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Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

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Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#61

Post by KGIII »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #59
harry8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take how much extra tax you are willing to pay. Pay it to charity that best supports those ideals. If you're not already doing this people will suggest talk is cheap and posturing has a negative value to society at large. Good luck with it!

I do give to charity, actually. That hardly precludes me from wishing my money, and others', was used more efficiently. I feel like this isn't going how you were expecting. I was supposed to be exposed as a hollow "progressive" who's free with other people's money but is secretly a grasping hypocrite. You shouldn't assume everyone is selfish just because you are.

To add to your point - and not a detractor from your point, just because you don't have the means to solve a problem doesn't mean your not qualified to point it out.

You may not know how to fix it, but you can probably point out when you've got a compound fracture. If it isn't you with the broken bone, you're probably qualified to suggest that it probably is quite painful.

I've donated a fair sum already this month. I'm no more entitled to opine about the system than you are. It doesn't work like that.

Like you, I don't mind paying taxes. Hell, I look forward to seeing my tax bill. I also acknowledge I can pay more.

Err... I'm not kidding. I don't mind paying my taxes. I kind of like paying back to the system that enabled me to be where I am. On the other hand, I seriously wish they'd spend that money more wisely, or at least more in line with my values.

I grow weary of seeing functional equivalents to, "You're not solving the problem, your opinion is invalid." You don't have to contribute significantly to the solution to notice the problems. I feel that sort of thinking is just an excuse to maintain the status quo.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#62

Post by valvar »

lotyrin wrote: post #21
jdmichal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity. I would only want to see that if we were already post-scarcity. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of bloodshed as people figure it out and realize they don't have any way to continue buying the things they require to live. Post-scarcity is great…

Globally, we are pretty much post-scarce on anything anyone "requires to live". The struggle will be to find out how all the rest gets divided when controlling distribution of the right to live is no longer a bargaining position and discovering if we can still provide for everyone without servitude.

Have you people not heard of Malthusian traps? Either we limit the world population artificially, or we continue having poor people. It really is one or the other.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#63

Post by KGIII »

Stratoscope wrote: post #28

Just a reminder for anyone who values the Internet Archive as much as I do: it's easy to set up an automatic monthly donation. If IA were a SaaS, they could easily charge more than my modest contribution and I would gladly pay it. If you only know IA from the Wayback Machine, take a look at the other things they offer and you will find something of interest. I was delighted recently to find that they had digitized my…

Another enjoyable site:

https://textfiles.com/

I've donated to support specific projects there. I should probably set up something regular. Jason does great things.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#64

Post by KGIII »

userbinator wrote: post #44

Hundreds of thousands of books can now be liberated. Let’s bring the 20th century to 21st-century citizens. Everyone, rev your cameras! If this was 10 years ago, they would be talking about scanners --- this brings me back to the days when P2P filesharing was absolutely blooming, and people would freely scan and share in various forums ("bookz scene") the books they had either bought or borrowed. The average camera o…

As I recall, someone had built a machine that turned the pages and took pictures of the pages. I think they were refining it, as it just snapped both facing pages at once, and were going to market it.

I never did find out what happened to that project. The work was being shared in one of the alt.bin. newsgroups and they had written a few blurbs about their machine.

This predates the popularity of crowdfunding, I don't know if that would have helped. I do seem to recall them mentioning some interest from libraries or archival services but I have no idea what happened.

Maybe someone here knows the rest of the story?

