[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Feb 22 07:49:11 PST 2006
pt1a3.206
pt1b3.206
Weekly_February_22.txt
The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, February 22, 2006 PT1*
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
Please note, I am writing this draft of the Newsletter one hour early,
so a few new books might come in and be added in next week.
Sometime while I am gone the world population should pass 6.5 billion
and the US population will approach 300 million.
*
New Type Of File In PrePrints!!!
If you have or can find:
formZ
3ds Max
Autodesk VIZ
Maya
Sketch Up
Rhinoceros
Etc.
then you should be able to see the latest file in PrePrints,
a 3D rendering of the center of Champaign, Illinois. We are
also including a Powerpoint presentation that will show this
to some degree to those who cannot do 3D renderings.
PT1A
*
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
*
WANTED!
Can you recommend programs for reading in "landscape mode?
*
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
3 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
3 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70]
1 New This Week From PG PrePrints [Correction 140 new last week]
55 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright-subtracted PGAu
62 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*
18,720 eBooks As Of Today!!!
Including 534 Australian eBooks [+3]
and 264 Project Gutenberg Europe [+1]
And 141 From The New PrePrint Site [+1]
[Correction, not 157 new last week, 140]
We Are ~94% of the Way to 20,000!!!
***534 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
15,658 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~254 eBooks per Month for ~61.75 Months
We Have Produced 578 eBooks in 2006
1,280 to go to 20,000!!!
~32 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
~8,072 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 ~329 eBooks Per Month This Year
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
[This change is 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.pglaf.org/ old site
http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ new site
[Still integrating, sorry]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 82 eBooks Per Week In 2006
62 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 ~2.00 years from Oct. 2003 to Nov. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,500
*
***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
of human inventions", and has received input from many people that helped
build the Internet. It currently receives about 3 thousand visitors a day,
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
document into a fully synchronized text and audio DTB at the push of a
single button. The DTB can then be played back using Dolphin's
EaseReader software player - which is included in Dolphin Producer.
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]
NEGROPONTE LEAVES MEDIA LAB
Nicholas Negroponte will step down from the chairmanship of MIT's
Media Lab, which he cofounded in 1985, to pursue his project of
supplying $100 laptops to developing countries. The United Nations has
endorsed the plan, which Negroponte says will be a boon to education
and development in the world's poorest nations. Negroponte has set up
a nonprofit called One Laptop Per Child to develop the laptop and work
for its implementation. In addition to Negroponte's departure, Walter
Bender, director of the Media Lab, will take a two-year leave of
absence to participate in the One Laptop Per Child program as president
for software and content development. Replacing Bender at the lab will
be Frank Moss, an entrepreneur who founded Tivoli Systems and
Bowstreet, which were bought by IBM. In a statement, MIT President
Susan Hockfield expressed her support for Moss, saying that his
experience and interests are a good match for the goals of the Media Lab.
ZDNet, 15 February 2006
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6039808.html
GOOGLE TO PROVIDE E-MAIL TO COLLEGE
[Will they still keep copies of all the email, and analyze them?]
Google will provide e-mail service for students of San Jose City
College under a new agreement just announced. The college, which is
part of the San Jose/Evergreen Community College District, has about
10,000 students, some of whom remain students for years while others
only stay for one semester, according to Michael John Renzi, director
of finance and administration. "It's quite daunting to administer
10,000 accounts when they come and go," Renzi said. Under the new deal,
Google will provide accounts and storage for students through its Gmail
service, though the addresses for those accounts will use the school's
domain, sjcc.edu. Faculty and staff will continue to use e-mail service
provided by the institution. The arrangement is similar to those
Microsoft has through its Hotmail University program. Google is
soliciting other colleges and universities to participate in its e-mail
offering.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 February 2006 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/02/2006021501t.htm
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News From Other Sources Than The Usual:
Syracuse PBS stantion WCNY "membership drives" are the major
source of complaints from their audience these days, so they
are looking into producing programs as a source of income,
since they have alienated so many of their former membership
to the point where they worry that they are entering a spiral
of ever increasing pledge drives with ever decreasing results.
[Reported about public television [PBS] by public radio [NPR].
*
Dead Man In Car Receives Three Tickets And Tow Away Sticker
"To Serve And Protect:" But who was there to help the man
in the back seat of an illegally parked Mercedes in Peoria?
Not too many details are available, but Decatur resident
Michael Hudson, reported missing two weeks ago, was left
to rot in his expensive coffin-on-wheels near the Peoria
Methodist Medical Center long enough to have been cited
three different times for the parking violation and then
a fourth time with a tow-away sticker.
Eventually someone just walking past the car notified the
authorities that there was someone in the back seat with
a foot up against the passenger window.
The ticket writer[s] remained anonymous.
[I guess there are worse places to be abandoned than in
back seat of a black Mercedes-Benz in Peoria, Illinois.]
