Computing desk
< November 9	<< Oct \| November \| Dec >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

November 10

Win 10 Long date format

With my new Win10 PC, I am trying to set the long date format to "dddd, yyyy-mm-dd", but the options appear preset and do not include that. I managed it ok with Win7. Anyone know how to do this? -- SGBailey (talk) 08:23, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You should be able to do it from the 'Control Panel'. (But not the new 'Settings' app AFAICT.) Open it, click on 'Change date, time or number formats'. Under 'Formats' click on 'Additional settings...'. Then select the 'Date' tab. While an increasing amount of stuff is in the 'Settings' app, it's always worth checking out the 'Control Panel' if you want to do something that doesn't seem to be available in the 'Settings' app. Nil Einne (talk) 14:59, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Confused by borrowing from internet archive

I am confused with the borrowing process do you need a library membership to borrow a e book from the internet archive or do you need to pay money to them because the website says you can borrow for 14 days but not sure how it works — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.169.165.175 (talk) 12:13, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You definitely do not need to pay money. Surprisingly they don't really seem to properly explain anywhere I could find, [1] [2] but AFAICT nearly anyone can just create an account [3] and borrow books. You do need to provide an email address (and password of course) and agree to their terms of service [4]. By default you also agree to receive various announcements from them, but these can be turned off. It's also possible, although I didn't see anywhere that you're forbidden if subject to US sanctions (e.g. from North Korea, Cuba) although I didn't see anything.

Note that from what I can tell, most (or all?) of the books for borrowing are scanned image books meaning what you will receive are ePubs or PDFs with images of each page of a physical book. (You can see this in the previews.) So even for simple fiction books, there can be no automatic reflow etc.

Also what you will receive if you download the books are protected by Adobe Digital Editions DRM, so you will need that software or something compatible to be able to view borrowed books outside your browser. This means any ePaper Kindle devices are out, although Kobo and similar devices are fine albeit as I said before the book is likely to be a scan. (I'm assuming no deDRM as that's not something we can help you with on wikipedia, although maybe apprentices called Alf can.....)

Also, as is typical with libraries, they may only have limited copies of their books available and so you may find the book you wan to borrow is already checked out and need to go on a wait list. You are limited to borrowing up to 5 books at a time. (No idea if there is a waitlist limit.)

If you have a disability that intereferes with reading printed text, you may be able to apply for a special membership [5] to download books in Digital accessible information system format and possibly with different or fewer limits, not sure. The books available for this may also be different.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:47, 10 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I think most of their books may have been OCRed, this is possibly how they work with DAISY. But I suspect there has been little or no proof-reading or checking probably partly why they still rely on the images for others rather than trying to covert them into proper reflowable ePubs even for simple adult fiction books. Nil Einne (talk) 16:17, 11 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They actually do offer reflowable ePubs like they have for the always-available books for (at least some) loaned books now (labeled "Smaller File, May Contain Errors"), if you're willing to deal with the proprietary DRM and have a system that works with it. Some books aren't OCRed though, particularly when IA's OCR setup doesn't work with the writing system, although there is also more ongoing work on this mentioned in this blog post. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜Talk｜Contributions 03:28, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the correction. I made a mistake in testing. I tried a children's picture book and I somehow thought the ePub and PDF were both images when I opened them in ADE but I see now I was mistaken. I think I must have opened the PDF twice by accident. (As a children's picture book the ePub is obviously not very good.) After that when checking stuff like if it had been OCRed (it had, the text could be copied), I just opened the PDF because it was easier. I actually tried an adult fiction book as well, but the ePub had some weird error when ADE tried to retrieve it and so is now checked out for 14 days with nothing I can do. (Although you can return the book in archive.org, if you check it out in ADE you need to return it in that too or it's still marked as borrowed even if it doesn't seem to be borrowed to you.) In retrospect it was a mistake to only test the borrowed children's book ePub anyway since it was possible the children's book ePub would still be a scan, but the adult fiction book would not be. And the distinction between the PDF/online version and ePub makes some sense. Nil Einne (talk) 04:00, 14 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, "borrow" may not be the right term. That implies that they are deprived of a copy until you "return" it. It's possible they may have licensing which limits the number of copies out at any time, in which case "borrow" would be the right term. But, if it's unlimited, then it would be more proper to say you can "view" the ebook for a given period. SinisterLefty (talk) 03:40, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SinisterLefty: It is borrowed — each digital copy of a book corresponds to a physical book they hold in storage, and can only be read by one person at a time. That way, they don't get the copyright owners or their lawyers mad at them, since it's no different than a paper library (albeit with teleportation powers) for copyright purposes, or at least that's my understanding (I'm not a lawyer; this is not legal advice etc. disclaimer). —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜Talk｜Contributions 03:52, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see, thanks. SinisterLefty (talk) 03:53, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]