GWeekly_January_05.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 05, 2005 PT1 *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971***** **Today marks the end of the 2004 production year, starting the 2005 year** 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 Comments on "Project Googleberg" as others have dubbed it, in other email. 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 7 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 84 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright [2 counted twice last week, we really did 2 more this week] *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones Project Gutenberg of Australian Reaches 400 eBooks!!! 14,956 eBooks As Of Today!!! 11,706 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 We Produced about 4,049 eBooks In 2004 We Are 99% of the Way from 14,000 to 15,000 51 to go to 15,000!!! 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We Are Averaging About 338 eBooks Per Month This Year About 78 Per Week It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~32 months, from 2001 to 2004 for our last 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 * HEADLINE NEWS Jan 2005 Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, by O'Brien[050005xx.xxx]0400A [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500051.txt or .000 [Author's full name: John O'brien, pseudonym for Patrick Joseph Hartigan] *** REQUEST FOR UNIX "GREP" EXPERT Please email hart@pglaf.org REQUEST FOR RUSSIAN TRANSLATOR We are trying to start up a Project Gutenberg Russian Team, and we need someone to translate simple email messages from members of Project Gutenberg who want to provide a service to the Russian Team, but who do not know Russian. . .these people will be helping with scanning, finding books, etc. The messages will be in MS Word's .doc format in cyrillic, we need them translated into English, also in a .doc file. 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PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections holdings of 15 collections. . .with this week's listing as: Alex-Wire Tap Collection, 2,036 HTML eBook Files Black Mask Collection, 12,000 HTML eBook Files The Coradella Bookshelf Collection, 141 eBook Files DjVu Collection, 272 PDF and DJVU eBook Files eBooks@Adelaide Collection, 27,709 eBook Files Himalayan Academy, 3,400 HTML eBook Files Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files Logos Group Collection, 34,000 TXT eBook Files Prof. Mao's Chinese eBooks ~ 300 eBook files Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files Project Gutenberg Collection, 14,959 eBook Files Renaisscance Editions Collection, 561 HTML eBook Files Swami Center Collection, 78 HTML eBook Files Tony Kline Collection, 223 HTML eBook Files Widger Library, 2,600 HTML eBook Files CIA's Electronic Reading Room, 2,019 Reference Files =======Grand Total Files==========107,065 Total Files===== Average Size Per Member Collection 6,691 Total Files===== These eBooks are catalogued as per the instructions of their donors: some are one file per book, some have a file for each chapter, and some even have a file for a single page or poem. . .or are overcounted for reasons I have not mentioned. . .each of which could cause the overcounting or duplication of numbers. 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Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #4049 May 2003 Mates at Billabong, by Mary Grant Bruce [mtsbbxxx.xxx] 4050 May 2003 Piccolissima, by Eliza Lee Follen [Follen #9][pcclsxxx.xxx] 4049 May 2003 The Talkative Wig, by Eliza Lee Follen [ELF#8][tktvwxxx.xxx] 4048 May 2003 The Leavenworth Case, by Anna Katharine Green [#6][lvnwrxxx.xxx] 4047 May 2003 The Garden of Survival, by Algernon Blackwood [grdnsxxx.xxx] 4046 May 2003 Omoo, by Herman Melville [Melville#5][omoosxxx.xxx] 4045 May 2003 What the Animals Do and Say, by E.L.Follen [ELF#7][wtnmlxxx.xxx] 4044 May 2003 The Dynasts, by Thomas Hardy [Hardy#24][dynstxxx.xxx] 4043 May 2003 Mozart:The Man and the Artist, by Kerst & Krehbiel[wammaxxx.xxx] 4042 May 2003 Conscience, by Eliza Lee Follen [Follen#6][cnscnxxx.xxx] 4041 May 2003 The Pedler of Dust Sticks, by Eliza Lee Follen[#5][pdlrdxxx.xxx] 4040 May 2003 Volpone; Or, The Fox, Ben Jonson [Jonson #5][vlpnrxxx.xxx] 4039 May 2003 Imaginary Portraits, Walter Horatio Pater [#6][?imagxxx.xxx] 4038 May 2003 Appreciations, With An Essay on Style, Pater [#5][?awaexxx.xxx] 4037 May 2003 Essays From The Guardian, Walter Horatio Pater[#4][?essgxxx.xxx] 4036 With 14,956 eBooks online as of January 05, 2005 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.67 from each book, for Project Gutenberg to have currently given away $1,000,000,000,000 [One Trillion Dollars] in books. 