support piracy." Why? Because someone says so with no good reasons? Well, I don't support piracy, but that's because of personal preferences. Not just because "someone told me to", or "it's hurting the bussiness". But rather because in the end it doesn't help very much.
Btw, I'm going to buy a new game in a few days, just need to make sure it's the right choice. So I'm not all Communistic, DON'T SHOOT! ;-)
- Steeltoe
What do you do to limit yourself today?
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I got a warez copy of starcraft to see if it was any good. I liked it so I went out and bought a copy of starcraft/broodwar battle chest. I know some other people who use warez like this too.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
He has a wonderfull idea but he should use scanners and a good OCR to speed the process. He doomed the project to failure ,it would seem, because he isn't adapting to new technology.
"She was worried that it could be locked away from people by one authority"
Thousands of computers in thousands of physical locations with such "books" would be just as hard to get rid of as regular books. Of course, right now, electronic books are harder to get since the technology hasn't exactly been embraced yet (see recurring issue about infinitely copied digital works). Eventually the market will change to match the new technology - it just won't be in the immediate future.
And those people usually do not get respect or understanding from simple John Q. Popcorn.
There are plenty of cross-platform, human-readable formats that don't require throwing away irreplacable information.
Congrats on another successful troll, 80md.
---
The choice of books to be included in the project is made by the people involved in the project, Hart has no say in this and will do everything within his power to avoid suggesting a book for you to work on, he serves more as an administrator of the whole project, keeping it working and from falling off the ends of the earth.
What I found interesting was the criticism levelled by other academics towards the project - it rather mirrors some of the pissy whining in the free software world. Lots of people complaining about choices of editions, editorial quality, and so forth, but none of them willing to get off their butts and help the project do it better.
Public libraries have been a standard in the US for so long that free access to information is now taken for granted. The only thing offered by this repository is convenience. It is an advance, with advantages, but not a revolution.
There are a fre points to address here:
Fundamentally, Gutenberg is about giving people the power to make choices about their reading material, and to put a large corpus thereof in a form people can actually use.
The revolution of Gutenberg's press, incidentally, was not allowing reproduction of books. Anyone could do that before. It was to make it affordable, and take it out of the hands of the clergy and make it an activity anyoine in secular society could participate in. The comparison to publishing over the net as an enabler is quite apt.
Are librarians ruling the world?
I'd like to see that.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Yes, although I fully agree that Project Gutenberg was revolutionary, given a choice today between a PG pure ASCII edition lacking formatting and figures on one hand and someone else's nicely formatted HTML book (and in many cases, this is an actual, not a theoretical, choice) on the other, I'll take the HTML version. And in most cases, the HTML edition was done totally independently of the PG edition.
I just want to thank you for all the great work youve done on the PG site. Style Hags and Design Wonks may bash you on points, but very few sites offer the wealth of CONTENT (yes content, i know its a dirty word on the web) in an other wise empty waste land of pretty eyecandy.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
http://wsmf.org/texts/emonks/
There is no reason there should be just ONE (or several) sources for this sort of thing.
All Praises to Hart and PG, he has done a herculean task for DECADES....
But....
Distibuted librarys and multi homed sources are the way to start thinking. Yes there needs to be a peer review and proofing of works going on line, but for collectors and folks looking it is far more useable to have a few dozen differnts ways and places of access this stuff.
Such as http://wsmf.org/texts/emonks/
If you have a collection of etexts or resources, put them up and spread the links. If the works are not already in one of the more popular resources (etexts, pg, etc) send it up for inclusion.
Spread the Words.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
99.9% free of errors means (if it refers to individual letters) that there is one error every thousand letters, or around one per page. If it's talking about words, it's still one typo every four or five pages. I get annoyed when I find two typos in an entire book, though this is admittedly at least somewhat because I *paid* for it.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
They currently DO use OCR.
What about putting the slashdot effect to good use ? Have the EFF or some other trustable third-party set up a web page with all kinds of banners from around the internet. If every user took time out each day to click on those banners, at 2-5 cents per click; the money could add up very quickly. I've tried suggesting this before, hope someone will take advantage of it.
True, but plain ASCII is easier to convert to whatever format you need. If you need it to be ACERTAINFORMAT.*, it is easier to go from the base ASCII. For example, I have converted several texts from PG to Rocket eBook format for downloading to my eBook. The eBook format is a subset of HTML 3.2 and it's easy to convert ASCII to .reb thanks to certain free utilities written by eBook owners. Hart's whole point was to make all the text available in a format that crosses all OS's.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
The problem here is that libraries don't have the physical space for what the electronic format could contain. Project Gutenberg is trying to get as much information as possible into the Etext databases - a million books? more? - which is much more than a physical library can hold. It may not be a revolution, but it sure as hell is a great adjustment of what we do have.
And how often have you suffered from a book decomposing or being stolen from a library?
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Some Gutenberg in PDF format here: Electric Book
One way was to evaluate various "trees" - we'd feed in a file from gutenburg, and it'll add "words" (delimited with whitespace - we're talking C++ extraction operators here) to the tree.
Then, using that tree, search for several words, timing the length of time it takes to perform the search. It's certainly more fun playing around with real text and searching through it (500k - searches/tree insertions aren't "instant").
