Project Gutenberg's 32nd Birthday

David Moynihan writes "July 4th marks the 32nd anniversary of that day in 1971 when Michael Hart first sped an all-caps version of the Declaration of Independence to anyone and everyone then on what later became the web, thus founding Project Gutenberg. Thanks to an army of volunteers and the Distributed Proofreaders, this is the last year PG will have fewer than 10,000 titles. Strangely, Microsoft picked this dual anniversary of literacy and freedom to re-launch their Reader product, with three free bestsellers a week, if you activate the new version with Passport, sign a EULA, etc. Real reason for the upgrade might be that the DRM on MS's old Reader was cracked. If you're not into giving away data, or are running a system other than Windows, maybe you could take the time to tell a friend about free books online, or even help out by visiting the Distributed Proofers and editing one page per day."

Comments

Re:You can't be serious

[psylent]

"could be worser" ... go back to school dude.

Are you saying XML will be dead in 15 years?

[egg troll]

Heh, XML: The BSD of Markup Languages! :)

Mac disclaimer on PG files

[ArsSineArtificio]

From the disclaimer/header on Project Gutenberg files:

If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]

Given that a) Macs, being Unix-based, have command-line FTP like everybody else and b) the idea of a point-and-click interface has now passed so far from being a bizarre and contemptible innovation that lots of people are trying hard to develop nice-looking Linux GUIs... ... isn't this snarky instruction now more than a little dated?

ASA