[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Nov 23 09:59:32 PST 2005
Weekly_November_23.txt
*The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, November 23, 2005 PT1*
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1A
Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
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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
6 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
72 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
***512 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,605 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are ~88% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,543 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~56 Months
We Have Produced 2649 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,395 to go to 20,000!!!
7,702 from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
85 from Project Gutenberg of Europe
[We will start including these in 2006]
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
78 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 17,600
*
***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]
LIBRARIES FOLLOWING RETAILERS' LEAD
Libraries increasingly find themselves in a quandary between growing
expectations among patrons for personalized services and libraries'
traditional stance as a strong advocate for personal privacy.
Commercial enterprises such as Amazon and Netflix typically make
suggestions to customers based on previous purchases and can notify
users when certain products are available. The library at North
Carolina State University is implementing a program that offers
students similar services based on past usage. To offer such services,
however, the library must keep more-detailed patron records than many
libraries keep, given the authority of government officials under the
USA PATRIOT Act to subpoena those records. Officials from the
university report that students are comfortable trading some measure of
privacy for the convenience of personalized services. Another program
at the University of Notre Dame offers similar suggestions to users,
which, according to its developer, should simplify research for many
students. Michael Golrick, the city librarian in Bridgeport, Conn.,
said that the large numbers of immigrants in his community would not be
so willing to trade privacy for convenience. Many of them, he said,
"came to this country to avoid the kinds of surveillance and
persecution we're seeing tinges of today."
New York Times, 20 November 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/weekinreview/20cowan.html
UNIVERSITY COMBINES EXERCISE AND TECHNOLOGY
The recreation center at Minnesota State University now includes
computers that can be used while people are exercising. Although many
fitness centers include individual TVs for treadmills and other pieces
of equipment, officials at Minnesota State wanted to offer something
more. They set up 40 adjustable stands, each of which has a computer,
monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Students using the rec center can surf
the Web, check e-mail, or perform other computer tasks while they
exercise. One professor at the university said he will incorporate the
new facilities into one of his fitness courses, where students will
exercise while taking quizzes and doing other activities on the
computers. Officials at other schools said they would consider adding
similar facilities to their rec centers, noting that more and more
students grew up multitasking and expecting to have access to a
computer all the time. Some disagree with the approach. Stephanie Maks,
who worked as a personal trainer for 20 years, said often the biggest
hurdle to an effective exercise program is letting go of technology.
"Don't bring the office with you to the gym," she said.
Wired News, 20 November 2005
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69633,00.html
CITIES AND TOWNS ADDING WIRELESS NETWORKS
Cities and towns across the United States are launching, or announcing
plans to launch, wireless broadband networks. Wireless technologies are
evolving to allow increasingly secure, robust networks in city-wide
installations. Large cities, such as Philadelphia and San Francisco,
and smaller towns, such as Lebanon, Oregon, are establishing wireless
municipal networks for reasons ranging from economic development to
improved services for residents. In Tucson, Arizona, a wireless network
will allow communication between ambulances and one of the city's
hospitals, improving patient care. That network is expected to be
online in mid-2006, and the service could be extended to other medical
facilities in the city. Other municipalities see wireless Internet
access as a valuable step in narrowing the digital divide and bringing
the benefits of technology to lower-income residents. In Mountain View,
California, Google, which is headquartered there, will develop a
wireless broadband network at no cost to the city.
Federal Computer Week, 21 November 2005
http://www.fcw.com/article91475-11-18-05-Web
ONLINE EDUCATION EXPANDS IN AFRICA
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has announced a grant to fund
online education efforts in Africa. The $900,000 grant will support the
Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa consortium, which is working to
develop an online portal that will offer a broad array of educational
materials from institutions such as MIT, the Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health, and Chinese Open Resources for Education. According to
Kuzvinetsa Peter Dzvimbo, rector of the African Virtual University,
which is part of the consortium, Africa is in great need of math and
science teachers, and the new portal will be used in "teach the
teacher" programs to educate new instructors in sub-Saharan Africa. The
online resources will not be limited to teachers, however. Beginning in
Tanzania and South Africa and spreading to other African countries, the
portal will be openly available to anyone with Internet access. Dzvimbo
said he hopes that eventually teachers in Africa will join the online
efforts alongside the professors and students in the United States who
will be initially involved.
