Slashdot Mirror
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
headisdead writes "A week after Google substantially improved their UK site, Deutsche-Welle carry the story that the a whole host of large European libraries (with the British Library's tacit support) have joined an EU-based digitisation project as a counter to Google's own library scheme. The project is the brainchild of BNF director Jean-Noel Jeanneney, a sort of mild-mannered Jose Bove for the librarians out there. Divisive pride, or healthy competition?"
I thin kthe main thing is that all these works will be preserved digitally, open for people to read whenever they want to. Anybody saying that this is a bad thing is just a hopeless google fanboi.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
The libraries are making their content more accessible? Can it be bad?
Perhaps a bit of both
The Drakorians are going to be pissed...
wget slashdot.org && fgrep -c "Google" index.html && rm index.html
9
wget www.google.com && fgrep -c "Google" index.html
3
It's simpler than that: if Google isn't digitizing European books somebody else has to do it and eventually somebody will create a unified search interface.
Next thing we know, someone's going to tell us how terrible Project Gutenberg is!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Divisive pride? What the hell is that? How does starting a different project in any way interfere with or "counter" Google's efforts?
I get enough manufactured controversy ignoring the commercials for my evening news.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
healthy competition = divisive pride
Hold on a minute... I think we're missing the point. If Goooooogle or anyone else happens to overtake the public libraries in popularity or usefulness, it is quite likely that the information available will suddenly become subject to what advertisers will pay for, and will turn in to a "top 40" of public information rather than a collected works of all public information.
If public libraries use their funds to assist each other in digitally making available all public information without regard to what is possible, then we have a GREAT thing, but when the sum total of that body of knowledge and history is governed by someone trying to make money, we, as a society, WILL lose in the end.
Its NOT about how you get the information or how it is stored... its about WHO is in charge of that information and what their motives are...
Sadly, capitalism is not good for everything...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Google for "Hidden Web". There's some stats out there that say there's at least three times the size of the known web hidden away.
I don't understand how this is considered "counter" or anti-google by opening up a similar service.
It seems that a lot of people around here want google to have a monopoly since it's good(tm) and microsoft is a bad(tm) monopoly. (Not that I'm a fan of MS).
All monopolies are bad, and there should be a free and open market. For all you know, this could be better than google's interface.
This turn of events is summed up well by the blurb: Google's service will be a good thing in that it is preserving works which could otherwise be destroyed or lost with time, and, most importantly, _searched_ for information as opposed to leafing through page after page; and the competition will be good in that Google will be forced to improve its service to stay on top. For the consumer: A win/win situation!
What - on earth. That was supposed to be AC, but it logged me in when I previewed the post. I don't think anybody I know knows my slashdot handle. Oh well.
Its amazing that something so great exists in this world! The glorious idea of capitalism!
"Sadly, capitalism is not good for everything..."
Please keep that in mind, next time your property taxes go up.
The cool thing about Google is that if the european site ends up being really useful, they might cross link to their content (like with answers.com or mapquest or whatever). Google has proven that they will give users the option of their own product and other well known products.
Biopolar is very well understood and is one of the depressions which responds very nicely to drugs. Webmd and google are you friends, just check things out.
"All monopolies are bad, and there should be a free and open market."
Californians wouldn't agree with you. And about that airline deregulation several years back...
Google and the libraries don't have to fight, and really, they're not. I don't know why the European libraries wouldn't want Google to digitize their content, but it doesn't really matter. If Google's content and these libraries' content is free to all, then it's good.
It's not even like there's anything to compete about really, it's being done for the good of humanity.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
So why isn't the "community" digitizing and indexing all the porn out there? We need to leave our adopted children some kind of inheritence?
The problem with so-called "deregulation" is that it really isn't true deregulation.
This is awesome, now not only are some of the grandest libraries in America being digitized, so too are some of the grandest in Europe. As great as Google is, I would very much prefer a world where all the eggs were not in one basket.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
I'm have to say that the origins of this are in a nationalistic ferver. Europe is afraid of being overshadowed by America. This project was organized by the French to fend off American Cultural Imperialism(TM). This is also healthy competition. It doesn't have to be either/or.
"The leaders of the undersigned national libraries wish to support the initiative of Europe's leaders aimed at a large and organized digitization of the works belonging to our continent's heritage," a statement said. "Such a move needs a tight coordination of national ambitions at EU level to decide on the selection of works," it added.
later
But he added: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the definition of how future generations conceive the world."
This is good even if it did arise from nationalistic pride. (Yah I know, Europe's a continent, not a country.)
It is better to not have one exclusive source of important information like this. This way we (humanity) are not storing all of our eggs in one basket. Plus Europe gets to put in more books without worrying about copyright. (Damn you Bono.) What would be best is if Google just gave the Europeans a copy of its library archives and the Europeans did likewise.
Nice Marmot
Look out! The British Royal Library is making its move!!!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
As long as the information is equally accessible, preserved with interoperable (read: open) standards and of similar quality I'm grossely indifferent whose flag is waving over the server-farm. Wasn't the internet supposed to do away with this nationalistic bs? *sigh*
What is the big deal with the French language? It used to be the main diplomatic language in Europe and this is about all (in the same way Assirian was the main diplomatic language in the Middle East 2500-3000 years ago, mainly because it was easier tyo learn than Egyptian).
Today in Europe Russian/Ukrainian is the language(s) with the biggest number of native speakers, followed by German. In Europe as well as in the world, French is way behind, even Spanish is more popular.