I suspect using Gutenburg for data processing isn't exactly unique... but it provides a nice example to do lots of stuff with "interestingly-sized" data, rather than the 10 pieces of data that people have to make up.
The copyrights for the works of JRR Tolkien are held by his son, Christopher, and (I think) his other children.
dave
I've read Michael Hart on Jon Noring's Ebook-List. The man is quite insufferable. Most of his posts were demonizing XML. But go ahead and build a portal to PG. The HWG is doing something similar: http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/gutenberg/index.html -- jean.jordaan@i.am . ... .... ///\\oo//\\\ Post Message: ebook-list@exemplary.net Get Commands: majordomo@exemplary.net "help" Administrator: Jon E. Noring, jon@exemplary.net Unsubscribe: majordomo@exemplary.net "unsubscribe ebook-list"
While a work remains in print, the copyright does not expire, since those associated with creating the printings usually take the few step required to maintain it. Tolkiens work is likely to remain in print for hundreds of years since it is one of the few truly great works of the past century (IMHO ).
Those works are at least available. My greatest frustration is with copywritten books that are out of print such as The Anatomy of LISP. If I don't find a used copy, I don't read the book at all (I did manage to find a copy of Anatomy, but it took a year or so). Those that are hardest to find are those that cover woodworking techniques of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The best copies of these I can find are phototypeset from copies, and the pages are frequently slightly askew or damaged or even missing. This represents a real loss of information, since those skills are not practiced widely anymore.
While PG has dealt with the likes of Shakespear, there has been almost no work on those technical works of the past. Not that I have any answers, it is just a problem that I see as a woodworker and blacksmith (in addition to computer geek).
I could easily agree that preserving and disseminating the works of Shakespeare is more important than the latest comedy album from Adam Sandler. But that's my opinion. ;)
Think of The Twilight Zone - literature doesn't have to have been born on paper to be valuable.
------Black Marlin
Oh god you hurt. Do you own massive shares of Microsoft and AOL/Time or something? How can you possibly believe that corperate domination and monopolization help the world? Socialism failed respectively, but it is still the basic governmental structure of many countries. American capitalism fails in giving freedom by making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
As other responses have pointed out, copyright law is designed to give the knowledge back to the people, after a given amount of time.
This man is great. Showing that the Open Source / GPL model can be logicially extrended beyond the limits of software. I'm just waiting for 'Open Source Canidate' to be listed the next time I'm at the polls.
If you don't like people being rich to begin with, then please say so.
When the wealth is attained by stepping on the lower classes, yes I do have a problem. I see situations of people making masses of money by exploiting those around them. This is in my mind unjust.
The middle class can go into a bookstore and acquire any of those texts for $4.95
Do you support open source? Download Mp3's? I'm sorry for throwing a quick red herring in, but it seems to me that paying publishers for something they didn't create would follow logic goverened on the same principles as mp3s.
The poor can go into a library and borrow exactly the same works for free. Well, not really. They paid taxes to be able to access that literature. Project Gutenburg gives (e)books without any direct or indirect cost.
All said, I'm guessing that at some level it boils down to being an idealistic college student. See Bulworth.
I realize the mistake in my statement. I meant to convey the fact that the rich poor gap is widening.
While the country as a whole *is* attaining greater wealth, it is strongly top heavy. 'Free' helps eliminate rich privilage.
sugar and mayonnaise :P He still has quite a lot of books on that site though.
-motardo
What makes ASCII so hot? ASCII is no different from these other standards, it's simply been around a little longer. One day it will be gone. And that day will probably be pretty soon with unicode coming around to replace it.
Project Gutenberg's choice of ASCII was still wise, and the ASCII archive should be preserved. However, Project Gutenberg has actively discouraged presentation of the materials in other formats even in situations in which its exposure to the public, its readability, etc, would all be enhanced. They have gone from defenders of the lowest common denominator to ASCII snobs.
Esperandi
8 bits to a byte is not a rule, and it can be changed, so can ASCII.
Both the comments here and in the article misconstrue one of the major complaints. This is due to a misinterpretation of the meaning of "error". For many of the older texts there is no single correct text. An important part of the text is the annotation that reveals the various different texts that have been found.
Shakespeare and the Bible are two of the most widely studied texts. Neither has a "correct" text. Every Shakespeare play has multiple originals that differ. The Bible as no originals left, just multiple copies. These copies differ in details. Some of the differences are copying errors, some are deliberate modifications, some are the translations, and some are the result of language evolution.
There are tools, like SGML markups, that allow the text to be annotated to reflect what is known about the history and evolution of a text. Project Guttenburg does not capture this information.
For some texts this is not important. For other texts this is important. Some readers will not care. Other readers will care. The ones that care are complaining about the loss.
Does anyone know when Tokiens work becomes free of copywrite? Too bad about that rubbish that gets printed by his son, the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion were great books, but everyhing that has come out since has been IMNSHO pretty pathetic. BTW a scanner with OCR would be a great thing for Project Gutenburg
You are not me, therefore you are not important
getting a scanner with OCR would be invaluble to the Gutenburg project
You are not me, therefore you are not important
I guess the question is, why aren't there more people working to help PG, to publicize and evangelize it like Linux does. Is it because there's no glamor in it? Or is it, as I originally thought, that people don't see money opportunity in it, or maybe a combination of both and other things?
