GWeekly_December_29.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, December 29, 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 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 1 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 98 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones 14,867 eBooks As Of Today!!! 11,706 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 We Have Now Produced about 3,960 eBooks In 2004 We Are Already 97+% of the Way from 14,000 to 15,000 133 to go to 15,000!!! We have now averaged ~444 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971!!! We Are Averaging About 340 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!!!

From NewsScan:

[For all those who never pay attention to such things, this means: THE PERCENTAGE OF BROADBAND USERS IN THE U.S. CAN NEVER DOUBLE AGAIN! Don't expect to ever hear the previous growth rates again. . . . Nobody paid any attention to this when U.S. Internet use reached 50%, and that. . .created the big .com crash. . . !!!] BROADBAND SURPASSES DIALUP IN THE U.S. The number of broadband Internet connections in U.S. households has finally surpassed that of dialup, accounting for 53% of residential users in October according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The prevalence of "always-on" broadband leads to higher usage rates as high-speed users subscribe to the practice of "infosnacking," says AOL executive VP Jim Bankoff: "People are more able and willing to just walk up to the Internet to get a quick snippet of what they need, send a quick e-mail, read a quick news article, check a sports score." That instant availability has changed communal behavior, says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Family members arguing over a point are more apt to "look it up online rather than continue to yell at each other," says Rainie, who notes his high-speed bandwidth at home has also changed his offline behavior -- he gets to the office late and leaves early in order to avoid rush-hour traffic, knowing that he can accomplish what he needs to do in his hours at home. 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Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #3960 The Entire Series of "The French Immortal" Authors, up to #4000 With 14,867 eBooks online as of December 29, 2004 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 $.93 when we had 10,750 eBooks a year ago Can you imagine ~14,867 books each costing ~$.25 less a year later??? Or. . .would this say it better? Can you imagine ~14,867 books each costing 1/3 less a year later??? 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Don't miss the one way up at the very beginning.] EU COURT RULES AGAINST MICROSOFT A European Union judge today ruled that Microsoft must immediately submit to sanctions imposed by EC regulators after they found that Microsoft broke antitrust laws by integrating its Windows Media Player into Windows, thus putting rival media software companies at a disadvantage. Microsoft had appealed the initial decision, arguing that pulling Media Player out of Windows would degrade its performance, but in today's ruling, Chief Judge Bo Vesterdorf of the Court of First Instance found that postponing sanctions would give Microsoft time to strengthen its grip on the market for media playing applications. Microsoft must now create two versions of Windows for European distribution -- one that contains Media Player and one without. Microsoft announced it would comply while contemplating its next legal move. (Washington Post 22 Dec 2004) <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18543-2004Dec22.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

MICROSOFT MUST ACCEPT EU SANCTIONS The president of the European Union's Court of First Instance ruled that Microsoft must abide by sanctions imposed by EU regulators pending the results of an appeal. The sanctions require Microsoft to provide a version of its Windows operating system that does not include the company's Media Player software. Microsoft also must publish application programming interfaces to allow competitors to create server products compatible with Windows. The court ruled that Microsoft failed to prove that meeting the sanctions would cause "serious and irreparable harm" to its business. ComputerWorld, 22 December 2004 http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,98474,00.html 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 "We are less generous now that we are more rich." Jan Egeland, UN emergency relief coordinator. [This is the quotation I wrote down directly when I heard it on the air, but I notice it doesn't appear in any of my searches, rather the word "stingy" is the main word used, and wanting higher taxes to get more relief. I recall, hopefully correctly, that I wrote the quote from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. However, this quote didn't come up in ANY searches, but was rather replaced more the more sensational: "It is beyond me why are we so stingy, really," "Christmastime should remind many Western countries at least, how rich we have become." [Please not he used "we" above, and only used "they" when replying to specific complaints he received.] "There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy," and that officials are saying "the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more."] No similar comments were raised against the BBC comments that current relief efforts would be small enough for the immediate responses, and forgotten soon enough that many of the victims would be still living in temporary shelters a year from now. You may also want to note that this is possibly the greatest natural disaster in recorded history, as the massive Krakatoa eruption of 1883 only killed 40,000, most by the same sort of tsunamis as in this catastrophe. By comparison, the number killed in Pompeii was perhaps 2,000, with perhaps another several thousand in nearby Herculaneum and their surroundings. The official count for this one had already passed 50,000 24 hours before our deadline, with another 50,000 expected to be added as more bodies are found and second stage deaths take place from injuries, lack of supplies, and an expected resulting empidemic from lack of food and clean water. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK The responses to Jan Egeland's statements will continue to be of the tabloid nature, completely ignoring facts that pledged donations at the time were much smaller than those reported after the effect of his statement, but reported as if they were that large before. [When I heard the first report of the U.S. pledging 3.5 million dollars, I actually thought they meant 3.5 billion dollars. . .a fraction of the amount spent to rebuild Florida after the four hurricanes this year. Apparently the total cost to insurance companies alone has been over $20 billion, not to mention all the costs not borne by insurance.] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK [For those of you who still refuse to believe that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. . . .] Economic reports for holiday sales indicate that the stores catering to the upper classes did quite well, while classes of a less wealthy nature spent much less at discount stores. In addition, the post-Chrismas rush expected the days after never seemed to materialize this year. Camera crews from a variety of news programs showed a several lack of crowds to face expectant store personnel. * More on TIMSS 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