[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Apr 19 08:58:20 PDT 2006
pt1a2.406
Weekly_April_19.txt
**The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, April 19, 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
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*
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:
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*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
8 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
45 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
55 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
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*eBook Milestones*
Over 1,000 New eBooks This Year!!!
19,152 eBooks As Of Today!!!
848 to go to 20,000!!!
18,721 at www.gutenberg.org[+xx]
564 Australian eBooks [+8] [Included in above line]
290 Gutenberg Europe [+2]
141 PG PrePrint Site [+0]
19,152 Grand Total of all four sites
55 New eBooks This Week
~96% of the Way to 20,000
***550 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
19,090 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~258 eBooks per Month for ~62.50 Months
We Have Produced 1,010 eBooks in 2006
848 to go to 20,000!!!
40 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,316 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
55 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
*
~75,000 eBooks at the PG Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
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***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:
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This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
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*Headline News from Edupage
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*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
Another One Bites The Dust
Illinois Governor Ryan Guilty On All 22 Counts
Taking payoffs, the truckers' drivers license scandal,
accepting illegal gifts, vacations, bribes, etc. from
others in return for giving state contracts, leases, etc.
Ryan claims he was unaware of such corruption even though
it appears he and his family received cash and gifts from
$100,000 to $200,000, and the Ryan was responsible for an
estimated $300,000+ to prominent lobbyist Donald Udstuen.
Ryan was about the 66th person indicted from the various
investigations of these matters, the vast majority of them,
including his campaign committee were convicted long ago.
"The charged conduct by former Gov. Ryan reflects a disturbing
violation of trust," said U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald
public statement upon the indictments. "Ryan is charged with
betraying the citizens of Illinois for over a decade on
state business, both large and small."
*
We won't even go into the non-reporting of VP Cheney's
reception when he threw out the first pitch at the
opening the baseball season.
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Revolt of the Generals
How Many Stars, How Many Generals?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended himself this week
against a group of command generals by saying that these are
only half a dozen of thousands and thousands of generals.
The truth is that there are NOT thousands of such generals--
command generals in charge of major operations in Iraq.
There have only been a dozen such generals in the three years
of the Irag War, and over half of them are on this list.
Even counting all generals in command of 1,000 troops or more
all over this world, there is only room for barely 1,000 such
generals in a miltary with 1,000,000 combat troops.
These are what are known as "command officers," and not those
who "fly a desk." In addition, all of these generals have in
excess of one star, namely two, three, or four stars, if your
count includes the Congressional testimony of Gen. Shinseki--
the first of the generals to speak out in a public forum that
the Iraq War was undermanned and underplanned and the highest
ranking officer in the entire United States Army.
These are command generals, all with more than one star,
more experience, more stars than the average general out there.
The rest are all desk officers, without the experience to see
what is really happening at the troop level, consequently the
actions and reactions you see here between real commanders on
the battlefield and those who only know how to fly a desk.
1 Star = Brigadier General Zero on this list, common in the military
2 Stars = Major General Three on this list, not nearly as common
3 Stars = Lieutenant General Two on this list, not very common at all
4 Stars = General Two on this list, the least common of all
Here is the list, by rank:
Gen. Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, Army, highest possible rank.
Gen. Anthony Zinni, also diplomatic corps "roving ambassador" Marines
Central Command Chief of Staff, Middle East, "Winning the Peace" author.
The top general in charge of the Iraq War.
Lt. Gen. John Riggs, Distinguished Flying Cross, Viet Nam,
Military Assistant to Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee,
Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans,
Commanding General, 7th Infantry Division, most recently
Commanding General of the First U.S. Army,
lost a star when he retired in protest, reasons not on record,
made through questionable charges AFTER he criticized the war.
Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, Director for Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff
"The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a
fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war."
Maj. Gen. John Batiste, Commander, 1st Infantry Division ["Big Red 1"]
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, "Father of the Iraqi Army"
Commanding General, Office of Security Transition, West Point graduate
Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, Commander, 82nd Airborne Division
There are NOT thousands of generals with multiple stars
and field command experience at such high levels in the
entire US Army, much less directly in command of Iraq,
perhaps a dozen, at the most.
"On June 22, 1999, Four Star General Eric Shinseki was appointed by
President Clinton To be the 34th Chief of Staff, United States Army."
He was the one who first told Congress of the mismanagement, and he
was forced to resign by Rumsfeld, who did not attend the retirement,
not that there was much of a retirement to attend.
