[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Jun 21 09:56:11 PDT 2006
pt1a2.606
pt1b2.606
Weekly_June_21.txt
***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 21, 2006 PT1***
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
*
Project Gutenberg of Australia Passes 700 eBooks!
Distributed Proofreaders Passes 8,600 eBooks!
At the moment I am writing this, just over an hour to our normal press time,
we have 103 eBooks done this week, with 4 more promised by CEO Greg Newby...
which leaves only 2 more to get us to 20,000. . . .
I am preparing this edition as if none of those will come in during the hour
I have left before I usually send out the Newsletter, but I will wait a half
hour for Greg to come into his office to see how he is doing.
With one hour to go we are at 19,994 and counting. . . .
With 35 minutes to go we are at 19,997 and counting. . . .
Thanks!!!!!!!
Give the world eBooks in 2006!!!!!!!
Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg
Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org
*
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
42 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
0 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70]
0 New This Week From PG PrePrints
61 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
103 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints]
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
19,998 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites
2 to go to 20,000!!!
19,998 Project Gutenberg [+65] Grand Total [Automated]
710 Australian eBooks [+42] [Included in above line]
318 Gutenberg Europe [+0] [Including after July 4]
368 PG PrePrint Site [ +0] [Included in above total]
103 Total New Books This Week
19,989 Grand Total of all four sites
19,994 [via our automated program]
[Please note we have several counting methods,
and they often differ by several book that we
have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.]
~99.99% of the Way to 20,000
***569 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
16,823 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~261 eBooks per Month for ~64.25 Months
1,743 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites
40 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders
8,607 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 ~332 eBooks Per Month This Year
[Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints]
All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 76 eBooks Per Week In 2006
103 This Week
372 This Month [Jun]
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 ~2.8 years from Oct. 2003 to Jun. 2006 from 10,000 to ~19,994
[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]
[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.
[Daily PrePrints stats at http://preprints.readingroo.ms/]
Please note that sometimes it takes a few weeks for entire
collections to fully appear in the PrePrints Section, thus
the count sometimes jumps by a large number when the files
are eventually completed and added in. Also note that the
PrePrint files are just that, PrePrints, and thus may move
later to other locations, including the main collection or
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, etc. For example,
on June 14, 200 WAP compatible cell phone eBooks appeared,
and will likely be moved to other collection points later.
The entire process of working out the details just to send
them to the PrePrints Section took well over a month.
Even with the speeded up process of the PrePrints Section,
it still takes a certain amount of time to collect and put
such a large collection online in a proper manner.
*
75,000+ eBooks at the PG Consortia Center
http://www.gutenberg.cc
[Including after July 4]
*
***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]
MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOLS TO RECEIVE GRANT FROM MICROSOFT
Microsoft has announced a donation of as much as $30 million in
software to high school and college students in Massachusetts. The
software package will include software-writing and Web-development
tools and is valued at about $800 per high school student and $2,400
per college student. The software will be offered to all public high
schools and colleges in the state; the total amount of the donation
will depend on how many of the state's students participate in the
program. Massachusetts has about 300,000 high school and 125,000
college students. Nate Mackinnon, a spokesman for the Massachusetts
Department of Education, said the donation could help minimize a
growing gap in science between U.S. and international students by
seeding an interest in technology in high school and being able to
foster those skills in college.
Associated Press, 13 June 2006
http://www.wfsb.com/Global/story.asp?S=5026245
NIELSEN TO TRACK ONLINE VIEWERSHIP
[The Times They Are A'Changin!]
Responding to a changing landscape of media, Nielsen Media Research has
said it will begin tracking viewership of television programs over the
Internet. Media companies have criticized Nielsen for only tracking shows
that people watch on televisions in their homes, even as growing
numbers of consumers watch shows on computers, cell phones, or other
devices, both at home and away from home. The new tracking tools will
be introduced over several years and could have a considerable bearing
on ratings of shows, particularly sporting events, which analysts
believe are especially likely to be watched outside the home. Nielsen
said it would provide its "Nielsen families"--those whose television
viewing provides ratings data--with portable devices so they can keep
tabs on any television they watch away from their homes.
Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2006 (sub. req'd)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115030869031780267.html
FEDS SUE TO PROTECT NSA ACTIVITIES
The U.S. Justice Department has filed suit against the attorney general
of New Jersey to prevent her from finding out whether telecom companies
in the state have provided customer information to the National
Security Agency (NSA). An uproar followed the reporting last month
that several companies had given call data to the NSA as part of its
efforts to find and fight terrorists. Citing a range of privacy concerns,
many objected to those transfers of information and filed lawsuits to
prevent further such cooperation. Zulmia Farber, attorney general of
New Jersey, sent subpoenas to a number of telecom companies, seeking
to find out whether they had provided data to the NSA. The new lawsuit
from the Justice Department argues that complying with those subpoenas
would reveal information that would ultimately threaten national security.
The suit claims that Farber does not have the authority to request such
information.
CNET, 16 June 2006
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6084665.html
You've been reading excerpts from Edupage:
To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to
LISTSERV at LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
and in the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName
or
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings,
or access the Edupage archive, visit
http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639
Extra!
Nokia and Siemens are merging to create a combined
cell phone and Internet provider system with great
horizontal and vertical integration.
