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Launching Gutenberg Radio - Public Domain Audiobooks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cliff's-notes dept.

tgbg writes "We are proud to announce the launch of "Gutenberg Radio". On these broadcast channels, you can hear the Gutenberg Library and anything else the Gutenberg family cares to share with its public."

142 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Unfortunately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    They're using Microsoft Sam to read the books.

    1. Re:Unfortunately by Dolphinzilla · · Score: 1, Funny

      Or maybe its Stephen Hawking trying to make a few extra dollars.

    2. Re:Unfortunately by stephanruby · · Score: 1

      Hopefully, this Sam character won't sue Gutenberg for using his voice.

    3. Re:Unfortunately by tgbg · · Score: 5, Informative

      absloutely incorrect. we are using the eloquence engine, and a set of custom software to markup the text for inflection, etc ...

  2. Hmm... by BJH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A truly brilliant idea. Now if only we didn't have to wait indefinitely for copyrighted works from after the 1920s or so to be released into the public domain...

    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or instead of retroactively extending copyright by 10 years every 10 years, Congress could be direct and say "before 1928 it's public domain, after 1928 it's copyrighted". Why 1928? [Congress answering with a straight face]: "Because that's when Mickey Mouse was born".

    2. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are using mp3. Surely this is an opening for vorbis, or better still Ogg Speex which is optimised for encoding speech -- there are plugins for Winamp, DirectShow filters, and a plugin for XMMS too.

    3. Re:Hmm... by GimmeFuel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even more likely, soon Congress will just announce "If you own a company that begins with D and ends in isney, you are hereby granted full license and copyright to every creative work ever made in perpetuity throughout the universe. If you own a non-Disney company, see your local representative for pricing information on Congresswhores of your own. If you a one of those human things, but not a corporation, please remember to vote. Democracy can't work without you."

      --
      live(free) || die;
    4. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      While it would be quite pathetic to admit the true intention behind the seemingly infinite amount of times they will extend copyright(and a big thanks to the Supreme Court for OK'ing it), I almost wish they'd just grant Disney a special exemption on their independently created characters (i.e. no Cinderella, Snow White, etc...) and put the copyright on everything else back to a reasonable amount (life + 50?).

      I think it's a great injustice that there are people who died that quite probably intended their works to be in the Public Domain by now, and we're depriving the citizens of this country (and others) of the multitude of works created in the past 70 years. It's not only disgraceful, it's unconstitutional.

    5. Re:Hmm... by Banjonardo · · Score: 3, Funny
      If you own a company that begins with D and ends in isney

      Immediately after, a bunch of hackers with nothing to do open doobisney, dumbisney, and such companies.

      --

      -----

      Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

    6. Re:Hmm... by ZanshinWedge · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Screw that, they should just get it over with, return the copyright laws to normal and specifically make a law taking Mickey out of the public domain in perpetuity. Yeah, it's stupid and arbitrary, just like the rest of the laws Disney et al get passed, but at least this way the damage is minimized.

    7. Re:Hmm... by sketerpot · · Score: 1

      ...And quickly get sued for trademark infringement. The smart ones, the ones who opened Davidson's Wiggly Whizney, which sounds very little like "Disney", then start trumpeting all over the place that their copyright terms are forever, and pointing out how stupid it is of the legal system to do this. They will be promptly ignored.

  3. Maybe it's just me... by Xacid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone find it weird that they're using Gutenburg in a phrase related to sound, not sight? Gutenburg helped end the need for everything to be said...

    1. Re:Maybe it's just me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Gutenburg helped end the need for everything to be said...

      Writing was invented long before Gutenberg.

    2. Re:Maybe it's just me... by danthedanish · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Writing was invented long before Gutenberg.

      But the printing press without doubt multiplied the availability of written works many times over.

  4. Police Academy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought I could find sound bytes of Police Academy , Short Circuit, or Cocoon on here... where are they? What gives?

  5. Computer Generated Audio Book by zubernerd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to what I read on the linked site, they are using "Test-to-Speech" software. This seems no different than using a text-to-speech agent on your own computer. What is the advantage for recording the text-to-speech? (When I think of audio books, I usually think of a human reader... not a computer - a human tends to be more accurate, esp. with languages like english)

    --
    Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
    1. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by vena · · Score: 1

      What is the advantage for recording the text-to-speech?

      they're not recording anything. they're asking you to install the text-to-speech software on your machine and have your machine read it... a feat which most modern OS's can already do out of the box.

    2. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by JohnFluxx · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know what they are doing, but one example would be for someone to go through the text and add in markers for how the computer should say things (angry, loud, etc), so you get the right inflections and voices etc.

    3. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by gimpboy · · Score: 2, Informative

      they're not recording anything. they're asking you to install the text-to-speech software on your machine and have your machine read it... a feat which most modern OS's can already do out of the box.

      actually they have some available for download:
      http://www.etc-edu.com/modules.php?name =Downloads& d_op=viewdownload&cid=24

      also this bootable disk that reads books is also pretty cool:
      http://www.etc-edu.com/modules.php?name=Dow nloads& d_op=viewdownload&cid=19

      alas, because of the bitchslapping they are currently getting from slashdot, i cannot download anything.

      --
      -- john
    4. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 1

      Hey, that's a good idea! The only problem would be that using a markup language to indicate emotions could introduce subtle changes in the meaning of the text (ie/ bias of the transcriber).

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    5. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by orthogonal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know what they are doing, but one example would be for someone to go through the text and add in markers for how the computer should say things (angry, loud, etc), so you get the right inflections and voices etc.

      If you're willing to do this, why not just read it into a microphone. Yes, Joe Blow isn't going to sound like Larry Olivier, BU TIT... <inflection="emphasis"> MUST BEE </inflection=monotone> BET TER THAN A SYN THE SIZED VOICE.

      Or, better, just convince a starving actor / voice-over announcer that it's a great way to get free exposure in bewtween auditions and that waiter job that pays the rent.

      --
      Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    6. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by Zak3056 · · Score: 1

      Yes, Joe Blow isn't going to sound like Larry Olivier, BU TIT... MUST BEE BET TER THAN A SYN THE SIZED VOICE.

      No joke!

      I tried listening to Dracula, and after about eight seconds, what popped into my head was:

      "VAN HEL SING WALKED UP TO THE VAM PIRE AND SAID "THERE IS A SEVERE THUN DER STORM ALERT FOR THE FOL LOWING COUNTIES...""

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    7. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by Erasmus+Darwin · · Score: 1
      "The only problem would be that using a markup language to indicate emotions could introduce subtle changes in the meaning of the text (ie/ bias of the transcriber)."

      As I see it, there are two possibilites:

      1. Read the work in a clinical, unemotional tone with nothing besides the grammatically appropriate inflection. This would be unbiased, boring, and only marginally more useful than an automated text-to-speech translation.

      2. Treat the audio version of the work as a partially subjective performance. Yes, this introduces outside bias into the mix. However, as long as we don't get rid of the original text and as long as we don't assert that any given performance is the definitive interpration of the work, I don't see the problem.

    8. Re:Computer Generated Audio Book by GrimReality · · Score: 2, Interesting
      When I think of audio books, I usually think of a human reader... not a computer - a human tends to be more accurate, esp. with languages like english

      True. However, have you considered the cost of making audio recordings of books?

      Another interesting note would be that audio books tend to use abridged versions for historical reasons --the size of audio-tape cartridges. This may or maynot be the case now, but even newer recordings seem to be done this way. With automated text-to-speech this problem could be overcome pretty easily, I suppose

      Thank you.
      GrimReality
      2003-04-21 15:04:47 UTC (2003-04-21 11:04:47 EDT)

  6. Review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These are NOT HUMANS reading the Project Gutenberg books to you. This is a COMPUTER generated reading of the books. If you enjoy the soothing voice of Stephen Hawking then you will enjoy listening to Project Gutenberg radio. I could only take about 2 minutes of Tolstoys' "The Cossacks" before I had to shut it off.

