GWeekly_December_01.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, December 01, 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 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 87 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones Today Marks Our 100th eBook In Finnish!!! 14,572 eBooks As Of Today!!! 11,509 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 We Have Now Produced about 3,664 eBooks In 2004 We Are Over 1/2 Way from 14,000 to 15,000 428 to go to 15,000!!! We have now averaged ~436 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971!!! It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100 It took ~3 years from 2001 to 2004 for our last 10,000 eBooks * HOT REQUEST FOR UNIX "GREP" EXPERT Please email hart@pglaf.org HOT 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. Thanks!!! Contact Jared Buck <JBuck814366460@aol.com> ***Introduction [The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. 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This "cost" is down from about $.95 when we had 10,069 eBooks a year ago Can you imagine ~14,571 books each costing ~$.26 less a year later??? Or. . .would this say it better? Can you imagine ~14,571 books each costing 1/3 less a year later??? At 14,571 eBooks in 33 Years and 04.75 Months We Averaged 436 Per Year [We do about 3/4 that much per month these days!] 36.1 Per Month 1.19 Per Day At 3664 eBooks Done In The 336 Days Of 2004 We Averaged 11 Per Day 78 Per Week 341 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 7th was the first Wednesday of 2004, and thus ended PG's production year of 2003 and began the production year of 2004 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *Flashback!!! 3334 New eBooks So Far in 2004 It took us ~31 years for the first 3324 ! That's the 9.75 months of 2004 as Compared to ~31 years!!! *Headline News from NewsScan and Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]

From NewsScan:

THE IPOD HALO EFFECT [Not to mention that people are reading eBooks on the iPods!] The popularity of Apple's iPod music players is having an unexpected effect -- six percent of iPod users report having dumped their old PCs for Apple Macs, and an additional 7% say they're planning to do the same. Among the reasons cited are ease of use, a focus on entertainment and the perception of better security. Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, which conducted the study, says the iPod halo effect will boost Apple's bottom line for a while to come: "We're in the very early innings of a multiyear trend." However, to maintain the buzz, Apple will need to stay ahead of the pack with new design trends. "They've got to keep that 'cool factor' going. If they don't, they're in trouble," says Munster. (CNet News.com 24 Nov 2004) <http://news.com.com/Survey+Some+iPod+fans+dump+PCs+for+Macs/2100-1042_3-546 5935.html> PC MAKERS FACING HARD TIMES [And we wondered why Intel was withholding the 4Ghz Pentium a year ago.] Three of the top 10 PC makers may drop out of the global PC market by 2007, starved by stagnant demand during the 2006-2008 timeframe, according to a new report by Gartner. The near-term forecast is a little brighter -- Gartner predicts annual shipment increases of 11.3% and annual revenue increases of about 4.7% between 2003 and 2005. But by 2006, most corporations and consumers will have replaced their oldest computers, completing the latest PC replacement cycle, which occurs about every four years for PCs and every three years for laptops. Emerging markets such as China will boost revenues during that time, but not enough to offset slack demand elsewhere, says Gartner, which declined to say which companies might drop out of the PC race. "The bottom line here is that the vendor landscape will look very different in the next couple of years," says a Gartner analyst, adding that there's still time for PC makers to enact cost-cutting measures that would enable them to survive the anticipated drought. (CNet News.com 29 Nov 2004) <news.com.com/Are+PC+makers+poised+for+major+hit/2100-1003_3-5470068.html> CYBERSPACE ACTIVISM [More below in Edupage section] The German-based Web portal Lycos Europe is offering a screensaver program that chokes spam servers by flooding them with junk traffic. The company argues that what it's doing is perfectly legal, but former FCC chief technologist David Farber comments: "You don't stop a bad thing by being bad yourself. The idea of somebody coming and hitting you and you hitting back, you both end up very hurt. It just aggravates an already serious problem." And noted computer security expert Dorothy Denning, a professor of defense analysis at the Navy Postgraduate School, points out that cyberspace activism of the kind offered by Lycos Europe is likely to have only minimal impact on spam because "the cost of adding extra bandwidth may be worth the reward" that spammers get from their activities. She adds: "The interesting question is whether or not that company [an anti-spam activist company] might be liable under some law, and would probably be liable, certainly, at least under a lawsuit by the spammers." (AP 30 Nov 2004) <www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2004-11-30-lycos-attack-spam_x.htm?csp=34> LOWER PRICES ON THIN TVs (BUY NOW!) A glut of liquid crystal display (LCD) flat-panel televisions will cause prices to drop by as much as 30 percent over the course of 2005; however, electronics retailers would just as soon not hear that kind of talk, and Lee Simonson of Best Buy admits: "We do not want to talk about predictions of price drops. We want people to buy now." According to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, the most desired holiday gift this season is a plasma TV, but Mike Fidler, an executive vice president at Sony, says that LCD TV's will drop so much in price that plasma will go away in three to five years.(AP/New York Times 29 Nov 2004) <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/technology/29lcd.html> WIRELESS IN PHILADELPHIA Verizon has struck a deal with the city of Philadelphia to provide wireless Internet access as a municipal service. A spokeswoman for Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street says the two parties "reached an understanding that protects our interests and allows us to move forward with the Wireless Philadelphia initiative." Under the Pennsylvania legislation, any political subdivision would have to get the permission of the local telephone company to provide a telecommunications service for a fee, including broadband Internet, and if the company rejects the plan it would have to offer a similar service within 14 months. (San Jose Mercury News 30 Nov 2004) <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10305668.htm> 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

