pt1a5.506 pt1b5.506 Weekly_June 7.txt ***The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 7, 2006 PT1*** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******* * 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 15 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 2 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70] 0 New This Week From PG PrePrints 66 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright 83 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints] *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* Distributed Proofreaders Passes 8,500 eBook Mark!!! 19,621 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites 389 to go to 20,000!!! 19,129 via gutenberg.org [+79] 646 Australian eBooks [+15] [Included in above line] 318 Gutenberg Europe [+2] [Including after July 4] 168 PG PrePrint Site [+0] [Including after July 4] 83 Total New Books This Week 19,615 Grand Total of all four sites 19,621 [via our automated program] [Please note we have several counting methods, and they often differ by several book that we have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.] ~98% of the Way to 20,000 ***562 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 16,553 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~259 eBooks per Month for ~64.00 Months 1,473 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites 37 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 8,531 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 ~296 eBooks Per Month This Year [Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints] All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 70 eBooks Per Week In 2006 73 This Week 333 This Month It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks 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 May. 2006 from 10,000 to 19,600 [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/] * ~75,000 eBooks at the PG Consortia Center [Including after July 4] http://www.gutenberg.cc * ***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 *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] SPAMMER SETTLES, EXPERIENCES CHANGE OF HEART One of the most notorious spammers has reached a settlement with Microsoft and the state of Texas and said the experience has been "a serious reality check." Under the terms of the agreement, Ryan Pitylak will pay $1 million to settle charges that he sent as many as 25 million spam e-mails per day. He will also forfeit many assets he gathered as a spammer. Pitylak said he has changed teams, as it were, and will now work to limit spam. "I am pleased to announce that I am now a part of the antispam community," he said, "having started an Internet security company that offers my clients advice on systems to protect against spam." In his heyday, Pitylak, now 24 years old, was fourth on Spamhaus's list of world's worst spammers. CNET, 5 June 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-6079868.html GOVERNMENT WANTS ISPS TO KEEP DATA FOR TWO YEARS The Department of Justice is working to require ISPs to keep records on customer activities for two years to help law enforcement officials fight crimes including terrorism and child pornography. Officials from the department met recently with leading Internet companies to discuss details about how such a plan could be put into place. Representatives of those companies said that while they want to aid efforts to stop or prevent crime, they have concerns about exactly what information the Justice Department wants them to keep and how it would be used. A spokesperson from the Justice Department said they want to see records of Web searches and e-mail exchanges but not the content of those actions. He also said access to those records would be restricted and subject to existing protocols covering who is allowed to see it and under what circumstances. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the proposal amounts to "a radical departure from current practices" and would pose "an unnecessary risk to privacy and security of Internet users." San Jose Mercury News, 2 June 2006 http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/14720891.htm JOHN DOE LIBRARY GROUP GOES PUBLIC The Connecticut library organization that was targeted by federal officials but prevented from revealing its identity has held a press conference concerning the matter. Last year, the Library Connection received a national security letter from the government demanding patron records. Authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act, the letters forbid recipients from even disclosing that they have received the letter. After months of wrangling over the matter, the Justice Department has ended its efforts to enforce the gag order. At the press conference, Peter Chase, vice president of Library Connection, said, "It was galling for me to see the government's attorney in Connecticut... travel around the state telling people that their library records were safe, while at the same time he was enforcing a gag order preventing me from telling people that their library records were not safe." The Library Connection continues to fight the demands of the letter and has not yet given the Justice Department any patron records. Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 May 2006 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/05/2006053101t.htm COURT PROTECTS ONLINE JOURNALISTS A California appeals court has overturned a lower-court ruling, saying that online journalists have as much protection under the First Amendment as traditional journalists. The case involved an action by Apple Computer to discover the identity of individuals responsible for revealing company secrets online. Apple had argued that the information was shared not by legitimate reporters but by people who were violating the company's trade secrets. The appeals court said that online journalists are covered by a state law that guarantees the confidentiality of journalists' sources. The three judges on the panel said there is no reasonable method to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate news and that First Amendment rights trump Apple's demand to know who leaked the information. Observers said the case could have far-reaching implications for bloggers and others who post information and opinions online outside the context of traditional journalism. New York Times, 27 May 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/technology/27apple.html EUROPEAN COURT KILLS PASSENGER-DATA TRANSFER The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has ruled that a 2004 arrangement between the United States and the European Commission contravenes European Community law and must be halted. Under the agreement, which was opposed by the European Parliament, airlines were required to submit passenger name records to U.S. officials or forfeit their rights to land at U.S. airports. Despite airlines' having spent large sums of money to comply with the requirement, the court found the deal illegal on technical grounds. The European Parliament had challenged the deal for a number of reasons, technical issues being just one. After ruling on the technical question, however, the court ended its inquiry, disappointing the European Parliament, which had hoped the court would rule on privacy concerns it raised in its case against the deal. CNET, 30 May 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6077893.html To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to 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 The new Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is rarely mentioned as having been an assistant two of President Nixon's appointees, John Ehrlichman, head of the Watergate "Plumbers Unit" and also to Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird in the Viet Nam War. Even less mention was made of Judge Robert Bork being the author of "The Saturday Night Massacre" of Watergate fame, when he was nominated for the Supreme Court. *QUOTES OF THE WEEK More journalists have been killed in the Iraq War since March 20, 2003, 66 as of last week, than in 20 years of the Viet Nam War, where a total of 63 were killed. Source: Reporters Without Borders * "Our strength is in our values, and if we give up our values to fight this enemy, we have already lost." Various sources from both sides of the aisle. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK The cash flow will continue to reverse, as networks who used to pay for transmission of their programs to you-- reverse their position and charge affiliates and others for their programming. Yes, your local station used to get paid by the network to show network programming, in return for advertising, which quite often obviously split between them. This plan may have originated with the BBC, The British Broadcasting Company, who used to pay to send shortwave programs to my area for my whole life until a few years ago when I bought a new shortwave radio and found I was not able to pick up any of the dozen plus frequencies I had listened to the BBC on for years. Research turned up the fact that the BBC was charging a fee now for their programs, and thus had shut off their "North American World Service" I had listened to. This fee of millions of dollars per year is paid by a lot of NPR, National Public Radio, stations through a new PRI, Public Radio International, which was perhaps made just for this kind of purpose. All in all, it would appear that some kind of "pay per" business plan is sweeping the world of commercial media outlets, perhaps explaining the success of Youtube, the media outlet that now receives up to 50,000 videos just in a single day for worldwide downloading. Yahoo is in the process of launching their competitor to Youtube. As more and more people refuse to watch commercials the networks are going crazy trying to figure out how to do their commercials in new ways, including previous notes concerning "Product Integration" being the new versions of ye olde "Product Placement." However, writers had a serious complaint about being forced to write ads for a plot line that revolved around sponsors' products. *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK According to CBS News Sunday night, the price of crude went up 14% in the same period that the profits of the gasoline companies went up 130%. * In New Orleans cleanup efforts, NBC reported that more of the sub-sub-sub-contracting ripoffs were revealed: Askritt Co., who freely admits they don't own a single truck for the removal of anything they contracted for, but simply paid sub-contractors and kept a lion's part of the government payments. As I recall this was paid by the cubic yard of disposal, and the original payees receieved $23 per cubic yard, then passed on contracts for $9 per cu. yd., who then did $8 and $7. . .until a man named Leo actually did the work for $3 per cu. yd. Source: Lisa Myers, NBC News, 06/05/06 * Immigration of Teachers to U.S. Now A Top Priority! Who Would Have Thought Teaching Would Be Globalized? The United States may be trying to keep some people in limbo as far as immigration policies are concerned but for 10,000 needed teachers, the path may well be paved with gold as various school districts compete for each and every available teacher around the world. Baltimore schools are likely to hire each one of 81 in a single room of interviewees if they interview well-- the location is Manila in the Philippines. It's impossible to find enough math, science, special- education and other teachers in America, so schools in need are sending their recruiters overseas. The same recruitment effort that yields interviews for perhaps five or ten teachers in the U.S. might get you several hundred to choose from elsewhere. Las Vegas, perhaps the fastest growing city in the US, recruits teachers from Canada, Topeka goes to Spain or India for