[gweekly] Oops! PT1a NOT PT1b Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Jun 7 09:36:56 PDT 2006
pt1a5.506
pt1b5.506
Weekly_June 7.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 7, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971*******
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
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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
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*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
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*eBook Milestones*
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~75,000 eBooks at the PG Consortia Center [Including after July 4]
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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:
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]
SPAMMER SETTLES, EXPERIENCES CHANGE OF HEART
One of the most notorious spammers has reached a settlement with
Microsoft and the state of Texas and said the experience has been "a
serious reality check." Under the terms of the agreement, Ryan Pitylak
will pay $1 million to settle charges that he sent as many as 25
million spam e-mails per day. He will also forfeit many assets he
gathered as a spammer. Pitylak said he has changed teams, as it were,
and will now work to limit spam. "I am pleased to announce that I am
now a part of the antispam community," he said, "having started an
Internet security company that offers my clients advice on systems to
protect against spam." In his heyday, Pitylak, now 24 years old, was
fourth on Spamhaus's list of world's worst spammers.
CNET, 5 June 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-6079868.html
GOVERNMENT WANTS ISPS TO KEEP DATA FOR TWO YEARS
The Department of Justice is working to require ISPs to keep records on
customer activities for two years to help law enforcement officials
fight crimes including terrorism and child pornography. Officials from
the department met recently with leading Internet companies to discuss
details about how such a plan could be put into place. Representatives
of those companies said that while they want to aid efforts to stop or
prevent crime, they have concerns about exactly what information the
Justice Department wants them to keep and how it would be used. A
spokesperson from the Justice Department said they want to see records
of Web searches and e-mail exchanges but not the content of those
actions. He also said access to those records would be restricted and
subject to existing protocols covering who is allowed to see it and
under what circumstances. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the proposal amounts to "a
radical departure from current practices" and would pose "an
unnecessary risk to privacy and security of Internet users."
San Jose Mercury News, 2 June 2006
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/14720891.htm
JOHN DOE LIBRARY GROUP GOES PUBLIC
The Connecticut library organization that was targeted by federal
officials but prevented from revealing its identity has held a press
conference concerning the matter. Last year, the Library Connection
received a national security letter from the government demanding
patron records. Authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act, the letters forbid
recipients from even disclosing that they have received the letter.
After months of wrangling over the matter, the Justice Department has
ended its efforts to enforce the gag order. At the press conference,
Peter Chase, vice president of Library Connection, said, "It was
galling for me to see the government's attorney in Connecticut...
travel around the state telling people that their library records were
safe, while at the same time he was enforcing a gag order preventing me
from telling people that their library records were not safe." The
Library Connection continues to fight the demands of the letter and has
not yet given the Justice Department any patron records.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 May 2006 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/05/2006053101t.htm
COURT PROTECTS ONLINE JOURNALISTS
A California appeals court has overturned a lower-court ruling, saying
that online journalists have as much protection under the First
Amendment as traditional journalists. The case involved an action by
Apple Computer to discover the identity of individuals responsible for
revealing company secrets online. Apple had argued that the information
was shared not by legitimate reporters but by people who were violating
the company's trade secrets. The appeals court said that online
journalists are covered by a state law that guarantees the
confidentiality of journalists' sources. The three judges on the panel
said there is no reasonable method to distinguish legitimate from
illegitimate news and that First Amendment rights trump Apple's demand
to know who leaked the information. Observers said the case could have
far-reaching implications for bloggers and others who post information
and opinions online outside the context of traditional journalism.
New York Times, 27 May 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/technology/27apple.html
EUROPEAN COURT KILLS PASSENGER-DATA TRANSFER
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has ruled that a 2004
arrangement between the United States and the European Commission
contravenes European Community law and must be halted. Under the
agreement, which was opposed by the European Parliament, airlines were
required to submit passenger name records to U.S. officials or forfeit
their rights to land at U.S. airports. Despite airlines' having spent
large sums of money to comply with the requirement, the court found the
deal illegal on technical grounds. The European Parliament had
challenged the deal for a number of reasons, technical issues being
just one. After ruling on the technical question, however, the court
ended its inquiry, disappointing the European Parliament, which had
hoped the court would rule on privacy concerns it raised in its case
against the deal.