*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.]
Not going to get into details of what is now called:
"The Great Firewall of China" [Google/Yahoo censorship]
but you can find quite a bit at:
www.resourceshelf.com/2006/02/prepared-statements-from-google-yahoo.html
*
Also not going to go into depth on Katrina
but you can find quite a bit at:
A Failure of Initiative: The Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee
to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina
Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the
Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina
http://katrina.house.gov/
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Los Angeles condemned a local furniture business via eminent domain
and paid $6,000,000 and is now offering it to yet another furniture
business for perhaps as low as $3,000,000, but certainly low enough
that the city will lose a minumum of $1,000,000 up to $3,000,000.
LA Public Safety Committee members are fighting about this option.
The committee chair, Jack Weiss says, "It's a multimillion-dollar
switcheroo for no reason at all. "The city could have saved millions
of dollars and it wouldn't have condemned an existing business."
Meanwhile, Councilman Parks, who has received contributions from
the potential buyers, is pushing for the sale, basing arguements
on the fact that the new owners will pay more in taxes than the
once proposed animal shelter that was ostensibly the cause for the
original eminent domain action.
[You force a furniture company out of business for animal shelters?
Really, who care about the location of an animal shelter. Of course
there have been other examples of forcing perfectly healthy business
and personal properties to be sold via eminent domain in Cleveland,
New Haven, and other locations, just to create higher tax brackets
for property taxes. "Sorry, you'll have to sell, so we can move in
someone with so much more money that they will build expensively and
then pay us more in property taxes."]
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
Can't quote exactly, but court documents were unsealed that report
more about Scooter Libby's relationship to Vice President Cheney in
terms of the leaking of classified information. Cheney appears to
be claiming he and President Bush have the Executive Authority to
"declassify" information at will, and thus can't be charged with
leaking classified information about Valerie Plame and/or the
manufacture of "classified" information to invade Iraq.
[Sorry, I can't find direct quotes, but you can probably find
some in later searches. Try "Coos Bay World" "Pittsburgh Post
Gazette" Telegraph.co.uk, etc.] "Albuquerque Tribune"
"International Herald Tribune" and The Associated Press.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
Olympics Coverage Will Have To Change
Given that NBC paid $3.5 Billion to cover the Olympics from
the 2000 summer Olympics to the 2008 summer games, and not
counting how much they spent on actual production, shows,
or on broadcasting/narrowcasting, it is pretty obvious that
things will have to change as ABC *stomped them flat* in a
crucial ratings period with twice as many people watching
Desperate Housewives and American Idol.
By the way, CBS paid $50,000 to cover the 1960 Squaw Valley
Winter Olympics, and spent and additional $450,000 on their
shows and broadcasting, including Walter Cronkite as anchor.
If you presume NBC is running at the same ratio of 10:1
for internal costs to how much paid to the Olympics,
that means their total costs are $35 billion for those
Olympics mentioned above.
However, given their low ratings, at least for broadcast,
they are going to have to either come up with some changes
or let someone else outbid them next time around.
[Personal note: I have seen similar competitions on TV
in Europe and they showed every minute of every skater,
from the worst to the best, and without nearly as many
commercials or as much yadda-yadda-yadda.]
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
The largest currency bills in the United States were printed
when there was no money during the Great Depression.
$100,000
There were much larger bills printed in other countries that
suffered hyperinflation, and you can buy German postage stamps
from that era for hundreds of millions of marks, but inflation
in the U.S. was very small, sometime even 0% or negative.
1940 2.3626%
1939 -1.5485%
1938 -1.5313%
1937 3.9665%
1936 0.0000%
1935 3.2815%
1934 8.9329%
1933 -2.6092%
1932 -11.5405%
1931 -8.4521%
1930 -2.7364%
1929 0.0000%
[I wonder if this was due to requests from the extremely rich
to make their money more portable if they left the country?]
[A little research says that banks actually used them to send
money to each other, with various discrepancies about dates
that say they were only printed for a few weeks in 1934 to
dates that run past World War II to 1946. Apparenty wars
have some bearing on this also, as paper money was created
in the U.S. during the Civil War, by both sides, in larger
denominations than are available today, up to $10,000 [1865].
Different larger bills were introduced again in 1929.
$500 William McKinley
$5,000 James Madison
$10,000 Salmon P. Chase
$100,000 Woodrow Wilson
Today large bills have been mostly taken out of circulation
in an effort to make it more difficult for drug dealers and
other criminals and ne'er-do-wells via executive order from
President Richard Nixon in 1969, his first year in office--
he later took the U.S. off the $35 per ounce gold standard,
which precipitated the inflationary spiral that followed to
President Ronald Reagan. [article on inflation available]
*
The most recognizable smells in the U.S.?
#1 Coffee
#2 Peanut butter
*
The most common food in the world?
Onions
*
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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