pt1a4.806 pt1b4.806 Weekly_August_30.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 30, 2006 PT1*** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******* For now I am leaving PT1a and PT1b combined. Please also let me know if you think these Newsletters are a waste of time or if you think I/we should keep doing them. I hope to remove the redundancies between PT1A and PT1B shortly, just haven't slowed down enough to yet, sorry. However, you will hopefully be pleased to see that the total number of eBooks created by Project Gutenberg passed 21,000, and added to the total of 80,000 donated by 100+ eLibraries, via The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, now creates some 100,000+ eBooks as the world's largest electronic library of freely downloadable eBooks, all available in full text. Please also note that Project Gutenberg of Australia keeps a pace of eBook production that is absolutely astounding: Now over 1200 eBooks!!! [Not counting those included under US copyright] We are already over 10% of the way from 20,000 to 30,000, and it has hardly been two months since #20,000. That means we have averaged ~100 books per week recently, largely due to Project Gutenberg of Australia!!! Thanks!!!!!!! Michael * We are interested in increasing the "SF" available at Project Gutenberg of Australia. To this end we are happy to receive donations of ebooks to add to our collection. SF, in this context can mean: Science, Speculative, Superhero, Swords, Sorcery, Spies, Supernatural and Scary Fiction. Of course, we are only able to accept works that are public domain in Australia. Generally speaking, this means that the author died in 1954 or earlier. Please see our WANTED list at http://gutenberg.net.au/wanted.html for authors and works of interest. If you have suggestions for authors or works to add to the list, please let us know. Do check first that they are not already available at Project Gutenberg Australia or Project Gutenberg, please. Contact details are provided on the WANTED page. http://gutenberg.net.au/wanted.html As always, ebooks by Australian authors and of general Australian interest are always greatly appreciated. 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 *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* 21,002 eBooks As Of Today At These Four PG Sites 19,103 Project Gutenberg US [+ 38] [NOT Including PG Australia] 1,202 Australian eBooks [+ 77] [NOT Included in above line] 330 Gutenberg Europe [+ 0] [NOT Included in above lines] 370 PG PrePrint Site [+ 0] [NOT Inclucded in above lines] 21,005 Grand Total [+115] 21,002 [by hand count] [+115] [Please note we have several counting methods, and they often differ by several book that we have to hunt down by hand to reconcile.] [Pleast note there is some duplication between these various collections. Volunteers needed to take these duplications into account.] ~10% of the way from 20,000 to 30,000 75,000+ eBooks at the PG Consortia Center http://www.gutenberg.cc [Please note that the four collections totals are eBooks that originated as created, edited, proofread, formatted, etc., by Project Gutenberg and its 50,000 volunteers, while the Project Gutenberg Consortia Center with 75,000+ eBooks contains entire eBook collections from other sources, all the production statistics given here are for some 20,000+ eBooks created by the various teams of Project Gutenberg volunteers, for which we share the responsibility of maintaining. The Consortia Center eBooks were and are the responsibility of the donating eLibraries, and we would be happy to forward any suggestions for correction to those eLibraries, but those eBooks must be edited by the donating parties, as per their requests.] * 17,937 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~266 eBooks per Month for ~67.80 Months 2,742 New eBooks in 2006 at These Four Sites 27 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 8,972 totAl from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] [Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers] [Note, PGDP mostly included in US eBooks] [Note, PGEU has its own Distributed Proofreaders whose total closely matches their grand total] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005 [Including PG Australia] We Are Averaging ~366 eBooks Per Month This Year!!! [Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints] All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 83 eBooks Per Week In 2006 115 This Week 100 Last Week 386 This Month [Aug] It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks It took ~12.5 years from Jan. 1994 to Jun. 2006 to go from 100 to 20,100 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 Jun. 2006 from 10,000 to 20,000 Not counting the addition of The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center * [Daily PrePrints stats at http://preprints.readingroo.ms/] Please note that sometimes it takes a few weeks for entire collections to fully appear in the PrePrints Section, thus the count sometimes jumps by a large number when the files are eventually completed and added in. Also note that the PrePrint files are just that, PrePrints, and thus may move later to other locations, including the main collection or The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center, etc. For example, on June 14, 200 WAP compatible cell phone eBooks appeared, and will likely be moved to other collection points later. The entire process of working out the details just to send them to the PrePrints Section took well over a month. Even with the speeded up process of the PrePrints Section, it still takes a certain amount of time to collect and put such a large collection online in a proper manner. * ***Introduction [Ignore for the moment] [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 ***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B*** pt1a4.806 pt1b4.806 Weekly_August_30.