Why do they keep complaining that French is ruined by English, you don't hear Chinese, Spanish, Russian or German speaking people complaining about this, and their languages are more popular than French, at least today. French people are sore losers.
from the library-wars dept.
hisheadisdead writes "Two days after Microsoft marginally improved their next Operating System, Deutsche-Welle carry the story that the a whole host of large community of European developpers (with Richard Stallman's tacit support) have joined an EU-based operating system project as a counter to Microsoft's own operating system project. The project is the brainchild of OSDL employee Linus Torvalds, a sort of mild-mannered Jose Bove for the developpers out there. Divisive pride, or healthy competition?"
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Surely this is an attempt at balancing things, not countering things. A digitised library in Europe won't stop Google digitising things, so it's not "counter" anything.
I'm all for balance and diversity, personally.
Still, I'm wondering, wouldn't it have been easier to join Google rather than fight them? Or did they think of that, and did Google not want to play along?
Do you realise that you forgot to check the "Post Anonymously" checkbox?
Luke-Jr
Pre 1990: Private American company(ies) compete with formerly allied European governments as part of a struggle for control of the ideological future of the world.
Post 2005: Private American company(ies) compete with formerly allied European governments as part of a struggle for control of the ideological future of the world.
This is going to be interesting.
They are lacking the vision to see the purpose of Google's efforts, and the purpose of libraries like themselves in general.
The purpose of a traditional library is to collect, catalog, and preserve the writings of humanity for the benefit of ourselves and our children to come.
The purpose of digitization projects like Google's is to bring this into a new era. The purpose is not to turn each individual library into an electronic form of its current self - the very idea of disparate libraries was merely a consequence of the times. The purpose is to build a single worldwide virtual digital library, covering more ground and providing more accessibility than any single library could hope to.
Google's project isn't there yet, but that's the direction they are pushing. And these libraries are being divisive and standing in the way of progress. They lack the vision of what they should be doing, and they're harming progress in the name of pride.
11*43+456^2
Google scans those books for business purposes, libraries scan them for library purposes. There are differences between the two.
Now, it is possible (I don't know) that when Google works with libraries, the libraries get copies of the images as if they had scanned the books themselves. In that case, when Google offers to work with a library, it makes sense to accept the offer.
But if Google doesn't actually offer to work with a particular library, or if they aren't interested in the same books as the library, or if there are restrictions on the use of the scanned images that are stricter than if the library scanned the documents themselves, then it makes sense for that library to scan the books themselves.
My experience (wife and mother-in-law) suggests otherwise (that it "responds very nicely to drugs").
Remember, Google doesn't own the patent on innovation.
The USPTO is already reviewing Microsoft's patent application on innovation as we speak...
He who has no
Harlan Ellison doesn't like people trading his books on bittorent. Fair enough. I'm guessing he probably also doesn't like libraries lending his books out either, since both represent a lost sale - though most of his books are out of print. Lending books out is generally accepted, though perhaps grudgingly in some quarters, because at least the libraries buy a copies in the first place and also give back to authors in various ways, depending on which country we're talking about. When the physical books dies a death and all we're left with are ebooks will this be the end of libraries lending books? A lot of (most?) people buy books because of convenience (they might be slow readers or just not want to haul themselves to a library at all. Heck they might even be obssessives about cleanliness.) but if a library could "lend" you an ebook (time limited DRM gizmo doodad...) then everyone will be borrowing. ie there's no way it'll be permitted. I know there's a big difference between national libraries and the public lending library but it's funny that one, by making digitised books acceptable, might lead to the death of the other.
The Bodleian library (working with Google) had a pilot digitization project of the manuscript library for something like 10 years; then Google comes along and signs them up.
There's a group through the Czech national library that's been putting stuff up, and is exploring offerring it on a subscription basis (merely 3000 Euro/year, and institutions only need apply).
For me, the best online digitization of a library currently available is already the BNF, and that project has poor quality control (unreadable scans), shaky connection qualities and bad links galore (an essential reference dictionary for my field is missing the volumes containing the letters A-C, and S-Z).
Without doubt, the EU consortium is using anti-americanism and anti-corporatism to justify the tons of government payouts needed to fund this; without doubt the documents won't be as easy to access as Google's project. But hell, if it puts more books online, I'm all for it. And unlike Google, many of these libraries have been around for centuries; one would hope that in a few centuries, they'll still be here. Google may be doing great, but will it be here in ten years?
If one of the libraries gets killed (by whatever), future generations will still have a chance to obtain the content from the other one.
So different libraries in different places under different jurisdictions are good.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Why should I be jealous? I merely object to French cultural chauvanism. One would believe that they have a total monopoly on all that is refined or sophisticated. Nobody seems to realize how fundamentally crass this pretension really is.
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
Divisive pride, or healthy competition?
Neither, you idiot. They are not competing! They are not dividing! They are doing something Google is not -- digitising European works. For Christ's sake, that's like saying by building a library in a small town, you are trying to take a jab at a library in a neighboring town!
Good soundbite, but not at all true. The origins of this project are more than a decade old, and I was involved with it in 1993.
The company I worked for at the time did data capture. We won the contract to digitis French National Library - custom scanning software was written, pagination checking, QA software...the lot. This was when you needed custom graphics cards to store an largish group 4-compressed TIFF, and a lot of work went into optimising the deskewing sfotware etc.
Back then the project was called EPBF, European Biblioteqe de Francais (or Every P*ssing Book In France as one scanner operator had it), though the name later changed to just BNF (Bilbioteqe National de Francais). We were always trying to get the British Library interested too, but the dragged their heals and it's not surprising to me that it's taken them twelve years to finally get to the table.
I rather doubt this is anything to do with Google as such. It's just making better use of what they've had for years already, at least in France.
