GWeekly_September_1.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 1, 2004 PT1 ******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******* 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 *THE INTERNET CELEBRATES 35TH BIRTHDAY *Hot Requests New Sites and Announcements *Continuing Requests and Announcements *Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders *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 From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 65 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones We Are Over 90% of the Way to 15,000!!! 13,677 eBooks As Of Today!!! 1,323 to go to 15,000 We have now averaged about 413 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971!!! It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 It took ~3 years from 2001 to 2004 for our last 10,000 eBooks *** THE INTERNET CELEBRATES 35TH BIRTHDAY On September 2, 1969, the first "network connection" was created at UCLA as test data flowed through a 15 foot cable between computers. In January, 1970, the experiments had expanded to connect four of these computer "nodes" as they were called back then, and in 1971 the first transcontinental hookup was established by adding 23 of these nodes from coast to coast. Project Gutenberg began in that same year, thus becoming the oldest of what we now call "sites." See this URL for more details: www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/08/29/internet.birthday.ap/index.html ***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.] Today, and until we actually GET new Newsletter editors who want to do another portion, there will be only 2 parts. . .this is Part 1, and the eBook listings in Part 2 [New Project Gutenberg Documents]. [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 Over Our 33 07/52 Year History, We Have Now Averaged About 412 eBooks/Yr And This Year We Are Averaging Nearly That New eBook Level. . .PER MONTH! 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Statistical Review In the 34 weeks of this year, we have produced 2770 new eBooks. It took us from 1971 to 2001 to produce our FIRST 2770 eBooks!!! That's 34 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 YEARS!!! With 13,677 eBooks online as of September 1, 2004 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.73 from each book, for Project Gutenberg to have currently given away $1,000,000,000,000 [One Trillion Dollars] in books. 100,000,000 readers is about 1.5% of the world's population! This "cost" is down from about $1.09 when we had 9149 eBooks a year ago Can you imagine ~13,677 books each costing ~$.36 less a year later??? Or. . .would this say it better? Can you imagine ~13,677 books each costing 1/3 less a year later??? At 13,677 eBooks in 33 Years and 01.75 Months We Averaged 412.9 Per Year [We add nearly that much per month these days!] 34.4 Per Month 1.13 Per Day At 2770 eBooks Done In The 244 Days Of 2004 We Averaged 11.4 Per Day 79.5 Per Week 355.5 Per Month The production statistics are calculated based on full weeks' production; each production-week starts/ends Wednesday noon, starts with the first Wednesday of January. January 7th was the first Wednesday of 2004, and thus ended PG's production year of 2003 and began the production year of 2004 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *Flashback!!! 2770 New eBooks So Far in 2004 It took us ~30 years for the first 2770 ! That's the 7.75 months of 2004 as Compared to ~30 years!!! Here Is A Sample Of What Books Were Being Done Around #2770 Aug 2001 Jewel, by Clara Louise Burnham [jewelxxx.xxx] 2778 Aug 2001 Cabbages and Kings, by O Henry [O Henry #10][ckngsxxx.xxx] 2777 Aug 2001 The Four Million, by O Henry [O Henry #9] [4millnxx.xxx] 2776 Aug 2001 The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford [gsldrxxx.xxx] 2775 Aug 2001 The Patrician, by John Galsworthy [JG #13][ptrcnxxx.xxx] 2774 Aug 2001 Fraternity, by John Galsworthy [JG #12][frtrnxxx.xxx] 2773 Aug 2001 The Country House, by John Galsworthy [JG #11][chousxxx.xxx] 2772 Aug 2001 The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy [JG #10][ipharxxx.xxx] 2771 Aug 2001 Five Little Peppers And How They Grew, Sidney [#1][5lpepxxx.xxx] 2770 [Author: Margaret Sidney] Aug 2001 Cleopatra, by H. Rider Haggard [H. R. Haggard #22][clptrxxx.xxx] 2769 Aug 2001 The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray[WMT #21][?tpsbxxx.xxx] 2768 Aug 2001 The Devil's Paw, by E. Phillips Oppenheim[EPH #10][dspawxxx.xxx] 2767 Aug 2001 The Red Acorn, by John McElroy [rdcrnxxx.xxx] 2766 Aug 2001 The Lady From The Sea, by Henrik Ibsen [Ibsen #7] [ldysexxx.xxx] 2765 Aug 2001 The Mahatma and the Hare, by H. Rider Haggard[#21][tmathxxx.xxx] 2764 Aug 2001 The World's Desire, by Rider [#20], and Lang [#27][wldsrxxx.xxx] 2763 Aug 2001 The Brethren, by H. Rider Haggard [HR Haggard #19][brthnxxx.xxx] 2762 Aug 2001 Benita, by H. Rider Haggard [H. Rider Haggard #18][bnitaxxx.xxx] 2761 Aug 2001 Complete Celebrated Crimes, by A. Dumas, Pere #29[dcrimxxx.xxx] 2760 Aug 2001 The Man in the Iron Mask[The Novel]Dumas, Pere #28[ironmxxx.xxx] 2759 (See also: #2751, which is the essay; #2759 is the Novel) (Note: [Please see the introduction which describes the various books of this title, and how the various editions were published, and how they have been named, and in what order to read them.) *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
