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Old Firewire Cable Needed
by Michael S. Hart 08 Sep '09

08 Sep '09

What I am looking for is a device (probably a camcorder or tape deck) that will play a Mini DV tape and has a 4 pin Firewire (IEEE 1394 output) (Sony calls it i.Link and DV out, Canon calls it a Firewire port, JVC call it a DV (Firewire) port, Panasonic calls it DV port, Samsung calls it a DV port, others may call it something else) that I can borrow for a very short period to get some material off of Mini DV tapes into my computer. I have the 4 pin to 4 pin cable I need to make the connection to my computer. If there is another type of device I can play a Mini DV tape and there is cabling that will present a 4 pin Firewire to my computer I could use that also, I just don't have the cabling.

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!@! An urgent appeal to all Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg
by Michael S. Hart 06 Sep '09

06 Sep '09

Please forward as you feel appropriate. Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2009 01:03:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Akrigg <contact.gutenberg(a)yahoo.ca> To: Michael Hart <hart(a)pobox.com> Cc: hart(a)pglaf.org Subject: An urgent appeal to all Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg Dear friends: I am the founder of Project Gutenberg Canada, and would like to make a special appeal to Canadian supporters of Project Gutenberg. Our government is sponsoring a Copyright Consultation on future changes to the Copyright Act. This is an unprecedented request from the government for the people of Canada to express their views on copyright law. Please consider making your personal submission. In the submission which I made on behalf of Project Gutenberg Canada, I made the following five recommendations: 1. A "Safe Harbour" provision for works more than 75 years old where the life dates of the authors are not known 2. No extensions of copyright durations 3. Explicit assignment to the Public Domain of those photographs that were in the Public Domain in 1997 4. 75 year copyright for works with more than 15 authors 5. Enhanced protection of the Public Domain You can read the full PG Canada submission at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/008.nsf/eng/01390.html Your own submission should be in your own words, and can be quite short. We don't want to bury the government in spam, and truly individual submissions will have the greatest effect. There is no need to precisely mirror the recommendations I made. You will find the main Copyright Consultations page here: http://copyright.econsultation.ca/ You will find information on how to email your submission here: http://copyright.econsultation.ca/topics-sujets/show-montrer/18 You might also wish to send a copy of your submission to your Member of Parliament: http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalC… The main Copyright Consultation page has information on how you can participate in the forums being conducted by the government on copyright issues, which naturally cover many issues which do not affect PG Canada, but do affect your life in other respects. The main thing is to make your submission sooner rather than later: the Copyright Consultation ends on September 13th. It appears possible that there will be a federal election in Canada this fall. Don't forget to tell your candidates that they are answerable to you when it comes to copyright law, and that you expect any future government to protect and promote the Public Domain. Thank you in advance for your help. And don't forget to make your submission! Dr. Mark Akrigg Founder, Project Gutenberg Canada _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

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Rosetta Stone as eBook
by Michael S. Hart 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

We are exploring doing something on the order of public domain translations of the various Ancient Greek, Coptic, Hieroglyphs et al from The Rosetta Stone. Please advise if you would be interested in helping. We put this in Preprints: http://preprints.readingroo.ms/rosetta/ Including a README.TXT Original source: http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5Ow9Ub_BIgC&oe=UTF-8 it's also at archive.org, with raw OCR Many thanks!!! -- Greg and Michael

