[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Dec 28 09:37:35 PST 2005
pt1a3.d05
Weekly_December_28.txt
*The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, December 28, 2005 PT1*
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1A
REQUEST FOR BOOKS!!!
Several of our long time volunteers are having trouble
locating copies of the following books. Before you do
too much to acquire them, you might want to check from
your own local copyright law about scanning them, as I
presume some of these may not fit into a public domain
status in all countries, but all should be ok in "life
+50" countries, and some perhaps even more widely.
Contact cjc at gutenberg.net.au if further information is required.
Deeping, Warwick:
----------------
Old Pybus
Doomsday
Roper's Row
Exile
The Bridge of Desire
Old Wine and New
Lewis, Sinclair:
----------------
Mantrap
Ann Vickers
Work of Art
Bethel Merriday
The God-Seeker
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnon:
Golden Apples--1935
Jacob's Ladder--1950
--Short story collections
When the Whippoorwill--1940
Walpole, Hugh:
--------------
--Novels
Wintersmoon: Passages in the Lives of Two Sisters,
Janet and Rosalind Grandison (1928)
A Prayer for My Son (1936)
John Cornelius (1937)
The Joyful Delaneys (1938)
The Haxtons (1939)
The Sea Tower (1939)
Roman Fountain (1940)
The Blind Mans House: A Quiet Story (1941)
The Killer and the Slain: A Strange Story (1942)
--Short story collections
All Souls' Night (1933)
Head in Green Bronze: And Other Stories (1938)
Mr Huffam: And Other Stories (1948)
Tarkington, Booth:
------------------
The Midlander
The Plutocrat
Claire Ambler
Mary's Neck
**
Portugal Has New Project Gutenberg Mirror
http://eremita.di.uminho.pt/gutenberg
or
ftp://eremita.di.uminho.pt/pub/gutenberg/
Offical data:
Continent: Europe
Nation: Portugal
Location: Braga
Provider: Universidade do Minho
Computer Science Dept
Brainchild of:
Alberto Simoes <albie at alfarrabio.di.uminho.pt>
***
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
1 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
49 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
***519 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,884 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are ~89% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,822 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~59 Months
We Have Produced 2928 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,116 to go to 20,000!!!
7,864 from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
517 from Project Gutenberg of Australia
124 from Project Gutenberg of Europe
Average 10.33 Per Month For 2005
[We will start including these in 2006]
[Apology for previously mixed numbers!]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Are Averaging ~250 books Per Month This Year
[This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg
sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org]
This Site Is Averaging ~57 eBooks Per Week This Year
50 This Week
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~32 months, from 2002 to 2005 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.00 years from Oct. 2003 to Nov. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,500
*
***Introduction
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene
that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B.
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart at pobox.com and gbnewby at pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
JAPAN EXPLORES SEARCH ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has organized a
study group of universities and electronics companies, including
Hitachi and Panasonic, to consider the merits of creating a search
engine specifically for Japan's Web users. Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi has publicly stated that Japan needs to extend its
influence in the IT arena. The government reportedly is considering
spending up to $885 million on the search-engine plan as part of its
efforts to become more dominant online.
ZDNet, 21 December 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6004037.html
PATENT OFFICE EXPECTED TO REJECT NTP PATENTS
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office notified NTP, a patent holding
company, and Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry wireless
e-mail device, that it expects to reject the five patents held by NTP.
The two companies are involved in a patent infringement lawsuit brought
by NTP. The patent office had issued preliminary rejections of the
e-mail patents in the past, but speeded its review process in response
to a request by RIM. The patent review is separate from the patent
infringement lawsuit, which could potentially stop most BlackBerry
service in the United States. NTP expects to appeal the final patent
rulings, a process that could take several years.
New York Times, 19 December 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/technology/20rim.html
HACKERS HIT SECURITY COMPANY DATABASE
Hackers gained access to the financial and personal data of 3,800 law
enforcement and network security professionals when they broke into the
customer database of Guidance Software in Pasadena, California.
Guidance Software is a leading provider of software to diagnose hacker
attacks, and its EnCase product is used by hundreds of security
researchers and law enforcement agencies worldwide, including the U.S.
Secret Service and FBI. The break-in took place in November and was
discovered December 7. The company alerted its customers within two
days after the discovery and assured them it would no longer store
customer credit card data. The company is working with the Secret
Service on a detailed investigation of the incident.
Washington Post, 20 December 2004 (registration req'd)
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901525.html
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***
INTERESTING QUOTES:
"There is no question that what this platform,
what I call the `flat world platform,'
does is really empower individuals.
