From hart at pglaf.org Wed Jun 28 09:51:02 2006 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed Jun 28 09:51:06 2006 Subject: [gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0606280950240.13402@pglaf.org> pt1a3.606 pt1b3.606 Weekly_June_28.txt ***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 28, 2006 PT1*** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** * This is my last day here as I prepare to leave for a month of travel on the East Coast [of the US], to be best man at my best friend's wedding, to see my Mom and my brother, whom I have not seen in ages, and to give a few presentations along the way. I plan to be in Connecticut for the first week, not sure of the dates for D.C. and Boston yet, and back for the last week in Connecticut and New York City, after June 19 or so. We are preparing another Newsletter Editor as we speak, and you will be hearing from him next week on July 5, if all goes well. The counting program died last week, and my emailer killed some so it's going to be just George and me counting, sorry. Michael * 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 * 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 31 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 8 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70] 0 New This Week From PG PrePrints 69 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright 108 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints] *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* 20,102 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites 20,102 Project Gutenberg [+91] Grand Total [Automated] 741 Australian eBooks [+31] [Included in above line] 326 Gutenberg Europe [+8] [Including after July 4] 368 PG PrePrint Site [+0] [Included in above total] 69 General US PG eBooks[+48] [Inlucded in above total] 106 Total New Books This Week [On schedule for 91] 20,097 Grand Total of all four sites 20,102 [via our automated program, by hand] [Please note we have several counting methods, and they often differ by several book that we have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.] ~1% of the way from 20,000 to 30,000 ***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 1,954 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites 42 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 8,649 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 ~340 eBooks Per Month This Year!!! [Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints] All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 78 eBooks Per Week In 2006 108 This Week 482 This Month [Jun] It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~12.5 years from Jan. 1994 to Jun. 2006 to go from 100 to 20,100 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 20,000 * [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] [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@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 ***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B*** *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] CANADIAN PROJECT AIMS TO COORDINATE DISPARATE EFFORTS A new initiative called AlouetteCanada is designed to bring together disparate digitization efforts from around Canada into a single online location. Many universities and museums in the country maintain small-scale digitization efforts of material relevant to the history and culture of Canada. Much of this content is inaccessible to most people, however, according to Carole Moore, chief librarian of the University of Toronto, one of the universities participating in AlouetteCanada. The University of Alberta and the University of Brunswick are also part of the project, and Moore said hundreds of other organizations could conceivably contribute material. Ernie Ingles, chief librarian at the University of Alberta, said AlouetteCanada is, in some ways, the antithesis of Google's book-scanning project. Although Google is making content available publicly, he said, "it is making that content available in a commercial way." Ingles questioned whether Google would be around forever to make that content available. Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/06/2006062101t.htm RESEARCHERS CLAIM FASTEST SILICON CHIP A team of academic and industry researchers has demonstrated a speed of 500 gigahertz for a silicon-based computer chip they developed. The team included individuals from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Korea University in South Korea, and IBM. To reach 500 gigahertz, which is about 250 times faster than many chips used today, the researchers conducted the test in an environment 451 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit); at room temperature, the chip reportedly still reaches speeds of around 350 gigahertz. Technology consultant Dan Olds said the announcement indicates that "we're not coming anywhere near the end in what processors are capable of." IBM's Bernard Meyerson said the chips, which might be available in consumer devices within two years, could lead to significant leaps in the capabilities of computing devices. New York Times, 20 June 2006 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/technology/20chip.html ETHICAL HACKING PROGRAM TO REQUIRE BACKGROUND CHECK Students who want to take part in an ethical hacking program at the University of Abertay in Scotland will be required to pass a background