SCREEN SAVER TO FIGHT SPAM A new screensaver by Internet portal Lycos is designed to fight spam by running up the costs of operating Web sites that sell goods commonly advertised in spam e-mail. Rather than targeting the e-mails themselves or their sources, which are often spoofed, the new tactic focuses on the Web sites where spam directs consumers. Using blacklists--from organizations such as Spamcop--of companies that profit from spam, the screensaver sends repeated requests to those companies' Web sites for information about their products. The goal, according to officials at Lycos, is not to overload the sites to the point of failure but to drive up the costs for companies to respond to so many hits on their Web sites. The screensaver also has been shown to slow traffic on some targeted sites by as much as 85 percent. The hope, according to Malte Pollmann of Lycos Europe, is that there will be a general decline in the amount of spam sent if the vendors who benefit from spam are forced to pay much higher costs to maintain their Web sites. The screensaver, which can be downloaded beginning in December, is available to all users, regardless of whether they are registered users of Lycos. BBC, 29 November 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4051553.stm 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 *** *Headline News Avoided By Most Of The Major U.S. Media 20 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF BHOPAL, AS MANY WERE KILLED AS IN 9/11 It would appear that the death rate from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal 20 years ago this week was nearly identical to the total deaths from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center 3 years ago. In addition, some 11,000 people Bhopal residents were disabled by the poison gas that was created when water mixed with pesticide. [Since I first wrote this, further ressearch shows over 20,000 died. Any further data would be appreciated] Recent televised reports show that Union Carbide left behind clearly marked poisons when they abandoned the Bhopal plant shortly after. Apparently the Union Carbide headquarters of Danbury, Connecticut, the major stockholder of the Bhopal Union Carbide India Limited plant, appears to have paid a fee to the government of India, and considers the case closed, even though thousands of Bhopal families appear to have been ignored, and the neither the contamination from the explosion nor from the other poisons intentionally left behind have been cleaned up, even to this day. *STRANGE QUOTE OF THE WEEK REWRITING THE HISTORY OF THE 1968 CHICAGO POLICE RIOTS "The police and demonstrators were going after each other. The protestors were provoking the police." Tom Brokaw 11/16/04 This seems to be quite at odds with his former commentaries, which you can find searching "tom brokaw police chicago 1968" in which he says he fought with his parents "we had a huge fight" and that he thought his "parents who were FDR working class democrats" "would be very sympathetic towards the demonstrators." Apparently you really do get more conservative as you get older. [1968 was Mr. Brokaw's first year of convention coverage.] [By the way, as predicted here, it appears that both Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather will be marching off to join the other dinosaurs in the near future, and I predict Peter Jennings will join them. The average age of these three passed double the median age of the United States years ago when the median was 33 years of age. Their average age is now around 73 years old. Mr. Lehrer is only just now coming up to 70.] and

From a Nina Totenberg, Washingon, November 30, 2004, NPR Report:

A representative of a Georgia school district who fired a teacher/coach in an alleged Title IX retaliation said the case could not have been made "more clearer." This case, in its entirety, is making its way to the Supreme Court. and John Wayne on "stealing" the America from its original inhabitants: Q: "For years American Indians have played an important -- if subordinate -- role in your Westerns. Do you feel any empathy for them?" A: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." *PREDICTION OF THE WEEK New news anchors for the major networks will be being tested on all the networks in the coming year or two, but the old ones will be invited back for the next election. *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK INCREASING REPORTS OF AIDS IN AFRICA ON WORLD AIDS DAY Sites in Africa are reporting 50% testing positive for HIV/AIDS, and that more women are testing positive than men. FIREFOX TAKES A BITE OUT OF IE The percentage of Web surfers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has fallen below 90%, with many of those users switching over to Mozilla's Firefox. According to a survey by OneStat.com, IE's market share has dropped 5% since May to 88.9%, while Mozilla browsers -- including Firefox -- have garnered an additional 5% in the same time period. Firefox's goal is to capture 10% of the market by the end of 2005. OneStat compiled the statistical comparisons from two million Internet users in 100 countries. (BBC News 24 Nov 2004) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4037833.stm> WHERE ARE SADDAM'S BILLIONS? The UN has admitted that it appears Saddam Hussein conned/bilked various UN committees out of a total of at least $21 billion. So far there appears to be little or no trace of where he put it. *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 *** http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/wo_hellweg111904.asp?trk=3Dnl =20 Is 'Fair Use' in Peril? The far-reaching Intellectual Property Protection Act would deny consumers many of the freedoms they take for granted. By Eric Hellweg November 19, 2004 Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you've recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you're caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress's desk passes, that may be the choice you'll face. How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal-no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry-was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that's but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this week. [More available on reqest to me] http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/wo_hellweg111904.asp?trk=3Dnl =20 ANTI-EVOLUTION TEACHINGS GAIN FOOTHOLD IN U.S. SCHOOLS from San Francisco Chronicle Dover, Pa. -- The way they used to teach the origin of the species to high school students in this sleepy town of 1,800 people in southern Pennsylvania, said local school board member Angie Yingling disapprovingly, was that "we come from chimpanzees and apes." Not anymore. The school board has ordered that biology teachers at Dover Area High School make students "aware of gaps/problems" in the theory of evolution. Their ninth-grade curriculum now must include the theory of "intelligent design," which posits that life is so complex and elaborate that some greater wisdom has to be behind it. http://snipurl.com/azil