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Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter
by Michael S. Hart 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter The Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter--Aug. 24, 2009 eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since 1971 40 Months to The End of the World Via Mayan Calendaring on December 21, 2012 [some now saying October 11, 2011] Leaving 3 years 4 months, 13 1/3 seasons or 40 months. Not to worry, I will still make long range predictions. Headline News We just released our 25,000th English Project Gutenberg eBook as "Merriam-Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 1913" For those of you unfamiliar with Merriam-Websters, this was the dictionary started by Noah Webster and model of all dictionaries bearing his name, though I should warn you that no official connection is required under law-- as he did not trademark his name. I am having a little trouble writing up press releases, and would appreciate any possible assistance as below: /// Massive Dictionary Is Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook The 1913 Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary marks a watershed in both the eBook world and paper publication. This is one of the finest dictionaries of all time, with as much history in its previous editions as those from a later period that now includes nearly a whole century. This dictionary, one of the world's greatest, is free of all charges, new and improved, and in the public domain, just waiting for you to download and own your own copy. In paper, this is one of the massive dictionaries movies use when they want to impress people, weighing so much a stand is usually provided at libaries, etc. Literally a potential murder weapon beyond the mythical blunt object usually associated with movie whodunits. However, for those who understand this dictionary, it is a source of a major portion of their educaction enabling a reader to follow links from one definition to another, until one understands why the same symbol is used for an element: copper, a planet: Venus, and the symbol for a human female. . .and education in itself, from the later 1950 edition edition, but not from current editions that have been pared down to a more businesslike performance. All of these are available at: http://www.gutenberg.org The Details: This weekend Project Gutenberg posted its 25,000th home- grown eBook: home-grown means not including eBooks given by the various Project Gutenbergs that are springing up, including Australia [approaching 2,000], PG of Europe is approaching 650, PG of Canda is approching 500, and many more around the world. All in all, adding up all the Project Gutenberg sites in toto, not discount duplications, there are 100,000+ book titles, along with music, movies, audiobooks, etc. All in all the original Project Gutenberg has produced a total of 29,660 at the time of this release, meaning the their total in all 50+ languages they have produced will be turning 30,000 in about a month. This larger total includes nearly 1,500 books in French, about 600 in German, 500 in Finnish, over 400 in Dutch & Chinese, about 350 in Portuguese, and 250 in Spanish and the list goes on and on. If it is languages other than English that interest you: http://www.gutenberg.cc where there are over 100 languages represented in a wide variety of languages and subjects, with about 75,000 all total, approximately half of which are non-English. /// Our 30,000th eBook created under U.S. copyright law will come out a month or so from now, suggestions welcome for items in any language or medium. Thanks!!! Michael /// We Recently Published Our: 200th eBook in Italian 400th eBook in Chinese 500th eBook in Finnish We are coming up on our 250th in Spanish. . .suggestions??? We are coming up on our 600th in German. . .suggestions??? iPhone Acquisition As you know, we try to get one of each of the popular reading devices to test how our eBooks work on them and demonstrate a wide variety of reading options. A friend is updating his iPhone today and I am buying his old one, so we would appreciate any suggestions of which programs we should load to demonstrate the widest variety of readers. Our All Time Hottest Requests!!!!!!! FLASH RAM I am looking for the earliest flash RAM possible. The ideal piece around which to center this collection is one of the 8 megabyte USBs. The very earliest were PCMCIA cards, such as used for the Poqet computer, etc. The earliest USB flash drives were DisgoDizgo, M-Systems and these were OEMed by IBM, HP, etc. They are particular in a recognizable fashion because their snapon connectors resemble the connectors of jigsaw puzzles. We received two examples of RAM actually labeled "Flash," for the H-P 95 pocket DOS machine from 1991, and a sample of Fairchild bubble memory, as well, from down under. Thank you, Mate! POWERPOINT We need someone who can do PowerPoint illustrations. One in particular, building a 3-D box of 1,000 dominoes. Additional Newsletter Services In addition, we will provide the PG Canada Newsletter and totals from PG of Australia, Europe, PrePrints, etc. These totals do NOT include 75,000+ at httpwww.gutenberg.cc Where there are eBooks representing over 100 languages. As you may have noticed, I cheated by a few days on the date of this Newsletter so I could include #25,000 so I should warn you that the monthly totals will be larger, this month, and smaller next time. The Project Gutenberg Statistical Report [As of about noon Central Daylight Time] Various totals from the ~30,000 at httpwww.gutenberg.org and our other Project Gutenberg Sites This week: day | cnt ----------------+----- Mon 2009-08-17 | 12 Tue 2009-08-18 | 3 Wed 2009-08-19 | 13 Thu 2009-08-20 | 4 Fri 2009-08-21 | 8 Sat 2009-08-22 | 15 Sun 2009-08-23 | 10 ( Thanks to Marcello Perathoner! Here are the current language totals for languages with 200 or more eBooks. [Warning: this did not change overnight, so I am doubtful it is totally accurate.] Grand total for today: 29662 25002 English en 1454 French fr 597 German de 513 Finnish fi 441 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 344 Portuguese pt 253 Spanish es 203 Italian it Total increase +294 Last month +286 All Reported Languges Previous month +287 Not counting PrePrints, Canada, Australia, PG Europe Thanks to Greg Newby! ////// And From Project Gutenberg Sites Worldwide 29,662 up 294 PG General Automated Count 1,786 up 12 PG of Australia 644 up 3 PG of Europe 2,021 up 0 PG PrePrints, Reserved [42],etc. [PrePrints was down when I checked, sorry] 425 up 50 PG of Canada [Est. since End of June] [No additional news from PG of Canada] ====== 34,528 up 359 Grand Total Up from last month's 34,179 up 347 Grand Total Up from previous month's 33,832 up 320 Grand Total Note There are perhaps 100 eBooks not listed here that are already in circulation from Project Gutenberg. Note PG Canada includes English, French, and Italian. /// Here is how we ended 2008 27,616 PG General Automated Count 1,726 Project Gutenberg of Australia 554 Project Gutenberg of Europe 225 Project Gutenberg of Canada [Estimated] [202 up to December, no current report] 2,431 PrePrints [Counting the 307 Chinese eBooks +111] ====== ====== 32,552 Grand Total [Counting those PrePrints] Here is how we ended 2007 The combined PG projects had produced a total of 26,161 titles. The most number of books posted... ...in one day was 65 on the 26th December ...in one week was 151 in Week 18 (week ending 9th May) ...in one month was 477 in November We averaged 338 per month [Over 4,000 for the year] 78 per week 11.13 per day 99 titles were newly REposted to the new filing system, bringing us almost to the 2,000 mark. Here is a small selection of project milestones; TOTAL Original Project Gutenberg eBooks equals about the number of books in the average U.S. public library 32,500 on 20082121 [Counting the 307 Chinese Preprints] [And presuming 3 after official count] 32,000 on Calcuating 31,500 on 20081021 [not an error, 1,777 PrePrints] 30,000 on 20081021 29,500 on 20080919 29,000 ~~ Calculating 28,500 ~~ Calculating 28,000 ~~ 20080516 27,500 on 20080405 27,000 ~~ 20080229 26,500 on 20080126 26,000 on 20071224 25,000 on 20071012 24,000 on 20070710 23,000 on 20070415 PG-AU 1,700 on 20081010 1,600 on 20080208 1,500 on 20070407 PG Canada 175 on 20080930 100 on 20080325 110 on 20080417 /// Here is the July emergency Newsletter in toto for archiving. Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby(a)pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg

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!@! Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook
by Michael S. Hart 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

As of today: 24902 English We are asking for suggestions for #25,000!!! We probably have just over 10 days. . . . Thanks!!! Michael

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!@! Gutenberg's 25,000th English eBook
by Michael S. Hart 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

As of today: 24902 English We are asking for suggestions for #25,000!!! We probably have just over 10 days. . . . Thanks!!! Michael

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How To Read eBooks In The Most Comfortable Manner
by Michael S. Hart 30 Jul '09

30 Jul '09

How To Read eBooks In The Most Comfortable Manner This is a request for anyone to submit ideas for little "How To's" for their favorite computers and programs. Nothing fancy to start off with, just the bare bones of how to get the eBooks into computers and how to read them in comfortable ways in terms of setting foreground and background colors or size, zoom and the like. Eventually we hope to create "How To" files for each of the majors in terms of both operating systems and programs. Many thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg

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How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones
by Michael S. Hart 29 Jul '09

29 Jul '09

How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones This is a request for anyone to submit ideas for little "How To's" for their particular brands and models of cell phones. Nothing fancy to start off with, just the bare bones of how to get the eBook into the phones and how to read them in comfortable ways in terms of setting font size, zoom, or the like. Eventually we hope to create "How To" files for each model, and in ways that will encourage a greater usage of the nearly 4.5 billion cell phones now in use, and to give some worthwhile uses to phones that are no longer in service, but still work well as eReaders. If your phone has WiFi built in, so much the better. If nothing more, please just send the barest outline, and we would hope to get others to fill it in to make it more user friendly. Many Many Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks If you ever do not get a prompt response, please resend, then keep resending, I won't mind getting several copies per week.

