Slashdot Mirror
Public-Domain Bookmobile Hits the Road
At Belle Haven Elementary School in Palo Alto, right about... *now*, the
Internet Archive Bookmobile
is starting its ten-day, cross-country trip to the Supreme Court. They're putting the hammer down
(itinerary)
(blog)
to make it to Ohio for the Bookmobile Conference.
Then they'll drive into Washington, D.C. on Oct. 8, the day before the nine Justices hear the
copyright-extension
case
Eldred v. Ashcroft.
The contraption is a Ford Aerostar with decals, satellite dish, wireless LAN, laptops... and a printer and binder to do on-demand printing of any of the thousands of public domain books on the internet. (The webpage says 20,000 but the decals claim 1,000,000... maybe they have 50 fonts :)
Update: 10/01 01:33 GMT by T : Nick Arnett writes "The piece about Belle Haven School's bookmobile put the school in Palo Alto. It's not; it's across the freeway, in a far less wealthy and privileged neighborhood, where access to technology is much less common than in Palo Alto. (I'm on the board of Plugged In, a community technology center in the same area as Belle Haven.)"
Uh, that is not a picture of me. It is just a picture on my webpage. I am stupid, though.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I hope they watch out... Given their recent problems with Scientology, they should stay away from $cientology's "Gold Base" in Hemet, California. People have a tendency to die in and around it.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
The technology used to print books on demand is going suck for a few generations. Forget about cool hardcover books with nice illustrations. Futhermore, how long am I going to have to wait for my copy to be xeroxed/mimeographed by the grandma at WaldenBooks anyways ? When is the grandma at Waldenbooks ever gonna learn how to run the Acme Book Machine anyways ?? Real publishers have this stuff down. They have been doing it for a long time. I don't want some scrappy tech head to print my book on his pre beta box with a bubble jet. Thats why I go to a book store and buy a real friggin book with glossy pages and nice pictures. If I wanted a purple mimeograph printed diagonally across the page I would go buy some computer hardware. Books are good technology that I use every day. Please don't fuck them up. Thank You.