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Why Project Gutenberg Isn't There Yet
option8 writes "This wired article ('Any Text. Anytime. Anywhere. (Any Volunteers?)'), goes into good detail on why Project Gutenberg, and similar efforts, are far from creating a complete, free electronic library. A quote: "The mechanics of a universal library are simple. The tricky part: harnessing the free labor." Though it doesn't go into technology much, I expect there's a lot of potential in mass OCR tech and good speech recognition (faster to read a book aloud than to transcribe it correctly)."
The mechanics of a universal library are simple. The tricky part: hairdressing the free labor.
Karma: Barber
#3 pencils and quadrille pads.
which will be ready first, Project Gutenberg or Duke Nukem?
Ah, good old Gutenberg, the German man who invented the printing press. I believe he was made Man of the Millenium in 2000. Not bad for a guy whos been dead for a few hundred years. The Library of Congress has a Gutenberg Bible on display (the Bible being, of course, the first book made with a printing press.)
And while we're discussing the speech recognition for books, it wouldn't make sense for poetry, which uses alternate spellings sometimes. It also wouldn't make sense for at least one work that I can think of - Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, which is already up there. When Alice first looks at the poem Jabberwocky, it's backwards. Try saying that backwards faster than you can type it!
Anonymous Coward: (n.) 1. nerd at school or library. 2. karmawhore in training. 3. embarrased prep.
Well, getting the source from the publishers certainly seems like a more feasible solution than copying the text out of books.
Now that I think about it, I imagagine publishers face this very same problem when publishing a new edition of an old work, and I'd wager they have developed a few tricks to make the process easier.
If all else fails, I suggest we direct some time, effort, and old PCs into monastaries. Monks dig that tedious shit, hard style. Only one question remains, though... VI or Emacs?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
No 'project' is going to get Steve Guttenberg back in Police Academy.
It is time to move on...
WARNING: This sig does not contain a joke
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There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Rescuing Steve Gutenberg's career requires more than just planning. hell, a generous donation from bill gates probably couldnt even do it.
Best title for any paper, book or article on the subject: How to wreck a nice beach.
If the manuscript's handwritten, farm it out to a typist.
We used to pay 0.5 yen a letter for English, 1 yen a character for Japanese.
Just reviewed my typing speed, and how much I get for spending an hour writing or debugging code.
Where do I get in?
so, speech recognition works, it just can't recognise much speech.
Just that one feature left to add then.
okay, I can see Geogias and the sophists using perl, but no way Plato would use a Mac. Mac is for artist types like Sophocles and Aeschylus. Plato is like totally *nix because quintessentially he's a Pythagoran, which rules out Microsoft because he has to have access to source and good hex editors, and the Socratic influence would lean towards adoption of Open Source.
So, all we need to do now is get all the great works of literature converted into Mac OS X commands?
Gutenberg has a more difficult challenge than I'd anticipated.
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