Firstly, the entire Universe may be a free lunch. It may be that there was a vacuum fluctuation so great that the universe was born just like that. At least, that is the gut feeling of quite a few cosmologists.
Next, Your life is a free lunch. As a feotus, you took nourishment freely from your mother, without her consent. If she did not want to feed you, she would have to starve herself. There's no way she could have borne you without you taking that free lunch, short of an abortion. (If your mom is pro-life, congratulations, a Free Lunch).
Then you were given all sorts of love - free. Nourishment as a baby - free. The air you breathe is free. So were the nappies on your bare bottomed buttocks. So were the first reading lessons. I could go on and on. In fact, you can see what not getting these things do, when you see the wretched poor children of third world nations. Since you are posting on slashdot, you are one of the privileged few. Don't be a hypocrite! You are here becuase you got many things free, from our society who values children and the future!
People say "Shakespeare is dead - he can't collect anymore." Bullshit. All copyrighted stuff should go back to the public domain, sooner or later. Why? Beucase of our social contract. Imagine how impoverished you would have to be, if you can't even read the children's fables, Aesop's fables, Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales, etc. How early would you have got to read? Not convinced. Go a few centuries back and look at what the literacy level was. How many books were there? And who are the illiterate? Naturally the poor, who can't get the books to read.
Consider Micheal Faraday, one of the discoverers of the laws of electricity. Apprenticed to a book binder, he read from the books (for free!) and taught himself enough science to enter the Royal Society. If there is any example of the liberating power of "free books" this is it!
Me personally, I'd love to see a /. interview with Hart - I'm sure it would be interesting! (Not that most of the /. interviews here aren't interesting - it's become one of the things I look forward to most!)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Exactly Exactly Exactly! The last time Gutenberg was mentioned on slashdot, people said the same thing. We need HTML/PDF/DOC... and so on. The point of Gutenberg, is that these books are built out of the simple building block of ASCII. HTML as a standard may go out the window. PDF's days are numbered, and the PDF's of tomorrow won't look anything like the PDF's of today. DOC... well, What exactly is a DOC? MS Word? Plain ASCII? RTF?
If these books are put into ASCII, that insures that they will be available tomorrow and the next day.
-Remove the 86 from my email to contact me.-
... a Beowulf cluster of Steve Gutenbergs competing in the synchronized swimming event at the Olympics?
That's an excellent idea! Perhaps we could get together and raise some money and exposure for PG as well?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
>In some respects, copyright laws is obsolete. It was written at a time when knowledge could not be transmitted or without a physical medium of storage, which had some cost. It didn't matter if you weren't paying an extra 5% for royalties to the author, because the majority of the price was the cost of reproduction and the medium itself. This has changed, and copyright law will have to change to recognize the fact that information can now be transmitted without any wealth being created. If advertising could be irremovably inserted into Project Gutenberg etexts, or if they could be distributed only on a "pay per view" basis, the endeavor would begin to do some good in the world and I'd withdraw my objections.
You are operating under the assumption that copyright is essentially a publisher's right, like the stationer's rights before the statute of Anne. While this is somewhat true in the U.K. (see the earliest interpretations of the Statute of Anne -- Donaldson, I think?), the U.S. Constitution only protects authors. The only reason publishers have any say at all is because of copyright assignment by the author or the works-for-hire doctrine. In short, the previous poster had a more correct interpretation -- copyright in the United States designed to protect the author.
Furthermore, your argument about the creation of wealth is flawed. First, (even though so die-hard economists might disagree), there is wealth created through the gutenberg project. This wealth is created in at least three ways:
Second, (despite the propaganda the other way) intellectual property law was *never* designed to guarantee profits to the publisher or even the author. It was designed to provide exclusivity in the marketplace for a limited period of time. After that, it was meant to enter into the public domain permanently. I can say with confidence that copyright law in its current incarnation is in many ways diametrically opposed to the original intent of the founding fathers.
BTW, IANAL, but I am going to law school...
Ah, well...
False.
Books exist because authors write them.
Books are distributed because publishers publish them.
And, evidently, because a guy who likes to eat mayonnaise puts them up on his web site.
But all the publishers in the world, electronic or not, free or not, wouldn't create a damn bit of wealth without the original creative effort.
So far, I have only seen you tear down other fields of endeavor -- to the English Lit guy, you recommended science or engineering; to me, you recommend . . . something else?
If you are not a troll -- or even if you are (and one of the most successful ever, judging by the length of this thread)-- define yourself. What is a "real education?"
Actually, Project Gutenberg does have a CDROM available. The biggest problem with PG is that Mr. Hart isn't a very good publicist. He admits this freely. It's a great idea, but it needs better support.
This is an ex-parrot!
One the one hand, there are zealots who do not understand Ayn Rand's philosophy, but think they are for it. On the other hand, there are people who do not understand Ayn Rand's philosophy, but think they are against it.