Cheers,
Ian
Libraries in the US are getting closer to censorship than ever. Take for example this new Alabama Bill targeting Gay Authors http://gay.com/gay http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/26/eveningn ews/main691106.shtml from an elected Republican representative in the state legislature, Gerald "book-burying
" Allen http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11 710,1369643,00.html
Consider some 'minor incidents' like New Mexico Book burning party http://books.guardian.co.uk/harrypotter/story/0,10 761,626418,00.html
Google is a US company, who already succumbed to China censorship pressures http://www.rfa.org/english/news/technology/2004/08 /01/142626/. Would they resist censorship pressures from the Christian right? Yea, right, just like Microsoft did http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/ 21/162247.
Don't fool yourself, folks. US companies are no longer a reliable for such a task. If Google is allow t create another de facto monopoly in Library Search, we risk gay books, Evolution volumes or the freaking Harry Potter adventures disappearing anytime now.
Let me ask you, who's going to preserve Western Culture heritage if the US completes it's path towards fascism bushflash.com/14.html? India!? The Chinese!!? Well, apparently it's going to be the French. Good for them.
(to the tune of George of the Jungle)
Bono, Bono, Bono of the Ski slopes
WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!!
When they found Sonny Bono, he was wearing a Douglas fir.
What does the deaths of Farley, Bono & Kennedy have in common?
A white powdery substance.
Who really killed Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono?
Tree Harvey Oswald!
How do we know Sonny was a politician at heart?
At the very end, he was stumping.
Why is Al Gore going to Sonny's funeral?
For all we know, he's the tree Sonny ran into.
What preceded Sonny Bono's senseless copyright extension?
Sonny Bono's senseless death.
Google doesn't even provide the full text. You can only browse maybe ~20 pages. And they're even designing the UI to make it hard to automatically grab those few pages. What's their problem with Google anyway?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Divisive pride vs healthy competition? Seems like you are boxing the answers. How about other reasons like interest in local issues, seeking diversity, etc? Why does every issue have to boil down to competition and monopoly?
Sometimes people's inability to put things into perspective and understand there is a world outside the good old US of A makes me despair.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Mod me down if you wish, but I have to say that I found Google Print nice, but not too useful. Sure, it's a nice thing that you can search through paper books, but in most cases you can't actually read them; you have to buy them, and this even goes for classics such as "20,000 leagues under the sea" which are already digitized by Project Gutenberg or similar organizations: Google digitizes newer, copyrighted editions even when there are older, public domain editions available. Thus, in my eyes Google Print is little more than a marketing door for on-line bookstores.
On the other hand, French digitalization project Gallica, though sometimes mocked on Slashdot, not only digitizes books, but gives the scans away freely (as in speech), so everyone can read the books in entirety or use them as they please. Both Distributed Proofreaders and Distributed Proofreaders Europe already use Gallica scans to produce completely digitized and free e-books which you can search, read, datamine, or do with them anything that suits you. If Slashdot readers are supporters of free software, this too is something they should revere.
I hope that Europeans will not compete with Google. I hope that they will make bigger, better, and more diverse Gallica.
. . . BNF director Jean-Noel Jeanneney . . .
At first read, I wondered why Backus-Naur Form needed a director.
^_^
What the hell? Have you realised that what you americans do even do is even worse? You demand people to do everything your way, and if they don't you just bomb them.
One would believe that they have a total monopoly on all that is refined or sophisticated.
That's absurd.
I've only ever heard this kind of things from us-americans, never from french people.
All they think is that their culture is worth preserving - I agree.
Libraries in the US are getting closer to censorship than ever. Take for example this new Alabama Bill targeting Gay Authors from an elected Republican representative in the state legislature, Gerald "book-burying " Allen. Consider other minor incidents like the New Mexico Book burning party . Can you spot a trend?
.
Google already succumbed to China censorship pressures. Would they resist censorship pressures from the Christian right, inside the US? Yea, right, just like Microsoft did
Don't fool yourself, folks. US companies are no longer a reliable for such a task. If Google is allow t create another de facto monopoly in Library Search, we risk gay books, Evolution volumes or the freaking Harry Potter adventures disappearing anytime now.
Let me ask you, who's going to preserve Western Culture heritage if the US completes it's path towards fascism bushflash.com/14.html? India!? The Chinese!!? Well, apparently it's going to be the French. Good for them.
Says who? Color? Inches? Miles per hour?
Yet another Google project that wakes competition up, just like GMail :)
gtkaml.org
It depends on what "accessible" means. I think these guys misunderstood the motivation behind Google's effort. Google is here to organise information - not to provide it: Google Print is only there to allow you to find books that match your searches, not to read them.
Try just about any book search on Google, even about old ones. Try Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Try Hobbes' Leviathan. Whatever. Google Print will point you to a modern, copyrighted edition of the book. You will only be able to browse a few pages.
Contrast with the Gallica project at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France: thousands of digitised books, freely accessible from beginning to end, most in scanned image format, but many in full ASCII text. And Gallica is much older than Google Print (in Internet time it's about one or two generations older), though not as old as the Gutenberg project.
Judging from his language, the French dude seems to think that Google Print is a scaled-up, English-language Gallica. It isn't. But if European libraries get their act together and start a project to make literally millions of books freely accessible for all in all European languages, hey, I'm all for it !
Thomas-
You are aware of the fact that in 1999, English was only third in the list of languages spoken natively by people around the globe?t /2001/0195/
http://www.unipublic.unizh.ch/magazin/gesellschaf
(It's in German). Even if you take the non-native english speakers, mandarin still wins.
Consider this:
'Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. (...) under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.' (Alabama Bill targeting Gay Authors)
Yea, I know, its only gays getting humiliated/beaten/banned. They are not going after you anytime soon, right?