100 million readers is only ~1.5% of the world's population! This "cost" is down from about $.92 when we had 10,821 eBooks a year ago. Can you imagine ~14,956 books each costing ~$.25 less a year later??? Or. . .would this say it better? Can you imagine ~14,956 books each costing 1/3 less a year later??? At 14,956 eBooks in 33 Years and 06.00 Months We Averaged 446 Per Year [We do about 3/4 that much per month these days!] 37.2 Per Month 1.22 Per Day At 4049 eBooks Done In The 364 Days Of 2004 We Averaged 11 Per Day 78 Per Week 337 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 5th was the first Wednesday of 2005, and thus ended PG's production year of 2004 and began the production year of 2005 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *** *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] [There haven't been many issues of Newsscan and Edupage recently, due to the holidays, so very few articles here.] THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING: THE WEB, OF COURSE The distinguished computer scientist Ramesh Jain says in his blog that his interview with John Gehl for Ubiquity received widespread attention and demonstrated that the importance of paper publications is becoming less significant compared to appearance of ideas or articles in cyberspace: "None of my articles that appeared in well respected journals got the attention of relevant people so rapidly... I am convinced that this is clearly the direction for ideas propagation and distribution." And last week's Ubiquity interview with technology visionary Michael Schrage also received a tremendous response from readers. You'll find the two interviews at: <http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v5i29_jain.html> and <http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/v5i39_schrage.html> RADAR INFO 'MORE RELIABLE' THAN WHAT THE AIRLINES TELL YOU [Tired of not being able to believe what the airlines tell you?] The Yosemite International Airport in Fresno, California, has become the first in the nation to use a Web-based wireless system that relies strictly on radar (rather than on reports from the airline carriers themselves) to obtain the flight information it displays on monitors and portable kiosks. Ron Dunsky, of the company that developed the software, says: "It is a way to inexpensively kick information up to a more accurate level." (AP/Washington Post 4 Jan 2005) <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46599-2005Jan4.html?nav=headlines> 'ENHANCED INTENSIVE CARE': IF YOU NEED IT YOU'LL WANT IT [Waiting for first story of a patient dying "live" on camera while no one is paying attention to what the camera is showing] New technology known as eICU ("Enhanced Intensive Care") lets physicians miles away from their patents manage health care via cameras and banks of computer screens. Developed by Baltimore-based VISICU Inc., the technology is already in use at least 18 hospital systems nationwide. Whereas traditional health care systems rely on nurses to notice a problem with a patient and relay the information to a doctor, eICU informs the doctor directly. The doctor can check the patient's ventilator, intravenous medication and anything else in the patient's room, and one physician notes: "The camera is such that I can count eyelashes." (AP/Los Angeles Times 4 Jan 2004) <http://www.latimes.com/technology/ats-ap_technology12jan04,1,3365615.story? coll=sns-ap-toptechnology> ANOTHER HIGH-TECH LEAP IN INDIA [India and China will be moving up the technology ladder, just watch.] The Indian state Andhra Pradesh is planning a new $90-million network that will move data between Hyderabad, the state's capital, and 23 districts at a speed more than 5,000 times the speed of the existing network. Hyderabad is already a hub of knowledge-based industries, and it has attracted Microsoft and numerous other world-class companies to establish research centers there. Mohammed Ali Shabbir, the state's information minister, predicts predicts the new system will revolutionize the entire communication network. He explains: "Widespread availability of broadband services at very low and affordable rates is expected to take government services to the doorsteps of the citizens and also trigger significant economic activity in every sector." (AP 3 Jan 2004) <http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050103/D87CLVL00.html> 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

