results for ‘google’

J. D. has a post on his blog tonight responding to concerns about how we can turn out a quality book so soon after the publication of Plenty of Blame to Go Around. Some have expressed the concern that our retreat book might not be as good since it’s coming out only 18 months after the publication of POB.

J.D. addressed some of the issues, and I want to add to what he wrote.

First, and foremost, I have always been a prolific writer. I think that my track record speaks for itself along those lines. At the same time, I’ve also made it clear that I don’t particularly enjoy practicing law, and that my writing is my outlet …

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In August, I posted about the better features of Google’s book search feature. J. D. and I both made very extensive use of Google’s site, as well as the Microsoft live book search site (a note about the Microsoft site–it will not work on the Mac. That, in and of itself, is reason enough for me not to want to use it at all).

There is a third organization digitizing books. The Internet Archive is also digitizing public domain books and making them available. The following article appeared in today’s issue of The New York Times, and explains why I prefer the Internet Archive project:

Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web
By KATIE HAFNER
Published: October 22, …

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Major hat tip to Dimitri Rotov for pointing this out.

It seems that Google got a healthy taste of its own medicine. Check out Richard Charkin’s blog. That’s poetic justice if ever it existed.

And yes, Dimitri, I am very pleased. 🙂

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About once per week, I get a call from J. D. about something he has found on Google’s book search site. He spends a lot of time trolling the complete versions of the public domain books that can be found there. He will call me to tip me off to some really obscure source that is of interest, and a fair number of them pertain to Ulric Dahlgren. Yesterday was an especially good one.

Abraham Lincoln had three personal secretaries. Two of them are well-known, John Hay and John G. Nicolay. The third is not well-known at all. His name was William O. Stoddard, and Stoddard wrote a memoir of his time at the White House titled Inside the White …

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Today, media giant Viacom has sued Google for $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement arising from the posting of its copyrighted material on You Tube. Here’s an article on this litigation from CNET:

Viacom sues Google over YouTube clips
By Anne Broache and Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 13, 2007, 6:35 AM PDT
Last modified: March 13, 2007, 2:14 PM PDT
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update Viacom on Tuesday slapped YouTube and parent company Google with a lawsuit, accusing the wildly popular video-sharing site of “massive intentional copyright infringement” and seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends …

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Yesterday, I got a call from JD, asking me if I had received a letter in yesterday’s mail accusing us of plagiarism of our work on the charge of the 1st Delaware Cavalry at Westminster, Maryland on June 29, 1863. Specifically, we were accused of plagiarising an unpublished manuscript on these events written by correspondent, submitted to the Carroll County, Maryland Historical Society, but never published by them. Neither JD nor I had ever even heard of the manuscript, let alone seeing it. In short, we’ve been accused of stealing from a manuscript we’ve never seen.

Neat trick, eh? I’ve often wished that I was good at mind-reading; I know my wife wishes I was a mind-reader when it comes …

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As critical as I have been of Google’s scheme to disregard the copyright rights of authors, I have a very difficult time finding any fault at all with this extremely useful web site. The link is to Microsoft’s Books Live site. Bear in mind that the depth of how much I despise Microsoft–also known as the Evil Empire–and that saying anything at nice about Microsoft is extremely difficult indeed for me. Hat tip to Teej Smith and J. D. Petruzzi for bringing this site to my attention.

However, the Evil Empire’s Books Live project has digitized thousands of PUBLIC DOMAIN works in order to make them available to the consuming public. These works are no longer eligible for copyright …

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J. D. Petruzzi has been working his way through the draft of the Dahlgren manuscript for me. I got another three chapters from him the other day, which means that he’s gotten through 9 of the 13 chapters for me. Scott Patchan’s also returning the favor (I read and edited his Shenandoah Valley in 1864 manuscript for him earlier this year) by reading it for me. When they’re done, it will then go out to four folks to read and review: Horace Mewborn, Bob O’Neill, Ken Noe, and Ethan Rafuse. Teej Smith, who read the very rough first drafts of each chapter as they were completed, also wants to take another run at it now that it’s been polished a …

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I’ve not been shy about stating my opinions about copyright protection issues, generally in the context of Google’s scheme to engage in copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale.

Many of you are familiar with the site YouTube, where people can post videos on the Internet and where they can be downloaded for free. YouTube is coming under increasing scrutiny due to copyright infringement concerns. While the networks haven’t gone after it yet, that day will come, probably much sooner than later. Here’s an article that appeared on CNet earlier this week:

Another Internet research firm has predicted doom for YouTube’s business model.

Copyright issues that have plagued video-sharing site YouTube since its official launch almost a year ago will …

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Dimitri Rotov had a very interesting post/rant on his blog today. He mentioned that I, along with several others, have been encouraging him to write a book about McClellan for some time now. I really think that Dimitri is the logical choice to write the definitive study of Mac’s life, and I can only reiterate the hope that he will do so.

Dimitri wrote:

I may write a book. I’m thinking about it. But I don’t feel obliged to do so.

Can this blog be a book substitute? I think it can. It requires a leap of faith, perhaps, over the bound book culture. It requires a dispensation: “He’s not being lazy or unfocused.”

Can pathbreaking research be published on …

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