On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
However, 1990 is the first year we actually made totally consistent additions every month to the collection, so it's the best start point.
So you pick an arbitrary starting point to make the math come out right.
Why not choose 1971 as starting point and accept where the math gets you: we are *behind* Moore's Law.
Hardly arbitrary, even as you yourself quoted above. 1990 was the first year of monthly production, a regular Newsletter, and most of the other things associated with Project Gutenberg. Growth in the 1970's was pretty much on a once a year basis, as there were severe limitations on our space allocations. The 1980's were pretty much devoded to Shakespeare and The Bible. Thus 1990 represents the best place to begin. If you think this is recent reasoning, I quote below from one of our old index files from the period: *** The Bible and Shakespeare represented the entire effort for the 1980's, and the Bible alone is about 1,000 times larger than our first file, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and so is the Complete Shakespeare. [That Shakespeare was never released due to changes in the copyright law] Dec 1979 Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address [linc1xxx.xxx] 9 Dec 1978 Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address [linc2xxx.xxx] 8 Dec 1977 The Mayflower Compact [mayflxxx.xxx] 7 Dec 1976 Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, Patrick Henry [liberxxx.xxx] 6 Dec 1975 The United States' Constitution [constxxx.xxx] 5 Nov 1973 Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln [gettyxxx.xxx] 4 Nov 1973 John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address [jfkxxxxx.xxx] 3 Dec 1972 The United States' Bill of Rights [billxxxx.xxx] 2 Dec 1971 Declaration of Independence [whenxxxx.xxx] 1