[There haven't been many issues of Newsscan and Edupage recently, due to the holidays, so very few articles here.] COLLEGES EXPAND RECRUITING TECHNOLOGY As the effectiveness of e-mail as an admissions tool declines, colleges and universities are beginning to explore alternative recruitment Internet strategies. At the top of the list for many institutions are streaming videos of campus, either on the school's Web page or in the form of video magazines, or Vmags. Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame began testing a Vmag two years ago, sending it to students who had been accepted but had not yet decided to enroll. Saint Mary's Vmag includes four videos, each between one and two minutes, showing various activities on campus. Users who have downloaded the Vmag are prompted when new versions are available. Many believe video is able to persuade in ways that fixed images are not. Westminster College in Salt Lake City has added 136 video clips to its Web site in an effort to appeal to prospective students. Joel Bauman, vice president for enrollment at Westminster, said the videos are fairly inexpensive to produce. Karen Giannino, senior associate dean of admission at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., said the videos added to her institution's Web site help "tell our story in a compelling way" and "differentiate Colgate" from similar schools. New York Times, 30 December 2004 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/technology/circuits/30coll.html EBAY TO DISCONTINUE PASSPORT Online auction site eBay has announced it will discontinue support of Microsoft's Passport service later this month. The service offers registered users a single location to store personal information including names, addresses, and credit card numbers. When shopping at online vendors participating in the service, users can access their profiles for transactions with just a single login. Since its debut in 1999, however, Passport has failed to live up to expectations, in part due to competition as well as to security concerns among consumers. In addition, retailers were slow to sign up for fear that Microsoft might begin charging fees to retailers for the service. A spokesperson from eBay said that the percentage of its customers who regularly signed in using Passport was "very small." Despite losing one of the largest online retailers in eBay, Microsoft said the Passport service will continue. Reuters, 1 January 2005 http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7217100 COPYRIGHT LEVY ATTACHED TO GERMAN PC SALES A German court has ordered one of the country's largest PC makers to pay a levy for each new computer sold, to compensate copyright holders for royalties lost to copying. Germany has long charged such levies on devices used for copying content, including blank audio and video cassettes. The VG Wort rights society, which represents copyright holders in Germany, had asked the court to charge Fujitsu Siemens Computers 30 euros (US$41) per computer; the court decided on a levy of 12 euros. VG Wort said it will work to make all PC vendors in Germany subject to the same levy. Bernd Bischoff, CEO of Fujitsu Siemens, said the levy is "a de facto tax on PCs," which will tend to decrease sales. Officials from Fujitsu Siemens said they will consider appealing the decision and have asked the German government to review the copyright levies as they apply to digital technologies. ITWorld, 24 December 2004 http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/041224germanlevy/ 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 *** TECHNOLOGY REVIEW *Headline News Avoided By Most Of The Major U.S. Media *STRANGE QUOTE OF THE WEEK About last week's quote: The actual quote by Jan Egeland, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator and former head of the Norwegian Red Cross: "We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries. And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really. Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become." George Stephanopolis questionned Secretary of State Colin Powell about this, asking pretty much the same question I did: Why was the original estimate barely into the millions of dollars, when it was obvious from the start that it would/should/could approach a billion dollars? Not to mention why President Bush took four days before giving out any statement whatsoever. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK I'm sure you've all now heard this spin-doctored beyond belief, so I'll let it be other than to add that when all is said and done, perhaps over a year from now, the death toll might be 1/4 million, possibly the second greatest natural disaster of all time. [There was an earthquake in Japan in the 1500s that perhaps took 1/2 million lives, perhaps 3/4 million.] