Quote and Source

From the July 2004 issue

QUOTE

"I absolutely hate taxes, but as a colleague said, I love Virginia more."

-- Thomas K. Norment Jr., Republican floor leader in the Virginia Senate, on sponsoring a $4 billion tax increase, higher than the Democratic governor's request

SOURCE

Electronic books have been around a long time now, but the Internet has been making them increasingly collaborative. Project Gutenberg (Gutenberg.net), famous for putting books in the public domain online, uses a "distributed" method of proofreading (organized at pgdp.net) to make sure its content is accurate, with each volunteer proofreading only a few pages of each book. Some authors go further, inviting readers to collaborate in a book's composition. Economist David Friedman's forthcoming Future Imperfect is online at patrifriedman.com/prose-others/fi/commented/Future_Imperfect.html; the author invites your suggestions. Columnist Dan Gillmor is doing the same with his book-in-progress Making the News, at weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor. Readers also produced an audiobook version of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture (Penguin), recording a chapter each at turnstyle.org/FreeCulture.