many of its teachers, Dallas heads south for teachers from Mexico and Chile, and those are just the most obvious examples of cities that will recruit some 10,000 foreign teachers to fill classroom vacancies. These policies are made obvious to other countries and the result is that they even offer courses of study to prepare students to become American teachers. Of course, not everyone approves, the head of the NEA, National Education Association, says that this policy, no matter how well intended, will continue to drive an expected teacher's salary down, and thus force teacher wannabees into other occupations if they want to share in the American Dreamz. For those teachers in Manila, this IS the American Dream, as they will receive twice or three times their current salaries in the new jobs. Didn't anyone think of these sorts of things when they decided to globalize everything? Source: CBS Evening News, 6/6/06 * More Katrina Recovery Money Goes Into Non-Work Pockets It seems that every week a new revelation spells out a new chapter in this never ending spectacle of greed. Even while denying the hiring of layers of contractors and sub-contractors and sub-sub-sub-contractors, money trails show that much of the money paid for a recovery from last year's hurricanes never leaves the office of the original contractor, but is merely raked off, then another contractor is hired, who then rakes off more-- perhaps for 8 levels--until finally a few percent of a government contract is paid to the contractor who gets to actually do the job. Previous reports included the "Blue Roof" program, and contracts given to Vice President Cheney's Halliburton company, AshBritt, Bechtel, Akima, etc. Some of these contracts magically seemed to grow by millions when it was announced they would be "no-bid" or limited bidded government contracts. For some unknown reason much of the money was spent in the neighboring states of Texas and Florida, where the contractors simply passed on the work after taking out millions of dollars for themselves. AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Flordia, company recently a recipient of one of the half billion dollar contracts, was recently called before Congress to defend contract failures that were obvious to all concerned, in only a few weeks the failures were already obvious. AshBritt President Randal Perkins said, "It's normal," to House Committee members when questioned. Local contractors quote their own prices as $12.90 and the like per cubic yard of debris and say contracts of $36 per cubic yard are going to connected Big Boys. AshBritt's Perkins said it was more like $23, and Army Corps of Engineers sources put it at $26, but reports, already made public, have shown that these contractors have made over $35 per cubic yard in Louisiana, though AshBritt was not specifially named. The range paid to the actual local contractors seems a range from about $13 to $17 per cubic yard, while that same contract to non-local contractors appears in many sources as $23 to $35+. Various politicians, including Mississippi's Governor, are founders of some of these contracting agencies for whom this has been a windfall profits year as Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, founded by Governor Haley Barbour. Apparently politicians on both sides of the aisle have concentrated as much or more on profiteering, some had even resigned their positions in the first month after Katrina to concentrate on such contracting. Many of the stocks of these companies has risen 50-90% in various periods after Katrina some with more than a billion dollars of contracts still waiting for work. While some workers are benefitting by getting $17/hour for cleanup work, the contractors who hire them get an admitted $30,000 per day. In some cases it would appear that private farmers are being paid to take mulch made from downed vegetation-- and some are reported to be making millions from it. [Search both AshBritt, Asbritt, and variant spellings] Sources: NBC MSNBC Taxpayers for Common Sense House Reform Committee Testimony CorpWatch Carlsbad Current Argus * 500Gb drives on sale for $190 Thus you can now add a terabyte in two drives for $380, or 1.2Tb in 3 drives for $357. I managed to get one of the 500G drives right over the counter, at Fry's in Chicago, no rebates required. * Want $4.1 in revenge on the media? Lock them in a hot room with no air-conditioning and make them bid for what they want with only phone contact with the bosses all night long. . .literally. . . . * 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. * Poem of the Week by Simona Sumanaru My Book Of Sounds You, to me, are like a book of poems. I am so very lucky to have found it one day on the dusty shelf of this old book store in which the air is hot and a little humid like spring this year - who would have thought spring could last that long- The store keeper is a little old lady with violet-grayish strands her hands like those of a piano player - one would expect butterflies of sound to be taking flight from right under her fingertips- every time she touches a book she takes these deep breaths and closes her eyes for a little while as if to memorize the feel of the cover on her music-filled finger tips it was a first edition, it was a romance, it was a motivational book that father read to son before football practice or maybe it was a family saga mother read to daughter before the curtains of night fell down and thoughts drifted away into womanhood and married life She knows them well: pages torn, pictures missing, tiny scribblings at the end of every chapter where a student in international politics boldly put in his own ideas, or maybe an educator to be sneaked in her most affectionate considerations before she decided to turn on the page towards the next soul to be molded. (C) 2006 Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart *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