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Project Gutenberg Publishes 10,000th Free eBook
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 16, 2003 03:45 PM
from the worthwhile-endeavours dept.
from the worthwhile-endeavours dept.
AndrewRUK writes "Earlier today, Project Gutenberg's founder, Micheal Hart, announced that the project has passed the milestone of 10,000 free eBooks available, with the publication of the Magna Carta.Project Gutenberg was founded in 1971, with the aim of "[making] information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search." In the 32 years since the project started, over 10,000 books, ranging from the Bible to school textbooks, and from the complete works of Shakespeare to the USA's declaration of independence, have been made freely available to the public by Project Gutenberg."
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Project Gutenberg Publishes 10,000th Free eBook
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I guess.. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://blog.peoplesdns.com/)
I still kind of have issues with ebooks.. I mean, reading is pretty much a tactile thing for me.. I.e. I like the smell of books, I like turning pages..
In other words, it is nice to get away from the computer sometimes and just read..
Though, I congratulate their efforts, it is cool
e-reader hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://hammeroftruth.com/)
Re:e-reader hardware? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.allthatsevil.net/)
How much text can you stuff in 8Mb?
2 full copies of the bible..
or
all of shakespeare
or
LOTS and lots of good fiction.
-Jazz
Proofreading (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.neorune.com/)
If you're in the mood for browsing books, give it a try... you can find something interesting to read and do a little service for humanity at the same time.
10,000 books? (Score:2, Funny)
(http://evilempire.ath.cx/)
Can't be said enough... (Score:2, Redundant)
(http://www.celsius1414.com/)
Congratulations! (Score:2, Redundant)
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/apsmith)
Go to Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net] if you'd like to help out!
Legal? (Score:4, Funny)
Still (Score:2)
(http://waz6.net/)
Project Gutenberg? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday April 27 2005, @11:26AM)
Slashdotted (Score:2)
(http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/)
errata (Score:1)
(http://www.hexatron.com/)
Just public domain... (Score:1)
www.literature.org/
www.online-literature.com
These folks also publish public domain stuff on the web.
It's sad though, there could be more, but because of the Sony Bono law, stuff that should be in the public domain by nowis still owned by the author's off-spring or estate.
What happens when PG runs into the Bono Wall? (Score:1)
(http://www.anotherbear.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 25 2003, @03:29PM)
What happens when Project Gutenberg has finally digitally republished all known literary works in the English language that were first published on or before 1922? Where does PG go once it hits the wall, which thanks to pgdp.net might even come within my lifetime?
$1 Trillion? (Score:2)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
For all the noise... (Score:2)
(http://www.flaredev.com/)
Anyone here regularly read from Project G? What did you read?
YOU CAN HELP!!! (Score:2)
Go to Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net] to help out! The are a distributed effort to scan, OCR, proof, and post books to Project Gutenberg.
If a man dies owing money to Jews (Score:2)
(http://www.meehawl.com/Blogfiles/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 04 2003, @06:38PM)
Story submission backlog (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday January 22 2004, @05:30PM)
1215-10-15 dawneth Magna Carta Published (yro, news) (accepted)
CmdrTaco must be pleased to get this one out of the queue.
Just Imagine! (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, back to the original meaning of... (Score:2)
* - Yes, yes - I know. Terrible joke. We all wish we could filter out all comments that had "Beowulf", "In other news", and "In Soviet Russia" in the text, but alas...
congrats (Score:1)
Slightly Off-Topic; archive of incorrect charter (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 17 2003, @07:28PM)
I have ascertained that Project Gutenberg has made some verry grave mistakes in their alleged duplicate of the "Constitution of the United States of America." Project Gutenberg's duplicate of the "Unanimous Declaration of Indepenance of July 4, 1776" appears to be correct. Yet, let me get to the truth in their alleged duplicate unamended "Constitution of the United States of America." I searched the Project Gutenberg archive for the the titular commercial charter for these united States of America and discovered a modern, (un?)intentionaly misleading, and incorrect entry. There are some discrepancies that are noticable. Project Gutenberg claims they are providing the "Constitution of the United States of America" as NOT AMMENDED and NOT REVISED, yet this is disputed because not until the alleged "14th Ammendment" was there ever spoken in the alleged "Constitution..." a "United States" in any RECEIVERSHIP for PUBLIC DEBTS. As provided duplicate from Project Gutenberg's archive,
BlockQuote EvidenceOf14thAmendment { "To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, Dockyards, and other needful Buildings;--And" }The previous quoted text is substance of the alleged "14th Amendment"! It is of nature defining a "United States" limited to jurisdiction of 10 square miles! This was known as the "Act of 1871", to create a "Government for the District of Columbia" of which to emancipate (aka Transfer of Title of Ownership) the "slaves" into ownership by an alleged "United States" as secured property and further provides for the naturalization and granted federal citizenship as well as granted privileges of the alleged "United States" to own property outside its lawful jurisdiction of 10 square miles and expand its "possesions". According to law, if an attempt is to be made to FREE a slave (aka Bondservant) then a process to manumit must ensue. According to Webster's Dictionary and Black's Book of Law, as well as some sources on Dictionary.com [dictionary.com], manumit is the "dissolve of Title of Ownership" and emancipation is the "transfer of Title of Ownership". Yet, who is to argue a slave's freedom from an oppressive Master and unto a new Master that is more lenient or kind (aka United States)? In support of my testimony, I will provide evidence in the United States Code, that the United States spoken of in the 14th Amendment is a corporation! According to USC Title 27, Section 3002 [cornell.edu],
(15)
''United States'' means -
(A)
a Federal corporation;
Continuing my testimony and perusing to Article Six, there is more evidence that Project Gutenberg's claim of providing "Constitution..." as unamended,
BlockQuoth MoreEvidenceOfAmendment { "All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." }
If anyone wants to read all the true and correct history of the colonies as they re-organized into united States, the beginning of the federal ussurpation, the Continental Congress, and the creation of the alleged "United States" federal corporation withou
Last time I checked... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Monday January 06 2003, @10:36PM)
Of course I'll now get the expected slew of people telling me that the formatting can all be reconstructed. It cannot. There is no unambiguous way to recover reasonable formatting of these texts to be viewed in any other format other than 80 columns. For a while I tried reading Gutenberg books on my Palm but the spurious line breaks everywhere drove me crazy, even after doing quite a bit of scripting to make a best guess at the correct format.