From NewsScan:
CUSTOM DESIGN ONLINE eMachineShop.com is giving tinkerers a new tool for designing and making their own creations -- its free design software not only tells customers whether a design can be made, but also provides a cost estimate. If the customer decides he or she wants to go ahead with the project, the design goes to a real-world machine shop for manufacturing. eMachineShop is the brainchild of Jim Lewis, a programmer and self-professed "tinkerer." (One claim to fame -- "the world's hardest sliding block puzzle.") Do-it-yourself types have used the eMachineShop process to manufacture more than 1,000 orders for things like door signs, motorcycle seats, robot frames, car engine covers, guitar plates and camera parts. "Being able to sit at your home computer, draw up some parts, submit them and 30 days later they are on your doorstep, all without human contact, is mind-blowing," says hobbyist Dennis Vegh. Lewis's next project? An application called Pad2Pad that focuses on electronics components. Lewis plans to take the design process beyond machine parts to the custom manufacture of printed circuit boards, including components like resistors, capacitors and chips. "My dream is essentially to become the Amazon in the manufacturing segment," says Lewis. (AP/CNN.com 26 Aug 2004) www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/08/26/online.manufacturing.ap/index.html MICROSOFT ORDERED TO YANK LINUX COMPARISON AD Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has ordered Microsoft to pull a print ad that includes a comparison of the total cost of Linux and Windows. In the ad, Microsoft claims Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows Server 2003, but ASA has questioned Microsoft's math, noting that the tests on which it was based involved running the two operating systems on different hardware. While Microsoft ran Linux on an IBM z900 mainframe (which is more expensive and underperforms the rest of its line), it ran its own software on cheaper, faster 900MHz Xeon machines. The ASA concluded that the ad was misleading because it implied that the comparison was between the two operating systems only. (InternetNews.com 26 Aug 2004) <http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3400131> DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING TARGETS DRUG DESIGN A global network of more than 150,000 home PCs called Folding@Home is helping Stanford University professor Vijay Pande identify potential drug compounds. The computers donate their spare computing power to run Pande's algorithms, which are designed to accurately predict how well molecules will bind to a given protein. "For almost 20 years, people have been talking about doing drug design computationally, but the real challenge has been getting sufficient accuracy. Our main goal was to come up with methods to really push that accuracy to the point at which our methods are pharmaceutically useful." Pande predicts his methodology may be used to design new classes of antibiotics or speed up treatments for Alzheimer's disease. "One way to think of Folding@Home is as a time machine where we can do the sort of computational work now that would be very easy for any researcher to do in perhaps 10 years. And we can develop these methods and test them now," says Pande. (Science News Daily 26 Aug 2004) <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040826090745.htm> FIRM TARGETS TEEN PC MARKET Digital Lifestyles Group is marketing a teen-friendly PC called the hip-e aimed at cornering the infamously fickle teenage technology market. The idea for hip-e grew out of Digital Lifestyle CEO Kent Savage's conversations with his 16-year-old son and his friends. After a series of informal focus groups, the boys were asked to draw up their designs for the ideal PC. Digital Lifestyles came back with 20 product concepts, which eventually were winnowed down to one. The hip-e is designed to serve as the hub for all of a teenager's digital interactions, and comes with a 120-gigabyte hard drive, plus Wi-Fi accessibility, a TV tuner and connections for videogame consoles. Speakers attached to the bottom of the PC's stand are removable and can be turned into a portable "beatbox." For $200 extra, the hip-e comes with an MP3 player/keychain data storage drive and/or a cell phone that can be synched with data on the computer. The interface is simplified -- users click on "paper" to launch Microsoft Word and "burn CD" to open a CD-copying program -- and the 17-inch desktop display features a "hangout tuner" that