Weekly_September_21.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 21, 2005 PT1 ******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A 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 We are trying an experiment this month to provide shorter Newsletter files. PT1 of the Newsletter will be split into to sections starting and ending at the points below where you will see this marker" "***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***" You should receive THREE versions of PT1 today: PT1, PT1A, and PT1B. Please send your comments on this. * HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS New Site!!! New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information about them and their authors where you can find more. For information please contact Philip Harper <webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk> * You might be interested in reading about MIT's Neil Gershenfeld's "Fab Labs" that are encouraging people to with three dimensions what Project Gutenberg has been encouraging with two dimensions. There are currently 6 of these Fab Labs: Boston, India [2], Ghana, Norway and Costa Rica where people are making 3 dimensional computer generated materials. Not quite the Star Trek Replicator, yet!!! [mh] From: PERSONAL FABRICATION: A TALK WITH NEIL GERSHENFELD "From this combination of passion and inventiveness I began to get a sense that what these students are really doing is reinventing literacy. Literacy in the modern sense emerged in the Renaissance as mastery of the liberal arts. This is liberal in the sense of liberation, not politically liberal. The trivium and the quadrivium represented the available means of expression. Since then we've boiled that down to just reading and writing, but the means have changed quite a bit since the Renaissance. In a very real sense post-digital literacy now includes 3D machining and microcontroller programming. I've even been taking my twins, now 6, in to use MIT's workshops; they talk about going to MIT to make things they think of rather than going to a toy store to buy what someone else has designed." www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gershenfeld03/gershenfeld_index.html and www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/fablab.html www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0574.html www.itconversations.com/shows/detail460.html * More News From MIT's General Direction SQUID LABS: SUCKERS FOR NOVELTY from Wired News EMERYVILLE, California -- It's a classic scenario: Five friends with a mutual passion, disillusioned with their choices after their East Coast college, pile into a van and head to California to break into the big time. But don't think rock 'n' roll fantasy. This group came straight out of MIT, and its members don't do guitar and vocals; they do patents and prototypes. They make up Squid Labs, self-billed as "a design firm that does differential equations," and they're already picking up the hits: solar panel driveways, swarming parachutes, a SourceForge for hardware and a comic book series for kid engineers. Squid Labs is housed in a generic warehouse in Emeryville down the street from the elaborate Pixar Animation Studios gates. The building is full of toys and half-completed projects, seemingly more chaos than inspiration. The desks of the five founders -- Saul Griffith, Colin Bulthaup, Dan Goldwater, Ryan McKinley and Eric Wilhelm -- are scattered with papers, scrap metal and wood, and small, bare electronics. http://tinyurl.com/74xhq * WRITERS SUING GOOGLE Wyatt, Edward. Writers Sue Google, Accusing It of Copyright Violation. New York Times, September 21, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/technology/21book.html [registration required] WANTED!
!!!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 2 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 38 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* ***500 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 17,170 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are 85% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,170 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months We Have Produced 2214 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,830 to go to 20,000!!! 7,467 from Distributed Proofreaders [Details in PT1B] We have now averaged ~500+ eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971 We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging About 260 books Per Month This Year We Are Averaging About 60 eBooks Per Week This Year 40 This Week It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~32 months, from 2002 to 2005 for our last 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 It took ~1.75 years from Oct. 2003 to Aug. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,000 * ***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 well that PT1 is now being send 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 ***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B*** Weekly_September_14.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 14, 2005 PT1 ******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] PANASONIC LAUNCHES LINUX COLLABORATION CENTER Motivated by a desire to foster standardized software architectures, Panasonic has launched a Linux incubator at its Digital Concepts Center, located in San Jose, California. Brad McManus, director of the Digital Concepts Center, said that Panasonic sees much to be gained in developing technologies on standard architectures, which would minimize problems of incompatibility among products. The Linux Collaboration Center will focus primarily on middleware and applications but will also consider projects that address user interfaces and ubiquitous networking. McManus said the new Linux center aims to establish relationships with four or five start-up companies developing consumer electronics. In exchange, Panasonic will have first right of refusal for a portion of the companies' institutional funding. eWeek, 14 September 2005 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1859036,00.asp You have been reading excerpts from Edupage: If you have questions or comments about Edupage, 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 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 Hurricane Hits Norway: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4863 * "After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/opinion/18rich.html?hp * Why was Karl Rove not more involved with the White House positioning on Katrina? He was in the hospital with kidney stones. Sources: Baraboo News Republic, WI 9/21 Press-Enterprise, CA 9/19 New York Daily News, NY 9/16 Australian, Australia 9/18 Times of India, India 9/19 *STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK Correction: that strange non-word mentioned last week should have been attributed to: The New Oxford American Dictionary ^^^^^^^^ NOT The New Oxford English Dictionary ^^^^^^^ [Another possible correction, as to the source of the two photographs and captions mentioned last week: some say only one of them was genuinely from the AP, Associated Press, though the person suggesting the correction didn't clarify further, though this URL, http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp was provided for more details, which credited BOTH to the AP: "The Associated Press has separately captioned two photos of looters. . . ."] DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK To lie to the police is a crime. For them to lie to you is not. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK New Orleans will try to have usual Mardi Gras celebration. *QUOTES OF THE WEEK [As requested, adding in URL and credit lines when possible.] More data from our readers about pre-Katrina warnings:
From 2002, concering the New Orleans area:
"THE BIG ONE A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from
even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time."
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/
and
A good summary of the various predictions of the effects of a hurricane
on New Orleans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans
[Sent in by Martin Ward