    1. Re:Review by rlanctot · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just be glad it wasn't Steve Gutenberg reading it. A friend of mine got ear damage listening to Cuccoon without earmuffs.

  7. in the future... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Gutenberg is a great thing. I hope someday they will catalog todays popular software.

    1. Re:in the future... by DanThe1Man · · Score: 4, Funny

      It will be a little strange hearing an a guy saying "one zero zero one zero..."

  8. That is SOOO Coool. by Yo+Grark · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wait. Who the hell are the Gutenberg family? :P

    Yo Grark
    Canadian Bred with American Buttering

    --
    Canadian Bred with American Buttering
    1. Re:That is SOOO Coool. by tgbg · · Score: 2, Informative
      Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

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  9. Re:Let me get this straight... by darkewolf · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    With the risk of being abused by ACs I'll have to reply to the above comment.

    You complain of everyone here having priorities wrong, with their wheeties, computer games and Gutenburg press stuff. Yet in turn your priority seems to be aimed at wasting your time abusing people.

    Oh well, I guess having books to read easily (even in poorer nations that may have just been in a war) isnt really a useful thing. Kids dont need to read I suppose.

    --
    "That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
    Nimheil
  10. Why not let people download rather than stream? by dethl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some of us don't have the connection to be able to listen to this. I would rather download this into (insert favorite audio codec here).

    --
    "Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
    1. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by Squarewav · · Score: 1

      dont worry couse of /. no one can hear them

    2. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by zapod4 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can download some of them. Dracula is a 350 MB mp3 file. The Time Machine is only 50 megs. (It's short. I remember reading that one in just a few hours)

    3. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful
      zaphod4 says you can, but that really misses the point. If it's just software generated voice, then why in the world download the output for every book, rather than distribute the software and the source file? This would let the user play the audio when they wanted with a far smaller download, and only have to download the source file for the next book, and even let the user use the software on other (non Project G.) files.

      I'm very unimpressed with this, and it seems a real waste of a resource like Project G. If they see that there is a need for public domain audio books (and I certainly expect there is), it would seem extremely straightforward for a group like this to get humans to volunteer to read a public domain audio book and digitize it for an archive. This would yield far better results than a project of such low quality audio and delivered in a bandwidth wasteful way that make it unlikely the current form will be well received.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    4. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by MasterOfMagic · · Score: 1

      If they see that there is a need for public domain audio books (and I certainly expect there is), it would seem extremely straightforward for a group like this to get humans to volunteer to read a public domain audio book and digitize it for an archive.

      If they asked for volunteers for this, I would be the first to step forward.

    5. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by tgbg · · Score: 1

      the books are available for download.

    6. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by RWarrior(fobw) · · Score: 2, Informative
      Audiobooks are not cheap to produce. In a decent quality production, you need a performer with a reasonable voice in a quiet studio reading for hours upon hours on end.

      Many of us are familiar with the works of Robert Jordan. The 9th book in the Wheel of Time series, Winter's Heart, is about 25 hours in length (20 CD's in the unabridged version). A fantastic, first-rate performance.

      To produce that, you had to pay the performer for 3.2 working days, and that's just for the bits you actually use. Let's add in the cost of mixing, second takes, plus the time it takes the performers to prepare for the work. You don't simply hand someone a script and expect them to put on a professional production sight unseen, and given the quality of most audiobook productions (and I've listened to many), I can't believe for a second that there's no prep time paid for.

      I can easily imagine having to pay each of the performers for three or four weeks work to do this one production, and it very well might be longer considering the size of this book.

      You simply can not get the kind of quality that makes for an enjoyable listening experience with a volunteer mom recording WAV files onto her PC with a Compaq built-in-the-monitor microphone.

      If you want good-sounding audio, you're going to have to pay for it.

      --
      Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
    7. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by dvdeug · · Score: 1

      You simply can not get the kind of quality that makes for an enjoyable listening experience with a volunteer mom recording WAV files onto her PC with a Compaq built-in-the-monitor microphone.

      Enjoyable listening experience is subjective. You would certainly get better then running these books through a text-to-sound program. Whether it's good enough or not is up to you. The children of that mom have probably never said "Don't read to us; just put in the CD because it will should better."

    8. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by jabuzz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry but audio books are relatively cheap to produce. First off a full recording studio is massively excessive and totally unnecessary, all you need is a quite room and a quality microphone. You record it directly onto hard disk via a proaudio sound card. Cool Edit 2000, is more than enough to do all the required post production.

      Quite rooms are ten a penny, you just need a house in the countryside. In fact more important than a quite room is a room with good accoustics. Ultimately it does not matter if an airplane goes overhead because you can just record it again. In fact you are going to have to record stuff more than once anyway, due to mistakes, coughs etc.

      The equipment necessary costs only a few thousand dollars at most, is easy to come by and is already owned by thousands of people around the world.

      The only hard bit is finding someone with a good speaking voice. However these are not the reserve of expensive actors.

      The actual manufacture of audio books is dirt cheap, the gross profit margins are obscene.

    9. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I can't imagine that audio books are that costly to produce. Sound proof rooms are easy to build or find and the equipment necessary to record good quality spoken word should be readily available on most decent fidelity sound cards. At most, i would be a few hundred to maybe a few thousand dollars to create a decent recording studio for spoken word.

      I would also think that recording books would be a great project for a university communications or broadcast journalism department that could possibly use campus radio station equipment, etc. We get good quality audio books while they get to practice their reading and speaking. It would be nice to see some universities stepping up to help with such a worthwhile endeavor.

    10. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by moncyb · · Score: 1

      To produce that, you had to pay the performer for 3.2 working days,

      I don't think you understand non-profits volunteering.

      Also, you don't need actors and perfect sound fit for an audiophile. This is just an audio book, not a dramatic representation. 8kHz mono read by some stupid bloke is just fine. It would be far better than low grade computer generated speech which is barely understandable.

    11. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by tgbg · · Score: 1

      exactly how do you know human readers are easy to come by - are you stepping up to plate. the only value in wearing your ass for a hat is it'll keep you from catching cold, but it won't do much for your breath :-)

    12. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by frovingslosh · · Score: 1
      Audiobooks are not cheap to produce. In a decent quality production, you need...

      Compaired to a text-to-speech system, the project could certainly get people to produce far better sounding books.

      You simply can not get the kind of quality that makes for an enjoyable listening experience with a volunteer mom recording WAV files onto her PC with a Compaq built-in-the-monitor microphone.

      If you want good-sounding audio, you're going to have to pay for it.

      This strikes me as the same mentatlty that claims that to get good software you have to give Bill Gates money, and then you have to buy all the updates to get it fixed. Just as there is good serious software available (granted, along with some very poor stuff), there is no reason at all that a good quality audio book project couldn't take off. Overall I would think it would take less effort than this software intensive approach, particularly if the original texts have to be extensively "hinted" to support it. And there are certainly people out there with good voices who would be willing to contribute them to the project whitout that 3.2 days of pay (just as there are programmers who work but also contribute to open source projects). The incentives for the individual to do this are many; to support Project G, to support the blind who might take advantage of it, or maybe even for a little exposure so they might get other voice work. The incentive for Project G. is obvious: If they are going to download MP3 files of public domain books anyway, they might as well be human voiced books that people can enjoy, not Dr. Kula books that show how far text-to-speech software has to go.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    13. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by bfish · · Score: 1

      I think it would be great for other people to read existing PG works. The only thing stopping you is your own microphone! Download the work of your choice from www.gutenberg.net and get rolling!