This situation is understandable, given the incompetent fools (Peikoff and his cronies) now the official rulers of the Objectivist kingdom, and given the foolishness of Rand's own later years.
Either way. "The fact that a man has no claim on others....does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance." -Ayn Rand, in "The Objectivist", June 1966.
Charity is ethically neutral. If you value literature, would like to see it preserved, and are a benevolent person, it is in your own rational self interest to help Project Gutenberg, if you can and want to. There is no room to argue the point. Even rational, objective people can order their values differently- reason many be objective, but temperament is as subjective as ever.
Please, all you psuedo-Randites out there, stop your ignorant posting. You damage a great philosopher's reputation. If you would like to belong to a cult, try Catholicism, and leave Objectivism to what few serious thinkers haven't yet abandonded it. And thank you, for reminding me why I usually avoid reading message boards.
The FSF has a higher profile and, well, Unix software (Not Unix, as the case may be) is more "valuable" than 100+ year-old text. Dept of defense donates money so there will be a FREE Ada compiler. Before everyone and his mother had a fast internet connection, people happily paid money for EMACS tapes. What would linux be compiled in if not gcc?
The Gutenberg project & FSF are similar in nature - the release of FREE information (books, src. code). Except, Gutenberg achieves its results by waiting for the copyright to expire...
I don't understand why this even made headlines. Steve Gutenberg hasn't made a film in years. Actually, he hasn't done any serious acting ever. I mean common. He made a bunch of police academy movies and I think he was in cacoon but I can't be sure since there aren't any websites devoted to his filmography. That is how lame this actor is. I guess the guys at slashdot are running out of stories.
in a class once. Ya, I'm sure of it. Weren't you the one who took Philosophy 260? No not to learn anything of course, just to find arguments to back up your own self-serving mindset. Where exactly did "Socialism fail"? (And i hope you're not going to point to the Soviet Union.) What does offering literary works for free have to do with socialism? Because it's free? I suppose libraries are a form of socialism too. Thanks for being one of the people that are helping to make this world such a great place for the masses to live in.(Sarcasm implied.) By the way if you are looking for work, I hear that there's still quite a bit of money to be made raping third world countries. Those places are full of parisites I hear.
The interview leaves me wondering one thing. I agree that Gutenberg started something that became a massive revolution... I think A&E's Biography of the Millenium even recognized him for it. There's no doubt that the protestant split was huge... but I fail to see the connection. The parallel is the Internet, not project Gutenberg... the internet's presence as a revolutionary medium is tremendously significant to society. But there's a lot more to this significance than a text repository...
Project Gutenberg is a noble effort in the same way that Open Source is. Unfortunately, it hasn't got what its namesake had: something that couldn't be had before.
Public libraries have been a standard in the US for so long that free access to information is now taken for granted. The only thing offered by this repository is convenience. It is an advance, with advantages, but not a revolution.
I do, however, anticipate another revolution of sorts. It is already becoming obvious: web based publication is starting to massively change things in the comics industry, and starting to show up as a viable alternative for fiction as well. Here is where it matters: new publication, not old, where things not printed, or printable, before the means were available.
As admirable as the project is, it fails to see where the real revolution lies. When will someone start a repository (searchable and reviewable) for new works? That would be the revolution...
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
Is that it renders Gutenberg absolutely useless for a vast body of texts. How does one mark up Beowulf, or other Old English texts, without an eth (ð) character? How does one markup Old Norse? French without the cedilla? Central European and Russian character sets present even more problems, and that's before we get to ideographic writing.
Don't get me wrong - I admire Project Gutenberg and the myriad contributors for their work, but I think ASCII, while possibly a sensible choice when Gutenberg was founded, is flawed in the long run. And SGML or XML DTD that allows use of non-Roman character sets would be a boon to Project Gutenberg and its potential audience.
Add to this that both hold extremely "populist" political positions that contrast sharply both with capitalists and "big government" socialists...
Despite some big storms of controversy, RMS has been somewhat more successful at attracting money to his efforts, mind you...
My suspicion is that both have, too often, backed themselves into extreme corners that have forced them apart from the "mainstream" in a manner that has been hurtful to their purposes. They probably don't need to disagree as much as they do...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
HTML may be replaced by updated standards, but it's not going "out the window". And even if it would, there would be a simple migration path.
(As a side point -- Unicode will make ASCII obsolete....)
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Somehow, I get the feeling you are. Assuming you're the same "Anonymous Coward" that started this thread, then if you're posting these in earnest then you've done nothing but reveal your own hypocrisy.
Not exactly. After all, they wouldn't be poor if they were responsible and independent, would they?
In most cases, you are probably right. But never forget that there are no hard and fast rules where humanity is concerned; the best you can do is find a tendency towards something or other.
No, the poor deserve to be poor, and they choose to be poor.
Whoa, hold on there. Read my above statement. I would agree that those who choose to be poor do deserve it. But again, there are those who do not choose it; what of them?
Mostly it's genetic. I think it would be safe to say that on a scale of 1 to 10, the poor are born at 2 and are driven down to 1 by the welfare state.
