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."

Must...avoid...Steve...Gutenberg...joke...

[mikeophile]

Seriously, awesome work people.

You can't be serious

[ryants]

even help out by visiting the Distributed Proofers and editing one page per day.

You can't seriously be asking Slashdotters to volunteer as proofreaders.

All caps?

[Anonymous Coward]

They had AOL back then?

Re:You can't be serious

[BabyDave]

Could be worse - they could be asking the Slashdot editors!

doh

[Anonymous Coward]

Download Error

You'll need to install and activate the current version of Microsoft Reader before you can download these Owner-Exclusive titles.

Click here to get started now.


No Linux version!? Gah.

Re:You can't be serious

[thinkninja]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

-1 Redundant

founding fathers

[Tablizer]

...first sped an all-caps version of the Declaration of Independence to anyone and everyone then on what later became the web

I knew it! This country was founded by COBOLers.

Re:founding fathers

[Anonymous Coward]

ADD 1 TO POST-POINTS.
MOVE "Funny" TO POST-STATUS.

(That's Cobol, for those who don't know)

Oh, who reads books anymore anyway?

[Faust7]

I absorb all information directly through a USB link from my laptop to my head. Pretty nice, except for the typographical migraines. I always have ibuprofen in hand when visiting Slashdot.

it's all lost and stoof

[shadowbearer]

I like what happens when you run across a title which isn't on the site. [ibiblio.org]

Example: "It's not there, eh? -- Canadian"

Heh.

SB

Re:You can't be serious

[claudius0425]

Hey yo, some us /. homies aint got no grammer problems.

Re:You can't be serious

[MadCow42]

Well, it wouldn't be THAT bad, we'd just have 5 different versions of each book, each released about a day apart.

MadCow.

Ah, that explains the "Midi-Sum and Nite Dream"

[Pac]

It probably accounts for Achilles shouting "First Greek" when he lands at Troy's beach and all those descriptions of statues of a girl suspiciously similar to a modern actress in Roman poems. And I was really sure Tom Sawyer's pet was not a penguin.

Re:XML please

[gotem]

I dare you to try and find any other data format that was commonly used 32 years ago that you can still read with current equipment.

punchcards.. what? you mean you don't have your punchcard read connected?

Re:You can't be serious

[JDWTopGuy]

How about a project to translate the books to 1337 speak?

20,000 1346u35 und3r 7h3 534
h4x0r3d by Ju135 V3rn

7h3y w4s 0wn3d by 7h3 c4p74!n

Or even worse, the Bible in 1337: (7h3 n3w h4x0r v3r510n?)

7h0u 5h417 n0t k!11, d00d.