    14. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by dvdeug · · Score: 1

      If they asked for volunteers for this, I would be the first to step forward.

      Why wait? Project Gutenberg already stores copies of computer-read books; if you want to read one of thier books into the computer, do it and send them a copy. (You might want to email Jim Tinsley or gutvol-d first, but don't wait for someone to ask you to volunteer.)

    15. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by tgbg · · Score: 1

      ok, i want you to read a book from the gutenberg collection and send it to me. e-mail me at meschman@etc-edu.com

    16. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by tgbg · · Score: 1
      nationally, reader rates are $25 a page.
      the time machine took me 42 minutes to produce.

      do the math.

  11. Gutenberg Video by Gefiltefish · · Score: 4, Funny


    This is exciting. I just can't wait for Gutenberg video to come out. My votes for priority works to be put into public domain video include: Lady Chatterly's Lover and for the more perverse slashdotters out there, Lolita.

    The classics will really come alive!

  12. An idea long overdue by ksdd · · Score: 2, Funny

    Man, I hope they do justice to Police Academy, Short Circuit, Cocoon, and Three Men and a Baby. I think those Gutenberg classics will be fabulous as audiobooks.

  13. The beginning by jesterzog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who's Online There are currently, 841 guest(s) and 1 member(s) that are online.

    (And rising every second.) I guess slashdot hasn't quite kicked into top gear yet, then. :)

    1. Re:The beginning by dalutong · · Score: 1

      I think there's something wrong. I'm number 403...

      Maybe this is the dot-slash effect...

      --

      What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    2. Re:The beginning by AyeRoxor! · · Score: 1

      "Forbidden
      You don't have permission to access / on this server."

      I'm guessing it's SDE.

      Tragic affliction of innocent servers...
      *sniff*

  14. What about the Chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Chinese used the print for thousands of years, long before Gutenberg.

    Actually, Gutenberg did not invent the printing, but the mobile printing.The Chinese language has thousands and thousands of ideograms and under these circumstances mobile printing is not a practical solution anyway; plate printing is easier to use. If it was useful for them The Chinese would have invented it.

    1. Re:What about the Chinese? by Galvatron · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The chinese DID invent it, they just abandoned it, because as you say, it's not worth the effort. However, I believe that Gutenberg invented his press without ever learning about the Chinese version, and therefore deserves full credit for the invention. The Chinese also deserve credit for having invented a movable type printing press, but deserve derision for sticking with an unbelievably inefficient alphabet, which prevented them from progressing past medieval levels of development for over a thousand years.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    2. Re:What about the Chinese? by ruck · · Score: 1

      If by "mobile printing" you mean moveable type, that's not right either. Moveable type (of terra cotta) was in use in China by the 11th century. It is true, though, that block printing was far more prevelant, for the reason you mention as well as others (the possibility of multiple printing runs, for example).

      This isn't to say that Gutenberg's invention wasn't historically important. It's just that, strictly speaking, he didn't invent printing anymore than Columbus "discovered" America.

    3. Re:What about the Chinese? by dalutong · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.

      An "inefficient" "alphabet" can not stunt a society's growth. This cast is most easily proven by China's current development. They are using Chinese ideograms, are developing rapidly, are developing cutting edge ideas, and have good literacy rates.

      Historically speaking the slow down of development can most easily be tied to politics, Confucianism, and society. You have to remember -- in 1300 they had 1000 foot-long boats and may have even curcumnavigated the globe (it seems Zhenghe was a pretty amazing guy.)

      So don't blame a language for limiting a people's potential. We, as global citizens, could be eons ahead of where we are now if we could erase history and social stigma (and preference) in an exact way. In 1000 years someone will make a comment about why we didn't. It will be clear then, as it is now, what we are/did wrong. The Chinese of 1300, for whatever reasons, decided that they didn't need to keep going forward in the sciences, so they didn't. I wish they hadn't, but they did.

      --

      What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    4. Re:What about the Chinese? by Galvatron · · Score: 4, Funny
      I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.
      ...
      The Chinese of 1300, for whatever reasons, decided that they didn't need to keep going forward in the sciences, so they didn't.

      Though I am neither a linguist or a historian, I have heard that explanation. I don't buy it. Frankly, putting on academic airs, and then declaring that the "real" reason China isn't as advanced as Europe is that "they" decided not to be, whoever "they" might be, is pretty pathetic. How do people just decide not to go forward in science? By not spreading knowledge! The movable type printing press was a tremendously powerful tool for spreading learning in Europe. One can argue about the precise magnitude of the impact, but I personally believe that at the very least, the printing press made it nearly impossible to stop scientific progress. By providing a tool to widely disseminate learning, advances were spread across the continent that might otherwise have languished in obscurity.

      Just because technology is now advanced enough to accomodate a language with thousands of distinct symbols doesn't mean that it didn't hold them back at the time. Just because the Chinese can build on the European advances of the industrial revolution doesn't mean that the Chinese were capable of advancing to the point of having their own industrial revolution without outside aid.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    5. Re:What about the Chinese? by dvdeug · · Score: 2, Funny

      I have heard that explanation. I don't buy it. Frankly, putting on academic airs, and then declaring that the "real" reason China isn't as advanced as Europe is that "they" decided not to be

      What happened to Greece? They were the most cultured country in the western world, the envy of every country around them. Alexander the Great conquered Afganistan, Egypt and everything in between, and installed, not his birth culture, but that of the Greeks. And then they stopped growing, and became just another appendage to various empires for the next couple thousand years.

      What about Germany? In 1900, Germany was the center of the mathematical world, holding a crown that Greece made for herself so long ago. Between then and now, this crown, as well as several other scientific ones left Germany and headed for America's shores. Why? There's certainly no technical reason why; the reasons are all cultural.

    6. Re:What about the Chinese? by Galvatron · · Score: 2, Insightful
      What happened to Greece?

      Over expansion and a power void left by Alexander. After Alexander died, his followers fought vicious civil wars, totally destroying whatever cuture was built up. Macedonian men divorced their foreign wives, and decided that rather than having an integrated nation, they'd prefer to be emperors. Any hope for a long term stable nation was dashed. Feeding into my earlier point, much of the Greek learning was known only to a few academics, and so was lost for centuries, until the printing press enabled (translated) Greek works to be widely distributed.

      What about Germany?

      Well, when WWI broke out, Germany was stuck with the weakest ally among the major European powers: Austria-Hungary. Given its situation, Germany did about as well as could be imagined in a war of attrition fought against the combined might of the UK, France, and either Russia or the USA (first the former, then the latter). After that, France demanded that Germany be punished severely, so the Weimar Republic was saddled with enormous debts. Hitler was able to use people's resentment at the situation to rise to power, and hence began WWII. This was, perhaps, even more costly than the first war. After such devastation, it's not surprising that Germany lost its edge. However, note that in contrast to the pre-printing press era, none of Germany's advancements were lost, and indeed Germany has rebounded nicely, and is currently one of the major European powers.

      All of this is fairly tangential to the point I'm really trying to make. Empires and nations may come and go, but there is one constant. No region in the world showed consistent, steady technological advances until Europe got the movable type printing press. Previously, one dynasty might be more or less advanced than the previous one, and very little learning was retained from one century to the next. After the introduction of Gutenberg's press began a period of technological and scientific innovation such as the world had never seen before, and which has not yet abated. China, though in possesion of the exact same technology, was not able to exploit the power of printed text until Europe broght the industrial revolution to Asia.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    7. Re:What about the Chinese? by parking_god · · Score: 1

      I'm neither a linguist nor a historian, but I recently read (well, listened to as an audiobook--maybe that'll keep the OT moderations to a minimum) Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the reason he gives for China's sudden halt in technological progression is political infighting; specifically, one faction of the court was well known for their support of exploration and 'treasure fleets' - monstrous collections of ships that dwarfed anything the Euros were putting together about the same time. A rival faction gained control of the court, and, wanting to punish their opponents, the first thing they did was recall the treasure fleets and destroy them. The second thing they did was dismantle the shipyards. There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I've gone too far OT as it is.