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
*
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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Strange News in Globalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/11fast.html?hp&ex=1144814400&en
=ad12af5ee011af1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order
By MATT RICHTEL
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has
a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry - but hers has an unusual
geographic reach.
...
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not
just outside Ms. Vargas's workplace here on California's central coast. She
was at a McDonald's in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas
had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and
Gillette, Wyo.
A man who wants a Big N' Tasty in Wyoming and a woman who wants an Egg
McMuffin in Honolulu may be placing their orders with the same teenager in
California. Several customers, told of the fact, seemed taken aback.
And yet where is the surprise? There you sit, perhaps miles from home,
idling in a car that was manufactured almost anywhere, burning gasoline
refined from a substance pumped out of the ground who knows where and
shipped, in all likelihood, across the ocean to be trucked to the station
where you last filled up. Meanwhile you're talking to your best friend on
your cellphone - and who knows how that works or where those signals go? -
or listening to satellite radio beamed down from space. Yet what's really on
your mind is the food they're getting together for you inside that
McDonald's, made from cattle that once lived anywhere and potatoes that grew
someplace else, all of it relayed from some way station in the McDonald's
supply chain.
Yes, a long-distance call center for a drive-through window is something to
marvel at. The real wonder is that the call center isn't in Bangalore.
The Magazine Reader
Wild Generalization X
In Details, a Hilarious Screed on Turning 40 and Not Loving It
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 11, 2006; Page C02
The folks known as Generation X are on the verge of turning 40, and
apparently they're getting cranky about it.
The thirty-something generation is irked, irritated and downright
peeved, writes Gen Xer Jeff Gordinier in "Has Generation X Already
Peaked?," a bitterly hilarious screed in the April issue of Details, a
magazine for young men. They're irked at their elders, the obnoxiously
self-mythologizing Baby Boomers. They're irritated at the younger
generation whom they consider airheads -- Generation Y or the
"millennials," who came of age around 2000. And they're peeved that
the media have failed to get sufficiently excited that Generation X is
turning 40.
"While the boomers and the millennials have been out gulping up all of
that mass-media oxygen, somebody seems to have forgotten to put
together the Newsweek cover story about Generation X on the brink of
turning 40," Gordinier grumbles. "Could it be that the age group that
popularized the phrase jumped the shark has done just that? . . . Is
Generation X already obsolete?"
Gordinier doesn't actually answer those questions, which are absurd
and unanswerable anyway, but he does have a good time ranting and
venting in delightfully comic fashion.
Here's what he says about the recent glut of media hype about Baby
Boomers turning 60:
"You see this stuff everywhere, and you just know what's coming. David
Crosby's face transplant. The James Taylor-Carly Simon remake of On
Golden Pond . Woodstock IV: Return to the Garden, cosponsored by Nike,
Botox and Ben & Jerry's. The Brown Acid line of tie-dyed Depends.
It's only a matter of time. Those insufferable boomers are tucking
into another gluttonous, cheek-smeared smorgasbord of self-importance.
Don't even try to escape."
And here's what he says about the twenty-somethings of Gen Y: "The
boomers bred and their solipsistic progeny have arrived . . . They
just love stuff. They love celebrities. They love technology. They
love brand names. . . . They're happy to do whatever advertising tells
them to do. So what if they can't manage to read anything longer than
an instant message?"
Gordinier tries to defend Gen X, but without much enthusiasm.
"Generation X is still defined more by lasts than firsts. We're the
last generation to produce and hold on to albums on vinyl, the last
generation to read newspapers . . . the last generation to express any
sort of resistance to corporate servitude, the last generation to
produce old-fashioned movie stars (Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt) as
opposed to manufactured aristocretins and reality-TV clowns."
Aristocretins! I love that. Finally, the perfect word for Paris Hilton.
Like all good rants, this one builds up a nice head of steam. It's big
fun. But of course it's all baloney. The media's insatiable need to
pigeonhole disparate humans into a "generation" with a single unifying
personality is almost as idiotic as stereotyping people by the hue of
their epidermis.
I refuse to get involved in this silliness. I'm a Baby Boomer but I
love my little brothers and sisters of Gen X and Gen Y. And in the
spirit of that love, I offer this sage advice to my young friends:
Work hard, kids. My generation has run up a huge deficit and you guys
are gonna have to pay it off. And remember to pay your Social Security
taxes. I'm looking forward to a long, happy retirement, and I'll need
plenty of Brown Acid Depends.