check to weed out those who might apply the skills learned in the program to malicious ends. University officials will work with the Home Office and a Scottish disclosure service to screen applicants, looking for anyone with a criminal background. The program, called Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures, is a four-year degree intended to teach hacking skills to students who will then work with businesses to prevent hackers from doing damage to computer systems and data. It is the first program of its kind in the United Kingdom. Responding to concerns that the program will simply create more hackers, Lachlan McKinnon, a professor in the program, said the university will do all it can to ensure students use their skills in a positive manner. He added, however, that there are no guarantees. "Harold Shipman qualified as a doctor, after all," he said, "before deciding to become a murderer." The Register, 19 June 2006 http://www.theregister.com/2006/06/19/hackers_background/ GOOGLE DEBUTS SHAKESPEARE SITE Google has launched a new Web site specifically for the works of William Shakespeare and related resources. At the site, users have access to the full texts of Shakespeare's 37 plays and can search those texts for words or phrases. The site also has links to academic resources concerning the plays, online groups that focus on Shakespeare, and videos of stage productions of Shakespeare's plays. The site also points users toward Google Earth, which coordinates maps of the globe with Internet searching. With Google Earth, users can locate the Globe Theatre in London and find other resources with information about the site. The site was introduced as part of Google's sponsoring of New York's "Shakespeare in the Park." USA Today, 14 June 2006 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-06-14-shakespeare-google_x.htm WIKIPEDIA ADJUSTS EDITING POLICY Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia based on the model that anyone can contribute to or edit any entry, has placed new restrictions on editing. Certain entries in any reference work are bound to be contentious, and with Wikipedia, disagreements can escalate to a "revert war," in which competing factions simply change an entry back and forth to reflect their opinions. Such disputes have resulted in a status of "protected" for 82 entries, meaning they cannot be changed at all, and a status of "semi-protected" for another 179 entries. Semi-protected entries can only be changed by someone who has been a registered user for more than four days, the idea being that such a "cooling off" period will avoid most of the problems resulting from disagreements. Despite the steps Wikipedia has taken away from the ideal of "anyone can edit," founder Jimmy Wales says the resource works and is valuable. Most entries are only protected for a short period of time, he said, and they represent a fraction of the 1.2 million entries in the English-language version. New York Times, 17 June 2006 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/technology/17wiki.html DOE CONTRACTS FOR PETAFLOP SUPERCOMPUTER The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has ordered the first petaflop supercomputing system and an upgrade of its Blue Gene system from Cray. DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced the $200 million arrangement last week, with plans for completion of the new supercomputer in 2008. The new system reportedly will attain 1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops), or one petaflop. Oak Ridge scientists plan to use the system to tackle problems in energy, biology, and nanotechnology. The lab also expects to offer computing time to other researchers through a program that grants supercomputer access to academic and corporate institutions. Federal Computer Week, 26 June 2006 http://www.fcw.com/article95010-06-26-06-Web You've been reading excerpts from Edupage: 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 *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK "We follow the law." This reply was repeatedly thrown in the face of Senator Arlen Specter in recent hearings, to determine the scope of the release of national telephone users' information to the intelligence communities, by AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, as he time and again refused to answer questions directing him to inform the Senate whether AT&T had or had not sent a plethora of information for intelligence gathering operations. In the wake of the revelations by The New York Times that such a data mining opportunity was being given to the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc., many a Senator and Congressperson has raised the same question. Harsh criticism of The New York Times ensued, even though they sat on the story for a year before publishing it, and only published it when it became obvious it was going to be published elsewhere. [Note that The Washington Post got scooped on the "Ivy Bells" story-- mentioned in last week's Newsletter, when President Reagan convinced, in a personal phone call to their publisher, them not to run it for a few days, but then someone leaked it to NBC. Whether this was in the way of retaliation for The Washington Post forcing President Nixon to resign over The Watergate Affairs no one is actually saying aloud.] Here are the direct quotations from the current hearings: Specter: Does