I do have some older manuscripts, including some old mathematics works. I should see if there is a project to digitize them. I'd be happy with digital copies as I don't have a material attachment to the books themselves - I don't think. (I may, I've never really been faced with sending them out to someone.) So, I'd be not too incensed if the process was destructive or if the books weren't returned.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#65

Post by polm23 »

KGIII wrote: post #64
userbinator wrote: post #44

Hundreds of thousands of books can now be liberated. Let’s bring the 20th century to 21st-century citizens. Everyone, rev your cameras! If this was 10 years ago, they would be talking about scanners --- this brings me back to the days when P2P filesharing was absolutely blooming, and people would freely scan and share in various forums ("bookz scene") the books they had either bought or borrowed. The average camera o…

As I recall, someone had built a machine that turned the pages and took pictures of the pages. I think they were refining it, as it just snapped both facing pages at once, and were going to market it. I never did find out what happened to that project. The work was being shared in one of the alt.bin. newsgroups and they had written a few blurbs about their machine. This predates the popularity of crowdfunding, I don'…

You might be remembering the Ion Audio Saver, which was inexpensive (https://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=F...

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#66

Post by theGimp »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #58
stcredzero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity...Highly highly unlikely... Is there ever going to be a post-scarcity era, or is scarcity contextual? Perhaps it is just going to be a moving target, like AI seems to be? Once a chess playing program that could beat the world champion was a pipe dream…

> Is there ever going to be a post-scarcity era, or is scarcity contextual? There cannot be a post-scarcity era as long as one man is able to impregnate more than one woman.

How does this tie into post-scarcity?

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#67

Post by KGIII »

polm23 wrote: post #65
KGIII wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, someone had built a machine that turned the pages and took pictures of the pages. I think they were refining it, as it just snapped both facing pages at once, and were going to market it. I never did find out what happened to that project. The work was being shared in one of the alt.bin. newsgroups and they had written a few blurbs about their machine. This predates the popularity of crowdfunding, I don'…

You might be remembering the Ion Audio Saver, which was inexpensive ( https://www.amazon.com/forum/kindle?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=F...

Quite similar, methinks. The other was much older (in Internet years). If I had to guess at a date, I can say I think it was in the 1998 to 2003 region. I can't be more accurate than a five year span, my memory isn't that good.

It was a rig that was made with a metal frame. You could adjust the height of the camera and it had a light attached to it in the pictures. It turned the pages automatically but would sometimes crumple the pages.

I believe the eventual product was to be able to use any camera that supported remote triggering? There was the little tripod mount screw welded onto what looked like aluminum tube framing. That held the camera and it was adjustable for different book heights and widths.

(I am trying to give as many details as I can, as it may trigger a memory better than my own.)

I recall some discussion on the lighting and they were using fluorescent lights that hit the same spectrum as the Sun. There was some discussion on using different spectrums.

I do also recollect them discussing OCR and that it was difficult to do on the images and not very accurate unless it were a more modern book with a common typeset.

I really wish I'd more info. It was a neat sounding project and the guy built it himself as well as worked on the OCR software - though I'm not sure they ever got the OCR working properly.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#68

Post by posterboy »

komali2 wrote: post #9

I'm ambivalent about all the weirdness about digital books. On the one hand, I kinda get why San Francisco Public Library has to "pretend" it can only loan out 20 "digital copies" of "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck" at a time, because I guess if you could just instantly use the Libby app to throw it on your kindle and renew endlessly, why would anybody ever buy a book? Still, it is "fake" prohibitions. There's l…

> because I guess if you could just instantly use the Libby app to throw it on your kindle and renew endlessly, why would anybody ever buy a book

Corolary, why would anyone ever write a book, except to make money, right?

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#69

Post by posterboy »

theGimp wrote: post #66
thaumasiotes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there ever going to be a post-scarcity era, or is scarcity contextual? There cannot be a post-scarcity era as long as one man is able to impregnate more than one woman.

How does this tie into post-scarcity?

> what is population control

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#70

Post by jpatokal »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #58
stcredzero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity...Highly highly unlikely... Is there ever going to be a post-scarcity era, or is scarcity contextual? Perhaps it is just going to be a moving target, like AI seems to be? Once a chess playing program that could beat the world champion was a pipe dream…

> Is there ever going to be a post-scarcity era, or is scarcity contextual? There cannot be a post-scarcity era as long as one man is able to impregnate more than one woman.

Most industrialized societies already have birth rates well below replacement level.
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