enables users to jump around between applications categories, such as music, movies, games, photos, communications, shopping, etc. Savage says teenagers generally don't like performing separate searches for various programs, so "it made sense to organize it for them and serve it up to them. I think what Apple did with iTunes and the iPod is great. But that's just one application. We are doing that -- on steroids. It's all of these applications, all on one platform." (AP/CNN.com 24 Aug 2004) <http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/08/24/business.of.life.ap/index.html> U.S. LARGEST EXPORTER OF SPAM The United States is the largest global source of spam, producing more than two of every five messages, a report by security firm Sophos shows. Sophos found about 43% of all spam originated in the United States. The next largest source was South Korea, with 15%, and China and Hong Kong, accounting for a combined 12% per cent. The report suggests that a U.S. law known as CAN-SPAM that took effect in January has done little to curb the flood on unwanted messages that some see as a threat to the Internet. Chris Kraft, senior security analyst at Sophos, says the results indicate little overall change from a similar survey in February for the United States. (The Australian 25 Aug 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U. australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10561978%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html XP SERVICE PACK: MIXED REACTION FROM TECH PROS Fourteen percent of tech pros who installed Windows XP service pack 2 have had major problems thereafter, a poll at the SANS Institute website says. Half of this number had no option but to reinstall the system in its entirety. (The Age 20 Aug 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U. <http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/20/1092889334896.html> IMAC REDUX Apple has used the 2004 Expo in Paris to introduce its new iMac, featuring the faster G5 processors currently used in Apple's top-end Power Macs. The new iMac is packaged in an all-in-one unit that resembles a flat-panel monitor but which has a processor and other components hidden behind the screen. The side of the panel has slots for CDs or DVDs to be loaded vertically. Apple executive Phil Schiller says, "A lot of people are going to be asking where did the computer go? It's around here somewhere and I just can't find it." The new iMac will be priced at $1,299 in the United States. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 31 Aug 2004 <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9544082.htm> PRIVACY CONCERN OVER AUSTRALIAN E-MAIL LAW Civil libertarians say that a proposed Australian law could allow authorities easy access to private, stored e-mails without a warrant, giving many new government bodies to access private e-mails, voicemail messages and SMS messages. Under current laws, unopened e-mails can only be accessed if they involve serious crime and only with a telecommunications intercept warrant. If the bill is passed authorities would need only a search warrant, or in some cases no warrant at all, according to online civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA). (The Australian 30 Aug 2004) Rec'd from J. Lamp australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10613440%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html ACLU DENIES MISCHIEF IN POSTING OF DELEGATE DATA The Secret Service is investigating the posting on a Web site operated by an organization called the Independent Media Center of the personal information of delegates to the Republication National Convention in New York. The Center describes its activities as "passionate tellings of the truth." The Secret Service, however, is concerned that posting of the delegate data could subject the delegates to harassment, acts of violence or identity theft. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the Independent Media Center, and the ACLU's Ann Beeson says: "This type of investigation is really a form of intimidation and a message to activists that they will pay a price for speaking out. The posting of publicly available information about people who are in the news should not trigger an investigation." (AP/USA Today 31 Aug 2004) <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2004-08-31-indymedia-post s-addys_x.htm> LINUX MAKING MAJOR INROADS IN BUSINESS A new Yankee Group survey shows that 36% of businesses plan to have at least a few Linux PCs within the next two years and 5% expect to switch over completely. Twenty-one percent propose adding Linux servers to their predominantly Windows environment and 11% plan to move to a Linux-only server setup. "All of the firms would like to reduce the amount of upfront capital expenditure dollars they spend on expensive Windows and Unix software licenses," according to the report. "However, they also recognize that in certain instances, a wholesale