[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Oct 26 09:55:49 PDT 2005
Weekly_October_26.txt
*The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, October 26, 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
STATISTICAL CHANGES
Due to various changes in our statistical reporting and coverage,
the accuracy of the weekly count of the number of eBooks will not
be as redundantly checked by a human count, and we will rely more
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***If you notice any inconsistencies, please send email to:
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WANTED!
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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
5 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
47 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***
17,405 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are ~87% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,343 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months
We Have Produced 2449 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,596 to go to 20,000!!!
7,590 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
52 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 17,350
*
***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]
HIGHER EDUCATION RESPONDS TO CALEA ORDER
The higher education community is preparing several responses to an
order by the Federal Communications Commission to extend the provisions
of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to
Internet service providers, including institutions of higher education,
libraries, and municipalities that provide Internet access. The order
would require covered entities to configure their networks to allow law
enforcement officials--with the authority of a court order--to tap into
data streams remotely. Currently, such taps typically require the
assistance of network personnel. Making networks compliant with the new
regulations would in most cases require significant investment in new
switches and routers, and higher education officials contend that the
expense would not be justified by the number of taps placed on their
networks. By some accounts, U.S. colleges and universities would incur
costs of at least $7 billion to redesign their networks. Those seeking
an exception from CALEA for education noted that in 2003, just 12 of
nearly 1,500 wiretap orders were issued for computer networks.
Representatives of higher education are working on responses including
appeals, possible lawsuits, and negotiations with federal officials.
Higher education officials said that the objection is not with
providing appropriate assistance to law enforcement but that lower-cost
solutions would provide the needed capability without placing a large
financial burden on colleges and universities and their students.
New York Times, 23 October 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html
STANFORD PODCASTS GO TO ITUNES
Under a new deal with Apple Computer, podcasts from various aspects of
campus life at Stanford University will be available on the iTunes Web
site. The arrangement is the first one in which a university has made
an institution-wide commitment to provide podcasts to iTunes. The
podcasts will include academic content such as lectures, coverage of
sporting events, and podcasts created by students. About 400 podcasts
are currently included, and Stanford officials said they plan to
regularly add content to the site, which is its own section of the
iTunes Music Store. Other institutions are said to be considering
similar programs, and the addition of capacity to handle video files in
iTunes could make the service appealing to still others. In a separate
project, Stanford podcasts are being made available through iTunes only
to students and professors involved in a group of university courses.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 October 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005102102t.htm
MORE SUITS TARGET GOOGLE'S BOOK SCANNING PROJECT
After failing to reach an agreement during several months of
negotiations, a group of five publishers has filed a lawsuit against
Google over its book-scanning project. The project has come under fire
since it was announced, with publishers and copyright holders arguing
that scanning their texts constitutes a violation of their copyright,
regardless of whether the digital copy is made available online in its
entirety. Penguin, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Simon and Schuster,
and John Wiley and Sons have sued Google, seeking to have the project
cancelled. The publishers are asking for Google to pay court costs but
not damages. All five are members of the Association of American
Publishers, which had been in talks with Google for months. Last month,
an organization representing writers sued Google over the book-scanning
project. Google continues to maintain that it respects the rights of
publishers and copyright holders and that the project will bring wider
exposure for the scanned text.
BBC, 19 October 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4358768.stm
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***
News from other sources:
The Parents Television Council announced their Top Ten list
of recommended television programs this week, only they did
not seem to be able to find ten shows they could recommend.
*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.]
White House and Congressional "Spin Cycle" from Monday to Friday.
Nomination for new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank [actually
NOT a part of the United States government, for those interested]
with another White House insider on Monday, October 24. Designed
perhaps to distract this news cycle from the impending indictment
of several even more prominent White House insiders.
[BBC]
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
The White House refuses to comment on ongoing investigations.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
The Valerie Plame incident will continue to be kept low key.
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
New releases of conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney
and Lewis "Scooter" Libby on June 12, 2003 have focused attention
on Mr. Cheney's possible connection with revealing the identity of
covert CIA agent Valeria Plame, and appear to contradict Mr. Libby's
previous testimony that he never knew about Ms. Plame until he spoke
with newspaper reporters. [See also: Judith Miller and Robert Novak]
Ms. Plame had been described as "a working soccer mom," but in fact
was a clandestine CIA agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction.
The question being investigated is if the Bush administration revealed
her identity to the press as retaliation when her husband, Ambassador
Joeseph Wilson, publicly announced the Bush administration falsified
reports of Iraq buying the now infamous "yellow cake uranium" that was
used as an exuse to invade Iraq.
Libby's notes indicate Mr. Cheney knew Ms. Plame was CIA over a month
before Robert Novak's article revealing her as an agent was published.
[Scotsman.com News - International - Cheney drawn into row]
[The New York Times]
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
Virtual Reference Service Notes 40% Increase This Year
[KnowItNow, Ohio]
[However, other places that have stopped promoting such services
say the user level has plateaued.
*
2,000 dead in Iraq.
However, this is an artifical statistic, as reported in the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Miami Herald.
In addition, The UK's Herald adds commentary on the return
to Vietnam War style of statistical reporting.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/49465.html
*
Top Ten for kids
The Parents Television Council yesterday released its annual list of
This week the 10 best and worst shows for family viewing were limited
to 10, as they could only find 9 shows they actually approved of.
*
The first "Tropical Storm Alpha" of recorded history occured this week,
the 22nd tropical storm of the season, killing many in the Caribbean.
*
882 millibars of air pressure in hurricane Wilma,
the lowest air pressure ever recorded in Atlantic hurricanes.
*
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
I Can't
I can't be with you
only because it makes you happy, I told the Leaf,
for I was a Bird
singing much too often about freedom
unaware that I shared with the Leaf
a whole branch
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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