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, August 30, 2006 PT1*** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******* pt1a3.806 pt1b3.806 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 ***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements General Catalog of Old Books and Authors http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ngcoba.htm which now indexes 24,000 books available free online, including all PG(US) & PG(Aus)'s books, along with some basic date information about them and their authors where you can find more. Plus many books not available on line, a good place to search for books by specific authors who you are interested in. For information please contact Philip Harper <webmaster AT kingkong.demon.co.uk> * We have been invited to peruse the various eBook collections of the Internet Archive for potential Project Gutenberg eBooks. http://www.archive.org Don't worry, many of the numbers listed are out of date, but you should get all the files when you pass through to the original sites. Click on "texts" to get started, feel free to pick up any of the eBooks you would like to work on. Many Thanks To Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive! * Please visit and test our newest site: "PROJECT GUTENBERG EUROPE" http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe] http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe] * There is an experimental online reader available. Start from any bibliographic record page, e.g. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4300 Basically this paginates the .txt file and remembers your last position in a cookie so you can later resume reading where you left off. Please test it. It should work with any book that has a text file where the encoding is known. * MACHINE TRANSLATION We are seeking as much information as possible on the various approaches to Machine Translation. Any brand names or contact information would be greatly appreciated. *** Please use our new site for downloading DVD and CD images, etc. http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject and The PG bittorrent tracker is up and running. Aaron Cannon has placed the CD and DVD there if anyone wants to test. You can access it by visiting http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969 *** Please checkout the various Project Gutenberg FAQs, etc. at: http://www.gutenberg.org/about * We're building a team to read our eBooks into MP3 files for the visually impaired and other audio book users. 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To see some of what we have now, please see: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images *** PROJECT GUTENBERG IS SEEKING LEGAL BEAGLES Project Gutenberg is seeking (volunteer) lawyers. We have regular need for intellectual property legal advice (both US and international) and other areas. Please email Project Gutenberg's CEO, Greg Newby <gbnewby AT pglaf.org> , if you can help. This is much more important than many of us realize! ***Progress Report, including Distributed Proofreaders In the first 07.80 months of this year, PG produced 2,857 new eBooks. It took us from Jul 1971 to Oct 2001 to produce our first 2,857 eBooks! That's 34 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 Years!!! 115 New eBooks This Week 100 New eBooks Last Week 386 New eBooks This Month [Jul] 366 Average Per Month in 2006 266 Average Per Month in 2005 Counting 216 PGEu 248 Average Per Month in 2005 Not Counting PGEu 336 Average Per Month in 2004 355 Average Per Month in 2003 203 Average Per Month in 2002 103 Average Per Month in 2001 2857 New eBooks in 2006 3186 New eBooks in 2005 Counting 216 PGeu > 2970 New eBooks in 2005 Not Counting PGEu 4049 New eBooks in 2004 4164 New eBooks in 2003 2441 New eBooks in 2002 1240 New eBooks in 2001 ==== 17,937 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 67.80 Months! ~265 books per month! 21,002 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks 17,063 eBooks This Week Last Year ==== 3,939 New eBooks In Last 12 Months [Incl. PGAu, PGEu & PrePrints] 1,202 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia [This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ] 330 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Europe 370 Items in Project Gutenberg PrePrints ~75,000+ Project Gutenberg Consortia Center http://www.gutenberg.cc You may also want to look at Project Runeberg [Scandinavian] http://runeberg.org * Project Gutenberg began operation on July 4, 1971 Project Runeberg began operation on December 13, 1992 Distributed Proofreaders began October 22, 2000 [Became an official PG-US site in 2002] Project Gutenberg of Australia began in August, 2001 The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center started in 1997] [Became an official PG-US site in 2003] Project Gutenberg of Europe started January 12, 2004 [Posted first books February 26, when we met in Brussels to address people at the European Union Parliament. Project Gutenberg PrePrints Started January 25, 2006 http://preprints.readingroo.ms * PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE: Since starting production in October 2000, Distributed Proofreaders has contributed 8,972 Books to Project Gutenberg. 