Inside Higher Ed, 17 November 2005
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/17/africa
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***
News from other sources:
The US "Patriot Act" has suffered several defeats of bills
attempting to extend its powers.
and
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
The US "Patriot Act" has suffered several defeats of bills
attempting to extend its powers.
*
Iran's third proposed oil minister has been rejected due to
"strong ties to the US and the UK."
This third time around puts Iran in "uncharted constitutional
waters" that might end up with the elimination of the minister
of oil as a position.
The first two were eliminated as lacking expertise, and the
third was said to have strong ties to the US and the UK, as
his daughter is citizen of the UK, and that he, himself, is
the possessor of a US green card, both of which he denies.
Source: BBC
*
Michael Scanlon, former aide to Congressional power Tom Delay,
and partner of famous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pled guilty to a
conspiracy to bribe public officials stemming from investigations
into attempted fraud of his Indian tribe clients and corruption
of a Congressman.
Source: Washington Post, 11/21/05
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
The Russian government now requires registration of all "non-
governmental organizations." [NGO's]
This is expected to end all such organizations other then the
select few kept for display purposes.
This would include New York-based Human Rights Watch, who has
maintained their Moscow office for years, as well as a number
of other such organizations such as Amnesty International and
Greenpeace, etc.
The new law, just passed by the Duma, would ban those foreign
NGO's altogether, and also ban foreign workers and money from
being used in Russian NGO's.
NGO leaders have protested, saying this will end civil rights
in Russia.
The law was passed 380 to 18.
Source: Reuters
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
Japan's landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid to take samples
and return them to Earth laboratories for scientific analysis,
will renew interest in the old science fiction idea of "meteor
mining" as a potential economic force.
Even a tiny gold, platinum, or iridium asteroid under 100 feet
in diameter could destroy the world's economic system, because
in spacefaring terms, our finanical institutions are based on,
still to this day, "beads and trinkets" that could still buy a
Manhattan Island for $24 worth of such beads and trickets from
the perspective of any spacefaring race that could simply pull
such an asteroid out of orbit and give it to us for Manhattan.
Think such asteroids don't exist?
Just ask any dinosaur expert what wiped out those dinosaurs.
It was an iridium asteroid, and a lot bigger than 100 feet.
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"Television exists to create advertizing."
"Politics demands we have access to those oil fields."
"Nobody on their death bed says,
I wish I'd spent more time at the office."
[Quoting Barbara Bush]
[_I_ might say that, if there aren't a million freely
downloadable eBooks by the time I am lying there.]
Charlie Rose and Ted Koppel, 11/22/05
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
German companies now occupy 0 of Europe's Top 10
20 years ago there were 7 in the Top 10
[Interestingly enough, in reporting this story, I could not find one
single online report, even from the BBC, from whose radio broadcasts
I first heard it. MSNBC *had* done a story on it, but it vanished.]
However, from another perspective, Germany's GDP is twice as much as
the United Kingdom's, so it may be that while the largest companies,
at least in Germany, aren't growing as fast, the economy is still an
awfully large factor in Europe.
Source: Global E-Commerce, Nov 21, 2005
In related news, since the year 2000, the list of the Top 100 Economic
World Powers names more than half of these as companies, not countries:
"Of the 100 largest economies in the world,
51 are now global corporations; only 49 are countries."
www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/top200.htm
***
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
sounds
my flute fills with sandalwood fragrance
the air is adorned with jewels of smoke
they tenderly encircle the heart of a cloud
the skies ablaze return caressing rain
my helpless lips have found delicious burden
a garland of melodies is my breath
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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