      --
      Brandishing Dangerous Logic
    8. Re:What about the Chinese? by dalutong · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you remember correctly, Western civilization has had its eras of non-development. The "dark ages," for instance. Also, when the Romans started to be dominant they stopped developing as much. That lasted longer than the Chinese dark ages (which, at most, could be from 13-something to 17 or 18-something.) But Latin has always had an alphabet! Why did Europe stop thinking for almost 1000 years? Because they chose not to! Religion and Feudalism, among other things, created a general disinterest in promoting science.

      The fact of the matter is that societies rise and fall. They grow, stop developing as quickly, feel they "know enough" and then have some outside force make them fall.

      Even now we can see this effect. The Cold War is over, information is spread more quickly than ever, but you don't see people trying to get commercial space flight or moon resorts up and running. Those who have the money don't care, those who do care don't have the money. Information won't make it magically happen.

      That was China in 1300. I have studied China my whole life. I believe what I believe because I know who Chinese society works, speak, read and write Chinese, and have seen students in the country, with no books, learn advanced algebra off of a chalk-board -- because they were inclined to do so. Had they thought farming was enough and that the government would take care of them, no amount of reading would have gotten them off their asses to do work.

      Look at America! Are people are some of the least education in the modern world. People laugh at how simple our education is. How is that possible if we have the largest free library system in the world? Because we don't care to learn.

      --

      What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    9. Re:What about the Chinese? by Froomb · · Score: 1

      Actually, it was the Koreans who invented moveable metal printing.

      Like the Chinese, they used xylography (wood-block printing), acquiring the technology about a century after the Chinese developed it around the 6th century. The oldest survivng example of printing comes from Puguk Temple in Korea, thought to have been made about 750 A.D.

      Chinese inventors such as Bi Sheng experimented with various kinds of moveable type using wood and porcelain during the northern Song period (11th century), but it was the Koryo dynasty Koreans who first used metal, in the 13th century. By the early 15th century it had become routinely used for state publications and many printed words from the period surive.

      This was not a trivial technology, given the large number of individual characters and duplicates that needed to be forged. The famed kabin font of 1434 crafted under King Sejong had 250,000 separate characters!

      For various reasons that have to do with both Euro- and Sino-centrism, the Korean contribution to printing is largely unknown and unappreciated.

    10. Re:What about the Chinese? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.

      An "inefficient" "alphabet" can not stunt a society's growth. This cast is most easily proven by China's current development. They are using Chinese ideograms, are developing rapidly, are developing cutting edge ideas, and have good literacy rates.

      Sorry, you may know China, but you clearly shouldn't be making blanket statements like this without broadening your knowledge.

      Case in point, take Ottoman Turkey. Ottoman turkish (and the other variants, Chaghatai, etc) had been written in slightly modified Arabic script for about 800-900 years around 1900 (there had been a so called "Runic" Uyghur script before that point). Literacy was terribly low in Ottoman Turkey, and the alphabet did a HORRIBLE job of fitting the language, and was hard to learn (literacy rates in almost EVERY country today that uses the Arabic script are far below standard). When in the 1920's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk switched the country's alphabet (well it wasn't just him, but he was the prime reshaper of Turkey) literacy rates almost IMMEDIATELY sky rocketed. The time needed to become literate with a Latin alphabet versus an Arabic one is much less. Today Turkish literacy is in the high 80%'s -- not great, but better than most.

      So I ABSOLUTELY must disagree with you that some alphabets can't hinder progress. I'm also TOTALLY disregarding the case of reading Arabic on a computer terminal which almost always is butt ugly and very hard to read.

      I forget the name of the theory, but there's a theory that one of the reasons that Indo-Europeans languages did so very well (they spread from Portugal to India! Compared to say the Sino languages which are spoken by many only because of the fact that their area is massively populated--they didn't really spread) was because they were good at passing on information without becoming garbled. Anyway, don't know if I buy that, but it's undoubted that some languages spread more than others, and I simply can't agree that some languages aren't BETTER than others.

    11. Re:What about the Chinese? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      Look at America! Are people are some of the least education in the modern world. People laugh at how simple our education is. How is that possible if we have the largest free library system in the world? Because we don't care to learn.

      I beg to differ. While there are certainly terrible aspects to the American education system, we also have the BEST in the world. Why do you think people from all around the world come here to study? While in lower levels, there is no doubting that many are left behind, and many ARE ignorant, we also produce the absolute best in education.

      See recent efforts by for instance Japanese to kick start their own education systems with American techniques. I really take issue with your statements again.

    12. Re:What about the Chinese? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      For various reasons that have to do with both Euro- and Sino-centrism, the Korean contribution to printing is largely unknown and unappreciated.

      I think the reason for this is that it didn't go anywhere. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Gutenberg's press lead directly to the printing revolution that is still running rampant in the world today. What did the Korean press lead to? nothing..

      There's not even any evidence that Gutenberg had even heard of Chinese printing presses, and his press differs signifigantly from Eastern presses.

      Incidentally, europeans used xylography too in the early middle ages, probably transmitted from the east, though I'm not sure.

    13. Re:What about the Chinese? by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      I believe that Gutenberg invented his press without ever learning about the Chinese version, and therefore deserves full credit for the invention.

      Generally, independent reinvention is credited only when it occurs at roughly the same period in time.

      The Chinese [...] deserve derision for sticking with an unbelievably inefficient alphabet, which prevented them from progressing past medieval levels of development for over a thousand years.

      First of all, there is no alphabet. Chinese words are not spelled using a finite set of symbols arranged in one dimensional order.

      Secondly, I think many other factors contribute more than the limitations of the language. Let me cite a few:

      • Questioning is generally associated with challenge and hostility, and is frowned upon. Scientific development requires questioning.
      • Aside from a few exceptions, Chinese political leaders are generally satisfied with obedient neighbors, and are not territorially expansive. This limits their contact with the outside world, and decreases the need for military technology.
      • The Chinese are arrogant about their place in the world, and are often in denial* about the abilities of other powers.
      • The civil service examinations emphasize the study of classics and "high" arts, and so the acceptance of technocrats into civil service is usually accidental. The lack of a technocrat government means that scientific development is neglected.
      • China stayed a (real) monarchy until early in the 20th century. The Chinese monarchies are not exceptions in their neglect of peasants, and how technology could uplift their lives.
      Chinese is a dominant language in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. How is it impeding scientific progress there? You might also be aware of China's own technological progress over the last few decades.

      * For example, Western missionaries introduced calculus and cannons to China early in the Qing Dynasty (about 400 years ago), yet this did not really stir the rulers into something akin to the Meiji Reforms in Japan. A couple of hundred years later (plenty of time to catch up), Qing would be punished by repeated invasions from various Western powers, and still be foolish enough to believe that some fanatics had magic to be invulnerable to Western bullets.

    14. Re:What about the Chinese? by joshmccormack · · Score: 1

      Actually, it was the Korean who invented moveable type before Guttenberg did, not the Chinese.

      http://www.korea-np.co.jp/pk/070th_issue/9811180 5. htm

    15. Re:What about the Chinese? by GlassHeart · · Score: 1
      China, though in possesion of the exact same technology, was not able to exploit the power of printed text until Europe broght the industrial revolution to Asia.

      I think it's more likely that the powers that be chose not to. The power of language is well understood and tightly controlled by each Dynasty. Political commentaries are basically unheard of, except when written by appointed observers directly to the Emperor. Even then, there was some chance of losing your head if your criticisms struck a nerve.

