SC - online OED troubles

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
> Partially I happen to agree with you, Ras. This largely looks like a
> corporate move to both seed the market and protect an extablished cash cow.
> 
> I also think you have to grant them the right to make a profit on their
> honest labors. 

The cry echoes from the walls of Adamantius' book-filled, paper-stacked
apartment: Where the h&*$'s that book _now_??? I just had it!

Well, I can't find the unfavorable thing (unfavorable being my new
generic cussword; I got tired of expletive deleted), but an interesting
view of the compilation of the OED can be found in the recent
non-fictional (if somewhat sensationalized) "The Professor and the
Madman", author unknown as I can't find the unfavorable thing. Doubtless
someone will do some kind of web search or check with Amazon and come up
with the info in about four seconds. Its main subject matter of a
massive academic project carried on by mail between the man chosen to
lead the team who did the reading, compilation, editing and collating of
the OED and, unbeknownst to the editor, a particularly well-read inmate
in an asylum for the criminally insane, is in many ways _less_
interesting than the story of the OED itself, with its various pitfalls,
dead ends, rebirths and changes of leadership on an effort that took
hundreds of people something like eighty years to complete.

No, the OED is not just a book, folks, and while some of the copyright
laws and other restrictions might be seen as aptly applied, any argument
that even sounds like trivializing it as "just a book, what's the big
deal" (an attidude that probably creeps in more when we get to talking
about the CD-ROM) is almost predestined to be flawed. Not that either
Ras or Stefan has done this, of course.    

> Stefan (who can be just as opinionated as some folks here)

I dunno, are there opinionated folks here? I hadn't noticed! Well, if
you'll excuse me, I'm off to attend my latest Forensic Assertiveness
Training Class. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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