CNET, 30 May 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6077893.html
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*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
*
*
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
The new Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is rarely mentioned
as having been an assistant two of President Nixon's appointees,
John Ehrlichman, head of the Watergate "Plumbers Unit" and also
to Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird in the Viet Nam War.
Even less mention was made of Judge Robert Bork being the author
of "The Saturday Night Massacre" of Watergate fame, when he was
nominated for the Supreme Court.
*QUOTES OF THE WEEK
More journalists have been killed in the Iraq War since
March 20, 2003, 66 as of last week, than in 20 years of
the Viet Nam War, where a total of 63 were killed.
Source: Reporters Without Borders
*
"Our strength is in our values, and if we give up our values
to fight this enemy, we have already lost."
Various sources from both sides of the aisle.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
The cash flow will continue to reverse, as networks who
used to pay for transmission of their programs to you--
reverse their position and charge affiliates and others
for their programming.
Yes, your local station used to get paid by the network
to show network programming, in return for advertising,
which quite often obviously split between them.
This plan may have originated with the BBC, The British
Broadcasting Company, who used to pay to send shortwave
programs to my area for my whole life until a few years
ago when I bought a new shortwave radio and found I was
not able to pick up any of the dozen plus frequencies I
had listened to the BBC on for years.
Research turned up the fact that the BBC was charging a
fee now for their programs, and thus had shut off their
"North American World Service" I had listened to. This
fee of millions of dollars per year is paid by a lot of
NPR, National Public Radio, stations through a new PRI,
Public Radio International, which was perhaps made just
for this kind of purpose.
All in all, it would appear that some kind of "pay per"
business plan is sweeping the world of commercial media
outlets, perhaps explaining the success of Youtube, the
media outlet that now receives up to 50,000 videos just
in a single day for worldwide downloading. Yahoo is in
the process of launching their competitor to Youtube.
As more and more people refuse to watch commercials the
networks are going crazy trying to figure out how to do
their commercials in new ways, including previous notes
concerning "Product Integration" being the new versions
of ye olde "Product Placement." However, writers had a
serious complaint about being forced to write ads for a
plot line that revolved around sponsors' products.
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
According to CBS News Sunday night, the price of crude
went up 14% in the same period that the profits of the
gasoline companies went up 130%.
*
In New Orleans cleanup efforts, NBC reported that more
of the sub-sub-sub-contracting ripoffs were revealed:
Askritt Co., who freely admits they don't own a single
truck for the removal of anything they contracted for,
but simply paid sub-contractors and kept a lion's part
of the government payments. As I recall this was paid
by the cubic yard of disposal, and the original payees
receieved $23 per cubic yard, then passed on contracts
for $9 per cu. yd., who then did $8 and $7. . .until a
man named Leo actually did the work for $3 per cu. yd.
Source: Lisa Myers, NBC News, 06/05/06
*
Immigration of Teachers to U.S. Now A Top Priority!
Who Would Have Thought Teaching Would Be Globalized?
The United States may be trying to keep some people in
limbo as far as immigration policies are concerned but
for 10,000 needed teachers, the path may well be paved
with gold as various school districts compete for each
and every available teacher around the world.
Baltimore schools are likely to hire each one of 81 in
a single room of interviewees if they interview well--
the location is Manila in the Philippines.
It's impossible to find enough math, science, special-
education and other teachers in America, so schools in
need are sending their recruiters overseas.
The same recruitment effort that yields interviews for
perhaps five or ten teachers in the U.S. might get you
several hundred to choose from elsewhere.
Las Vegas, perhaps the fastest growing city in the US,
recruits teachers from Canada, Topeka goes to Spain or
India for many of its teachers, Dallas heads south for
teachers from Mexico and Chile, and those are just the
most obvious examples of cities that will recruit some
10,000 foreign teachers to fill classroom vacancies.
These policies are made obvious to other countries and
the result is that they even offer courses of study to
prepare students to become American teachers.
Of course, not everyone approves, the head of the NEA,
National Education Association, says that this policy,
no matter how well intended, will continue to drive an
expected teacher's salary down, and thus force teacher
wannabees into other occupations if they want to share
in the American Dreamz. For those teachers in Manila,
this IS the American Dream, as they will receive twice
or three times their current salaries in the new jobs.
Didn't anyone think of these sorts of things when they
decided to globalize everything?