When authors write it's not just the letters that counts. Some of that writing effort goes into formatting and you can't just discard it. It's depressing thinking how much work has gone into removing crucial information from 10,000 of the world's texts.
Books warez... (Score:2)
(http://sharpy.xox.pl/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 14 2005, @02:12PM)
Yeah, it's copyrighted. So if I erase the files from my harddrive after I read them, wouldn't this be equal to borrowing them from library?
Now that all these books are available... (Score:2)
(http://domain.broken...registrar.joker.com/)
-1, Redundant (Score:2)
Behold yon glittering host, your future spoil! (Score:1)
How appropriate... (Score:1)
Please support project Project Guttenberg! (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
plain ASCII makes no sense (Score:1, Redundant)
What advantages? Advantages like indicating what words are actually part of a title, so that a reader could display titles in large print and provide a table of contents. Advantages like having real bold, italic, and underline. Advantages like being able to handle characters not in ASCII. Advantages like allowing a reader to break lines however makes most sense for that situation (for example, handhelds are going to have shorter lines than a large monitor). The list goes on.
Their argument for continuing to favor ASCII [gutenberg.net] is to support the widest possible usability, now and in the future, since markup languages can come and go. This doesn't stand up to scrutiny though, for the simple reason that XML contains strictly more information than plain text. XML can be flawlessly converted to plain text by a program, but the opposite is not true: plain text cannot be converted to XML. Was that line break the end of a stanza, or simply a line of a paragraph? Is that single line in all-caps a title or is it a paragraph of shouting? This information simply cannot be extracted from plain text. Not to mention the problem of characters that aren't in ASCII.
Suppose that XML is just a fad, that it's a horrible joke being perpetuated by hordes of clueless professionals who love buzzwards. Suppose no one uses XML in 10 years. Even if this is true XML is still a better choice than plain text because XML has enough information to automatically convert the books into whatever superior format emerges in the future. Plain text does not.
Magna Carta (Score:1)
a great read! (Score:1)
Michael Hart is a true visionary (Score:2)
(http://www.dpbsmith.com/)
It is a strikingly original project. And it has some quasi-political overtones. Hart has some well-articulated reasons why he didn't and doesn't believe that, say, the Library of Congress will ever get around to systematically digitizing books.
With approimately 20,000 books online, it is no longer a sarcasm to call the Internet a library, even if it is still far less rich than a small-town public library. Half of those are Project Gutenberg's.
Project Gutenberg Australia has more recent works (Score:2)
(http://www.dpbsmith.com/)
Keep in mind that if you don't reside in Australia you would be committing copyright infringement if you were to download anything from that site that is still under copyright in your country of residence.
Go to their site to see what they have, or use the invaluable U. Penn online books page [upenn.edu] to search for them.
Distribution (Score:1)
Re:errata (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.pgdp.net/)
Re:Sol 8/9 and Sun ONE Directory 5.2 Headaches (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ummm... (Score:1)
(http://it.slashdot.org/~sik0fewl/)
Has anyone yet mentioned that you can help out by joining the distributed proofreaders project out help out? What's the link?
Yes [slashdot.org], they [slashdot.org] have [slashdot.org].
Re:The Black Book of Communism (Score:2)
Kinda how you wouldn't expect to find a copy of The Communist Manifesto on Rush Limbaugh's website -- or Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, for that matter. Both are books that don't fall into Rush Limbaughs sphere of interest.
Centralized communism didn't turn out the way that Marx envisioned; that doesn't make some of the social criticism or observations from the left any less valid. Most of the advances in labor laws that exist today -- the 40 hour work week, anti-child labor laws, safety laws -- were brought about by protests and agitations from unions, back when unions were strongly leftist and many of the leaders were reading works by Marx and Engels.
Personally, I think it's a shame that we don't teach the history of the labor movement in the United States, or about the huge debt in improved living conditions that we owe to it. Most of the people who were alive during the first labor uprisings are long dead. With the loss of manufactoring jobs, and the corporatization of union leaders, the legacy of the labor movement is dying out, and it seems likely that in just a few decades only a few history scholars will know or remember anything about it.
Re:Encouraging and clarifying "pubic domain" (Score:2)
Nope. Some company sued Corel over including pictures it had made of famous paintings in their image collections. The court ruled that making a copy of an existing work doesn't give a new copyright, no matter how hard it is. In the US, at least, creative effort is required for a new copyright.
Re:Is there *any* editorial oversight? (Score:2)
(http://www.uitti.net/stephen/)
Re:Is there *any* editorial oversight? (Score:2)
We're a library; our job is not to pretty up the past, it's to record. We noted on our copy that it was propoganda, and left it at that. If you are interested in the history of anti-Catholism in the US, that is an important work to read.
Why not just include ""The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion"[4] as well?
Because we haven't found a clearable copy yet? That work had indirectly affected everyone on the planet; it's an important historical document, and so it should be preserved, if only so people can know what racist lieing screeds sound like so they can recognize it when the next politician or disgruntled psycho starts reciting them.