They say the number of cell phones will be
FOUR BILLION
in 2010
All the more reason for Project Gutenberg to make
cell phone eBooks more and more available.
The number of computers in 2010 may not even make
it to two billion.
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
*QUOTES OF THE WEEK
Ben Bradlee, Editor of the Washington Post during the huge
events surrounding the Watergate burglary by a White House
created "Plumbers Unit" to "stop leaks," said in interview
conversations with Jim Lehrer of The PBS News Hour, that a
story he withheld at the request of very high officials in
Washington about the US wiretaps of Russian communications
via an undersea cable, then appeared on NBC while he could
have allowed Bob Woodward, who also broke Watergate, to do
the story in The Washington Post. President Reagan called
Katherine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post and
personally convinced her not to run the story.
Ben Bradlee said reporting truth was the highest standard,
except when lives were at stake, or national security.
However, he added that most of the time when someone would
claim national security, it was really their own security.
The Russians had had the Ivy Bells listening device on KGB
museum display for years, so there is some questions as to
how much national security was involved, but Reagan said a
number of terrorist incidents had been foiled in just that
year due to information from Ivy Bells, and that the story
might make the Russians think again about the subject.
In addition Bradlee said, "Don't be a member of anything,"
country clubs, press clubs, etc., you must be independent.
Source: PBS, 6/19
Codename: Operation Ivy Bells
Search: "Ivy Bells" Moscow
See: Veils, The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987,
by Bob Woodward
*
CIA Director John McLaughlin said that as soon as the 2nd
plane hit The World Trade Center everyone knew it was Bin
Laden carrying out his threats.
Frontline, PBS 6/20
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
The originating Project Gutenberg sites will reach a total
of 20,000 eBooks in a few hours.
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, eBooks originating
from ~100 other eBook sites and donated for our use, would
likely reach a total of 80,000 eBooks by July 4.
Thus the entire Project Gutenberg at all five sites should
be ~100,000 eBooks on July 4, 2006.
[We are looking for someone to catalogue the relationships
between the various collections, identify duplications and
create a general overall catalog. Thanks for your help!]
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
Once a minute in the U.S. an ambulance is turned away from
a hospital because of overcrowding and "many hospitals have
shut down emergency rooms to save money."
NBC News, CBS News 06/14 ABC News 06/16
*
51% of colleges students have visited MySpace, 78% for Facebook.
Inside Higher Ed, 16 June 2006
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/16/internet
*
Noticed an Increase in Radio and Television Commercials?
There are now segments on the radio that contain more commercial
time than programming time. . .on a regular basis.
However, I noted when logging one of these today, that they seem
to have gotten some message about just how much they can include
as the commercials roughly equalled the substantive material.
When I first started monitoring this it appeared as if sometimes
the advertising was literally 5 times as long as the "program."
Interestingly enough, these are likely driving listeners to just
channel surf more and more, as radios and televisions become the
frontlines of a new kind of "economic warfare" in which the ads,
such as they are, are being force fed through alimentaries of an
ever more angry listening and viewing audience.
The trouble is that these advertisers are losing their audience,
their prime audience, those who can afford to buy all the stuff,
both to non-commercial subscription services and Tivo, etc., who
lets them skip the commercials altogether.
By the way, in case you didn't know, legislation has been put in
committees to FORCE the commercials to be included in programs--
which will lead to even more channel surfing.
As long a people have an alternative, and commercials are not an
entertaining format, people will find ways to ignore them.
Some Madison Avenue types are making millions by making ads that
you can't really tell are ads, or that contain music you want to
hear and so keep the channel where it is. . . .
See previous story about "Product Integration."
*
One of the longest running TV shows in the world will end July
30, 2006. "Top of the Pops" debuted 1964; The Rolling Stones,
and The Beatles started and ended that first show.
Today the show is syndicated to over 100 nations, all over the
world, but the BBC says it is time to hand over the reins to a
new music media generation that gets its music from iPods, the
Internet, and other sources.
Today the show brings in just barely a million BBC viewers but
there was no count for the 100+ other countries, to compare to
the 19 million viewers at its highest ratings.
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
*
In local news, one of the U of Illinois home towns will double
it's property taxes to provide for the poor, and will match up
now with the property taxes of the other home town. Champaign
and Urbana are the UI home towns.
The trouble with property taxes is that then then you rent the
property they pretend you own. I paid more in property taxes,
this year, than I ever paid in rent any year of my life.
*
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
Joyride
You make me be a child
with colored toys of playfulness and youth
and pinkish cheeks of passion and laughter
running down the streets bare feet
white dress fluttering as I go
carefree, hopeful, unaware
bumping into these little old ladies
going to church on early Sundays
apologizing with a song
and riding aback the morning breeze
rushing to meet Spring
and as I listen to the blooming trees
I learn that I was born to be riding
on the swirl of love.
(C) 2006 Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart
*
Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
For more information about the Project Gutenberg's mailing lists,
including the Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters:
and the other Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists:
The weekly is sent on Wednesdays, and the monthly is sent on the
first Wednesday of the month.
To subscribe to any (or to unsubscribe or adjust your subscription
preferences), visit the Project Gutenberg mailing list server:
http://lists.pglaf.org
If you are having trouble with your subscription, please
email the list's human administrators at: help at pglaf.org
More information about the gweekly
mailing list