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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."

50 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 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.

  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 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.

    2. 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
    3. 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?
    4. 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. 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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  8. 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..."

  9. 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 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)

    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.

  10. 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!

  11. 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.

  12. 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. :)

  13. 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 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?
    3. 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
    4. 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.

    5. 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
    6. 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?
  14. 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.

  15. 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.
  16. 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 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
  17. 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
  18. 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.

  19. 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.
  20. 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 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/
  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.