"We've gone from a globalization
that was really built around countries,
to one built around companies,
to one that is increasingly empowering individuals."
Tom Friedman
Source: www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html
*
"Freedom is what promotes innovation."
Reed Hastings, Netflix Founder
*
News From Other Sources
Reports surfaced today that Harry Pooter and the
Pyramid of Furmat will be the 7th and final book
in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. However,
similar reports indicated the title of The Half
Blood Prince would be Harry Potter and the Pillar
of Storge.
"The Pyramids of Furmat lie a few miles east of the famous
Fortress of Shadows, not far from the magnificent Pillar of Storge."
According to Ms. Rowling.
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=2468322005
and
Glasgow Daily Record, UK - Dec 26, 2005
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
Vice President Cheney removed his residence from online
sources, says The New York Times, December 28, 2005.
Google then replaced the tampered government photographs
with others from a more reliable/valid private source.
See Maureen Dowd's column.
*
Delphi auto parts has finally withdrawn from the table
a proposal to cut workers' wages to 33%, not *by* 33%,
in the face of asking for hundreds of millions to pay
600 executives it wants to keep as it files bankruptcy,
the same 600 executives who led them into bankruptcy.
If changes at Delphi do not run smoothly, General Motors
could also face insolvency.
ABC News
Automotive News
Detroit Free Press
*
At least there was some mention of the over 200,000 deaths
due to the tsunami in some of the "year in review" stories.
*
No mention of Valerie Plame, whose husband, Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, warned before the Iraq war that the WMD
[Weapons of Mass Destruction] cited by President Bush
and others did not exist. Ms. Plame was then "outed"
as a CIA agent, presumably in response. [No mention
even in the Top 100 stories of the year.]
*
The "eminent domain" strategies of moving people out
of their neighborhoods to move in big businesses who
would pay more taxes got no mention either. However,
at least one story mentioned that most Seaside, MS.
homes were over $1 million, and that once offshore
floating casinos will now be rebuilt on land, land
once owned by the poor who lived there for a number
of generations, who will never get to rebuild.
Apparently residents there are being pressured by
the city to sell cheap rather than rebuild.
Source: msnbc.msn.com/id/10549743/
*
No mention of Special Agent Coleen Rowley's
memo to the FBI about 9/11 after 21 years on the job.
Though she was one of TIME's persons of the year, 2002,
all of whom were whistleblowers, all of whom were women.
The others brought down Enron and Worldcom, and not much
mention of them, either.
*
What about those in Congress who were advised of wiretaps?
Was it only a dozen? Were they sworn to not tell anyone,
even other members of Congress?
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
"We will rebuild the hurricane damage to the poor."
or
"We will rebuild the hurricane damage for the rich."
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
New Orleans WILL have Mardi Gras.
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"The only ones complaining about trailers
are those already living in houses."
ABC World News Tonight 12/20
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
There will be a "leap second" added between 2005
and 2006 to correct for some slowing of rotation
of the earth, mostly due to drag from the moon.
This is a common occurance, done 7 years ago and
some 21 times since Greenwich Mean Time began in
1884. [Also called Coordinated Universal Time]
*
Movie theater grosses are down 14% over last year
for the holiday season, but the statistics do not
include any reference to the fact that more money
is coming in from video rentals than theaters.
*
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater]
1 would be 79 years old or more.
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
POEM OF THE WEEK
Prediction
Facilitators again pop up at me
through covers of books, pictures in motion,
songs I sometimes listen to when I'm ready to listen
saying things I thought I knew
but then realized I never quite got
growing in me a sort of feeling that resembles maturity
as a non-profit living in a profit oriented world
grey skies readily situated me
on the brink of a paradise lost situation
when I met this man; he sang Happy Birthday to Jesus
every Christmas while this woman he loved was mailing
gifts to Santa Claus
the child I hold within still listens hard
the chimes of freedom are ringing again on their
veranda; let my soul be yours this very moment
the new year breathes its first breaths
the swing they sit on makes little squeaking noises,
the night is chilly, their feet covered in fluffy blankets.
A tiara of fireflies lights up an airy path
thoughts wander on while reading from the classics:
two books for a dollar again this year
wonderers like marlins dive into the depth of each other's eyes.
The Moon predicts they'll always keep them open.
Copyright 2005 by Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart
Please send comments to: simona_s75 AT yahoo.com & hart AT pobox.com
***
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