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK More on TIMSS I'm not at all sure why the 8th grade math scores got the press releases a few weeks ago, my own comparisons with a report from 1999 that I saved showed that the U.S. scores in 8th grade science showed much more of a change: 1999 Rank Country Name Score 28 United States 500 2003 Rank Country Name Score 09 United States 527 This shows a 5% increase in absolute scoring, and drastic improvement in international ranking. [Perhaps it was a misprint, and the press releases should have said Science, not Math] At any rate, here are the top 15 in each category of 2003: Math Grade 8 Rank Country Name Score 1. Singapore 605 2. Korea [Rep./South] 589 3. Hong Kong, SAR 586 4. Chinese Taipei 585 5. Japan 570 6. Belgium [Flemish] 537 7. Netherlands 536 8. Estonia 531 9. Hungary 529 10. Malaysia 508 11. Latvia 508 12. Russian Federation 508 13. Slovak Republic 508 14. Australia 505 15. United States 504 Math Grade 4 [Only about half as many countries measured] Rank Country Name Score 1. Singapore 594 2. Hong Kong SAR 575 3. Japan 565 4. Chinese Taipei 564 5. Belgium [Flemish] 551 6. Netherlands 540 7. Latvia 536 8. Lithuania 534 9. Russian Federation 532 10. England 531 11. Hungary 529 12. United States 518 13. Cyprus 510 14. Moldova, Rep. of 504 15. Italy 503 [Please note approximately 100 point level change between the 15 each grade] Science Grade 8 Rank Country Name Score 1. Singapore 578 2. Chinese Taipei 571 3. Korea, Rep./South 558 4. Hong Kong, SAR 556 5. Estonia 552 6. Japan 552 7. Hungary 543 8. Netherlands 536 9. United States 527 10. Australia 527 11. Sweden 524 12. Slovenia 520 13. New Zealand 520 14. Lithuania 519 15. Slovak Republic 520 [Note only 58 points from #1 to #15 in this area] Science Grade 4 Rank Country Name Score 1. Singapore 565 2. Chinese Taipei 551 3. Japan 543 4. Hong Kong, SAR 542 5. England 540 6. United States 536 7. Latvia 532 8. Hungary 530 9. Russian Federation 526 10. Netherlands 525 11. Australia 521 12. New Zealand 520 13. Belgium [Flemish] 518 14. Italy 516 15. Lithuania 512 [Again note less difference betwen #1 and #15] TIMSS = Third International Mathematics and Science Study Three weeks ago nearly every new service had positive comments about the improved U.S. students' TIMSS test scores that come out every four years. Only one source I heard had the nerve to say that the scores didn't really show any improvement, while the rest seemed to reek of jingoism. However, in reviewing the scores, it seems obvious that the U.S. test scores in question, the 8th grade math scores, were basically unchanged, moving up less than 1% from the 1999 score of 500 to the 2003 score of 504, out of 800. This represents a change of 1/5 of 1% per year, which I seriously doubt is within the statistical parameters of the TIMSS testing methodologies. [This is 1/8% if you measure from the total of 800 points, or a 1/2% total change over the four year period, an increment these kinds of tests are not reported to target.] Much more likely is the fact that the U.S. ranking has been changed more by changes in the other countries, both in terms of the changes the countries chosen for the 2003 tests, and the performance changes of those countries that stayed the same. More details of score changes in the top 20 of 1999: Rank Country 1999/2003 Change 1/1 Singapore 643/605 = 38 2/2 Korea 607/589 = 18 3/5 Japan 605/570 = 35 4/3 Hong Kong 588/586 = 3 6/6 Belgium (Fl) 565/537 = 28 7/13 Slovak Republic 547/508 = 39 9/7 Netherlands 541/536 = 5 9/21 Slovenia 541/493 = 48 [Netherlands and Slovenia tied in 1999] 11/25 Bulgaria 540/476 = 66 14/9 Hungary 537/529 = 7 16/14 Australia 530/505 = 25 Avg. of 11 listed here: 568/539 = 29 Change in U.S. Score: 500/504 = 4 Change in U.S. Rank 28/15 = 13 Obviously the other countries changed much more than the U.S., over 7 times as much change, not to mention that many of the countries tested in 1999 were not tested in 2003, a factor of change much greater than that of the U.S. performance change. Thus we see that that most other countries changed much more than did the U.S., which changed very little. It would appear that the U.S. didn't really move on the charts so much as other countries moved up and down past the U.S. In addition, it appears that the science scores were not mentioned in these news reports, nor were the scores for students in the lower grade classes. I will have to dig them up to let you know more about them in later issues. *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