[gweekly] PT1A Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Apr 12 09:40:00 PDT 2006
pt1a1.406
Weekly_April_12.txt
**The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, April 12, 2006 PT1**
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
Please note some previous miscounts still not corrected, but the grand totals
should be fairly accurate, just have to go back and fix the interim counts.
*
Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
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
*
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
1 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
2 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70]
0 New This Week From PG PrePrints
37 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
40 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints]
[I'm sure there are a few bugs in the new accounting]
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
1.5 eBooks Per Day Averaged Since July 4, 1971
19,097 eBooks As Of Today!!!
18,668 at www.gutenberg.org[+xx]
556 Australian eBooks [+1] [Included in above line]
288 Gutenberg Europe [+2]
141 PG PrePrint Site [+0]
19,097 Grand Total of all four sites
40 New eBooks This Week
~95.5% of the Way to 20,000
***531 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
15,996 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~257 eBooks per Month for ~62.25 Months
We Have Produced 955 eBooks in 2006
903 to go to 20,000!!!
21 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,286 total from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
[Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005
[Including PG Australia]
We Are Averaging ~294 eBooks Per Month This Year
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 68 eBooks Per Week In 2006
40 This Week
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~32 months, from 2003 to 2006 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.5 years from Oct. 2003 to Mar. 2006 from 10,000 to 19,000
[The above changes due to the opening of Project Gutenberg
sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org]
[Now including totals from Australia, Europe and PrePrints]
[Apologies, it will take a while to integrate everything
not all statistics may be totally equalized yet]
[PGEu Statistics Are Counted Monthly Not Weekly]
[Daily PGEu stats at http://dp.rastko.net/default.php]
[Daily DP stats at http://www.pgdp.net]
BTW, we just started a new "PrePrints" site at PG,
so if you come across eBooks that aren't ready for
primetime, but that should be saved for upgrading,
we have a place to put them.
http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ new site
*
***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
FREE INTERNET REFERENCE SITE
LivingInternet.com provides a 700-odd page reference about the Internet
"to provide living context and perspective to this most technological
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many from educational institutions. Now in its 7th year of operation.
http://www.livinginternet.com/
TEXT TO SPEECH
Dolphin Producer is a new software package which will convert a text
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The DTB can also be played back on any other DAISY DTB software or
hardware player, as well as any MP3 player - The choice is yours.
http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk or http://www.dolphinusa.com
*
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
CABLE COMPANIES ROUND OUT OFFERINGS
[Around here SBC/AT&T is offering deal for unlimited long distance,
DSL and satellite TV for about $90. Has anyone tried such offers?]
A set of new deals signals even tighter competition among communication
services providers, as cable companies work to expand their offerings
to align more directly with those of phone companies. The goal for
cable companies is to be able to offer TV, telephone, computer, and
wireless services, all from the same provider. Most notably, Comcast,
Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Bright House Networks have
announced a deal with Sprint Nextel that will allow cable customers
access for wireless devices. Although some of the details remain to be
decided, under the arrangement, consumers will be able to access TV
programming over cellular networks and possibly to use handsets that
use cellular networks outdoors and Wi-Fi networks indoors. Analyst
Aryeh Bourkoff noted that cable companies already have an advantage
over phone companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, in that phone companies
have an uphill path to being able to enter the TV market. "The phone
companies have the advantage of wireless today," Bourkoff said, "but
they have to build video, and that's going to be very expensive."
New York Times, 9 April 2006 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/technology/10cable.html
EFF CALLS FOR PATENT TO BE INVALIDATED
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on the U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office (USPTO) to invalidate a patent that broadly covers
technologies that allow tests to be posted and taken online. In 2003,
the USPTO granted the patent to Test.com, which has since contacted a
number of colleges and universities, as well as businesses, that
conduct online testing, saying those services violate the patent. Many
of those approached by Test.com believe that the idea of putting tests
on the Web is too obvious to warrant a patent. Now, the EFF says it has
evidence that, even if the idea justifies a patent, Test.com was not
the first to develop the technology to make it happen. According to the
EFF, the IntraLearn Software Corporation began selling products with
online testing capabilities in 1997, two years before Test.com applied
for its patent. Jason Schultz, staff lawyer for the EFF, said that the
USPTO would address the validity of the patent, which could take as
long as a year or more. If the office determines that a patent is
appropriate, said Schultz, it will "a tiny insignificant patent" rather
than the very broad patent granted to Test.com.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 April 2006 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/04/2006040601t.htm
GOOGLE, EARTHLINK TO TAKE SAN FRANCISCO WIRELESS
San Francisco has chosen Google and EarthLink to build a wireless
network that will cover the city. The companies submitted a joint bid,
which was selected over five other bids by the San Francisco
TechConnect committee. Under the terms of the bid, Google will provide
free service at 300 Kbps, while EarthLink will manage a paid service
that will cost at most $20 per month and will operate at 1 Mbps. A
report recently released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
Electronic Privacy Information Center argued that the Google-EarthLink
proposal was the worst of the bids in terms of protecting user privacy.
Others had questioned whether the Google-EarthLink network would
sufficiently penetrate buildings to reasonably provide full coverage.
Chris Vein, executive director of the Department of Telecommunications
and Information Services for San Francisco, said that he had not read
the report on privacy and that the city would negotiate with the companies
to provide as much access as possible. The deal must be approved by the
city of San Francisco and reviewed by the Board of Supervisors.
CNET, 6 April 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-7351_3-6058432.html
MIT RESEARCHERS BUILD MICRO BATTERIES
A team of researchers led by a group at MIT have put viruses--the
biological kind--to work in the manufacture of nanowires, which the
researchers said can be used to make extremely small batteries.
