War and Nookd — eBook Regex Gone Haywire

PerlJedi tips a story that highlights one of the downsides to ebooks. A blogger who recently read Tolstoy's War and Peace on his Nook stumbled upon some odd phases, such as: "It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern..." After seeing the word 'Nookd' a few more times, he found a dead-tree version of the book and discovered that the word was supposed to be 'kindled.' Every instance of the word 'kindle' in the ebook had been replaced with 'Nook.' "The Superior Formatting Publishing version isn’t a Barnes and Noble book, so this isn’t the work of a rogue Nook marketer from B&N. Rather, it’s likely that Superior Formatting Publishing ported its Kindle version of War and Peace over to the Nook — doing a search and replace to make sure that any Kindle references they’d inserted, such as in the advertising at the end of the book about their fine Kindle products, were simply changed to Nook. The unwitting hilarity of a publisher doing a 'find and replace' and accidentally changing the text of a canonical work of Western thought is alarming. Many versions of e-books are from similar outfits, that distribute public domain works formatted for Kindle or Nook at the lowest possible prices. The great democratizing factor of the ebook formats – that anyone can easily distribute – can also mean that readers can never be quite sure that they are viewing the texts as the author intended."

Okay, Okay It Was Me

[eldavojohn]

But I went back and searched every kindle and cranny to set every instance of the word back to kindle to fix it.

I'm only human.

What a brute force method...

[glwtta]

You could say it's downright medireview.

sed -i ...

[i.r.id10t]

sed -i s/wand/wang/g Harry\ Potter*

Just wrong.

[CubicleZombie]

They really shouldn't mess with the clbuttics.

Another clbuttic case...

[tlhIngan]

Just more of the same clbuttic errors.

(Hint: "ass" was one of the 13 words.)

Re:Okay, Okay It Was Me

[jakimfett]

Aha, my good fellow! Thy response doth Nook the warmth of delight in mine heart!

Romeo & Juliet

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

But soft, what light through yonder Linux breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the Oracle(TM).
Arise, fair Oracle(TM), and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she

Re:sed -i ...

[Anonymous Coward]

for those who haven't read the referenced bash.org quote [bash.org] :

<JonJonB> Purely in the interests of science, I have replaced the word "wand" with "wang" in the first Harry Potter Book
<JonJonB> Let's see the results...

<JonJonB> "Why aren't you supposed to do magic?" asked Harry.
<JonJonB> "Oh, well -- I was at Hogwarts meself but I -- er -- got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wang in half an' everything

<JonJonB> A magic wang... this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.

<JonJonB> "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wang. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wang for charm work."
<JonJonB> "Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wang. Eleven inches. "

<JonJonB> Harry took the wang. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wang above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls

<JonJonB> "Oh, move over," Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry's wang, tapped the lock, and whispered, 'Alohomora!"

<JonJonB> The troll couldn't feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry's wang had still been in his hand when he'd jumped - it had gone straight up one of the troll's nostrils.

<JonJonB> He bent down and pulled his wang out of the troll's nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue.

<JonJonB> He ran onto the field as you fell, waved his wang, and you sort of slowed down before you hit the ground. Then he whirled his wang at the dementors. Shot silver stuff at them.

<JonJonB> Ok
<JonJonB> I have found, definitive proof
<JonJonB> that J.K Rowling is a dirty DIRTY woman, making a fool of us all
<JonJonB> "Yes," Harry said, gripping his wang very tightly, and moving into the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind on flying, but something else kept intruding.... Any second now, he might hear his mother again... but he shouldn't think that, or he would hear her again, and he didn't want to... or did he?
<melusine > O_______O
<JonJonB> Something silver-white, something enormous, erupted from the end of his wang

<JonJonJonB> Then, with a sigh, he raised his wang and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

<JonJonJonB> 'Get - off - me!' Harry gasped. For a few seconds they struggled, Harry pulling at his uncles sausage-like fingers with his left hand, his right maintaining a firm grip on his raised wang.

Re:George Orwell couldn't even come close to today

[Garble Snarky]

Tolstoy isn't really western, is it?

Twain chose that word for a reason

[Thud457]

You do realize that you can actually post the word "nigga" on slashdot, right?

apparently AKabral is one of many avatars of Ironyman.

oh, and the word being referred to is nigger [google.com]