We are told that "the Million Book Project has exceeded its goal of digitizing one million books by 2007. " Well, I can think of a million books that I'd never want to look at, and I can think of a million books that I would give up my life to preserve. Or your life, at least.
Which million does the Million Book Project address? And how? And why?
I don't know about why, but I am deeply offended and seriously worried about the "how" part ... about the fact that the very first words you encounter if you go to the US site of the million book project are:
"Use Internet Explorer to....." (look at these books).
Uffda!
I assume nefarious, evil, underhanded things involving Bill Gates and possibly some unsuspecting innocent animals ... either as sacrificial objects, or possibly as object's of Mr. Gates affections .... I don't know, one hears things that one would prefer not to believe or even think about... Anyway, evil nefarious things have presumably happened if the first thing the ultimate book digitizing project has to say is "Use Internet Explorer...."
It is simply disgusting and very troubling.
I assume the site is using a Microsoft backend because, well, the site does not actually work very well, if at all. So far I have not seen a single book among the million book site's collection because I keep getting server errors and timeouts. Nothing else. They may have digitized a million books but, at the moment, we are not allowed to see any of them.
Somewhere along the line, somebody made a bad decision. I won't say any more until I have learned the details. Nor will I give you the link. I don't give links to dead sites.
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Uffda! Indeed! Micro$oft/Microsquish. I get sooooo sick and tired of these kinds of Web sites that insist on slurping the MS cool-aid and insist that we do so as well. Isn't this a Web sight that is supposed to be for everyone -- including those of us who would dare to use software and platforms that are not Micro$oft?
You want a supercomputer and you get an abacus.
From a historical perspective, the digitization of the world's information is taking place at an amazing rate. Tools to search, catalog, and analyze that information are also being developed and deployed at equally amazing rates. For over a century the Dewey Decimal system was the state of the art in information cataloging. For centuries prior to that, libraries of information were limited to wealthy collectors and a few institutions of learning.
I grew up with the Jetsons. I want that future NOW...not the IE crippled and corrupted version that Microsoft has created. In my saner moments though, I can still be amazed at how far we have come and how quickly we are moving.