The project involved modifying the genes of the virus such that its outer
surface would bind to certain metal ions. Researchers then bred the
virus in a cobalt chloride solution, which resulted in the production
of cobalt nanowires just 6 nanometers wide by 880 nanometers long.
The wires, which also included small amounts of gold so they could
adequately transmit electricity, were then used as positive electrodes
for batteries. The researchers hope that with this technology they can
create batteries as small as a grain of rice.
ZDNet, 6 April 2006
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6058703.html
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*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.]
*
MISUSE OF EMINENT DOMAIN TAKEN UP BY MINNESOTA'S CONGRESS
Remember those news reports from Ohio, Connecticut, etc.,
in which homes and businesses were being eminent domained
just so richer people and/or businesses could move in?
The ostensible reasons for this was to the advantages tax
collectors would have by having a richer tax base. i.e.,
if you force out the middle class and replace them with a
whole new upper class population, you have a better town.
Of course, there IS a certain kind of logic to this and a
rash of copycat locations have been trying to do the same
sorts of things around the country; classifying perfectly
good homes and businesses below community standards so an
eminent domain takeover can be accomplished, with results
being that the properties are then sold to similar people
and businesses with more money. The expected results are
that the rich will then renovate the neighborhoods with a
much higher taxable assessment level and the tax man will
get more money to give to the local governments.
Today Minnesota's State House is working on a legislation
package to prevent such uses of eminent domain as the new
eminent domain takeovers should be ruled as benefits to a
government, but not to the public.
It's class warfare all right, with the first shots fired.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
*
Department of Homeland Security Caught With Online Sex
NBC's Dateline reported on April 9 that two Department of
Homeland Security people were trapped in their online sex
sting operation when they tried to get together with fake
young girls at the sting locations.
*
"The ones who know, don't care any more,
and the ones who care, don't know."
Nicholas Cage, "The Lord of War"
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Congress is passing "Ironclad Ceilings On Spending"
with great public fanfare and media coverage as the
National Debt approaches $10 Trillion dollars: but
at the same time they have passed two amendments to
virtually unpass these "Ironclad Ceiling" bills.
One of these bills exempts Congress from the limit,
which is about half of national spending, such as a
continuing payment for the Iraq war, etc., with the
second bill exempting entitlement programs which is
the other half.
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
This is actually about quotes you did not hear. . . .
re: Katie Couric becoming the next Dan Rather, Walter Cronkike
or Edward R. Murrow at $13 million per year guaranteed over the
next 5 years or so:
As many of you probably know, Ms. Couric does the "Thanksgiving
Day Macy's Parade every year with Al Roker and Matt Lauer: but
last year might have been her last one for several reasons.
Apparently there was a big cover up of the fact that people had
been injured by the crash of the M&M's balloon into a lamppost,
which then crashed to the ground injuring some wheelchair bound
women who could not escape in time and her sister who stayed to
take care of her.
This was not just the mild kind of cover up when bad news isn't
mentioned at all, but a more active kind of cover up in which a
clip from last year's parade was substituted for live coverage,
so the audience could see the [now fake] M&Ms in good health.
It is presumed that the M&Ms will be patched up and ready to go
for the next parade, but no comment has been heard about others
such as the injured parties or Ms. Couric's attendance.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
>From a reply to the announcement of specific brands of terabyte boxes at
Fry's this past week for $649. Other places have the same products from
the same brand[s] at $699.
Of course, if you are willing to simply buy 4 @ 250G drives for $99 each,
and put them in a less sophisticated box than previously mentioned, these
new terebytes can be added for ~$450 rather than the $649-$699 mentioned.
Add another $50 each time you want to add a serious feature.
However you want to count it, though, if you have been considering buying
a terabyte, the time is obviously coming when there will quite many wider
and wider ranges of selections, and you will likely see terabytes sold at
Best Buy, Circuit City, etc., for under $500 by next year's holidays.
If you want a top of the line terabyte box you can get one at about $1500
that includes rows of SCSI and GigE connectors, dual power supplies, etc.
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
This week's statistics come to you courtesy of the big flap
in the United States Congress in response to President Bush
making a felony issue out of being an illegal alien.
As previously mentioned in reference to the U.S. population
reaching 300 million shortly, the actual population is very
undercounted, as witnessed by the 5% push by Congresspeople
to get more representation based on such undercounts.
In addition, Congress is now citing numbers over 11 million
for undocumented workers in the U.S., including who knows a
total of how many children they have had while in the U.S.,
which makes those children legal citizens, under previously
enforces U.S. citizenship laws.
This is also bringing attention to labor unions.
Today unions represent under 1/12 of United States workers,
but rates approaching 1/2 exist in certain jobs, such as an
assortment of local government workers. Where do you think
AFSME gets all that money to advertize with?
AFSME = Association of Federal, State and Municipal Employees
The highest union rates across jobs are among men with less
than 9th grade educations.
It's not always the United States, the same cycle happens
with Canadian workers, as below.
In 1998 the average full time union worker received $19/hr,
as compared to $15.64 for full time non-union workers.
This is just over a 20% advantange for union workers.
However, the different among part time workers is greater--
$16.55/hr for unions, $9.71 for non-union workers. 70%+
In addition, unionized workers usually get more hours/week,
receiving weekly paychecks of $325.64 versus $161.92, which
is just over DOUBLE the paychecks of non-union workers.
*
By the way, for those interested, the official U.S. population
estimates just passed 298 million, though many say estimations
of this nature leave out as much as 5% of the population.
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
[This one is getting a little out of date, as the US population
is obviously no longer 6% of the world. In fact, rounding to the
nearest percent, the US will soon fall from 5% to 4%.]
"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.
*
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