One moment. It would seem to me that you support a free state, where all have an equal opportunity but what they do with it is up to them (which is, more or less, what we have now). And I agree; that is the best way of doung things (indeed, the only way; people seem to have forgotten that we're all individuals, so equal opportunity doesn't necessarily mean equal results). However, this last statement of yours throws that out the window completely. You cannot believe both without being a hypocrite, since the genetics issue kills the idea of "all men are created equal." You speak derisively of several groups (notably the "Klintonistas") with implications that you would tie them to Nazism. Yet your last statement reeks of the very thing you despise.
The inevitable logic of the welfare state dictates that the poor will eventually be forced to download and read these books, to "improve" them (as if there were anything left to improve after they've been worked over by the Klintonistas).
Not that I've seen. Frankly, I've seen the exact opposite, which is even worse; little if any real attempt at getting people off of welfare and back into society as functioning, contributing members thereof.
The basic premise of Liberalism is to do exactly that: "Improve" others against their will, by means of armed force.
Show me evidence of that and I'll be impressed. I can name as many concervative groups that would do the same (and before you go calling me a liberal, I'm not, as anyone I know can tell you. But I do have a heart).
I also get the impression you might not be attacking the project, or the ideals of the project, but rather Hart's ideals.
The two are inextricable. Hart is certainly a deluded psychotic and a dangerous criminal, and his "project" is just what one would expect from such a source.
While I agree that it's hard to separate Hart's ideals from those of the project (seeing as he defined said ideals, and only has his own to work from), I don't see how he's deluded at all. And certainly not dangerous; name one person he's ever hurt.
I was trying (successfully) to say that Project Gutenberg is a criminal and subversive organization which must be destroyed at any cost.
Hasn't looked too successful to me. Of course, it would help if you produced any evidence to support your claims, but you seemingly refuse to do so. Instead you just spout like a volcano.
It is a statist attempt to upset the natural order established by free competition.
Hardly. These works are comparatively ancient. There is little if any profit in republishing them. Why, then, give that task to a group that doesn't seek profit anyway? Certainly better than to give it to a business that would lose money by doing so.
It is a statist attempt to propagandize in favor of an intellectual welfare state.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong here. The tone of your writings is somewhat reminiscent of Ayn Rand. This, plus the content of your posts, leads me to believe you're an Objectivist, seeing as I've never met an Objectivist who didn't have a style reminiscent of hers (which is understandable, given the Objectivist philosophy on aesthetics). Last I checked, Objectivism viewed the intellect as among the most important things out there, perhaps the only thing which could be called sacred (a word I know you'll flame me for using, but what word has more appropriate connotations?) So clearly, the spread of knowledge is a good thing by your beliefs. Since this knowledge can no longer be profited from, how is Gutenberg bad? You seem to say that money makes right, that a man should be judged by how much he is worth (this being from that line about people who don't want to pay for Shakespeare not being morally equipped to handle it). Even Rand herself didn't believe that.
He tells me that he never went to college, but his daddy got him this job. I chew now. He drinks some milk. He has a milk moustache. He tells me he has written about two articles. The rest of the time he is a janitor. He chews again. He puts some jelly on the toast. He takes another bite. I chew. He chews.
I ask him how long he has been working at the Gazette. He replies, "Three years." Other journalists that have interviewed him say that he chews with his mouth open. He informs me that he interviewed some guy who ate a bunch of sugar and did something about online books. He recounts a story of how much garlic this person eats. He takes a bite of toast. He chews. I chew.
I ask him if he chews with his mouth open. He says no. I know better, I have ate with him.
THE END.
This reminds me of forced labor.
Some writer once complained that a farmer can "transfer the control of his property" to their descendants for _ever_, but his "transfer" will only last for some years. Land is not the same as intellectual but I can see a point.
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
They have some free examples to show you, including The Declaration of Independence of the United States. What do you have to do to get it? Download about 6 megs of Adobe Acrobat, then download this file. It sends back CPU and hard drive identification to Adobe, and you then get your key. All this to read the Declaration of Independence....
Long live Project Gutenberg!
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If any of read you Machiavelli the goverment and comapnies wants to control what you read, listen to, and who speak to. This is very important for control. Individuals now can access information that they never had a chance to access before. The world leaders are getting scared and they want to make sure they control your life remember alot people have a FBI file. I pretty sure I do. Being a first generation american they would want to keep track of me. But remember it is and always has been who has the knowledge that will be in control.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
And this has what to do with Project Gutenberg?
He wants to give away free "works of genius" to parasites.
Since you know how to use /. I have to assume you're not an utter moron, so you must be posturing for some obscure reason. Maybe you're a shill for the RIAA?
The whole idea behind copyright laws is to protect an artist's work for a limited time. Got that? For. A. Limited. Time. Read that about five or six times, until it sinks in. Pay special attention to that word, "limited."
Works are supposed to pass into the public domain after a while. Hart is simply putting such works on the Web for all to see. All legal, all moral, all well within the spirit of copyright law. Now tell me, where does socialism come into the picture?
Shakespeare didn't revolutionize the Judeo-Christian/Western European literary tradition by sitting around waiting for a handout. He earned his keep fair and square. He worked damned hard.
