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Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

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Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#91

Post by contact9879 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #88
contact9879 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

choose your favorite hash hash( )

Hashes are too long, aren't human-recognizable as to meaning, etc. I don't want half-assed workarounds. They need to uniquely number their books.

- they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices

- hashes are as long or short as you need them to be

- publication timestamp is in every ebook’s metadata, is almost guaranteed to be unique, monotonically increases, and has actual semantic meaning compared to an isbn or oclc

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#92

Post by kragen »

lukan wrote: post #82
kragen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a couple of different reasons. The first is literary merit: reading Harry Potter is a great deal more enjoyable than reading Bechdolt's book. Rowling may not be Homer or Shakespeare, and there are things about her books that could be better, but reading them has been an extremely popular activity since they were first published. I suspect that, if there are people in 200 years, less of them will read Rowling than…

" Harry Potter, like Rambo, The Matrix, and Frankenstein, supplies metaphors and narratives through which nearly everyone today interprets the world around them, even if they haven't read it themselves" I did read the books, but I don't think I have really encountered the use of "Muggles, horcrux, mudblood" in every day life, nor do I personally feel they shaped my metaphors or narratives on how I see the world. Fran…

The young woman I was standing behind at the bus stop tonight had the Deathly Hallows logo tattooed on her harm.

What does Harry Potter represent? You can't replace a book-length narrative with a short phrase.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#93

Post by lukan »

kragen wrote: post #92
lukan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Harry Potter, like Rambo, The Matrix, and Frankenstein, supplies metaphors and narratives through which nearly everyone today interprets the world around them, even if they haven't read it themselves" I did read the books, but I don't think I have really encountered the use of "Muggles, horcrux, mudblood" in every day life, nor do I personally feel they shaped my metaphors or narratives on how I see the world. Fran…

The young woman I was standing behind at the bus stop tonight had the Deathly Hallows logo tattooed on her harm. What does Harry Potter represent? You can't replace a book-length narrative with a short phrase.

Well, possibly I miss something, because I wouldn't recognize a Deathly Hallows logo if I see one. (I assume this is rather from the movies?). But there are occasional references to Harry Potter I have seen.

Apart from that, I would say Harry Porter represents some things.

The glass eyed bullied nerd, that steps into a magical realm to become a superhero. In general, the concept of a fantastic magical realm hidden besides this dull concrete reality. But those are old tropes I would think and unlike with Matrix(blue pill, red pill), Star Wars (may the force be with you, the dark side), Lord of the rings (The ring of power that corrupts), I don't see such strong concepts coming from Harry Porter that

"supplies metaphors and narratives through which nearly everyone today interprets the world around them"

Just my impression, I don't have a strong opinion here, rather curious what I might miss.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#94

Post by shevy-java »

We need to open up all .pdf files. Free the world. I believe information is a human right. (I am not at all against payment for original work, mind you. My point is that information at the end of the day has to be accessible to every human being, without exception. Wikipedia ALL the things.)

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#95

Post by kidsil »

mastazi wrote: post #4

RIP. Project Gutenberg and IMSLP are two of my favourite websites. Every January, when new works enter the public domain, I go and download a bunch of books and sheet music. HN readers, let's not forget to donate to these websites that keep the Internet worth surfing.

You just opened my eyes to IMSLP and I would like to thank you for that. For years I have been chasing music scores that were just the right level for my kids.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#96

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

contact9879 wrote: post #91
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hashes are too long, aren't human-recognizable as to meaning, etc. I don't want half-assed workarounds. They need to uniquely number their books.

- they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices - hashes are as long or short as you need them to be - publication timestamp is in every ebook’s metadata, is almost guaranteed to be unique, monotonically increases, and has actual semantic meaning compared to an isbn or oclc

>they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices

They don't need to. It'd be smart. It's not "arbitrary". It's fucking library science.

>hashes are as long or short as you need them to be

Hashes might uniquely identify a computer file, but they don't uniquely identify an edition/release of a published book. Some jackass on libgen decides to tweak a single byte, now it has a new hash... but it's not a new edition.

>publication timestamp is in every ebook’s metadata

As someone who takes a look at every internal opf file, no... they're not in every ebook.

You're suggesting I go to the extra trouble of doing a job they could do easily, when I can only do it poorly, and I don't know why... because the first person to respond was a dumbass and thought I was attacking him? I swear, 99% of humans are still monkeys.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#97

Post by walkabout »

dinkelberg wrote: post #78
walkabout wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re intended to derail every thread that includes them into discussions about this stupid date format, thus wasting lifetimes of person-hours. It’s surely an effort by misanthropes who want the worst for humanity. If it’s coming from any benign motivation, then it’s totally misguided.

I'm sorry, but this reads somewhat misanthropical itself. Let people have some fun?

They’re trolls. They’ve been doing this for years. It’s just trolling.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#98

Post by 9dev »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #72
acabal wrote: post #50

I'm shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindnes…

Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.

Have a little respect, for fucks sake. This does not belong here.

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#99

Post by ndriscoll »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #96
contact9879 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices - hashes are as long or short as you need them to be - publication timestamp is in every ebook’s metadata, is almost guaranteed to be unique, monotonically increases, and has actual semantic meaning compared to an isbn or oclc

>they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices They don't need to. It'd be smart. It's not "arbitrary". It's fucking library science. >hashes are as long or short as you need them to be Hashes might uniquely identify a computer file, but they don't uniquely identify an edition/release of a published book. Some jackass on libgen decides to tweak a single byte, now it has a new hash..…

You don't need to hash file contents (though that is often a useful thing to do). You can hash e.g. the URL that was earlier claimed to be the canonical identifier. Running it through your favorite hash function fixes your complaints about file names (choose your favorite hash function such that it is not too long and only outputs allowed characters).

Re: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, has died

#100

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

ndriscoll wrote: post #99
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they don’t need to do anything to conform to your arbitrary organization choices They don't need to. It'd be smart. It's not "arbitrary". It's fucking library science. >hashes are as long or short as you need them to be Hashes might uniquely identify a computer file, but they don't uniquely identify an edition/release of a published book. Some jackass on libgen decides to tweak a single byte, now it has a new hash..…

You don't need to hash file contents (though that is often a useful thing to do). You can hash e.g. the URL that was earlier claimed to be the canonical identifier. Running it through your favorite hash function fixes your complaints about file names (choose your favorite hash function such that it is not too long and only outputs allowed characters).

Ah. The url, so I can substitute one difficult-for-human-readability with another difficult-for-human-readability, both of which are excessively long and opaque-by-design.

>choose your favorite hash function such that it is not too long

ISBN's 13 digits is about as long as is tolerable. Any time there is a list of authors six names long (academic titles) along with a subtitle, it's very easy to bump up against max filename size.

This isn't a problem I can solve on my own. Just trying to bring attention to it. My solution thus far is to just avoid publishers who are so unprofessional as to not provide numbers. It's not tough, Project Gutenberg does it. Anyone can do it. If you're some amateur whose entire catalog is 8 books published, you say "this book is 1, and this book is 2" etc, and it's a done deal. Again, I don't expect anyone to use ISBNs (in the US, you have to pay for them unless you're one of the big 5 publishing houses), but just use your own for god's sake.

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