The only European countries that speaks English are Britain and Ireland. France isn't in a "sea of English", it's part of Europe, it's in a sea of French, German, Spanish, Italian and a whole load more.
According to french.about.com 113 million people speak it fluently on a regular basis. It is the second most widely taught second language after English.
It is the official language of France; Bénin; Burkina Faso; Central African Republic; Congo (Democratic Republic of); Congo (Republic of); Côte d'Ivoire; Gabon; Guinea; Luxembourg; Mali; Monaco; Niger; Sénégal; Togo; the Canadian province of Québec; and the Swiss districts of Vaud, Neuchâtel, Genève; Jura; French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion; French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French southern and Antarctic lands.
It's the co-official language of Belgium, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti (the two official languages are French and French Creole), Madagascar, Rwanda, Seychelles, Switzerland, and Vanuatu.
I'm not French, but I certainly respect a country for trying to keep their own cultural identity. Sometimes that get a bit carried away with the language thing, but it doesn't seem to be hurting them. Remember, English is taught in their schools from a young age, and lots of French people speak really good English.
Oh Great American Lord,
I apologize to be the small european insect I am.
Please continue to show me the way to the True-Way-Of-Life.
How to make war to the rest of the world.
How to destroy the eco-system as much as possible.
How to elect stupid arrogant bastards.
How to venere our Lord the Market.
How to refute silly theory like Darwinism, etc. and be true biggots.
How to give weapons to our child so they can be mass murderers.
And, most of all, how to give lessons to everyone without the slightest doubt.
Amen.
Et, tant que t'y est , VTDLC, gros bouffon.
bah.
nobody is saying you should lose your culture or language you idiot.
you think that the US is the only country that speaks english?
Try canda, the uk, australia, south africa, new zealand to namea few, plus a high percentage of citizens in many of your cherished european countries.
Do you think that because google (and american libraries like Harvard) are ONLY going to digitize english books?
Thats just silly.
Most books at first may be english but at some point, ALL major books will get digitized irregardless of political motivation.
Cut the anti-US propoganda and get with the plan. Digitizing books is a GOOD thing. Politics is BAD.
I agree.
Forget the politics, get with the plan, and digitize everything, no matter what the language.
yep. As a french, i agree.
I, for one never stated this kind of things. I (and others, i guess) am feared to loose some of my culture to yours. end of communication.
*squeak*
Just as a reminder, the French project of an almost purely digital library (Bibliotheque de France) has been a huge money burner. Their IT system is a complete mess, a mess in which they have already sunk millions of Euros.
Who was the President of that fiasco? Jeanneney, the same guy who is now trying to 'counter Google' or something. I suspect this so-called 'European' project is a scam to obtain more money for his own aggrandizement.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I dunno, I've got an image of something white and wobbly, and way larger than it's got any right to be.
I just found this part funny.
"lots of French people speak really good English."
Perhaps better than some of us native English speakers I would say.
Not that I should be criticizing, I'm terrible with grammar.
Information needs to be free and distributed and not in control by one person/company/...
There's more to it than just french chauvinism the likes. I see it as a two-fold problem.
1. Selection. Digitisation implicates selection of the materials you are going to digitize. Even Google can't digitise every book in the world. A lot of people feel that the selection of several North-American university libraries doesn't reflect world culture but just North-American culture.
Now, I'm a bit pragmatic on the issue: the selection of the works isn't language-based or geography-located. So I suppose a great deal of (at least translations of) world literature is going to find it's way into the Google project.
Still, the issue stands that making a balanced selection is a big responsibility that should be shared. Not centralised in one big company.
2. This brings me to my second point: interests. At best you could say this is just Google's patronage of the preservation of our cultural heritage. But what are the interests of a commercial firm like Google? Actual preservation of important works and improving access to those works? Or rather monopolising the control over the access and dissemination of information? Already the - imho false - notion that "if it's not on Google, it doesn't exist" is gaining field. I feel this is just one expression of the increasing control of Google over how the general public perceives information.
Now, in this respect, this new european project is perhaps perceived as biased towards futile and useless fighting against Google and "americanisation" but I, for one, wouldn't like to wake up noticing that our perception of the world and world culture is being dictated by some companies based on the other side of the globe.
It's very ironic but really true !
So, when the Chinese own the global economy in the not too distant future, you'll accept that insisting on speaking English is just bringing suffering on yourself, and happily learn Chinese?
No, I didn't think so...
Hate to tell you, but any history you have America shares. It might not have happened here, but it happened to my ancestors as much as it did yours.
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
What sea of English? Are you nuts? You might as well describe America as being an island of English floating in a sea of Chinese.
What a great way to bring suffering on oneself. Being incompatible is an economic drain. Long-term, it's better for the US to raise the white flag.
So go on! Dump your attitudes and go learn to speak Mandarin!... or not.
European Libraries are... co-operating with one another, empowered and disempowered on the basis of sex and sex-linked traits. the
http://relet.net/gtr/gtdb.php?id=87
...are in preparation, also funded by the us poultry genome project website; bdgp:
http://relet.net/gtr/gtdb.php?id=86
Jose Bove, what a great name !
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Say that five times really quick.
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
samzenpus gets the HSDHL award for April (High Sylabbic Density HeadLine).
He also gets props for spelling Digitisation correctly. You looked at it funny. Admit it.
i'm not sure for VTDLC: "Vas te (faire) defoncer le cul".
stand for something like:
"Go Fuck Yourself Moron"
the rest of the post is insightfull at last
I don't catch the point in turning this fact into some sort of international French vs English cultural war. Even, if some people in France make some sort of anti-American statements (as the French always do anyway, you noticed that, didn't you ? ;-), it won't harm google.com in any manner, nor it will prevent them from digitasing the entire universe (even French litterature) as long as they have enough storage... U better leave this kind of subject to cheap tabloids or Fox News.