He worked damned hard at ripping off the hard work of his contemporaries, you mean. Maybe you want to provide a different example?
I didn't get the impression, from the article, that Hart is living off of welfare or anything. I'm sure he'd like to see some grant money come his way, but I doubt he'd change his lifestyle much -- he seems comfortable enough. So what the hey is your problem?
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
All I can say is, if Hart doesn't change his diet, he won't live to see 54...! yikes!
GMH Rules! But, please, what Project Gutenberg are you using? No Hopkins on the one I use.
Go out to an old bookstore, or Bookfinder and dig up some musty old tomes that were published back before 1923 or so and aren't yet in Project Gutenberg. Original editions, not re-translations or re-issues, so there can be no doubt about their public domain-ness. Check with P.G. to determine their eligibility. Then scan 'em in.
I have a couple of old translated Arsene Lupin novels by Maurice Leblanc that I intend to scan in when I have the time. God knows they need more; they only have one, The Glass Stopper.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I meant to convey the fact that the rich poor gap is widening.
Of course the gap is widening. So what? If you don't like people being rich to begin with, then please say so. But it's meaningless to say that the richer are getting richer than the poor are getting richer. It conveys no useful information.
While the country as a whole *is* attaining greater wealth, it is strongly top heavy. 'Free' helps eliminate rich privilage.
I'm assuming you're talking about the topic at hand, the Gutenberg Project. If so, I fail to see your point. The middle class can go into a bookstore and acquire any of those texts for $4.95. The poor can go into a library and borrow exactly the same works for free. The rich in this case have no priviledges.
But to the topic of "topheaviness". This is simply untrue. If the largest segment of the population were poor, you would have a point. But that is not the case. The largest segment of the population is middle class. Think of it as a bell curve. There are extrememly few destitute people in the nation, and the filthy rich are just as rare. But in between you have a smooth hump in the curve known as the middle class. There is no disproportionate lump at either end of the curve.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You've never bought a book, have you?
You don't know where to shop, do you? A paperback classic goes for 4.95. The typical paperback goes for one or two dollars more, but there's no royalties to pay for public domain works, so they're less.
Visit West Virginia, or any old mill town in New England.
Until two years ago, I lived in a rural county that had the country's highest poverty rate and the highest percentage of welfare recipients. That particular region, not demographic, had a damaged economy. I made no claim that particular regions won't have economic disparities.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
American capitalism fails in giving freedom by making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This is completely false. At best it is merely an example of lying with statistics. A widening gap between the rich and poor does NOT mean that the poor are getting poorer. If the rich get 10% richer and the poor get only 5% richer, guess what? The poor are getting richer!
Yes, there are some individuals getting poorer. Impossible to avoid that under any economic system. But in the US, there is no demographic or group that is getting poorer.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You're talking about individuals, I was talking about demographics. No matter what the economy or political system, there will always be some individuals moving downwards. There's simply no way to avoid it. Unfortunate but true.
However, by demographics I was not referring to job sectors. I was talking about race, parental economic status, gender, etc. If you want to talk about job sectors getting screwed by the rich, then let's not forget to include the all time poorest profession, the drayman.
Of course, only the wealthiest 15% of the population would be able to buy the products of those factories
Have you any realistic notion of economics whatsoever? Businesses want to earn profits and the only way they can do so is to sell their product or service. If a company can sell it's product for 10% less and make a bigger profit (since they will have more customers), they will do so in a heartbeat. Pull out your high school econ textbook and look up marginal costs. I would love to be a businessman in your above scenario, 'cause I would then target my business to the lower 85% that everyone else foolishly ignored.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Text in electronic form has never been easy to read on a computer screen. I spend most of my time in front of my computer and you will still not catch me reading a book on it! Software like e-book still does not make it easy. Is there any info on an open source reader with simple/useful features like autoscrolling, light text on dark background, margin notes etc?
Maybe even a napster like side that lets you maintain your own library and download new books.
Perhaps even an emacs plugin will do...
I am sure this would make a nice complement to Project G and make online text more popular. Also, it would make publicising the whole thing easier.
You know what's the weirdest thing about project Gutenberg? (The weirdest thing I noticed anyway).
Take a look at the "standard.new" and "NEWUSER.GUT" files on the FTP sites.
Check out that justification! The text is
formatted so that it's left AND right justified,
with a fixed width font and with no extra spaces. i.e. The text was carefully written in such a way that it just happened to fit perfectly.
Pretty strange.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
You're up to your usual high standards. I especially liked the parts where "people who are too poor to buy his books are ipso facto too stoopid and morally defective to deserve to read Shakespeare" and "none of Faraday's fraudulent theories outlasted his lifetime." That last reminds me of some of the crackpot shit that those anti-Kommunists sent the FBI regarding Einstein's "anarchistic," "metaphysical" theories. Just delightful!
But hey d00d I just gotta tellya like don't f**k with Project Gutenberg, d00d. I'd like take it personal 'cause I just this last weekend scanned volume one of Haldane and Kemp's English translation of Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea, all 568 pages of it, Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner Publishers, 1909. Only two more volumes, a mere thousand pages to go. And they're really only appendices anyway; volume one is the complete core of World as Will and Idea. I bet you'd get a kick out of Schopenhauer. I've got three short books of his essays on my web page, two of which that haven't been proofread, hint, hint. They're free for the downloading. However, a special charge for downloading applies to Randites: five dollars, or two hundred rubles, per volume. We accept Visa.