      Early in the Qing Dynasty, Western missionaries competed with native astronomers in computing a new calendar. This is important, because Emperors ("Son of Heaven") derive some of their power from accurately predicting climate and cosmic events. Because the missionaries knew calculus, they won the contest and were appointed positions in government. Other missionaries brought innovations like cannons. None of these alerted the Dynasty enough to make fundamental reforms to catch up, and a couple of hundred years later China would be repeated humiliated, losing wars to just about every other Western power, including Japan.

      Japan, on the other hand, got a rude shock when Americans arrived. They instituted a set of reforms under the Emperor Meiji, and leapfrogged China. The Japanese do have an alphabet, but they also use thousands of ideograms to this day. The language did not seem to impede their development that much, once they gathered the political will to do it.

    16. Re:What about the Chinese? by dalutong · · Score: 1

      You are right -- I was not clear. I was referring to lower education. Primary-high school.

      --

      What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    17. Re:What about the Chinese? by Gutzalpus · · Score: 1

      Look at America! Are people are some of the least education in the modern world. People laugh at how simple our education is. How is that possible if we have the largest free library system in the world? Because we don't care to learn.

      You've proven your own point quite well here. "Are people are..."

    18. Re:What about the Chinese? by versimilidude · · Score: 1

      The Romans didn't "decide" to stop growing culturally. They got to a point where the government stiffled any initiative in the population. Only the rich were allowed to get rich. In the era of the Republic and the early Ceasars there were many stories of self made men who ascended to wealth and then political power. Under the later emporers confuscation of profits, inability to initiate new businesses, a corrupt court system, etc. became the rule. Then the barbarian migrations began and trade was essentially impossible. With no trade there was no reason to develop anything except new weapon systems (castles and armor).

    19. Re:What about the Chinese? by dalutong · · Score: 1

      Exactly! It had nothing to do with the writing system, it had to do with the current society!

      I'm glad someone is on my team. :)

      --

      What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
    20. Re:What about the Chinese? by Froomb · · Score: 1

      I think the reason for this is that it didn't go anywhere. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Gutenberg's press lead directly to the printing revolution that is still running rampant in the world today. What did the Korean press lead to? nothing..

      "The printing revolution" began in East Asia and made books widely available to a wide segment of the population at a time when Europeans were still relying on hand-copying. To insist otherwise is to deny the existence of the vast treasure-trove of printed works in China, Korea, and Japan over the past millenium.

      Xylography is a cost-effective way to print texts using Chinese characters; moveable type is not, given the formidable number of individual characters that need to be forged. Unlike in Europe, only the state had the resources necessary to create and maintain a moveable type printing press. The Chinese likely felt no economic or cultural need for it, but the Koreans did, for reasons that are debated but I believe stemmed from the political situtation in the 14th and 15th centuries.

      With Ming dynasty (from 1368) China had shut its border to foreign states such as the Koreans, and it was becoming more and more difficult to obtain the quanity of books desired by the reading public. The government printing office, through use of moveable type, was able to reprint in a nimble fashion copies of imported works together with texts the state wanted to promulgate. Over the five centuries of the Choson dynasty the printing press contributed greatly to the cultural sophistication of Koreans and helped make up for the isolation imposed on it by China.

      You don't have to be Korean or Chinese (I am neither) to appreciate the genius of Korean printing, a tradition now transmuted into widespead use of the web in South Korea.

    21. Re:What about the Chinese? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      Sorry if you got the wrong impression, I'm not attempting to "deny" any history or what not. It's definite that the Eastern civilizations had some form of press before it existed in Europe.

      BUT, I would VERY strongly disagree with a couple of your comments.

      1) No, the printing revolution did NOT start the East. The printing evolution may have started in the East, but there is no question that in Europe the press was perfected and then spread to the rest of the world. When the Japanese started printing in the early Meiji era, did they borrow from their neighbors or from Europe? Likewise, the entire rest of the world--Europe or Eastern? And I would also strongly disagree that printing was a direct succession from East->Europe. Everything I've read about the presses lead me to believe that Guteberg's press was an entirely independent invention that shares little in common with Eastern presses.

      2) About printing being available to a "wide segment" of the population versus in Europe. One of the theories about why the printing press did so well in Europe is because literacy was (comparatively) VERY high. There are estimates that 16th century literacy in Europe is higher than much of the world today (or at least compared to say, South Asia [which admittedly is low]). If you track the spread of the printing press in Europe, from Germany it spread to Granada in the West and Hungary in the East in under thirty years. We have very good records for how many presses opened where, in what cities, what years etc, and the rate of spread is phenomenal.

      Incidentally, a little off topic, but the first press in Istanbul was founded in 1496 by a family of Jews from Andalusia fleeing the reconquista. The Ottomans wouldn't open an official printing press until ~1730, and it lasted for only about 5 years before fizzling. It was really 19th century that they got a printing press going. Sorry, I just think that's interesting :)

      Let me just say again, I'm not attempting to deny the processes that the Eastern civilizations used, nor that they definitely had a press in the Korean case. But I simply don't think you can say that the printing revolution is a product of the Eastern world.

      thanks

    22. Re:What about the Chinese? by Froomb · · Score: 1

      Your view well reflects a European understanding of of the history of printing, including placing Europe in the center, but I do not believe it can sustain close examination.

      Books and a wide variety of printed matter were broadly available throughout most of China, Korea, and (yes) Japan from the Sung period (i.e. late 10th century) on. Just check the catalog of any major library of East Asian materials.

      Western printing technology was eagerly adopted by East Asians in the 19th century, along with new techniques of paper production, because it was far more efficient, having developed rapidly after the industrial revolution. Similiarly the www (a European/US) innovation was quickly taken up over the past decade by all the countries around East Asia. Gutenberg may or may not have independently developed his printing press, and printing did change European history, but that doesn't mean that in a very different part of the world printing hadn't develped earlier or been less transformative.

    23. Re:What about the Chinese? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

      I guess at our core we will just agree to disagree then. Thank you much for the interesting conversation, you've given me some interesting facts and perspectives.

    24. Re:What about the Chinese? by hard2starboard · · Score: 1

      I see that you are no naval architect, but I am. The longest ship ever built during the reign of Zheng He was 440 feet. In comparison, the ships sailed by Columbus were around 85 feet. 440 feet was huge at the time, but no even close to 1000.

  15. Gutenberg Video is already here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    They have lots of public domain movies (anti-communist propaganda from the fifties, old commercials, some documentaties, for example about WWII, etc.)

    They started three or four years ago by posting LARGE mpeg2 files (500-700MB); in the meantime they switched to divx and xvid.

    1. Re:Gutenberg Video is already here by Tarrek · · Score: 1

      Where are these available?

  16. You're just not thinking about it the right way. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The printing press was a the first effective tool for broadcasting information to a large population. Gutenberg did not invent writing, he invented a way of mass copying written language. Considering it that way, audio broadcasting fits right in.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  17. BitTorrents? by NotTheAntiChrist · · Score: 1

    How about Torrent's for those mp3s of Dracula and the Time Machine? If BitTorrent really wants to gain legitimacy it would do well to become regular practice for free content providers such as this to use it.

    1. Re:BitTorrents? by zogger · · Score: 1

      --exactly what I ws thinking. Great stuff to get that tech more widely used, that and the text editions.

  18. A great gift for blind people by elpapacito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagine being blind and being able to access (maybe in a not far away future)
    the entire Gutenberg ebook library by internet. No need to read the whole book
    with some kind of Braille device, no need to -own- a text-2-speech program
    and, maybe, no need to own a computer if the stream is broadcasted with some other equipement.

    Blind people will -love- this and I can't but be happy for them.