Anarchy is about taking complete responsibility for yourself. - Alan Moore
America shares this history exactly how? By eating french fries? Something (you don't even care about) happening to your ancestors (you don't even care about) is not what the parent was talking about.
What do you mean by "the longest running continuous government in the modern world"? Please explain, I'm not native englich speaker, so I'm a little confused here.
Apparently they are trying to resist.
...and to extend
:) english for mass communication / advert.
i live in a small country where we have at least three main languages for less than 7 mio people (yes, you spot it)
praticaly everybody in this country (including the immigrants) talk more than one language. Not to say than i m particulary good at my mother thongue:
"parce que la grammaire et l'orthographe francais ont pleins de regles MAIS surtout des exceptions."
but:
"es könnte praktish sein, zum beispiel in deutsch schreiben und lesen zu können."
as i say, we have three main languages but we even manage to use (and fear
well i think it's all a matter of culture, the more WE have the better WE are (as humyanity)
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
where did you get that idea? It's not even close to the longest running continuous government. The monarchies of Britain and Denmark have been running for several times the length of America's democrasy, or do you just count the modern world as having started with America's war of independance?
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
No idea what you mean here or what relevance it has, but you do realise that Britain had a Prime Minister before the start of the US' War of Independence? (1735, Sir Robert Walpole first entered 10 Downing Street)
Learning a foreign language is a great way to expand one's horizons.
Think of the poor French or German unable to appreciate Monty Python or Shakespeare in the text. What are they missing ! Now the converse is also true. Reading Kant in the text is quite an experience, so is Rousseau or Voltaire. The same is true of Cervantes or Garcia Marques in Spanish, and of all other languages, past or present.
I recommend trying to read even small passages of The Illiad in ancient Greek. There are resources on the Web that can help you do that relatively easily. With a good translation at hand the experience is amazing.
Now think of all the lost languages of the world. All the legends, all the cultures that have already disappeared.
Today we can and we must preserve all this. Both the Google and the European initiative go in the right direction.
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
Only if you define "longest running continuous government" is such a way as to exclude all the other governments that have been around for a longer time. This is a non-argument, and requires you to ignore changes to the USA government but rule any changes to other governments to be a change of government type.
Sometimes people's inability to put things into perspective and understand there is a world outside the good old US of A makes me despair.
How will restricting literature from being translated to English expand the views of those who are taught no other language?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I'm obviously missing a trick; I want to see what is Insightful about this comment.
It affects my tax bill, but then, I'm European. I don't think that it'll be quite as expensive as you appear to be making out, though.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Erm, what?
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
People like Truffaut and Godard made great movies before all this cultural protectionism. I am struggling to think of a great French movie of the past 10 years, except maybe Amelie.
(Some) folks: forget about the nationalistic/risk/fight tone of TFA. This is sensationalism to get the article through. This does not help. It misses the point. It mis-reports the essential.
Folks, just think technically. Q: What gets to be used by a majority ? A: The most exposed stuff. Discussion: There should be no convincing work needed there (I hope.) That's the basic of advertisement. This is independent of nation/subject/topic/culture.
Getting English literature digitalised is fantastic. This will lead mechanically to more exposure, thus more use. There is no need to be French (or whatever you name it) to realise that. There is no agressivity involved in saying so. It is only being clear-minded about it to say "well we may want to gain exposure as well in order to not be forgotten on the long term". It is only fair. There is no question of imperialism here. Just relax! This is gentle and nice point. Ultimately, as mentioned above, Google will reference all and that's exactly what we (well... me) want? Isn't it?
Z.
PS: I am tired about the ranters: starting flames as soon as a French stuff comes on /. scene. Pretty much repetitive, always orientated toward fight...( yaaaaarning ), missing the point ,not funny. Just please: relax, look and write about the interesting stuff. Just please. Can I beg?
Divisive pride, or healthy competition?
Who cares? If it means more literature is digitally preserved then its all good.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
please.
In an ideal world, people would do the Right Thing because it was the Right Thing. In this one, they sometimes do the Right Thing because they are prideful and don't want to be shown up by those they have contempt for. But at least they are doing the Right Thing, and that is a Good Thing. And the Internet Archive can snarf and collate them both, anyway. With the cost of hard drive space doing what it's doing, in four or five years, the entire print Public Domain will fit in few thousand dollars worth of storage space.
I was hoping it was frenchish for YHBT.
Oh well, its not like they would understand anything beyond a "graphic novel" anyway.
How many have you seen?
ps. I'm struggling to remember a great American movie of the past 10 years..
or perhaps he meant... ... in the modern world.
Just like he said.
