pt1a1.d05 pt1b1.d05 Weekly_December_14.txt *The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, December 14, 2005 PT1* *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A *** 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 * WANTED!

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* 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 3 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 58 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* ***516 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 17,775 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are ~88% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,713 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~59 Months We Have Produced 2819 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,225 to go to 20,000!!! 7,806 from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] 514 from Project Gutenberg of Australia 131 from Project Gutenberg of Europe [We will start including these in 2006] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging ~250 books Per Month This Year [This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org] This Site Is Averaging ~58 eBooks Per Week This Year 61 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 ~2.00 years from Oct. 2003 to Nov. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,500 * ***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 *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] HARPERCOLLINS TO DIGITIZE BOOKS HarperCollins has announced plans to digitize its own books and make those files available through search services, marking the latest development in the rapidly changing landscape of electronic access to books. Google is working on its hotly contested service to scan vast numbers of texts and make them available online, while other companies have begun their own programs to digitize books. The move by HarperCollins is that company's attempt to be a part of new technologies while retaining control over its content. The company will pay to have an estimated 20,000 backlisted books digitized, as well as about 3,500 new titles each year. Those electronic files will be open to search engines to make indexes but not to download images of the pages. According to Brian Murray, group president of HarperCollins, "We'll own the file, and we'll control the terms of any sale." Jane Friedman, chief executive of the publisher, said, "We want to be the best collaborator, but we also want to take charge of our future." The company said the effort would also allow it to keep certain titles available long after they are out of print. Wall Street Journal, 12 December 2005 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113435527609919890.html GEORGE MASON DEVELOPS ACADEMIC BROWSER ADD-ON Researchers at George Mason University are developing a plug-in for the Firefox browser that will help academics organize sources and properly cite them. The tool is designed to harvest bibliographic information from online sources and organize it for someone doing research on the Web. Assuming the bibliographic elements are formatted in a way the software can recognize, the application will parse title, author, and other information and correlate it with the source. Daniel J. Cohen, assistant professor of history and one of the developers, said it can be thought of as "incredibly smart bookmarking.... You're not just bookmarking the page, but you're automatically [capturing]...all that info that scholars want to save." Unlike commercial products that organize sources, the new application will tie directly into the browser, eliminating the step of manually collecting citation details. The open source application is expected to be completed next year and will be available for no charge from George Mason's Web site. Cohen said he believes the application will make unintentional plagiarism less likely than if a researcher were keeping sources organized manually. Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 December 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/12/2005120602t.htm EU DOMAIN OPENS FOR BUSINESS A new domain has been launched that supporters believe will help create a sense of identity and strength among the nations of the European Union (EU). The .eu domain is initially open to organizations that hold trademarks or have offices in any of the 25 nations in the EU. The domain will later be opened to other groups and eventually to individuals. More than 400 registrars have been approved to handle applications for the domain. Jean Pire, a senior partner in a Belgian intellectual property law firm, said he expects the .eu domain to grow to be second only to .com in the number of Web sites that use it. Currently, .com is the domain for more than half of the world's Web sites; Pire predicts .eu eventually to represent about 25 percent of Web sites. The .eu extension will not replace existing country-specific extensions, such as .de for Germany and .fr for France. Wall Street Journal, 7 December 2005 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113391801658415733.html 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 [As requested adding sources, etc., when possible. Remember, the subject is not the article's subject, the subject is the manipulation of the world news, credibility gaps, ploys, mis- and dis-information.] [Didn't believe the previous reports here? Try these. And start getting used to the idea that China and India are going to be driving the world's economy for decades] China Is Now World's #1 Information Technology Producer Laptops, cellphones, digital cameras, etc. Not only is China the largest, but it is growing by nearly 50% per year in techno-sales, nearly 4 times faster than US sales are growing, so the gap widens faster and faster. Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). See: China overtakes US as biggest supplier of tech goods Indian Express China Overtakes US as Supplier of Information Technology Goods New York Times China overtakes the United States as the world's biggest supplier ... FinFacts Ireland * EU Parliament to Investigate CIA Prisoner Transport The European Parliament is meeting today to question the actions of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, in secretly removing 400 prisoners from U.S. soil to former Iron Curtain countries Poland, Romania and possibly others. Following several more reports, including those of the Council of Europe, that have created "credible reports" concerning "inquiry into alleged American secret detention centres and clandestine prison transport." Franco Frattini, EU vice-commissioner, has requested satellite images and flight logs from Eurocontrol to confirm these reports, and has advised EU Parliament of these proceedings. The newly popularlized terms for such prisoner transfer are "rendition", "black sites," and "torture flights." Here follows the concluding paragraph of: Times Online December 14, 2005 article by Sam Knight and Philip Webster "Growing unease about the CIA's rendition programme, which is believed to have transported 3,000 terrorist suspects for interrogation around the world since 2001, has prompted investigations in Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden." Sources: Times Online, UK EUobserver.com CNN International NPR *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK "This careful research has been unable to identify any occasion since September 11, 2001. . .or earlier in the Bush Administration when we received a request for permission by the United States for a rendition through United Kingdom territory or airspace." As per "very detailed searches of all our records" by the UK Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office. However, this was followed by: full circumstances of CIA flights in and out of the country. "Military flights by other countries are not subject to checking local authorities." Quotes from Jack Straw Britich Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK There will be a million eBooks online in two years, with or without efforts by Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Library of Congress, and now HarperCollins has thrown their hat into the ring. [Story above in Edupage section] * By this time Chinese will be the most popular Internet language, but, given the Chinese government's opinions on free information, free as in free speech, I don't think they will be a major force in building the world eBook libraries until/unless a significant social or political change has taken place. * *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK [Referring to investigating the CIA rendition flights] "We don't know yet if this has become an EU issue, but we cannot be the last ones to discover if something serious happened. We are here to seek the truth and not to wait for someone to provide it for us." Jean-Marie Cavada Chair of European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee * "Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards." Dick Marty Swiss Senator In a written summary of his investigation on "extraordinary rendition" *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK A Full Time Minimum Wage Worker Cannot Afford One Bedroom According to the current Low Income Housing Coalition report there is not a single county in the United States today where full time minimum wage workers can afford one bedroom apartments. This is the final straw, down from their report of December 20 of last year when only 4 of the 3066 U.S. counties could afford the average one bedroom apartment. The figures cannot fall any further, they have reached zero. Source: CBS News, NPR News, Low Income Housing Coalition * [Commentary] [Remember the recently publicized events in which Social Security recipients were told: "Social Security was never intended to meet all retirement needs." "Social Security was never intended to do the whole job." "Social Security was never intended or designed to be an investment vehicle." "Social Security was never intended to be a person's sole source of income during retirement." Now that there isn't a single county in the United States where a full time minimum wage worker can rent a one bedroom apartment, I wonder how long it is going to be before the official line is: "Minimum wage was never intended to support a full time worker." * $2.4 million will buy you a 30 second ad in the Super Bowl. * Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries. "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 [REprint. . .apparently this one got a bit mangled in the process of getting it prepared, my apologies.] a moment with you laid back time's a blue octopus embracing my ankles, my feet like birds cut through airy waves of memory polyphonic castles erected in the realm of newspeak sounds upon sounds describe majestic towers sweet melody of understanding playing over and over again the abyssal voice: lonesome mariners befriending oysters their old secrets revealed through long voyages initiation a dialogue of alikeness opening up door after or after door above a seagull: caresses came to resemble its dance touch of feathers spreading wide in horizons of color ethereal sensations, hear mermaids singing beloved songs the rhythm of utter belonging joyfully contained in a moment with you Copyright 2005 by Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart Please send comments to: simona_s75 AT yahoo.com & hart AT pobox.com *** *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