AT&T provide customer information to any law enforcement agency? Whitacre: We follow the law, senator. Specter: That is not an answer Mr. Whitacre, you know that. Whitacre: That's all I'm gonnna say, is we follow the law. It is an answer. I'm telling you we don't violate the law, we follow the law. Specter: Now, that's a legal conclusion, Mr. Whitacre. You may be right or you may be wrong, but I'm asking you for a factual matter -- does your company provide information to the federal government or any law enforcement agency, information about customers? Whitacre: If it's legal and we're requested to do so, of course we do. Specter: Have you? Whitacre: All I'm going to say is we follow the law. Specter: That's not an answer, it's not an answer, it's an evasion. Whitacre: It's an answer. Specter: If you're under instructions by the federal government... Whitacre: We follow the law, senator. Specter: You've said that. I don't care to hear it again. Whitacre: I don't care to repeat it again, but we do. Specter: Well then, don't. If you're under instructions by the federal government as a matter of state secrecy not to talk, say so. Whitacre: Senator, we follow the law. Specter: Well, I think that answer is contemptuous of this committee. Specter finally forced Whitacre to admit that any response by him would violate what he had been instructed was "classified information." Source: ABC MORE DOUBLESPEAK The Senate refused to repeal 100% of the estate tax that had been vilified as "The Death Tax," by embattled White House guru Karl Rove, but in the end it will cost the real taxpayers just as much, as the deal is being engineered by repealing what may be all timber company taxes to win over Senate votes from timber rich Washington State. All in all The Estate Tax is being repealed for all but the richest 1% or less in the country, and it should be mentioned that that 1% owns half of everything that can be owned in the United States. Source: The Washington Post [I wonder how rest of the country would react to all this if that 1% actually lived on their blocks, and owned half the land, half the cars, half the stocks, bonds, cash, boats, etc. while the next 2% owned half of what was left, and the next 4% owned half of that, etc. . .leaving only a few percent to be earned by 90% of the block's residents???] *QUOTES OF THE WEEK "We follow the law." *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK It will eventually be determined that there has been an overall pattern of divulging the personal information of U.S. citizens. *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK 72% of troops in Iraq say we should get out by the end of 2006. 21% say out now. Source: Zogby, and various sources that quoted the polls also done by Le Moyne College. [As a result, only 6 Senators voted to end the war by year end this week] Americans Lose Touch, Report Fewer Close Friends In the last 20 years the number of close friends reported by Americans has dropped from about 3 to 2. In 1985 2.94 friends a person could discuss the important issues of their lives with were reported. In 2004 that had dropped to 2.08, a drop of .043 per year for those 20 years which would be down to about 2 friends by now, in mid-2006. Not only do Americans have fewer persons they can discuss important matters with, but those they do have are family rather than the traditional friends we tend to think of. "This change indicates something that's not good for our society," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, Professor of Sociology at Duke University. The study appears in the June American Sociological Review. [This supports the growing realization that millions of people in the United States know Oprah Winfrey better than their neighbors] Source: LiveScience.com [Perhaps this is why MySpace has 87 million subscribers!] * The Big 10 Opens Its Own Television Channel In an effort to bring in more money from collegiate sport events The Big 10 has opted to create its very own source of income for their sporting events for the next 20 years, and should reap the amount of an extra $7.5 million per year as a result. The only trouble is that right now you will have to subscribe to DirecTV to get it. For at least the first 10 years of this, there should be some of the normal television coverage of the past, as The Big 10 is now also reported to have inked lucrative deals with Disney's sports coverage, from their ESPN and ABC television subsidiaries. Viewers will have to subcribe to The Big 10 Channel [BTC] via an opt-in selection to DirecTV's Total Choice package, available to just over 15 million households. This isn't the first collegiate sports collective to do this and it certainly won't be the last. Believe it or not, The Big 10's action on this was taken from some little known Western Mountain college conference. [Just one more step on the way to "pay per everything." Whether you pay per month, week, day, or per event, it's still pay per.] DirecTV's Total Choice package costs $41.99 per month. Source: TV Week, Various Big 10 press releases. and www.usdirect.com/programming/total_choice.php * The "Tahiti" oil well is going down further beneath sea level than Mt. Everest goes above sea level. * 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. * 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_06_28_part_1a.txt
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