Here's tonight's straight line for Randite Man:
Why, it so happens that as a contribution to Project Gutenberg, I myself have scanned all of volume one and, thus far, 250 pages of volume two, of Papa Karl's Capital, Charles Kerr Publishers, 1906. (This is actually true, too, but I quit doing Capital for a while because a guy emailed me volunteering to proofread Schopenhauer's magnum opus. I'm tellin ya, proofreading is a lot of work and proofreaders are hard to come by, so if someone volunteers you bet I'm going to take advantage of his offer.) I'm proud to have contributed my time and effort to this splendid project. All people, no matter how oppressed by poverty (OK I'm pushing it there - oppressed by poverty, yet with Internet access!) should have the opportunity to study and learn from this ground-breaking, magnificent work of economic theory.
Take it away, Randite Man!
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Just a quick request/plea/suggestion: if you find a typo in a Project Gutenberg etext, please email me the fix. Or, fix the text and email me the text! There are definite quality problems with stuff prior to 1994 especially....today, though, the etexts have higher quality standards and go through more proofreading before posting.
promo.net/pg for the listings; you can link to any of the 2500+ etexts from there. Thanks.
my email: gbnewby@ils.unc.edu
I recently corresponded with the guy who runs PG. I wanted to write an application to interface with PG that allowed people to view the texts to their own liking. You can't customize a web browser to the hilt just for one damn page, so this way you could have a centralized place where you went to read these electronic books, it would allow you to highlight passages, email quotes, save bookmarks, all kinds of great shit. The only problem with writing it was that the index files on the FTP sites are total shit for a program to parse. Partial author names, partial title names, some places like "[Reserved for 2001, by Arthur C Clarke]", all kinds of stuff that makes parsing it almost impossible.
So I wrote him asking if he would make the destailed database or an ascii export of it available on the mirrors and such (the web page features all kinds of complex search features and a great browsing funciton to find certain books with ALL information in FULL, so he's got to have one somehwere). What did he reply with? "Sure, the aim of project guttenberg is to provide etexts to as many individuals as possible?" Hell no! He got pissed off and started saying he thought the website was a better idea (the website is shit, sir, sorry to let you in on it, but you can't have close to the kinds of features I was going to provide) and he would not provide any kind of computer-readable index file in order to prevent such things from happening!
So much for "Free texts readable by humans and computers alike" and the entire concept behind PG. They tell people they can feel free to convert the collection to HTML if they want and similar things, but I'm guessing that if that was done, PG would speak out against it and get quite pissed off. I wasn't even thinking of changing the format, just giving the user a really nice configurable reader!
Esperandi
we can get them to mirror DecSS source code as an electronic text. Or maybe one of us should right a historical account of the whole DecSS affair and include the source code to show exactly what started the whole affair and then have them mirror it. I do think that what project Gutenburg is doing is *very* good for society as a whole. I used several of the texts from project Gutenburg in my college english classes. If I happened to have a few 19th century books laying around the house I would definately scan them in and send them to the project. That's one of the main problems with the project, nothing modern is going in. I wonder if project Gutenburg would accept origianl works from internet authors, on subjects like computer programming or networking. I think that maybe I'll write a begginers book on java programming and submit it to see if they will accept it. Lots of the readers here on slashdot have aquired vast amounts of knowledge and maybe some of them would be willing to share that knowledge with others. (ahemmm useful knowledge not an Idiots guide to being a troll :) ) [please to do not hurt me with your trollish powers you must only use them for the good of mankind.]
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
I think the reason that it hasn't gotten the attention of mainstream public is because nobody's figured out how to make money from it, or to make some kind of commercial product from it.
But, isn't it very much like Open Source? The spirit of Free Software is very much the same as the idea of Free Books (not free as in price, though it is that too). It takes volunteers to contribute to a repository that is freely open to all.
It's a shame that he's not getting more support.
I wonder if there's anyway someone can somehow take his effort and offer it as a commercial product. I think some CD-ROM makers have done so, but give some of the proceeds into the project.
I think Project Gutenberg is excellent and very useful. I recently used a large number of its texts to collect data on the frequencies of letters and pairs of letters in English (for a cryptanalysis program I am working on). Anyway, I think it would be neat to hear of oddball uses for such a database, that would be very difficult without it (other than just being able to read cool stuff for free).
"Politics is for the moment, an equation lasts eternity" -A. Einstein
I for one have started reading a book from the Gutenberg collection, and then gone out and bought a copy to finish reading it. (I did it for all the usual printed over digital reasons [i.e. I can take a book anywhere, I can curl up on the couch with it, etc.]) I can't help but wonder how many people have use the project in this "try it before you buy it" way, and how much money has been made because of it.
Defintiely a good read and a reminder that long before CDA, RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, and the USPTO, there were other entities all too willing to block access to information.