Well i'm not French, i'm Belgian. I'm frenchspeaker. The sad thing about this project is that "once again" a French official found a way to put some "Anti-american" bashings in his speech. I'm fed up by their rethoric. It looks more and more like xenophoby to me. The French "elites" have a great problem with the US because nobody in France is listenning to them. Read their speeches and then go to Paris. Movie theatres make money with American action films not with their boring state funded nombrilistic social drama movies. Mc Donalds restaurants are everywhere. Young people wear NBA t-shirts and American brands on the street. Nobody feels threatenned by the American "culture" except the elites. People still speak French, still enjoy French food and still read French magazines, still wear French brrands etc. There is nothing wrong with some new ways of living coming from a foreign culture. Even the French language is the consequence of a much bigger cultural invasion (Rome) and France as a political entity from a Germanic invasion (Clovis, Charlesmagne). Anyway back to the real topic: The project is simply great. I would feel more confortable if this European heritage is under public organization supervision than under a private company one. Google is a private company. Its goal is about making money. Here we are talking about culture heritage. Knowledge must be free. It should be copied, duplicated, modified, distributed freely. Nobody can have any claim on patents, copyrights or any stuffs like that. Anyway As somebody pointed out. Sooner or later googlebot will browse their database and index it anyway. Maybe they could use it like they did with dmoz.org . And other search engines too... That's the real point. Sooner or later a better (privatly funded) search engine will come out and will get an access to this public database. Olivier
Also, the Brits might disagree, since their parliament history goes back to before the "new world" was discovered.
that the libraries in the Google consortium only hold English language books? Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Oxford University claims to hold half a million books in modern European languages other than English in the specialist Taylorian library alone. The Taylorian is not in the Google consortium but I would be surprised if the participating libraries could not match this between them.
The more digitisation the better, but I think the various initiatives should try to avoid overlap.
...and how little comes out of France that is any good.
you make a point, but it's NOT what come OUT of France...
what you describe is what REACH you in the USA...
please talk to your film ditributor....
(and that's not only working for French Movies)
As long as the access remains open, sure, it's great. For once, nationalistic (or regionalistic) pride does something good.
If anything, it's sad that an American company has to scare them into doing something good rather than doing it on their own.
The physical world simply does not exist for you then, I take it?
Are you indexed by Google? Do you exist?
Nope, it gets re-booted every 4 years.
Do we re-write the constitution every 4 years? Nope.
And what about the fact that Senators have 6 years terms? Oh, and about 1/3 have are elected every 2 years. So, does the government get "re-booted" every 2 years then even though 2/3rds of the Senators are not involved in the election?
And what about the Supreme court? It's members are appointed for life. Yet they are responsible for interpreting the constitution (the law of the land). Do they change their minds every 4 years?
30 years even
Don't know how your post was modded flamebait (oh! hang on, yes I do: kneejerk moderation).
I'm a Brit, and I think what you say is broadly correct.
However, the US also "Always Fail IT" as it tends to react against, or try to ignore, or reinvent as its own, Non-US innovations.
What you say about the British Library is correct however.
I have been constantly frustrated by the lack of access to works in the BL. Of course, many of these tomes are priceless, so you can't have every Tom, Dick and Harry thumbing them with grubby fingers, but a digital copy could have, and should have, been made that could be freely available.
Given the amount of money wasted on so many dubious public 'projects' here in the UK, any money spent on this would have been very worthwhile IMO.
And of course, and the best way to protect your cultural heritage is to not let google put copies of it in the same database as their silly american 'culture'. Sheesh.
There's a difference between making sure your culture is preserved, and going out of your way to snub a company's offer to help preserve and distribute that culture for the world, just because it's american owned.
Running your own digitizing program is probably a good idea just for redundancy's sake. Refusing to let google digitize your cultural works as well is just the same kind of nationalist (or regionalist if you prefer) bullshit that people like yourself tend to complain about americans perpetrating.
Thing is, French was spread to some of this arm-long list of third world countries by means of colonization and all the lovely benefits it brought to the benighted natives - Pillage, exploitation, genocide, disease, rape, and enslavement were some of the ways French got around in Africa. Read up on the Belgian Congo and the rubber plantations owned by Belgium's King, and you wonder if maybe the natives could have done better keeping their own 'uncivilized' language.
English may not be the official language of many countries, but it dominates in other, more important provinces like Art, Music, Science, Medicine and Diplomacy, and THAT is what is sticking in the French craw - They see their global power and prestige eroding away like a beach in a hurricane while they grasp and claw at it franticly.
The difference between old-world Imperialism and the spread of English language pop-culture, be it British, American, Canadian, or Australian music, movies and TV, is at least the natives won't have hands and feet amputated by entertainment executives if they refuse to co-operate.
They were ruled by a monarch, as oppose to now when they have a monarch.
It's true; we have the oldest government in the world if you don't count the civil war spat. I'm about ready to disown it anyway; I sure can't recognize it anymore.
The simple fact is that the US is NOT the "longest-running continuous government in the world" no matter how you slice it. As I pointed out, the Brits have a parliament that goes back to LONG before North America was even discovered.
No, but your current government is doing a nasty end-run around it. Maybe you should rewrite it to prevent such abuses in the future, instead of trying to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage.Maybe you should rewrite it to prevent such abuses in the future
The problem with the US constitution isn't that it's poorly written, it is that it's being poorly interpreted. No amount of rewriting is going to remedy that.
sigs are hazardous to your health
According to the article, Bodleian in Oxford is one of the contributors to the Google project. I believe that Bodleian in Oxford is a European library.
Did Google ask any other European library to participate? Did the French library ask Google to be included in the project?
Backus Naur Form?
British Nutrition Foundation?
British National Formulary
La Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Don't be lazy. Please introduce TLA's properly to make it easier for the reader. It's annoying having to go searching just to understand one paragraph.
The project is the brainchild of La Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) director Jean-Noel Jeanneney
P.S. Just to destroy the irony of my comment (or not to appear as a hypocrit): TLA = three letter abbreviation.
But there was no definiative point when it changed. OK, after our (English) civil war and the monarchy had less power when they returned, but that was 1651. Parliment went from being a temporary body to being a permanent one.
Still predates the US govenment by a long way.
We have had monarchy and parliment for a long time, and power has gradually gone from one to the other. At what point do you draw the line?
Isn't the Iroquois confederacy the longest running democracy in the world at 800 years?