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PG Canada - *June* news summary
by Michael S. Hart 27 Jul '09

27 Jul '09

Here is the news from PG Canada for June. We published a total of 15 ebooks during the month: we have now published a cumulative total of 340 ebooks. The New Releases section at the top of the PGC main page always gives the details of new releases for the most recent three months. LANGUAGES: - 13 in English - 2 in French CANADIAN CONTENT - 7 of this month's 15 ebooks were by Canadians or had a connection to Canada. FICTION/NONFICTION - 8 fiction - 7 nonfiction GENRES - 3 novels - 3 books of essays - 2 biographies (one of them an autobiography) - 2 children's books - 2 manuals - 1 book of short stories - 1 book of poetry - 1 book of geography To complement our recent edition of the later volumes of Proust's cycle of novels À la recherche du temps perdu, we published a 1927 set of reviews and articles on Proust by his contemporary Paul Souday (1869-1929). We also published "Sister Teresa" (1909 version) by Irish novelist and art critic George August Moore (1852-1933), and the 1925 edition of his monumental three-part autobiography "Hail and Farewell". Authors new to PGC this month included: Auzias-Turenne, Raymond (1861-1940) [Écrivain et diplomate français] Chase, Alvin Wood (1817-1885) [American physician and entrepreneur] Dunham, Bertha Mabel (1881-1957) [Canadian librarian and novelist] Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) [American novelist] Johnson, Clifton (1865-1940) [American author and photographer] Lindsey, Charles (1820-1908) [Canadian journalist] Moore, George Augustus (1852-1933) [Irish novelist and art critic] Souday, Paul (1869-1929) [Critique littéraire français] Sterrett, Virginia Frances (1900-1931) [American illustrator] Verga, Giovanni (1840-1922) [Italian novelist] *************** Thanks as ever for your support! Mark __________________________________________________________________ Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/gift/

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Extra Edition of the PG Newsletter
by Michael S. Hart 17 Jul '09

17 Jul '09

I'm sending this out now because I have serious doubts as to whether I will be able to do this very easily when the Newsletter is actually due. This may be the last time on this hard drive that I actually get booted up, and it was pretty much just luck that got me this far. I'll be buying some new computers this week, I hope, with the hopes that I will be more or less back to normal, but right now the thing won't even let me make backups as the USB ports have power, but don't recognize any drives. I'm actually dialed up on the modem right now. If any of you have any suggestions as to the best deals I should be looking at for laptops and netbooks, please let me know, and please cc: gbnewby(a)pglaf.org The Brief News We are rapidly coming up to our 25,000th eBook in English and all suggestions for what title to use are welcome. This should take place next month. In addition, we are coming up on our 30,000th PG eBook of all languages perhaps a month or so after that, so we are also looking for a great eBook in another language to put up as #30,000. We are giving away about 75,000 books per day through the http://www.gutenberg org server, for ~2 million per month and the monthly total was often over 3 million per month, all told over the past 4 years or so. This means we have given away over 100 million books over the past 4 years, just through that one site alone. The World eBook Fair In addition, over these same four years we have sponsored The World eBook Fair along with The Internet Archive, The World Public Library, ebooksabouteverything.org, etc. http://www.worldebookfair.org handed out a million files, just on one day alone, July 4, to start up this 39th year of presenting eBooks on the Internet. Please note: this is less than a million eBooks, as some entries are multi-file in nature. Traffic has since dropped to about half that, with a very healthy 50,000 downloads per day of our "best sellers." In its first year The World eBook Fair gave away nearly a total of 30 million eBooks, and if the averages have been at 25 million over the 4 years, that's a 200 million book total over those two URLs over a 4 year period, or totals somewhere in that range. This does not count all the other sites such as Australia or Canada or PG of Europe, etc. The Current PG Totals I'm not sure I have time right now to fill in everything, with monthly comparisons as I usually do, as I am running mostly on adrenaline right now and will have to stop soon to eat, sleep, shower, etc. Here are the brief reports you can compare to last month: I will also try to get back online after the fact and try to redo a real Newsletter with all info as of July 21st. Here are today's numbers for languages with 200+ eBooks: Grand total for today: 29326 24725 English en 1442 French fr 587 German de 508 Finnish fi 433 Dutch nl 402 Chinese zh 338 Portuguese pt 242 Spanish es 202 Italian it Courtesy of Greg Newby. Here are the weekly totals: day | cnt ----------------+----- Fri 2009-07-10 | 9 Sat 2009-07-11 | 11 Sun 2009-07-12 | 11 Mon 2009-07-13 | 11 Tue 2009-07-14 | 7 Wed 2009-07-15 | 8 Thu 2009-07-16 | 8 Courtesy of Marcello Perathoner We have recently been averaging just under 10 books per day with some very good days that are much better. If we are lucky, we may do 3,500 to 4,000 books for 2009. Not to mention the hundreds of books that have been updated and improved, corrected, etc. Many thanks to all who have helped us reach our 39th year! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg

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