Also an example of how such obstacles can be overcome. Sure, CDA/RIAA/MPAA/DMCA/etc. may be bugging certain people now, but as illustrated in this example, that doesn't mean that a reasonable solution won't be reached.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The premise on which Michael Hart based Project Gutenberg was: anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely. . .what Michael termed "Replicator Technology" The concept of Replicator Technology is simple; once a book or any other item (including pictures, sounds, and even 3-D items can be stored in a computer), then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer.
The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.
The major point of all this is that years from now Project Gutenberg Etexts are still going to be viable, but program after program, and operating system after operating system are going to go the way of the dinosaur, as will all those pieces of hardware running them.
For anyone who hasn't read it, there's a much better article about Michael Hart written for Wired a few years ago. He certainly seems like an, um, odd fellow, but I wouldn't mind meeting him sometime.
r g.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/esgutenbe
Second, we who use it need to support it. If there are any worthy causes, Project Gutenberg is one. Who else performs such a massive work without compensation, without help (and oftentimes with a lot of deliberate trouble-making)? This isn't something as material as world hunger (a worthy cause, too, but in a different way); this is our very culture! If every person who uses the Project submitted just one favourite old book, imagine how quickly it would have grown. It would have far more than the 10,000 he wanted by 2,500.
We also need to fight the ridiculous expansion of copyright. Copyright should last at most to the author's death, or to the emancipation of his children. No adult child has any inherent natural right to control his father's published writings, IMHO. The Disney-sponsored extension is just plain flat-out ridiculous. Whom is it protecting? The authors who are dead long before copyright expires? Their children, who are retired at best? No, it protects large Disneyesque media corporations. They don't need protection. This legislation simply ruins it for the rest of us.
There are many more out-of-print books than books in print. I would wager, though, that the last century has seen more books published than all previous centuries put together. Relaxing copyright to a saner system would release many works to the world.
Amen to this! I've been using Gutenberg for years as a source of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, etc., to read on my Palm during train trips, meetings (everyone assumes you're doing something useful--try that with a paperback), and long installations.
Since PG insists on plain ASCII, all you need is a freeware txt-to-Palm converter (MakeDOC) and a freeware text reader (CSpotRun lets you turn the text sideways for easier reading). The reading experience on a sharp LCD screen is much better than on a CRT. I've actually got untouched books on my shelves that I read on my Palm because it was easier.
Thanks to PG, I still spend plenty of time with my old friends from college--the classics. If it weren't for Hart, they would have drifted away like my "real" friends.
I think this article served as a little tidbit into the ideals of project Guttenburg. First off and foremost, there seems to be dispute about the validity of some of the texts, and the amount of errors thererin.
The choice of books to be included in the project is made by the people involved in the project, Hart has no say in this and will do everything within his power to avoid suggesting a book for you to work on, he serves more as an administrator of the whole project, keeping it working and from falling off the ends of the earth.
Secondly, the prospective texts are passed through the hands of multiple editors in an attempt to get rid of the most of these errors. The goal is for the text to be as completely free of errors as possible (I seem to recall a reference to 99.9% free of errors in a few places). However, the amount of errors is again left to the editors and the creators of the text, and not upon Hart himself.
I think the largest issue facing the project, which was not brought up by the article, is the proposed extension of copyrights for 25 more years I beleive it is. If this were the case, then things would not be entering the public domain for a much longer period of time, thus decreasing the amount of material available to the project and preventing some very important works of literature from making their way into the public domain!!!
OK, I think my little idealistic rant is over now...
Its sad the way some people want to stop the flow of information. Its very sad that they were able to buy laws that would allow them to continue. By controlling media for the absurdly long time that is done now (originally, copyrights only lasted 14 years) Big media gets to control not only our there media, but our culture in general. Walt Disney has been dead for decades, and yet his copyrights live on.
Its disgusting not only that this is allowed to happen, but that those that are at its forefront don't even stop to consider the deleterious effects of there actions.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
My writing teacher in High School was so worried about all the worlds books being put on computers. She was worried that it could be locked away from people by one authority. I'm fairly certain that it would happen as she predicts. Gutenburg is a good example of that. Where are entities like the EFF, in Hart's case? While they rally to DeCSS's cause, others like this one go hungry. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying DeCSS is without merit. Literature for the masses though, is a tad more important than DVD.
-Remove the 86 from my email to contact me.-
I remember when I first heard about Project Gutenberg. It was such a great concept. Unfortunately, I've never had the time to do anything really to help out.
I wonder if anyone who's made a lot of money on these tech IPOs would be interested in contributing to helping support the free dissemination of literature.
Many of us sit and rant and rave about copyright and open source, and everything being free, but I think we get too lost in being the tech elite and forget that, well, there's more to technology than just propagating technology. Technology is designed to help people, and perserving and promoting literature is a great way to help people through exposing them to culture.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Thanks to Gutenberg, I'm much better educated, literature-wise, and much more convinced of the future potential of handhelds in spreading information and knowledge cheaply and effectively. -- q
Can we get him for a Slashdot Interview? Project Gutenberg comes up here from time to time. While I don't know whether there is general interest among Slashdot readers, I think Project Gutenberg qualifies as one of the earliest pioneers in free, online distribution.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.