[gweekly] PT1A Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Sep 14 09:56:26 PDT 2005
Weekly_September_14.txt
The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 14, 2005 PT1
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*eBook Milestones
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*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
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*eBook Milestones*
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***Introduction
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
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This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
RIAA AND MPAA JOIN INTERNET2
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA) have become corporate members of
Internet2, joining companies including the Ford Motor Company and
C-Span. "Internet2 is a stepping stone between the research lab and the
commercial sector," said Lauren Kallens, a spokesperson for the
organization. Earlier this year, the entertainment groups sued hundreds
of Abilene users for using the network to illegally trade files, but,
according to Gayle Osterberg, a spokesperson for the MPAA, the groups'
membership in Internet2 is unrelated to their antipiracy efforts. "This
particular partnership," she said, "is more of an opportunity for us to
have a technology testing ground." The groups plan to collaborate with
the Internet2 community to study distribution and digital rights
management technologies for networks faster than today's commercial Internet.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 September 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/09/2005091202t.htm
FBI LOSES ROUND ONE
[Interesting that the URL mentions "library" but the words do not.]
A federal judge has handed the FBI a preliminary defeat in its efforts
to continue to suppress information about an investigation of a
Connecticut institution. The institution, whose identity has been kept
confidential under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act, and the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the FBI for the right to disclose the
institution's identity. Judge Janet C. Hall agreed with the
plaintiffs, saying that under the FBI's position, "the very people who
might have information regarding investigative abuses and overreaching
are peremptorily prevented from sharing that information with the
public." Hall did grant a stay of her ruling, however, giving federal
authorities until September 20 to try to persuade the Court of Appeals
to overturn the ruling. If the appeals court takes no action by then,
the plaintiffs are free to disclose the institution's identity.
Watching the case closely are groups critical of the PATRIOT Act, who
have long argued that the law grants federal authorities excessive
investigative powers at the expense of civil liberties.
New York Times, 10 September 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/nyregion/10library.html
DIGITAL RIGHTS ORGANIZATION OPENS IN UK
Modeled on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the United
States, a new organization is being launched in the United Kingdom to
protect the rights of users of digital resources. According to the Web
site of the Open Rights Group (ORG), the group will work to "vigorously
defend our digital civil liberties, ensuring that the our hard-won
freedoms are not taken away simply because they've moved to the
digital world." Suw Charman, one of the group's co-founders, said that
ORG intends not to replace but to work alongside organizations with
similar goals, of which several already exist in the United Kingdom and
Europe, including the Campaign for Digital Rights, the Foundation for
Information Policy Research, and the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure. Officials from the rights group Citizens Online
expressed skepticism that ORG efforts would be appropriately inclusive.
Citizens Online worried that ORG's focus would be "middle class"
issues, ignoring technology issues concerning people with disabilities
and the digital divide.
BBC, 9 September 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4225938.stm
KATRINA BOOSTS ONLINE EDUCATION
Educators at all levels--from elementary through college--are trying to
figure out how to accommodate the estimated 200,000 students from the
Gulf states who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and some see
the circumstances as a prime opportunity for online education to prove
its worth. Advocates of online learning are working to get federal
authorities to relax rules governing things ranging from obtaining
teacher certification to using public funds to support online schools.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has committed $1.1 million to the Sloan
Consortium, an organization that works to improve the quality of online
instruction, to provide space for 10,000 students in its program. A
number of online programs for elementary and secondary students are
hoping to persuade government officials to allow public funds to be
used by displaced students in online programs. Julie Young, chief
executive of the Florida Virtual School, one of the nation's largest
online public schools, said, "It's going to be an opportunity to show
the power of online learning." Critics said online programs are a poor
substitute for in-class learning. Nat LaCour, secretary general of the
American Federation of Teachers, said displaced students "need to be in
classrooms with teachers who can provide nurturing experiences."
Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112622247296335918,00.html
FEDS AWARD NATIONAL ARCHIVE CONTRACT
The federal government will spend $308 million to create a national
electronic archive that Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United
States, said will be of significant value to academic researchers.
