Comments on: Microsoft to offer book search

Company joins Yahoo's book digitization project, paying to bring 150,000 books online. Will MSN Book Search stay out of legal trouble?

[irwinbarry]

Project Gutenberg

Hasn't anyone heard of Project Gutenberg and Bartelby.com? Hungary offers two (at least) digitized book sites one MEK offers classics of Hungarian and world literature as well as outstanding non-fiction, and irodalakademia.hu offers a great collection of contempoprary Hungarian literature. I guess with so few people reading Hungarian they are more concerned with people reading than with copyrighting. There's a big difference between reading on a computer and holding a book in your hands--and it's quite possible that having started a book in computer mode you will actually want to buy it.

[Codonology]

Good move! A Sign of Moving Toward Future Concept Search Technology

This news, including Yahoo's timely action on digitizing published contents (books etc.), echos my voice which was posted on C/net not long ago (http://news.com.com/5208-1024-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=10289&messageID=75550&start=-174) . It is about a sign of first wave on Search Technology moving toward to more deeper layer, which is Concept Searching. If you JUST think that it is the only goal to make "grabbing the words out of every book" much more efficiently by digitizing all of them, you need think again. Remember, here's the Law No.1: Everybody has only 24 four hours a day, 7 days a week; and has limited life-span (100 years)". Law No.2: Everybody has limited reading speed and comprehension capability. Therefore, human do not need too many to read and comprehend by him or herself; however, everybody wants understand much enough to have a balanced life. Balanced life means that being educated but not overwhelmed by knowledge; being productive but not over stressed; so on and so forth....
What does this has anything to do with "Concept Search Technology"? The quick answer is that if you can get answers (not just web link, and not just those hazy wording from the books etc.), do you choose to get answers by lengthy reading on your own, or pick Concept Searching. I believe that you will choose the latter, unless you take reading only a joy, not a way of communication. It sounds absurd already.

For more in-depth discussion, please visit my web site: www.Condonology.com

Good Future!

Hua Fang, MD

[t8]

OK here is our business plan

Microsofts business plan:
Do what Google does, but try to do it better.

(Q) So where does all of Microsofts research and development billions go?

(A) Probably in implimenting their copycat products and bloating them out in order to spend the research budget and to keep those tubby Microsofties employed.

The conclusion is that Google is lean, light, and efficient and Microsoft is synonymous bloat.