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind
USA isn't even the longest running government in North America....On top of that, it wasn't even continuosly running:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9511/debt_limit/countdown/
Cheers,
Rich
Indeed, the last thousand years of British political history is defined by the rise in supremacy of Parliament. It's now a rather ironical situation where the monarch has absolute power, but can't (or won't) use it. Parliament taking away the monarch's ability to collect taxes being a key point in the process. The Magna Carter (1215) was is just one of the things that lead to the form of the US goverment. The British Bill of Rights (1689) is also presumably a seed for the ideas that led to the more encompassing American one.
Anyway, let's not be so serious. The OP clearly didn't write that intending to be taken serious. How could they?
BNF = Backus-Nauer Form?
/Paid attention in CS classes
A Prime minister who reports to a king doesn't have a thing to do with democracy.
Touchy, aren't we? Who pissed in YOUR cornflakes this morning?
I think you're projecting. Relax.
The simple fact is that the US is NOT the "longest-running continuous government in the world" no matter how you slice it.
As I pointed out, the Brits have a parliament that goes back to LONG before North America was even discovered.
I think most people would agree that the British form of government essentially changed with Parliment Acts 1911 and 1949 basically making the government uni-cameral. This would be like the house of representatives passing a law saying the senate was no longer necessary.
Such a dramatic alteration in government amounts to a change in government since it alters the very principles on which law is made.
"Do we re-write the constitution every 4 years? Nope.
No, but your current government is doing a nasty end-run around it. Maybe you should rewrite it to prevent such abuses in the future, instead of trying to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Just because the government is doing things you don't like doesn't mean it's doing some "nasty end-run around it".
The full text of the constituion in online. I'll concede your point if you can give me an example where this administration is doing an "end-run" around the constitution. Just give me an action of theirs and the corresponding clause of the constitution that's being violated.
Go look at the Magna Carta. Be sure to check the date. The Brits definitely have seniority over us in this matter.
A legislature which can say "no" to the king has, however, quite a lot to do with democracy.
I am half Russian half Spanish - My Russian father fought against Franco during the Civil War and married my Spanish mother. I was born and live in Argentina and I am fluent in Russian and Spanish. Russian and Ukrainian may be considered different languages for historical reasons but they are very close. Anyway I have no problem understanding Ukrainian although I have never learned it. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about Catalan or Portugese, for me it is very hard to understand anything in these languages, even Polish,Czech, Slovakian or Italian are easier to understand (Probably the comparison with Italian is not fair, as a child I lived in an Italian neighborhood, and had Italian friends).
Here is a free link to the story.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
And don't forget the most important lesson of all, imparted on the world by a minority of US citizens mostly residing in CA and NY: How to be a whining liberal bitch that backstabs your own country by trumpeting logical fallacies and other non-arguments from their pseudo-intellectual rooftops.
11*43+456^2
Why did French lose its status of 'Lingua Franca'? Because their leaders were narrow minded, they thought that whatever country controls Europe, controls the World. For that reason in the XVI-XVIII Centuries they focused on Europe and did not care to build and expand a colonial empire overseas, they started caring about that in the XIX Century but by then it was too late. They did not care to populate the French colonies in North America, they abandoned their subjects in the New World, Napoleon did not hesitate to sell Louisiana to the US, etc. A French administrator and soldier (I forgot his name) started conquering India and he was quite successful but he abandoned the project because he did not receive suppoprt from the French Government. The result of all these mistakes is obvious: English and not French is the current 'Lingua Franca'. The French won the 100 Year War but they did not manage to conquer the world, the British did. Although now the British Empire is gone, its heritage is all over the world and is there to stay.
BTW I am neither British nor French.
Because they started early the British mannaged to grab most overseas territories easy to assimilate, that is sparsely populated areas inhabited by primitive populations. Think of North America, most native tribes were hunters and gatherers, and thus were easy to assimilate or destroy.
By the time the French started expanding their colonial empire the best overseas territories (those with sparse, primitive populations) were already taken. They had to conquer densely populated areas with advanced cultures, such as Indochina or Algeria. Large populations with advanced cultures are hard (almost impossible) to assimilate or destroy. For a while they managed to coerce native people to speak French and (forcefully) assimilate the French culture but eventually the native languages and cultures resurfaced and the French were kicked out violently out of those countries.
In addition the British were better administrators than the French and knew when it was time to leave and made the transition to native administration as smooth as possible. The French did not realize when it was time to give up and fought costly and cruel colonial wars which they lost.
How to elect stupid arrogant bastards.
Hey now... We learned that from the masters, y'all.... America was laid with European planks, remember?
How to make war to the rest of the world.
How to destroy the eco-system as much as possible.
How to give weapons to our child so they can be mass murderers.
And, most of all, how to give lessons to everyone without the slightest doubt.
Ditto... Ditto.... Ditto.... Ditto....
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
I don't claim any sort of moral superiority (its pretty much an even playing field IMNSHO), but I do object when you guys get up on your soapbox and attempt to lecture us.
It (sort of) ended when they lost the Peloponesiac war, even after that the local government remained democratic.
Besides (unlike the US) Athenians INVENTED democracy.
"I'm not French, but I certainly respect a country for trying to keep their own cultural identity."
What about the dozens of other languages that were spoken in France and systematically wiped out by the French government? I think they are extremely hypocritical in this respect. I'm all for fighting against English language dominance, but I'm also against French language dominance in France.
Why did it take a corporation to finally spur them to do something? It looks like they got caught with their pants down and are maybe trying to save some face since the obvious question is why haven't they done this already?