Weinstein, a former history professor, said the Electronic Records
Archives (ERA) will store and make available all federal electronic
documents, which otherwise could disappear entirely or at least be very
difficult to locate. The federal government is increasingly creating
documents online in electronic format, and the ERA is vital in
preserving them, said Weinstein. The ERA, which is expected to debut in
2008 and be complete by 2011, could also serve as a model for colleges
and universities that create their own digital archive systems,
according to Weinstein. Rick Barry, a management consultant in archives
and information management, said that the archive itself will not solve
the problem of preservation. Bureaucratic and cultural problems must
also be overcome, he said.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/09/2005090901t.htm
THIRTEEN COUNTRIES GET BEHIND OPEN STANDARDS
Government officials from 13 countries have developed a report to the
World Bank on economic growth, efficiency, and innovation in which they
argue for the establishment of open technology standards. The report is
quick to point out that open standards are not synonymous with open
source, in which source code is shared and can be modified by anyone.
The open-standards movement advocates defining a set of standards,
available to anyone, that allow various applications, whether
proprietary or open source, to exchange information. The report is the
product of a project led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at the Harvard Law School. According to Charles R. Nesson, law
professor at Harvard and founder of the Berkman Center, the goal of the
report is to make a "rational business case for having a broad base of
open technology standards." The report urges governments to "mandate
technology choice, not software development models."
New York Times, 9 September 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/technology/09open.html
TUTORING ONLINE, OVERSEAS
Online tutoring services, which typically offer cost and scheduling
advantages over local programs, have begun outsourcing some tutoring
positions. Although some online tutoring companies that serve the U.S.
market limit tutors to people living in North America, some now employ
tutors in countries including India, South Africa, the Philippines, and
Chile. As with other examples of outsourcing, the primary motivation is
cost: Growing Stars, a California-based tutoring company, charges $30
an hour for U.S.-based tutors and $20 an hour for tutors in India, who
are paid the equivalent of $230 per month. Burck Smith, chief executive
and co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based online tutoring company
SmarThinking, said his company has seen demand grow by 50 percent over
the past few years, and the company signed 20 new clients, including
high schools and colleges, for services this fall. Critics of online
tutoring argue that there is already little oversight to such programs,
resulting in questionable quality, and that using tutors from overseas
only serves to make monitoring even more difficult.
New York Times, 7 September 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/education/07tutor.html
CA HOPS ON THE OPEN SOURCE BANDWAGON
Following IBM's lead, Computer Associates International (CA) has
announced that it will allow open source developers to use 14 of its
patents free of charge. Earlier this year, IBM, which has been one of
the strongest corporate backers of open source technology, said it
would forgo royalties on 500 of its patents. The CA patents that will
be offered address application development, data analytics, and systems
management. CA also announced an agreement with IBM under which the two
companies will exchange license rights. According to Mark Barrenechea,
executive vice president of technology strategy and chief technology
architect at CA, the deal will give customers easier access to the
range of intellectual property available without charge.
ZDNet, 7 September 2005
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5852500.html
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*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
Racism Denied At All Levels Of Government. . .but. . . .
1. White People "Found" Food, Black People "Looted Food"
Even as far away as Zimbabwe, the news is reporting that
two pictures from the Associated Press {?} contrasted in
print the racism of the American press, as a white woman
was portrayed as having "found food," while a picture of
of a black man is portrayed as having "looted" food.
Reports of this are popping up in a wide variety of news
sources, but they are usually comments rather than whole
reports from the news sources, comments from readers, or
from distant news services, but not the major US media.
2. Crowds Of Mostly Black New Orleans Refugees Turned
Back By Police At The Majority White City Of Gretna
Crowds of refugees from the New Orleans Superdome and
Convention Center area were stopped by Gretna police,
as shots were fired, apparently as warnings by police
of the majority white City of Gretna, which houses an
expressway known as the Crescent City Connector which
is one of the major arteries out of New Orleans. The
Crescent City Connector was one of the only roads the
hurricane left completely open, and many evacuees say
they were told to leave New Orleans that way; sources
indicate this was at the direction of Governor Blanco.
However, the Gretna City Police Chief said:
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down."
"We shut down the bridge," since Gretna was "a closed and
secure location" since before the storm hit."
"There was no food, water or shelter."
"We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people."
"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New
Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
These comments were made by Arthur Lawson, Police Chief of
the City of Gretna United Press International.
Jefferson Parrish and Bridge Police assisted in the shut
down of the three major access points to stop foot traffic
trying to flee across the west bank of the river.
Quoting The State of Louisiana's Disaster Plan:
"The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles.
School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles
provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation
for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating."
No mention is made of what to do about those for whom no transportation
is available. . .those were obviously beneath the radar scope of planning.
Some of the less censored headlines:
"Racist police blocked bridge and forced evacuees back at gunpoint."
"Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans"
"On the Edge Without an Exit" The Los Angeles Times
Somehow it seems that those farthest from the situation
are the only ones willing to state what is obvious locally.
*
FEMA Never Intended Thousands Of Imported Firefighters To Fight Fires
Perhaps as many as 4,000 firefighters have been anxiously sitting on
their hands for over a week as they have been locked away from action
for which they have been trained by administrators who have little or
no training in handling emergency situations. Many administrators are
not commenting, while others say that these firefighters are being used
solely for "community outreach" since they have not been "cleared" for
the actual purpose they were trained for by unadept administrators,
who sent for no background checks and now say they are required.
Source: CBS 9/12/05
[Also see The Dayton Daily News ?]
*
40 Died In A Hospital, There Was No Evacuation Plan For Them.
*
Palestinians Burn Gaza Synagogues
*STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK
I supposed the strangest words of the week were those NOT heard,
as NBC censored Kanye West's comments as the news went from the
East Coast to the West Coast. . .his picture was included, but a
"18 second gap" replaced his commentary.
Some sources reported that Kanye West's microphone didn't work,
but those one the earlier East Coast verson of the NBC news and
most obviously Jon Stewart, noticed the difference and reported
that the news had been censored in transit.
Here is the quote as it is being referenced:
"If you see a black family it's looting,
but if it's a white family they are looking for food.
George Bush doesn't care about black people."
*
Oxford English Dictionary, or Bullchevy English Dictionary?
The OED fake: Another Strange Word of the Week:
"esquivalience"
As you may have heard as one of the unfounded urban legends,
but which turn out to be true, at least the fiction is fact,
many publications, perhaps even most of those of the Fortune
500 type of publishers, contain intentional errors--ERRORS!
You may have heard of maps either containing locations never
in existence or in the wrong place, but those at least maybe
were legally required for such errors to be around the edges
and NOT in the "field of play," so that a person using error
ridden maps for the intended purpose, the land or sea named,
would not get into trouble using them for directions. Since
I am originally from a seaport, I am personally aware of map
laws that require a rather large red disclaimer on every one
of the maps stating that these sea charts are NOT navigation
tools, but merely recreational items. Much as software were
once labeled as not merchantable, meaning good for nothing.
At any rate, Oxford has admitted, though under some cloud of
smoke, that the New Oxford English Dictionary does, in fact,
contain intentional errors, which reduces their standing for
this act to the point of having been caught out, and made to
stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap.
I presume next time they will "fingerprint" their work in an
even less discoverable manner, in the hopes not to be caught
out so soon next time around. I wonder if they didn't think
to do it in a less obvious manner, such as varying commas or
periods or semi-colons in a coded manner? Thus the CONTENTS
of their dictionary would be accurate, while the FORM was an
investigative tool as accurate as a fingerprint.
DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Comments On How The Katrina Relief Efforts Are Going:
Laura Bush: "very very well."
VP Dick Cheney: "extremely well."
President Bush: the situations in Iran and New Orleans are going well.
[Of course, this stance was reversed yesterday when President Bush
finally admitted that things were not going very well and that he
was taking responsibility for that.]
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
Keep watching China, India and Indonesia for economic growth.
*QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"If you see a black family it's looting,
but if it's a white family they are looking for food.
George Bush doesn't care about black people."
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
5/8 of Bush's emergency management appointees had no experience,
were simply pork barrel jobs for his campaign workers.
Michael Brown was simply the college roommate of the original
FEMA chief, not other recommendation or expertise, not even a
real job on his resume, other than the Arabian Horse group.
*
Meat consumption in China us up 400% in 20 years.
*
One Ohio high school was reported to have 63% of the girls pregnant.
*
In some communities blacks are 9 times as likely to be pulled over
for traffic stops than are whites.
A film crew trying to record such statistics locally was stopped
by the police and taken to court.
*
Nearly 3/4 of a million dollars for 30 second American Idol ad!
About $600,000 for 30 seconds on Desperate Housewives.
The average for all prime time shows: $150,000.
***
POEM OF THE WEEK
Tonight is hard to get in touch with my thoughts
as my eyelids are heavy with a dreamless sleep
in which I feel I am floating like a feather
dettached from the wings of a mother swan
who once knew about a lake,
and how the vivid waters felt to the touch
but then she got bored, took off
and learned about the lighness of air,
like the angels who sit on my eyelids tonight
Alas, I must be dreaming of flight
while I cry myself to sleep under the starry skies
of your eyes.
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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