[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Nov 2 10:01:09 PST 2005
Weekly_November_02.txt
*The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, November 02, 2005 PT1*
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1A
Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
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*
HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
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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
33 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
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*eBook Milestones*
***500+ eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,438 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are ~87% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,376 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months
We Have Produced 2482 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,542 to go to 20,000!!!
7,613 from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
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 ~58 eBooks Per Week This Year
33 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 Oct. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,400
*
***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]
CRIB NOTES FIND THEIR WAY TO IPODS
The latest offering for the vastly popular iPod are crib notes for
books commonly included in college and university curricula. A company
called SparkNotes, which competes with market leader CliffsNotes,
provides the content, which is sold by a firm called iPREPpress.
Students who pay $4.95 each for a set of notes have access to the usual
set of study aids--plot summaries, major themes and motifs, study
questions, biographical sketches of the characters. The iPod notes,
however, also include several minutes of audio content for each title.
Kurt Goszyk, the founder of iPREPpress, said that students can listen
to music stored on their iPods while reading the SparkNotes for an
assigned text. "You can listen to your favorite rap song in the
background," he said, "as you're reading about 'The Great Gatsby.'"
The notes will work with most versions of the iPod, including the very
small iPod Nano, raising concerns about the possibility students will
see a new opportunity to cheat.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 October 2005
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/10/2005102702t.htm
ANTI-SPYWARE COALITION RELEASES GUIDELINES
The Anti-Spyware Coalition has released a definition of what
constitutes spyware, as well as guidelines for dealing with spyware.
The group's definition says that spyware is an application installed
without sufficient consent of the user and that interferes with the
user's ability to exert control over such things as security, privacy
and personal information, and system resources. Critics had cautioned
that a definition of spyware would allow developers of unwanted
software to simply sidestep the characteristics included in the
definition, thereby legitimizing their applications. The Anti-Spyware
Coalition said it understands that concern and drafted a definition
with enough latitude to avoid that problem. The group also identified
good practices for how organizations should identify and prevent
spyware. Included in the resources is guidance on how to rate the
severity of particular spyware applications. The group will accept
public comments on the newly released documents until November 27 and
will release final versions in early 2006.
CNET, 27 October 2005
http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-5918113.html
ICANN AND VERISIGN SETTLE SITE FINDER DISPUTE
VeriSign and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) have reached a tentative settlement in their dispute over
VeriSign's Site Finder service. The service, which VeriSign introduced
two years ago, directs users who mistype URLs to suggested target pages
rather than providing error messages. ICANN objected, saying that the
service interfered with some functionality of the Internet and--because
VeriSign was paid by some of the sites it directed users to--was an
abuse of VeriSign's power. The service was suspended, and each
organization filed suit against the other. Under the proposed
settlement, which must still be approved by the boards of both
companies and by the Commerce Department, VeriSign would receive an
extension until 2012 in its oversight of the .com domain. In return,
any introduction of services such as Site Finder would have to be
cleared in advance by ICANN.
Wired News, 25 October 2005
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69346,00.html
MICROSOFT JOINS YAHOO BOOK PROJECT
Microsoft has said it will participate in a recently announced
book-scanning project led by Yahoo and the Internet Archive. Unlike
Google's much-maligned project, the Yahoo initiative, called the Open
Content Alliance, will only scan books that are in the public domain or
for which explicit permission has been granted by the copyright holder.
In contrast, Google will scan copyrighted books unless copyright
holders specifically request that their books be excluded, though only
small portions of copyrighted books will be available online. For its
part, Microsoft will finance the scanning of about 150,000 books, while
Yahoo will pay for about 18,000 books to be digitized. The Open Content
Alliance also differs from Google's project in that all of the content
from the alliance will be available from a database to any search
engine; Google will be the only means to access the content of its
project. Microsoft will create an MSN Book Search service next year,
though the business model for particular services and fees has not been
set, according to Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search content
acquisition at MSN.
ZDNet, 25 October 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5913711.html
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***
News from other sources:
Some people have been pointing out how the news media
showed us Terry Schaivo for days and weeks on end,
but won't show a single casualty of the Iraq war.
>From a local paper:
"Dog gets more ink than dead soldiers"
"Two thousand of our soldiers have died with no foreseeable end to
this war in sight. All I ask is, where is the outrage over that?"
South Bend Tribune, IN - Oct 30, 2005
[Note: this page vanished shortly after publication]
[I tried linking to it from multiple locations.]
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
[As requested adding sources, etc., when possible.
Remember, the subject is not the article's subject,
the subject is the manipulation of the world news.]
QWEST DODGES MULTIBILLION DOLLAR BULLET FOR $.5B
A tentative settlement for $400 million by Qwest,
in addition to other smaller settlements, may get
Qwest out of the business of defending lawsuits &
back into the communications business.
An "accounting scandal" of billions of dollars is
still being settled, and stockholders who bought
under false or misleading statements by Qwest
from May 24, 1999 to July 28, 2002 are now
being reimbursed.
The Seattle Times: Business & Technology:
Shareholder settlement, 11/02/05
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
The current "official" Pakistani report of the Kashmiri earthquake
is 73,000 as of today, though local officials say it is 79,000.
The offical government toll has been much lower than the local
offical tolls for some time, but is finally being corrected.
In addition, the number of severely injured is about 70,000.
These figures are for Pakistan only. If you add the Indian
death toll, the official figures are over 80,000, but no one
in the media seems to like reporting the entire total figure,
just as they refused to report the total tolls from Katrina,
but rather sub-divided the death toll by state, and rarely,
if ever, gave all the figures at once.
Scotsman.com News
Scottish news direct from Scotland Wednesday, 2nd November 2005
*
President Ronald Reagan: "We did not, repeat, did not,
trade weapons or anything else for hostages nor will we."
re: Iran-Contra Affair
Meet the Press, Oct. 30, 2005
*
[I deleted Ambassador Wilson's comments on the yellowcake
uranium, Valerie Plame [his wife] and Judith Miller. 6/9]
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
As I predicted before, Pluto will NOT be eliminated from the list
of our planets. My previous prediction was based on the fact the
planet had a moon, Charon, but with two more now discovered, this
should be becoming more and more obvious.
National Geographic News, 11/01/05
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"About 10 minutes ago or so, the United States Senate
has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership!"
[Epithets deleted]
"They have no conviction. They have no principles.
They have no ideas. This is a pure stunt."
Most are telling you that operating under Standing Rule XXI
is never done, but the truth is that it does get used every
once in a while, the last time in the Reagan election year.
Concord Monitor Online - Concord, NH
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
The first "Tropical Storm Beta" of recorded history occured this week.
The 23rd tropical storm of the season, and the 13th hurricane, also a
new record, plowed into Nicaragua on Halloween, dropping 15" of rain,
but didn't get much major media coverage.
*
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
Negativity
Negativity grows on one's soul
like ivy on the barren wall
Making the windows of the eyes
shadowy and cold
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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