Source: CBS Evening News, 6/6/06
*
More Katrina Recovery Money Goes Into Non-Work Pockets
It seems that every week a new revelation spells out a
new chapter in this never ending spectacle of greed.
Even while denying the hiring of layers of contractors
and sub-contractors and sub-sub-sub-contractors, money
trails show that much of the money paid for a recovery
from last year's hurricanes never leaves the office of
the original contractor, but is merely raked off, then
another contractor is hired, who then rakes off more--
perhaps for 8 levels--until finally a few percent of a
government contract is paid to the contractor who gets
to actually do the job.
Previous reports included the "Blue Roof" program, and
contracts given to Vice President Cheney's Halliburton
company, AshBritt, Bechtel, Akima, etc. Some of these
contracts magically seemed to grow by millions when it
was announced they would be "no-bid" or limited bidded
government contracts.
For some unknown reason much of the money was spent in
the neighboring states of Texas and Florida, where the
contractors simply passed on the work after taking out
millions of dollars for themselves.
AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Flordia, company recently a
recipient of one of the half billion dollar contracts,
was recently called before Congress to defend contract
failures that were obvious to all concerned, in only a
few weeks the failures were already obvious. AshBritt
President Randal Perkins said, "It's normal," to House
Committee members when questioned.
Local contractors quote their own prices as $12.90 and
the like per cubic yard of debris and say contracts of
$36 per cubic yard are going to connected Big Boys.
AshBritt's Perkins said it was more like $23, and Army
Corps of Engineers sources put it at $26, but reports,
already made public, have shown that these contractors
have made over $35 per cubic yard in Louisiana, though
AshBritt was not specifially named.
The range paid to the actual local contractors seems a
range from about $13 to $17 per cubic yard, while that
same contract to non-local contractors appears in many
sources as $23 to $35+.
Various politicians, including Mississippi's Governor,
are founders of some of these contracting agencies for
whom this has been a windfall profits year as Barbour,
Griffith & Rogers, founded by Governor Haley Barbour.
Apparently politicians on both sides of the aisle have
concentrated as much or more on profiteering, some had
even resigned their positions in the first month after
Katrina to concentrate on such contracting.
Many of the stocks of these companies has risen 50-90%
in various periods after Katrina some with more than a
billion dollars of contracts still waiting for work.
While some workers are benefitting by getting $17/hour
for cleanup work, the contractors who hire them get an
admitted $30,000 per day.
In some cases it would appear that private farmers are
being paid to take mulch made from downed vegetation--
and some are reported to be making millions from it.
[Search both AshBritt, Asbritt, and variant spellings]
Sources:
NBC
MSNBC
Taxpayers for Common Sense
House Reform Committee Testimony
CorpWatch
Carlsbad Current Argus
*
500Gb drives on sale for $190
Thus you can now add a terabyte in two drives for $380,
or 1.2Tb in 3 drives for $357.
I managed to get one of the 500G drives right over the counter,
at Fry's in Chicago, no rebates required.
*
Want $4.1 in revenge on the media?
Lock them in a hot room with no air-conditioning and make them
bid for what they want with only phone contact with the bosses
all night long. . .literally. . . .
*
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, with
the obvious exclusion of the 11-12 million immigrant workers
now being mentioned so much in the news.
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.
*
Poem of the Week
by Simona Sumanaru
My Book Of Sounds
You, to me, are like a book of poems.
I am so very lucky to have found it one day
on the dusty shelf of this old book store
in which the air is hot and a little humid
like spring this year - who would have thought
spring could last that long-
The store keeper is a little old lady
with violet-grayish strands
her hands like those of a piano player
- one would expect butterflies of sound
to be taking flight from right under her fingertips-
every time she touches a book
she takes these deep breaths and closes her eyes
for a little while
as if to memorize the feel of the cover
on her music-filled finger tips
it was a first edition, it was a romance,
it was a motivational book that father read to son
before football practice
or maybe it was a family saga mother read to daughter
before the curtains of night fell down
and thoughts drifted away
into womanhood and married life
She knows them well: pages torn, pictures missing,
tiny scribblings at the end of every chapter
where a student in international politics
boldly put in his own ideas,
or maybe an educator to be sneaked in
her most affectionate considerations
before she decided to turn on the page
towards the next soul to be molded.
(C) 2006 Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart
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