From hart at pglaf.org Wed Feb 15 09:21:54 2006 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed Feb 15 09:21:58 2006 Subject: [gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0602150919570.3575@pglaf.org> pt1a2.206 pt1b2.206 Weekly_February_15.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, February 15, 2006 PT1* *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A * Editor's comments appear in [brackets]. Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart@pobox.com or gbnewby@pglaf.org Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart@pobox.com * WANTED! >>> !!!People who can help with PR for our 35th Anniversary!!! <<< >>> !!!People to help us collect ALL public domain eBooks!!! <<< * Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc. * 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.] 11 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70] 157 New This Week From PG PrePrints 56 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright 225 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* 18,675 eBooks As Of Today!!! Including 531 Australian eBooks [+1] and 261 Project Gutenberg Europe [+11] And 157 From The New PrePrint Site[+157] We Are ~93% of the Way to 20,000!!! ***531 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 15,613 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~254 eBooks per Month for ~61.5 Months We Have Produced 533 eBooks in 2006 1,325 to go to 20,000!!! 40 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 8,040 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 ~255 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 89 eBooks Per Week In 2006 225 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@pobox.com and gbnewby@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] MICHIGAN PRESIDENT DEFENDS GOOGLE'S BOOK SCANNING Speaking at the annual conference of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers, the president of the University of Michigan defended her institution's participation in Google's Book Search program. The program has upset many publishers and other copyright owners, who contend that the project violates their intellectual property rights. Mary Sue Coleman told conference attendees that the program "is about the social good of promoting and sharing knowledge" and argued that Thomas Jefferson would have loved it. Insisting that vast numbers of cultural artifacts are at risk of being lost due to insufficient efforts at conservation, particularly among libraries, Coleman characterized Google's project as one of preservation and her institution's participation as central to the university's mission. She noted that the University of Michigan had been "digitizing books long before Google knocked on our door, and we will continue our preservation efforts long after our contract with Google ends." Coleman's comment also included a clear defense of the rights of copyright holders. Her institution would not "ignore the law and distribute [protected material] to people to use in ways not authorized by copyright." CNET, 6 February 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6035858.html EFF RAISES CONCERNS OVER GOOGLE DESKTOP The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is warning users about what it says are privacy concerns with Google's new Desktop Search application. The tool indexes files from a computer, allowing users to search that content from other machines. According to the EFF, this process poses significant risks to personal privacy, particularly in light of recent government demands for access to usage logs from Google and other companies. EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston said, "Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of...whatever...text-based documents the desktop software can index." If federal authorities obtain Google's records, he said, they would have access to all of those files. Officials from Google conceded that the new tool does represent a trade-off of some measure of privacy, but said such a compromise is one that many users will be willing to make. The company also said it would encrypt those files, would place strong limits on who can access the information, and would not store it for more than 30 days. BBC, 10 February 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4700002.stm TSA CALLS FOR AUDIT OF SECURE FLIGHT PROGRAM The federal government's Secure Flight program has suffered another setback, this time from Kip Hawley, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Hawley told Congress that he has ordered a "comprehensive audit" of the program, though he did not say what prompted his decision. The program is intended to increase airline security by checking the names of all passengers against watch lists, a task currently carried out by airlines. Under the Secure Flight program, the federal government would assume that responsibility. Critics of the program point to its cost--$200 million over four years--noting that even last month Hawley said the TSA still was not entirely sure how it would work. They also have complained about privacy concerns of the program and routine mistakes that airlines reportedly make in checking passenger names against watch lists. Wired News, 9 February 2006 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70198-0.html GROUP SAYS YAHOO AIDED CHINESE AUTHORITIES For the second time recently, Yahoo has been accused of helping the Chinese government identify and prosecute individuals accused of political crimes. In 2005, Yahoo was criticized for providing information that helped Chinese authorities prosecute journalist Shi Tao, who was convicted of revealing state secrets. Reporters Without Borders said that another case has surfaced in which the ISP provided information to the Chinese government that led to the conviction of Li Zhi. According to the group, Li was found guilty of "inciting subversion" after he posted comments online critical of local officials and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Mary Osaka, a spokesperson from Yahoo, said that at the time the company was unaware of the nature of the investigation. In addition, she reiterated the company's position that it is better for Yahoo to have a presence in the country, "providing services we know benefit China's citizens," even if that requires compliance with local laws that run counter to U.S. beliefs and values. Internet News, 9 February 2006 http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3584191 BILL WOULD FORBID UNNECESSARY STORING OF DATA A bill introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) would require operators of Web sites to delete information about the site's users unless the site had a "legitimate" need to preserve that data. Information covered by the bill includes names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other data, and all Web sites would be subject to the legislation, including those operated by individuals and nonprofits. According to Markey, the Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006 is intended to address two issues: identity theft and government subpoenas of Internet data from Web sites including Google and Yahoo. Markey said personal information about Internet users "should not be needlessly stored to await compromise by data thieves or fraudsters, or disclosure through judicial fishing expeditions." ZDNet, 8 February 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6036951.html THAILAND BLOCKS YALE PRESS WEB SITE Internet users in Thailand will not be able to access the Yale University Press Web site following the government's response to a biography that presents an unflattering image of the country's king, Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thai officials in the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology frequently block access to online materials that include adult or violent content, criticism of the Thai royal family, information about the country's national security, or allegedly false advertising. The book, written by journalist Paul M. Handley, who reported from Thailand for 13 years, will be released by the Yale University Press in July. It is also expected to be banned in the country. Although Handley refused to comment specifically on the government's decision to censor the press's Web site, saying that the book will speak for itself, Yale issued a statement defending the book and the author. Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 February 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/02/2006020801t.htm To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to LISTSERV@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 *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 even going to really include much about VP Cheney shooting of Harry Whittington other than to mention that his name wasn't included in many reports, nor was Cheney's name, and apparently not even White House Press Secretary McClellan was notified at the time. However, local authorities, who said their report is already completed, would open an investigation which would include a grand jury if Whittington dies. Detail: Cheney didn't have the proper hunting license. Detail: Whittington apparently still has birdshot in him, and not only the one that worked its way into his heart causing a heart attack. Question: What if Whittington had shot Cheney? *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK [All combined this week.] [From last week] The Valerie Plame scandal will be swept under the carpet until after the November US elections, as will most of a host of related WMD issues, etc., mentioned below. [OK, I was quite wrong about this one, details below. My guess is that this information came out resulting from the efforts to remove this as an election issue by moving Libby's trial to after the election. I am as surprised as anyone.] Reports surfaced this week from various sources in the CIA, State Dept., NSA and Scooter Libby's testimonies, all concerning the dis-information campaign concerning the rumored Iraq-Niger uranium sale that was publicly, and privately, denied by Ambassador Joe Wilson, but it still managed to get into the President's State of the Union Message, 2003. These reports from various senior officials indicate a campaign began in March, 2003, to discredit Ambassador Wilson and to deter any other future whisteblowers and that the campaign was started in conferences called by Vice President Cheney in his office, immediately after Wilson's appearances in CNN interviews in which Wilson said that there was no such Iraq-Niger uranium deal to the public, views shared by State Department's reports on the subject, the IEAE Chief, and weapons' inspector Albright, as reported below. Here is the timeline: March 7 International Atomic Energy Association chief Mohammed El Baradei addressed the U.N. Security Council, saying the documents indicating the yellowcake deal were just forgeries, and provided no evidence against Iraq. March 8 CNN, Ambassador Joe Wilson appears supporting the word of the IAEA Chief through his personal experience, but the details can't be told, they were classified. This is supported on CNN by U.N weapons' inspector Albright in his own comments. [See Wilson's conversation with the New York Times' Kristoff in May, 2003] March 9 Vice President Cheney calls a meeting in his office to discredit Ambassador Wilson, attended by Scooter Libby who was his Chief of Staff along with Karl Rove, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Hadley, and Deputy National Security Adviser John Hannah. [This meeting was reported by senior officals, at both the CIA and State Department who attended, who gave an anonymous report to public sources. At first they had no comment, claiming fear of losing their jobs, having family members endangered as with Joe Wilson's wife on the occasion she was "outed" as a covert CIA agent and other fears not named. However, as more and more came to light about the situation, they decided they had to speak out about the campaign of disinformation. These reports have lots more to offer, possibly reference to the above mentioned "outing" of Valerie Plame Wilson.] March 18 Invasion of Iraq The basic disinformation, Weapons of Mass Destruction, supposedly indicated by documents pointing to an Iraq- Niger deal for now infamous "yellowcake uranium," then already refuted by Ambassador Wilson internally by his 2002 mission to Niger at the request of Vice President Cheney through the CIA. The IAEA Chief, Ambassador Wilson, a weapons inspector named Albright, who also appeared with Wilson on a CNN interview, all said these documents were forgeries. Additional information, previous released, was also in serious doubt, having been challenged by our experts-- such as information obtained through "aggressive means of interrogation." There are way too many details to go into here, but it should be noted that many of these challenges had been made officially before The State of the Union Message, in which President Bush included "yellowcake uranium." [As mentioned immediately after the most recent of The State of the Union Messages, it's hard to believe that President Bush is still referring to a Weapons of Mass Destruction scenario. Not to mention an Al Quada link to Iraq.] These reports also indicate that Vice President Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Hadley visited a CIA headquarters location immediately after Wilson did the CNN interview, and other reports indicate the repeated visits by Vice President Cheney. This reported by CIA official[s]. [Now former] Excerpts from Wilson's CNN comments of March 8: "Well, this particular case is outrageous. We know a lot about the uranium business in Niger, and for something like this to go unchallenged by us, the US government, is just simply stupid. It would have taken a couple of phone calls. We have had an embassy there since the early '60s. All this stuff is open. It's a restricted market of buyers and sellers. For this to have gotten to the IAEA is on the face of it dumb, but more to the point, it taints the whole rest of the case that the government is trying to build against Iraq." Excerpts from Wilson's CNN comments of March 2: "The underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists," [This is getting way too much to follow here, so I am going to end by pointing out an 02.16.03 article Stephen Hadley, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, had written for the Chicago Tribune, that was reused en masse by the State Department in re-release to major media on March 10: "Two Potent Iraqi Weapons: Denial and Deception" This publication continued the Bush administration position still relying on the "yellowcake uranium" deal that had now been discredited multiple times.] [I'm just suprised at how much of this has been kept out of the press for three years now. I have gone out of my way not to include personality clashes, name calling, expletives, etc.] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK After the multiple fatal coal mine accidents recently, the feds are going after millions of dollars in unpaid fines from coal mines, but they say is has nothing to do with recent events, citing plans they made last year to make collection efforts. * 96% of all clothing sold in the US is made in other countries. * 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. "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. * *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@pglaf.org
pgweekly_2006_02_15_part_1a.txt
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