project gutenberg

Not Buying The Kindle

May 14, 2009

As a supporter of Project Gutenberg‘s eBook philosophy, I refuse to purchase a device that operates solely in proprietary file format and has hinky public domain vs. copyright and ownership issues associated with it. Lately, the PG-forum arguments for and against the Kindle have turned into ones of readability; subjective terms such as “comfortable” and [...]

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Can’t Burn eBooks

April 9, 2009

Oxford’s Bodleian Library: Where Forests Go When They Die (h/t Michael Hart) … the library also follows another traditional policy that is considerably more liberal: scholars from any university in the world are given free access to the library as readers, and those without a university affiliation can become readers by paying a nominal fee. [...]

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Day 898: eBook News

February 11, 2008

One million books scanned at U of Michigan Librarians at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor threw themselves a party on Friday to celebrate a milestone in their ambitious effort to scan every single book in the collection. They scanned the one millionth book, leaving just 6.5-million to go. Google Book Search: The Good, [...]

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Day 732: Grab Bag

August 30, 2007

Who Killed Beethoven? - Dun dun dun duuuuuuun … Examiners in the UK are asked to “make science easier” – Unintelligent design crosses the pond, thus making us not the only G7 nation with low expectations of our kids.  Or as England’s equivalent of the DoE(dumacation) responds,”Deliberately increasing the proportion of easier questions is a clear [...]

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Day 683: Optimal Copyright Term Is 14 Years

July 13, 2007

So says mathematics (thanks, D) [Rufus] Pollock’s work is based on the pr[e]mise that the optimal level of copyright drops as the costs of producing creative work go down.  As it has grown simpler to print books, record music, and edit films using new digital tools, the production and reproduction costs for creative work in [...]

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Day 665: Blogging Out Loud

June 25, 2007

Like Loki, I suffer from a bit of blog burn-out and have considered simply shutting VatulBlog down and restarting another space dedicated to Project Gutenberg, geophysics and other assorted geekiness.  No, no, I’m not turning off the blog and the following tells you why. The conversations here have been severely lacking since last fall really, and often it’s [...]

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Day 621: Michael Hart Interviewed On NPR Today

May 11, 2007

Founder and executive director of Project Gutenberg, Michael Hart, was interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday this morning. Fellow interviewees are Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive (that “dovetails with Project Gutenberg”) and Michael Keller of Stanford University’s library (representing Google). The topic is Digital Libraries and universal access to all knowledge. This conversation will help those [...]

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Day 608: Hart Article In Global Politician

April 28, 2007

Michael has a great article in the Global Politician entitled Web2.0 – Erudition, Not Hoarding: Response to Sam Vaknin.  With computing and electronic media, as with any medium including book, newspaper, television, radio, its value depends on the user.  For the person who really doesn’t want to learn, the argument over medium is immaterial. … Sam [...]

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Day 564: Fahrenheit Dumb

March 15, 2007

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” — Heinrich Heine Gita and Ramayana Will Be Burnt By The DMK Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) president K Veeramani has warned that the sacred book of the Hindus, the Bhagawad Gita and the Indian epic Ramayana, would be burnt as part of a demonstration to [...]

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Day 520: Google’s Moonshine

January 30, 2007

a.k.a. the perks of having a large, well-funded PR department. The New Yorker: Google’s Moon Shot – The Quest For The Universal Library Google intends to scan every book ever published, and to make the full texts searchable, in the same way that Web sites can be searched on the company’s engine at google.com. … [...]

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