[gweekly] PT1A Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Sep 21 10:11:44 PDT 2005
Weekly_September_21.txt
The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 21, 2005 PT1
******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1A
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart at pobox.com or gbnewby at pglaf.org
Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart at pobox.com
We are trying an experiment this month to provide shorter Newsletter files.
PT1 of the Newsletter will be split into to sections starting and ending at
the points below where you will see this marker"
"***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***"
You should receive THREE versions of PT1 today: PT1, PT1A, and PT1B.
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*
HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
New Site!!!
New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors
http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm
which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all
PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information
about them and their authors where you can find more.
For information please contact Philip Harper
<webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk>
*
You might be interested in reading about MIT's Neil Gershenfeld's
"Fab Labs" that are encouraging people to with three dimensions
what Project Gutenberg has been encouraging with two dimensions.
There are currently 6 of these Fab Labs: Boston, India [2],
Ghana, Norway and Costa Rica where people are making 3 dimensional
computer generated materials. Not quite the Star Trek Replicator,
yet!!! [mh]
From: PERSONAL FABRICATION: A TALK WITH NEIL GERSHENFELD
"From this combination of passion and inventiveness I began to get a
sense that what these students are really doing is reinventing
literacy. Literacy in the modern sense emerged in the Renaissance as
mastery of the liberal arts. This is liberal in the sense of
liberation, not politically liberal. The trivium and the quadrivium
represented the available means of expression. Since then we've boiled
that down to just reading and writing, but the means have changed
quite a bit since the Renaissance. In a very real sense post-digital
literacy now includes 3D machining and microcontroller programming.
I've even been taking my twins, now 6, in to use MIT's workshops; they
talk about going to MIT to make things they think of rather than going
to a toy store to buy what someone else has designed."
www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gershenfeld03/gershenfeld_index.html
and
www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/fablab.html
www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0574.html
www.itconversations.com/shows/detail460.html
*
More News From MIT's General Direction
SQUID LABS: SUCKERS FOR NOVELTY
from Wired News
EMERYVILLE, California -- It's a classic scenario: Five friends with a
mutual passion, disillusioned with their choices after their East Coast
college, pile into a van and head to California to break into the big time.
But don't think rock 'n' roll fantasy. This group came straight out of MIT,
and its members don't do guitar and vocals; they do patents and prototypes.
They make up Squid Labs, self-billed as "a design firm that does
differential equations," and they're already picking up the hits: solar
panel driveways, swarming parachutes, a SourceForge for hardware and a comic
book series for kid engineers.
Squid Labs is housed in a generic warehouse in Emeryville down the street
from the elaborate Pixar Animation Studios gates. The building is full of
toys and half-completed projects, seemingly more chaos than inspiration.
The desks of the five founders -- Saul Griffith, Colin Bulthaup,
Dan Goldwater, Ryan McKinley and Eric Wilhelm -- are scattered with
papers, scrap metal and wood, and small, bare electronics.
http://tinyurl.com/74xhq
*
WRITERS SUING GOOGLE
Wyatt, Edward. Writers Sue Google, Accusing It of Copyright Violation.
New York Times, September 21, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/technology/21book.html
[registration required]
WANTED!
>>> !!!People to help us collect ALL public domain eBooks!!! <<<
*
Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc.
*
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
2 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
38 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
***500 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,170 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are 85% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,170 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months
We Have Produced 2214 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,830 to go to 20,000!!!
7,467 from Distributed Proofreaders
[Details in PT1B]
We have now averaged ~500+ eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971
We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Are Averaging About 260 books Per Month This Year
We Are Averaging About 60 eBooks Per Week This Year
40 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 ~1.75 years from Oct. 2003 to Aug. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,000
*
***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 well
that PT1 is now being send 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
***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***
Weekly_September_14.txt
The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 14, 2005 PT1
******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
PANASONIC LAUNCHES LINUX COLLABORATION CENTER
Motivated by a desire to foster standardized software architectures,
Panasonic has launched a Linux incubator at its Digital Concepts
Center, located in San Jose, California. Brad McManus, director of the
Digital Concepts Center, said that Panasonic sees much to be gained in
developing technologies on standard architectures, which would minimize
problems of incompatibility among products. The Linux Collaboration
Center will focus primarily on middleware and applications but will
also consider projects that address user interfaces and ubiquitous
networking. McManus said the new Linux center aims to establish
relationships with four or five start-up companies developing consumer
electronics. In exchange, Panasonic will have first right of refusal
for a portion of the companies' institutional funding.
eWeek, 14 September 2005
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1859036,00.asp
You have been reading excerpts from Edupage:
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***
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
Hurricane Hits Norway:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4863
*
"After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions
prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that,
according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more
than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian
Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations,
imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money
sent its way for Katrina relief."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/opinion/18rich.html?hp
*
Why was Karl Rove not more involved with the White House
positioning on Katrina?
He was in the hospital with kidney stones.
Sources:
Baraboo News Republic, WI 9/21
Press-Enterprise, CA 9/19
New York Daily News, NY 9/16
Australian, Australia 9/18
Times of India, India 9/19
*STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK
Correction: that strange non-word mentioned last week
should have been attributed to:
The New Oxford American Dictionary
^^^^^^^^
NOT
The New Oxford English Dictionary
^^^^^^^
[Another possible correction, as to the source of the
two photographs and captions mentioned last week:
some say only one of them was genuinely from the AP,
Associated Press, though the person suggesting the
correction didn't clarify further, though this URL,
<http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp>
was provided for more details, which credited BOTH
to the AP: "The Associated Press has separately
captioned two photos of looters. . . ."]
DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
To lie to the police is a crime.
For them to lie to you is not.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
New Orleans will try to have usual Mardi Gras celebration.
*QUOTES OF THE WEEK
[As requested, adding in URL and credit lines when possible.]
More data from our readers about pre-Katrina warnings:
>From 2002, concering the New Orleans area:
"THE BIG ONE A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from
even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time."
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/
and
A good summary of the various predictions of the effects of a hurricane
on New Orleans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans
[Sent in by Martin Ward <Martin.Ward at durham.ac.uk>]
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
"Kozlowski and Swartz to pay nearly $240 million in fines and resitution."
[Tyco CEO and CFO]
Borsa-Italia.Net, Italy 9/21
HoweStreet.com, Canada 9/20
Australian Financial Review 9/21
[Large fines for white collar criminals are not making the headlines
the way they used to, these were hardly mentioned, and no mention of
whether the fines would make it into the record books or not.]
*
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
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
[This week it's not a poem, but a Cherokee Indian tale.]
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that
goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 "wolves" inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,
false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:
"Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
***
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