    1. Re:A great gift for blind people by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't a blind person already have a text-2-speech program to access the Internet and in turn use that to read the texts anyway?

      A better use would be to automagically convert the text to [insert favourite format] so you could play it with your portable audio player? I listened to the LOTR and the Hobbit over several months in my MP3 player.

      Course, these books would all sound like they were being read by Stephen Hawking, which would be wierd if we weren't listening to A Brief History of Time (which isn't public domain, afaik :).

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    2. Re:A great gift for blind people by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 1
      no need to own a computer if the stream is broadcasted with some other equipement.
      Oops, missed that part when I thought out my reply. I still stand with by comments though, even if they don't quite address your entire point. :)
      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    3. Re:A great gift for blind people by gmhowell · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ditto, but in our house, it's a bit of envy. To paraphrase my wife: ahh, to only be [blind|deaf].

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    4. Re:A great gift for blind people by tgbg · · Score: 1

      you haven't listened to even a single chapter and are completely unaware of the issues of the blind, but enjoy the sound of your voice.

    5. Re:A great gift for blind people by akhaksho · · Score: 1

      Do you mean to say that someone in your house is blind & deaf? How do you communicate? Just curious...

    6. Re:A great gift for blind people by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      My wife is deaf blind. Currently, I write each letter on her forehead (using a finger, not a pen). Ideally, I/we will learn hand signing. Very similar to ASL, but done in a manner that the deaf-blind person can feel the signs instead of see them.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    7. Re:A great gift for blind people by akhaksho · · Score: 1

      Are there any high tech things that are used to communicate with the deaf blind? Writing on the forehead is pretty low bandwidth. :)

    8. Re:A great gift for blind people by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      My old .sig was a search for such things. There are some things available. My old journal articles are the best place to look for such things.

      One of the more interesting tools (and one which we will soon get, hopefully) is a braille display. Search for 'brl-tty' for the Linux drivers. It's a keyboard (with braille on it:) and a row of ~80 'characters'. Each character has six bumps (or eight, depending on the type of Braille you use) and a solenoid for each bump. When you get stuff over the line (typically a serial line, I believe) it is converted to the appropriate braille characters. That probably doesn't make a great deal of sense. Sorry.

      There are also Braille TDD's. Same deal as above, but hooks up to a phone line. For some reason, these are cheaper than the above. Hmm, that gives me an idea or three...

      The other nifty bit of tech is about the size of a TI-89. There are six display cells (IOW it shows 6 Braille characters at a time) and a rocker switch. Use the rocker to scroll through the text. The device has a good sized memory chip, and you can load straight ASCII files into it. So I've been going to various book warez sites for when we inevitably get one of these. (Why warez? Straight eBooks of any flavor don't cut it, and very, VERY few books are printed in Braille.)

      Text to speech is a curious thing. The brain processes speech different than it does text. Some in the Braille using community have done studies showing entirely different comprehension. The meme they are trying to put forth is that 'text to speech is killing literacy and literature in the blind community'. And, as my wife exemplifies, going in that direction is leaving behind some folks.

      Anyway, having a deaf-blind wife, I could go on on this topic (and similar) forever. Just tell me when to stop.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
  19. MC Hawking by meta.chris · · Score: 1

    Listening to these books is somewhat reminiscent of the fine works of MC Hawking. Dig.

    Seriously.... I understand the potential that such a project can reach. However, I'm curious what will lie in the future of public domain books, and having human read audio freely available.

  20. are you sure you cannot download the player? by gimpboy · · Score: 2, Informative

    from this link, it seems you can download a bootable cd with the player and a hundred or so books. then you can boot the disc and play the books:

    bootable cd

    i wouldnt be surprised if you looked around and found a link to the player. alas the site is now dead. check back in a day or so though and i bet you'll find it.

    --
    -- john
    1. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      download a bootable cd with the player and a hundred or so books

      Your link is broken so I can't verify, but chances are the CD just contains the aforementioned mp3s and an mp3 playing program.

      What the parent post wanted was the software used to do the text-to-speech conversion.

      If this software were on the CD, they could have fit thousands or tens of thousands of works on the CD. Talking pretty quickly you can say about 4 syllables a second. If each syllable were 4 letters long, that is 32 bits per second (with no compression - for long books you can probably compress that down to probably less than 8 bits/second). Data rates for MP3s are typically mesaured in kilobits per second. Suppose you recorded at 8 kbps - which is probably sub-optimal even for speech (music is normally recorded at 128 kbps or better). You can fit 1000x more text in the same space that would hold the same text spoken. And you wouldn't have any audio compression losses at all (of course, you still are dealing with an annoying computer-generated voice, but we are comparing apples to apples here). Also, with the software and the text itself you could probably tweak the reading rate, pitch, etc to suit your taste rather than depend on what recorder wanted. They could supply recommended parameters for each work - it would only use a couple of bytes per work.

    2. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by gimpboy · · Score: 1

      the link died after the slashdotting, but you can still get to it through the google cache. i really dont think it contains over 100 books in mp3 format. if you look at the books they have for download (farther down on the page), most are well over 100 megs each.

      from this page, it looks like they are using viavoice and emacspeak to generate the audio. i think it does all the conversion on the fly with viavoice and that is why it needs 128 meg ram disk. it ouputs in txt, jpeg, tiff braille as well.

      --
      -- john
    3. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by tgbg · · Score: 1
      you are absloutely wrong. you can not fit thousands of books.

      the cd contains a complete linux distribution so it can boot from the cd, the TTS software and 138 books.

      it is not copy protected.

      it is copyrighted to prevent resale.

      it has NO mp3s at all.

    4. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by tgbg · · Score: 1

      correct - but we had to get off viavoice because it is no longer available on linux. the engine viavoice uses is eloquence and was written in the 70s. it is great because it allows in-line markups in the text to control parsody. cutrrently speechworks owns the rights to the eloquence engine.

    5. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      I won't debate your assertions about the contents of the CD, but I'm not sure that you can say "you are absloutely wrong. you can not fit thousands of books".

      The number of books you can fit on the CD is limited purely by the size of a book. Assuming the software takes 50MB (which is a high estimate - assuming they were even remotely efficient with the linux distro) that leaves 600MB for books. Alice and Wonderland from project gutenburg weighs in at 62kB compressed. The King James bible weighs in at 1.5MB - and that is quite long. Depending on the length of the books involved you can easily fit over 100 on a CD, and could fit 1000 assuming they were under 60KB in average length - which is Alice in Wonderland.

    6. Re:are you sure you cannot download the player? by tgbg · · Score: 1

      i'm just telling you what i put on the cd. it is only filled to 487 meg or so.

  21. Emoticons by yintercept · · Score: 1
    someone to go through the text and add in markers for how the computer should say things (angry, loud, etc),

    It is a shame that, in all his inventing, Guttenburg didn't take time to invent the humble emoticon. :-(

  22. Actually, you CAN hear Stephen Hawking. by Polyphemis · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually, funny you should bring that up at all. Yesterday, I was in Barnes and Noble and came across one of Stephen Hawking's audio books on CD, and it's HIM reading it using his voice synthesizer, for the whole damned book.

    This is the one I saw, I believe.

    1. Re:Actually, you CAN hear Stephen Hawking. by orthogonal · · Score: 1

      Actually, funny you should bring that up at all. Yesterday, I was in Barnes and Noble and came across one of Stephen Hawking's audio books on CD, and it's HIM reading it using his voice synthesizer, for the whole damned book.

      You really think a world-class physicist sat there and transcribed his book through his synthesizer? Yeah, I'm sure Hawking's got a lot of time on his hands. And it's so weasy to read your book and poke at the keys of your synthesizer with a pen held in your mouth.