or significant switch to Linux might reduce upfront costs but result in higher overall costs." One potential deterrent is the scarcity of Linux personnel, says the report: "The establishments that have or are seriously considering Linux bemoaned the present dearth and high cost of skilled Linux administrators, even as they praised the open-source operating system's ease of use." (San Francisco Chronicle 31 Aug 2004) <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/3 1/BUGL88H0161.DTL&type=tech> You have been reading excerpts from NewsScan: NewsScan Daily is underwritten by RLG, a world-class organization making significant and sustained contributions to the effective management and appropriate use of information technology. To subscribe or unsubscribe to the text, html, or handheld versions of NewsScan Daily, send the appropriate subscribe or unsubscribe messages (i.e., with the word 'subscribe' or 'unsubscribe' in the subject line) to: Text version: Send message to NewsScan@NewsScan.com Html version: Send mail to NewsScan-html@NewsScan.com NewsScan-To-Go: http://www.newsscan.com/handheld/current.html *
From Edupage
BROWSING THE WEB AS A LIBRARY Marti Hearst, a professor at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a prototype search program designed to turn Web searches into something that approximates browsing the stacks of a library. The Flamenco search tool uses descriptions of archived items--in Hearst's tests, 35,000 images from an art collection--to display items grouped by criteria such as artist, period, medium, and subject. Users searching for representations of flowers in the 18th century, for example, could see results grouped by decade or by variety of flower. Flamenco can show groups of results that include paintings and sculptures of irises, or paintings of irises and roses. Hearst said the tool allows users to "compare and contrast, discovering new categories and relationships." Bruce Horn of Ingenuity Software is working on a tool that would allow a similar type of browsing on a computer, helping users find relevant resources that might be distributed in many places around a hard drive. New York Times, 19 August 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/technology/circuits/19next.html REALNETWORKS WAGES PRICE WAR, TARGETS APPLE Making reference to the old joke about "losing money on each sale and making it up on volume," RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser said his company will offer songs from its RealPlayer Music Store for a limited time at half price, including songs that play on Apple Computer's iPod portable music player. The drop in price will reportedly widen the company's loss for the current quarter. RealNetworks recently unveiled a new version of its music software that allows users to play songs on the iPod despite objections from Apple, which is considering legal action against RealNetworks and said it will likely revise the iPod to prevent playing songs from RealNetworks. Glaser has long argued against "closed" formats for music and believes that, despite the short-term cost to his company, the half-price promotion will ultimately benefit the market for digital music. New York Times, 17 August 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/business/17real.html UNIVERSITIES TO DEVELOP OPEN SOURCE FINANCIAL SOFTWARE Indiana University (IU) and the University of Hawaii have begun work on a project called Kuali to build open-source financial-system software for colleges and universities. Organizers of the project said that steep prices for commercial systems--as well as ongoing concern over potential consolidation of the market, which could lead to even higher prices for systems not specifically tailored for the higher education market--are the major factors driving the project. Kuali will be an expansion of a homegrown financial system developed by IU and currently in use at its eight campuses. The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) will provide support and advice, though no funding, for the project. In a NACUBO survey last fall, nearly half of the respondents said open source was a viable option for financial systems. Also partnering on the project will be a company called RSmart Group. Although the software will be free to install, as with any open-source project, RSmart hopes to sell support services to colleges and universities that opt for Kuali. Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 August 2004 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/free/2004/08/2004083002n.htm DNA ANALYSIS USED TO FIGHT SPAM Researchers at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center have modified an algorithm--originally created to discern patterns in protein sequencing--to serve as a spam filter. The algorithm, named Chung-Kwei after a Feng Shui character, analyzes e-mail, looking for patterns of letters that exist in spam but not in legitimate messages. Because of the amount of spam in circulation today, the researchers have an abundance of spam e-mail to feed to the algorithm to train it to identify those strings of characters that indicate a message is spam. Chung-Kwei is able to process 88,000 messages in about 15 minutes, said the researchers, and will continue to "learn" as more e-mail arrives. The tool is able, for example, to identify e-mails that have "S" replaced with "$" as spam. Researchers said Chung-Kwei is able to successfully detect nearly 97 percent of spam. BBC, 25 August 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3584534.stm You have been reading excerpts from Edupage: If you have questions or comments about Edupage, http://news.com.com/2100-1040-958352.html or send e-mail to: edupage@educause.edu To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU and in the body of the message type: SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName *** More Headline News Avoided By Most Of The Major U.S. Media [Yet More oddness from the International Olympic Committee] IOC NIXES BLOGGING BY ATHLETES The International Olympic Committee has barred competitors, coaches, and support personnel at the Olympic games from writing firsthand accounts for news and other Web sites. Its position is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists and that the interests of accredited media come first. The editor of Duke University's alumni publication says: "This is unfathomable to me. I don't understand what the International Olympic Committee might be concerned about. It's a way to engage a wide audience with reporting from the field and therefore generate excitement and interest in the games. This is a means to personalize the Olympics, to excite a constituency with the thrill that comes with the knowledge that a couple of their own are participants in the competition." The IOC isn't buying it. (San Jose Mercury News 19 Aug 2004) <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9445119.htm> A little about the medal count: 75 of the 202 competing nations won medals, 12 of them won a single medal, with Israel winning its first and Iraq coming oh so close. Total Country Medals Gold US 103 35 China 63 32 Russia 92 27 Prediction, next time China will do even better. On a per captita basis, this would be the ranking: 1. Bahamas 2. Australia 3. New Zealand 4. Greece ... 35. US *** *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK US MEDIAN NATIONAL INCOME CONTINUES TO FALL THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR The US Census Bureau announced this week the median household income fell again between 2002 and 2003 as they continue to digest more data coming in on this subject. More below. POVERTY UP AND HEALTH CARE DOWN IN THE UNITED STATES Poverty in the US increased last year to 36 million people, providing about 7 people above the poverty line for each one living in poverty, as the poverty rate reached 12.5% of the households in the United States with incomes below $18,850, which is less than half the median national income of $43,318 for households [2003]. Today's figure "represents a relatively large jump, for a number that doesnt move that much" in most circumstances, according to Heather Boushey, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. These household incomes are really less than than it appears, as government assistance checks are usually counted as income. 12.9 million of those living in poverty in the US are children, according to these reports. THE RICH GET RICHER WHILE THE POOR GET POORER The numbers also showed that that the opposite end of the spectrum continued to see esclating earnings: "We see that the top has been pulling away," Ms. Boushey added. Women continued to make about 75% as much as men. HEALTH CARE ALSO IN DECLINE Meanwhile, the number of people without health care also increased dramatically over the same period, to 45 million, meaning that for every 5 US people with health care, there is one person without. The is because the US health care industry is the only such industry in the industrial world without a universal health care program. 90 OF JOB SEARCHES FILLED WITH INSIDERS 90% of all job searches are filled with someone who already had an inside track with the employers or interviewers before those jobs are even announced to the public. *ODD QUOTATION OF THE WEEK "Just because someone is willing to pay you for something does not automatically mean that something has real value." *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists About the Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter: Goes out approximately at noon each Wednesday, but various different relays will get it to you at different times; you can subscribe directly, just send me email to find out how, or to subscribe directly by yourself, go to: http://gutenberg.net/subs.shtml and About the Project Gutenberg Monthly Newsletter: Goes out approximately first Wednesday of each month. 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