***
Cargo, Unloaded
_________________________________________________________________
For a week, people have been dropping by the palatial offices of The
Magazine Reader to congratulate us for killing Cargo magazine. We'd
love to take credit, but the death of Cargo is really a triumph for
all the men of America -- except for the 373,727 wimps and weenies who
actually subscribed to Cargo.
For those of you blissfully unaware of Cargo, it was a shopping
magazine for men, a mag filled with caption-sized "articles" about
stuff you can buy -- stuff ranging from shoes to cars to men's makeup
and, believe it or not, men's bikini waxes. Cargo was created in March
2004 by the Conde Nast magazine empire and was killed a couple of
weeks ago, put out of its misery like a lame horse.
Last week, the New York Times interviewed Ariel Foxman, Cargo's
erstwhile editor, who whined that the media had said nasty things
about his magazine. One of those nasty things -- "the most hurtful,"
the Times reported -- was printed in The Magazine Reader when Cargo
debuted.
Hurtful? What, pray tell, could he be talking about?
Maybe it was our observation that Cargo "might be the worst idea for a
magazine in human history." Or maybe it was our call for men to
boycott Cargo in order to "strike a blow against foppery, frippery,
metrosexuality, the commercialization of everything and the
wimpification of America."
Gee, we didn't want to hurt the feelings of Cargo editors, who are
obviously very sensitive souls. But we're thrilled that American men
showed their innate good sense by avoiding Cargo. Frankly, we're
amazed that the magazine managed to find 373,727 guys dunderheaded
enough to subscribe.
Heeding our own call to boycott Cargo, we hadn't seen an issue since
that wretched debut. But when we heard about the magazine's death, we
bought the May issue, just to see if it was still pathetic.
It was.
It contains a tiny story about various kinds of goop you can rub on
your skin so you'll look tan. And a piece touting a men's fragrance
that's designed to smell like marijuana and "male sweat." And a blurb
about chairs that look like they're held together with duct tape,
except that the duct tape is really leather and the chairs, which cost
$4,800 each, are part of a designer furniture line called "Ersatz Heirlooms."
Come on, guys. If you want to look tan, go outside and lie in the sun.
And if you want to sit on duct-taped chairs, smelling like weed and
sweat, do you really need a men's shopping mag?
Goodbye, Cargo. We can't say we'll miss you, but we'll remember you
fondly next time we're duct-taping the furniture.
**
Subject: FOR IP: Oklahoma bill to open your computer to companies...
(Note - this is an Oklahoma House bill, not a US Congress.
Doesn't make it any more right...)
http://www.okgazette.com/news/templates/cover.asp?articleid=423&zoneid=7
Get ready for Microsoft, cable and phone companies, and quite a
few other people to know a lot more about what you do on your
computer, thanks to House Bill 2083.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Ben Fenwick
It's supposed to protect you from predators spying on your
computer habits, but a bill Microsoft Corp. helped write for
Oklahoma will open your personal information to warrantless
searches, according to a computer privacy expert and a state
representative.
Called the "Computer Spyware Protection Act", House Bill 2083
would create fines of up to a million dollars for anyone using
viruses or surreptitious computer techniques to break on to
someone's computer without that person's knowledge and
acceptance, according to the bill's state Senate author, Clark
Jolley.
"The bill has a clear prohibition on anything going in without
your permission. You have to grant permission", said Jolley,
R-Edmond. "You can look at your license agreement. It will say
whether they have the ability to take that information or not".
But therein lies the catch.
If you click that "accept" button on the routine user's
agreement, the proposed law would allow any company from whom you
bought upgradable software the freedom to come onto your computer
for "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of or
fraudulent or other illegal activities in connection with a
network, service, or computer software, including scanning for
and removing computer software prescribed under this act".
That means that Microsoft (or another company with such software)
can erase spyware or viruses. But if you have, say, a pirated
copy of Excel - Microsoft (or companies with similar software)
can erase it, or anything else they want to erase, and not be
held liable for it. Additionally, that phrase "fraudulent or
other illegal activities" means they can:
- Let the local district attorney know that you wrote a hot
check last month.
- Let the attorney general know that you play online poker.
- Let the tax commission know you bought cartons of cigarettes
and didn't pay the state tax on them.
- Read anything on your hard drive, such as your name, home
address, personal identification code, passwords, Social Security
number ... etc., etc., etc.
"I think in broad terms that is still a form of spying", said
Marc Rotenberg, attorney and executive director of the Electronic
Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "Some people say,
'Well, it's justified'. I'm not so clear that should be the case.
Particularly if the reason you are passing legislation is to
cover that activity".
The bill is scheduled to go back before the House."
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