      More likely, he can feed teh synthesizer and arbitrary text he wants, along the lines of:
      cat mybook.full.txt | synthesizer | /dev/audio.in

      --
      Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    2. Re:Actually, you CAN hear Stephen Hawking. by Polyphemis · · Score: 1

      I said that based on what I read on the Amazon page and on the back of the box. I don't know how he did it specifically, I was simply going by what the information on the audio book said. Here's a quote from the page I linked in my original post:

      Physicist Stephen Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The condition has progressed to the point where he can no longer speak for himself. Hawking, therefore, uses a voice synthesizer to deliver this series of popular lectures on black holes, current physics theories, and the nature of time and space. The synthesizer paces sentences oddly and slurs an occasional word; Hawking jokes about being unable to get rid of its American accent. However, listeners will soon adapt to the oddities of delivery, and once they do, will find themselves inspired by the sweep and clarity of Hawking's mind, and by his warmth and bravery. G.T.B. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine--

    3. Re:Actually, you CAN hear Stephen Hawking. by fgb · · Score: 1

      I listened to that too. Although his next audiobook (The Universe in a Nutshell) was read by a professional voice actor. It was much easier to listen to.

  23. Commercial vs. free voices by gad_zuki! · · Score: 1

    Here's the advantage: I can't afford AT&T's excellent Natural Voices and other commercial offerings that make the standard free stuff that comes with your OS sound like crap. Its not just aesthetics, the free voices are simply difficult to understand most of the time. Download Coolspeech(share) or Readplease(free) and find out for yourself. Yuck.

    Considering the link has been slashdotted already, I can't listen to tell you what kind of voice they're using, but if its a good commercial voice then more power to them. If its just Microsoft Mary, or whomever, then you're right its a waste of effort and bandwidth.

    1. Re:Commercial vs. free voices by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm of the opinion that if the voice doesn't sound British, they're wasting everyone's time. All audio books should be read by British people. It's probably some crappy free robotic sounding voice.

      Hey, what would a british robot sound like?

      [British]Crush! Kill! Destroy! Pip pip![/British]

      (Incidently, I'm not British, but I work with one and somehow it's rubbing off on me. I actually said "bloody" the other day. Being Canadian, this could get downright messy. "This poutine bloody sucks, eh?" *shudder*)

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    2. Re:Commercial vs. free voices by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Just find me an english speaker who can properly say "poutine". Heck, I'm french and I don't even know how it should be accented in english.. Should I retain the frency intonation, or should it be anglicized "pooh-teen" ?

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    3. Re:Commercial vs. free voices by tgbg · · Score: 2, Informative

      it's the eloquence engine with a custom front end to mark-up the text for inflection and other parsody factors. the front end went thru 37 releases over a year of testing. we are working with a speech therapist and hope to achieve an "ideal" result by end of summer.

    4. Re:Commercial vs. free voices by GrimReality · · Score: 1
      I'm of the opinion that if the voice doesn't sound British, they're wasting everyone's time.

      I am going to use my favourite excuse here --historical reasons.

      There are some things that gets the 'cool' label and are stuck with it --for good or bad. Consider this as a form of stereotype.

      This is probably the same reason why activity X is considered 'extra cool' if done by a person of Y descent.

      Just to clarify any doubts, I am not against using British/Irish voices for English audio books. In fact, I think they are pretty cool, especially if it is a comedy; here I go again, stereotyping people, I should better remove the log from my eye before trying remove the speck from others'. :-)

      Ideally, I suppose, books by authors from region X should be read by someone with an X-type accent; to sound authentic :-)

      GrimReality
      2003-04-21 15:14:58 UTC (2003-04-21 11:14:58 EDT)

  24. Not Quite Like Radio by looie · · Score: 1
    oh well, as of 11:41 PM EDT, the link is broken. one thing you can't do to real radio is have too many users. ;-)

    mp

    --
    "The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
    1. Re:Not Quite Like Radio by unitron · · Score: 1
      "one thing you can't do to real radio is have too many users. ;-)"

      The word "broadcast" does seem to have acquired a wider range of meaning than previously. I was wondering where they got the money to operate several actual over the air radio stations. Apparently they didn't. Perhaps a new word for over the air broadcasting and only over the air broadcasting is needed.

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

    2. Re:Not Quite Like Radio by Loosewire · · Score: 1

      you can't do to real radio is have too many users.
      Surely you can have too many people with airels feeding off the signal and make it extremely weak??

      --
      Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
  25. A proposal by dalutong · · Score: 1

    Couldn't one (with a nice fast connection and large harddrive) set up a server that allows users to make accounts. With these accounts they could start book projects. The new projects could be listed on the front page -- even if they are incomplete. They could be updated chapter by chapter. They could be voted on and commented on, so as to encourage the reader (whose project it is) to finish the book/do more books/redo chapters that had slip-ups.

    It seems that you could eventually have a good collection of good public domain readings. Some books could have multiple readings as well. Just a thought...

    --

    What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
  26. Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The site seems to be dead currently, but that's undoubtedly just the Slashdot Effect.

    I have no idea what they're using, but for the sake of accessibility and future-compatibility, I hope they're following the standards of the DAISY Consortium. DAISY has devised a standard for talking books which deserves support, especially as it's been specifically designed to provide accessibility for people with disabilities.

    Learn more about the DAISY Consortium here, and in the FAQ here.

    --Kynn

    --
    Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    1. Re:Talking Books and the Blind by tgbg · · Score: 1

      we will never use xml for anything. we have already done more for the blind than daisy. nice plug for daisy though. keep up the good work. maybe you can voulenteer 40 hours a week or so to make daisy compliant books. you sound like a real public service maven, a regular saint.

    2. Re:Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I thought that this story seemed more like an ad than a story -- what with this fellow actively and aggressively following up to posts.

      Looks like it's not only an ad -- it's an ad for a jerk.

      --Kynn

      --
      Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    3. Re:Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 1

      Gawd. This guy's pathetic. I've rarely come across anyone who, in the replies to THEIR OWN STORY, deserves to be modified down as "Flamebait."

      --Kynn

      --
      Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    4. Re:Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 1

      It's actually a consortium of software developers, basically -- which is why it's got much more of a corporate bent to it. The goal is to get software developers on the same page when it comes to digital books.

      Since most of the time, software development is expensive, they talk a lot about money. Software development for people with disabilities is even more expensive -- a screenreader program such as JAWS for Windows runs you around $800. Yes, more than many people pay for their computers themselves is the cost of software to make usable if you're blind.

      I said "most of the time," and since this is Slashdot, you're undoubtedly wondering about open source software. Assistive technology software developed as part of an open source project is a GREAT idea, and would be a huge boon for people with disabilities.

      Sadly, few people in open source seem interested enough in this idea to create what's necessary. Emacspeak is one such example, though. Note that a link on the Emacspeak page says that etc-edu.com is using Emacspeak to generate the Gutenberg Radio files!

      --Kynn

      PS: No, I'm not connected in any way with DAISY.

      --
      Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    5. Re:Talking Books and the Blind by tgbg · · Score: 1

      daisy is a hack organization for microsoft developers. festival is hard as hell to use. ibm withdrew viavoice from emacspeak. that leaves everything available in the $1K and up price range. but we have created bootable book readers that you can download, copy and pass along for free. and we create 10-30 audio books a month for free. and we absorb all the costs of the broadcasts. i have been with the gutenberg project for about five years, and am the audio team leader. recently ibilbo offered me the position of audio archivist, which i accepted. to date, i have contributed 5+ man years to gutenberg, schoolforge and several different linux based projects. - as well as 10s of thousands of dollars and loads of equipment. keep an eye on us - by the summer we should have hundreds of free books available, and a reconfigurable book reader that boots from cd. in other words, pick the books you want to go on the cd. and the broadcast is going to be around for the duration. once the slashdot onslaught is over, we'll have zipped books for download too.