I didn't see the Byzantine team at the last Olympics. Did their Emperor make it to the Pope's funeral? What's his Imperial Highness' name, anyway?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Fucking hell, you have a 50 year lead in world politics and you think you have accomplished something. Great Britain, Netherlands, Greece, Germany, France, all were where you are now and THEY ALL FELL. They all had one thing you lack: CULTURE. Go open a fucking book, preferably history, educate yourself and then come back here strutting your stuff you ignorant cunt.
English #1 and French #2? Really?
The only way this discussion makes sense is if you conclude that (Europe=World).
I certainly support their effort to preserve their language and culture. I love France for Lafayette, Descartes, & French Food, but let's keep the facts straight and with regard to all of our bretherin:
The facts m'am, just the fact:
MAJOR LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
(Number of native speakers)
1. Mandarin Chinese 836,000,000
2. Hindi 333,000,000
3. Spanish 332,000,000
4. English 322,000,000
5. Bengali 189,000,000
6. Arabic 186,000,000
7. Russian 170,000,000
8. Portuguese 170,000,000
9. Japanese 125,000,000
10. German 98,000,000
11. French 72,000,000
12. Malay 50,000,000
(http://www.al-bab.com/arab/language/lang.htm)
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
"The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world."
Well, technically speaking, I'd say that honor would go to the Japanese Imperial House: Japanese Yamato's House Emperor is the head of Japan government back to... well, I really don't know, maybe Sixth Century or the like.
Of course you can contest the role of current Emperor as "real" governor.
Redundancy
How the hell. And they say the US is deluded. French and English? That doesn't even past the two neuron firing test.
French cannot be the second most widely taught language when Japanese, Chinese, and German, just to name 3 off the top of my head, is taught more NATIVELY in their respective countries. I'd also think Spanish would be up there.
Further, that makes English not the most widely taught language either.
Those are some screwed up facts you cite. I'd like to see a real study, not just claims, of which language dominates. I have little doubt that English may be the dominant language in industrialized countries and the web, but do you honestly believe a geographic initiative to restore certain European works is going to INCREASE the language count and interest? No.
You forget Bahasa Indonesia with about 99% of the 200 million Indonesians speaking it.
It and Malaysian are close enough that they could even be considered close dialects of the same language.
I wonder about small countries or regions losing their language such as French Canada.
I welcome the digitization of non-english works, that way I will be able to auto-translate them via some internet web site to English.
> this once rational community
Once rational?
When?
Well I'm not American, in fact I'm Canadian but I remember back in the day when the french use to do nuclear testing. I remember an Island where they use to do this testing and that the indigenous people where dieing from radiation poison. I remember when the French found out they decided that comitting genocide would be the best solution. I remember them threatening to imprison any french broadcasters who put it on the news. I remember it took Green Peace (all American at the time I believe) to save the people and even then the French tried to arrest them. Oh but wait the french can't do anything wrong. Oh no sorry thats only censorship in where they prevent all of their mistakes reaching the news. Even to this day the Europeans have much greater censorship. Hell did you know when I was in Germany a year ago I actually got into an argument because the town I was in was taught that Germany won WW1. I've also argued with a french man because he claimed that France never surrendered in a single war and was the military leader of the world. No country, not Canada, not the States, not France, not Britan, not Germany, not Russia, not Japapn, not a single country from any continent is innocent of horrific things. Don't think you are so great because the french have done just as many if not far more monsterous acts then the US. Its unfortunate that the French are no more educated then the Americans in terms of what they and other countries do. In fact I would almost say your worse. Sorry to burst your bubble but thats the truth.
The American movie industry has been very good at driving out foreign competition. In Europe, you can easily see good American, European and sometimes Asian films, but in the US it is more difficult to find something non-American. That narrows down people's cultural horizon.
Europe has far fewer school massacres than the US. The rest of the points you can argue about but that is concrete.
:p
Lecture over.
Well, I'm a relatively conservative Christian who doesn't agree with homosexuality, but I see this as ridiculous. Does this mean that Christian books about Christianity and homosexuality should also be banned? How absurd! So much for freedom of speech.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
To the best of my knowledge the parliament with the longest history is the one in the Isle-of-Man (between England and Ireland). It over a thosand years since it started, about 10 yrears ago one of my uncles went to the thousandth year celebration.
for more info see http://www.tynwald.org.im/
Tynwald is the Manx language name for their parliament.
-Nivag
.adf
--
jkl;
Yes, and the more projects there are to do this, the better. Good for Google, even if they do tremble a bit at the closed-minded zealots who would be ruthless dictators beneath the mantle of religion; and good for the EU for embarking on a parallel project. I'm sure that any laws, state or Federal, that attempt to restrict the availability of published materials will wind up in Federal court, and will be declared as unconsitutional infringements on freedom of the press and speech. This sort of thing had been going on for 200+ years, and the crazies who want to prevent people from reading things have not won yet.
"The day after they put their separate library on line, googlebot will index and assimilate it anyway..."
We are the Google. Resistance is futile.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Well, BNF has it since at least 1999: check it at http://gallica.bnf.fr/
... did they deliver online one text after these months that passed since they began making noise?
abount 70000 titles in text or image mode and lots of images, audio files etc., all for free.
Google is late
No one has mentioned in all the replies I've seen the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). Fantastic digital archive and other Institutional Repository projects such as DSpace, the CERN Document Server and many others are already in place.
It becomes obvious after a little while (IMHO) that Google have seen these projects going on and can see an opportunity.
Google is not the beginning, or the end. It's already there. They're not leading!
A president who reports to the all mighty dollar doesn't have anything to do with democracy either.
this is a test, do not be alarmed.
Oh come on, who modded this down? This is hilarious.
Dr negativity obviously lurks in the shows with his mod points on puppet strings.
You're nothing; like me.