  27. Re:They already are... by dirkdidit · · Score: 1
    GEORGE BUSH SHOULD DIEt

    Whew! I thought I was the only one that was thinking he was getting a bit pudgy.
  28. Re:It must be useful for the blind people by happyrat · · Score: 1

    Why should people with vision problems accept crap just because it's better than nothing?

    Text to braille keeps the same kind of relationship to the content as "normal" sighted people have to text.

    However, many with vision problems are not braille readers, so they have the options of synthesized speech, crappy human readers, or (less often) talented human readers.

    Human speech can be sped up (chipmunk style, putting the experience into a decent time-frame), but synthesized speech must be listened to at the rate it comes out to be understood. But, for some sad reason, many human volunteers for audio-books for the visually impaired read in monotone voices, so perhaps there really isn't any issue here after all.

    Someone should get aspiring actors to read the books for the credit, fame, and ... oh yeah, no fortune... they could read for good karma...

  29. Re:You're just not thinking about it the right way by eenglish_ca · · Score: 1

    How did the printing press become so widespread anyways? There is still a tremendous amount of physical labor involved in setting it up to stamp out pages.

    --
    Checking out my form of escapism.
  30. http://www.archive.org/movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.archive.org/movies

  31. Re:Chinese writing inefficient? by BJH · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Quite right.

    I speak, read and write Japanese, and I spent some time learning Chinese a few years ago. I've since forgotten 99% of the Chinese I learned, but I can still read Chinese with a reasonable level of understanding.

    I think of the difference between phonteic and ideographic writing systems like this - one takes only a short time to learn to read, but each word's meaning has to be learned separately. For the other, it takes longer to learn to read, but once you've done that, you have at least a vague understanding of 90% of the words you see in everyday usage.

    So, is it more efficient to spend more time at the start or more time throughout? I don't know, but I do know that anybody who says one way is better than the other has an agenda of their own.

  32. Re:Chinese writing inefficient? by bastard01 · · Score: 1

    I would have to say that the parent would have a point about the differences between the two types of writing systems. I have been studying Japanese for a few years, and it seems a lot more logical to actually grab a kanji, and that usually will at least semi-resemble what it represents(makes learning a bit easier) than to grasp the phonetic spelling of a word, and as for this, I am sure that most /.ers would agree with me, English is a bitch to learn how to spell. Of course one disadvantage of ideographic writing systems for me.. I have REALLY bad handwriting, I mean tree could look like book, bird could look like horse, or island, and there are others that are frightenly similar... reading easy.. writing.. not quite as easy.

  33. Mirror by soul_cmd · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you head over to the main Gutenberg Library site and search for "Time Machine" the audio book appears to come up. It would seem that ibiblio has the book on its FTP (and available for download) for at least "Time Machine". If you're looking to get started here's a direct link to the zip.

    1. Re:Mirror by tgbg · · Score: 1

      there are 22 books available this way currently. another 50+ are being reviewed. the version at http://www.etc-edu.com is a newer edition of the audio software. but, by all means, go to gutenberg.

  34. Re:Let me get this straight... by darkewolf · · Score: 1

    Star Trek? I am trying to make sure my boy next finds the stuff. He prefers real stories, like The Voyage of Bran, Tain, and even more modern stories like LOTR.

    Oh well.

    --
    "That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
    Nimheil
  35. Sorry, we're later risers... *yawn* by tweakt · · Score: 1

    Forbidden

    You don't have permission to access / on this server.

  36. The Chinese and printing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    OK, let's get this straight on who invented what and what the chinese were up to in the 1300s.

    Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. Presses existed long before him. The chinese did have them. But G, with some of the advanced european knowledge of metallurgy invented little metal characters which could be set and reset for each page. Movable type.

    Before movable type, you carved or smelted, one plate per page, fixed. This advance not only lowered the price for printing books, but more importantly lowered the price for various temporary printed works like newspapers and revolutionary pamphlets.

    Not to mention that the leftover clothes of all the people who had died during the black death turned out to be a very chap source for low quality paper.

    Now in the 1300s, the chinese developed a rice crop which yielded twice a year instead of once. The result, like building Granaries in Civ, was an instant doubling of the food supply and with food surplus comes time to work on other stuff.

    During this period of 'Sung industrialization' the chinese had textile mills, and battle fleets, and, of course, printing, or, more accurately, surplus labor to support these things.

    Did they decide to stop? No. In a short time, double food lead to double population, and then china was back with its usual population problems and everyone needed to get back to farming.

  37. Distributed Gutenberg Speech Conversion by libertynews · · Score: 1

    Everyone send in ogg samples of them reading a phrases from one of the works published by Gutenberg. String 'em all together and you have a human voice instead of computer reading it to you!

    (I'm just kidding, this would sound like crap).

    But it would be nice if some humans would read the works and encode them for distribution so that people don't have to be subjected to speech that still doesn't sound much better than SAM (Software Automated Mouth) on my Atari 800.

    bcl

    --
    Remember Lexington Green!
  38. Downloading the Software by Kynn · · Score: 1

    According to the Emacspeak homepage, this project at etc-edu.com uses Emacspeak.

    Apparently they do some pre-processing with scripts before feeding it to Emacspeak, and then save the output as MP3 files. (This is all from reading the guy's public comments here -- in between flames -- as well the Emacspeak blurb.)

    If you have Emacspeak -- free software that runs on Linux, natch -- you only need access to ETC's scripts to produce identical files. This seems to be the bit that he wants to sell to institutions.

    So, a lot of the software is out there! Enjoy.

    --Kynn

    --
    Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    1. Re:Downloading the Software by tgbg · · Score: 1

      if tubbo can get emacspeak running on his computer and really prove it, i will send him $50.

    2. Re:Downloading the Software by Kynn · · Score: 1

      You really are a bitter and angry little person, aren't you?

      --Kynn

      --
      Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/
    3. Re:Downloading the Software by tgbg · · Score: 1

      push away from the table and try to install emacspeak tubby. it doesn't work anymore ... you better head back to the local community college and get some more remediation.

  39. Great start, but still needs work by bfish · · Score: 1

    I don't think it is fair to expect perfection on the bleeding edge. Frankly, the voice is monotonous and hard to follow lots of times. Why not take a listen and take notes. Send the notes in and see if you can't help make it better. Heck, it's free! Who knows if everybody contributes a little, maybe there will be a fantastic computer voice generated that can read all the PG works so that they can be enjoyed. Frankly, I've heard some piss-poor human readers do works as well...

  40. Re:Chinese writing inefficient? by Moridineas · · Score: 1

    I would mostly agree with you, but don't confuse a true phonetic alphabet system with English. English is only semi-phonetic and centuries of irregularities and invasions show in our spellings.

    Compare to a "real" phonetic language such as Turkish or Spanish. MUCH easier to learn to read.

  41. Re:You're just not thinking about it the right way by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    I actually took typesetting with movable type in high school. This shows that I'm old :-) You get pretty fast at it. Eventually, they came up with a machine that would cast a line of type, in molten lead, as you typed it. That made things even faster.

    I also took switchboard operation with plugboards, in the last year they taught it. To test for busy, press the tip of the plug to the ring of the jack. If it clicks, the line is busy. The next year, the school got an automatic PBX.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  42. Re:When I sar this I thought you meant real radio by tgbg · · Score: 1

    yea, i bet you are a real book worm. what are the last three books you read, and in what decade.

  43. Re:Chinese writing inefficient? by KDan · · Score: 1

    Wat are you toking about, d00d? English is esy two spel! No won I now as ever made eny spelling mistaxe in English. You must of been thinkin of an other language.

    Daniel

    --
    Carpe Diem