27 added this week. For more complete DP statistics, visit: http://www.pgdp.net/c/stats/stats_central.php * Check out our website at www.gutenberg.org, and see below to learn how you can get INSTANT access to our eBooks via FTP servers even before the new eBooks listed below appear in our catalog. eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists. Info on subscribing to daily, weekly, monthly Newsletters, listservs: http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/subscribe-howto or http://www.gutenberg.org/subs.shtml *** *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report The PGCC collection at http://www.gutenberg.cc has doubled in size from the listings below, but we don't have exactly matching collection sizes yet for a new breakdown. There are ~160,000 separate downloadable files, and presuming 50% are reduntant or are required at the level of more than one file per book: The number of individual eBooks now is about 80,000. Thus the grand total of eBooks at Project Gutenberg is 21,000+ created by Project Gutenberg volunteers, plus 80,000 donated from over 100 other eLibraries, to create a downloadble library of 100,000+ eBooks ! * PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as: [This list is being updated as the moment, you can get the entire list on the collections pages at gutenberg.cc] 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 Internet Archive ~30,000 eBook Files [In Progress] <<< Literal Systems Collection, 68 MP3 eBook Files Logos Group Collection, ~34,000 TXT eBook Files Poet's Corner Poetry Collection, 6,700 Poetry Files Project Gutenberg Collection, 15,035 eBook Files PGCC Chinese eBook Collection ~300 eBook files <<< Note Name Change Renascence 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=========~137,142 Total Files===== Average Size of the Collections 8,067.18 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. If we presume 2 out of 3 of these files are overcounts, that leaves a unique book total of ~45,714 Unique eBooks If we presume 3 out of 4 of these files are overcounts, that leaves a unique book total of ~34,286 Unique eBooks * The new overall collection size, which has reduced the need to account for duplications and eBooks with files for each chapter, etc. 75,000+ Unique eBooks *** Please also note that over 25,000 eBooks are listed via The Online Books Page, of which over 6,300 are from PG. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ In addition: The Internet Public Library had a similar listing which is now in limbo. If anyone knows what is happening with the IPL, please let us know. Inquiries, made months ago, and again recently, have not turned up any current information. You can try a new IPL service at: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/ It would appear that The Internet Public Library ended its first incarnation with about 22,284 entries, which has now been surpassed by the Online Books Page. Still looking for more Internet Public Library info. *** Today Is Day #238 of 2006 This Completes Week #34 and Month #07.80 [364 days this year] 126 Days/18 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 8,998 Books To Go To #30,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 84 Weekly Average in 2006 61 Weekly Average in 2005 [Counting 216 PGEu] 57 Weekly Average in 2005 [Not Counting PGEu] 78 Weekly Average in 2004 79 Weekly Average in 2003 47 Weekly Average in 2002 24 Weekly Average in 2001 42 Only ~42 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers List [Used to be well over 100] [This listing usually from the previous week] *** Permanent Requests For Assistance: DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS NEEDS CONTENT, PROOFERS AND SCANNER TYPES Please visit the site: http://www.pgdp.net for more information about how you can help a lot by simply proofreading just a few pages per day, or more. If you have a book that has been scanned, but not yet run through OCR (optical character recognition) or proofed, and you would like the Distributed Proofreaders to work on it, please email dphelp@pgdp.net and we will get things started. Also, DP is seeking public domain books not already in the Project Gutenberg collection. To see what is already online, visit http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/GUTINDEX.ALL (a text file) listing Project Gutenberg eBooks and is available for downloading. Do you have Public Domain books you would like to see in the archive? Can they be destructively scanned? If so send them to the Distributed Proofreading Team! Please email dphelp@pgdp.net with your geographic location. You will be given the address of the nearest high-speed scanner. [Note that the high-speed scanner requires destruction of the book(s) which will not be returned.] We have high-speed scanners currently located in the east, west and central portions of the US to make shipping easier. Please make sure that any books you send are _not_ already in the archive and please check them against David's "In Progress" list at: http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html to ensure no one is currently working on them. It would also be helpful if you obtain copyright clearance before mailing the books, and send the 'OK' lines to dphelp@pgdp.net Do you like to work on an entire book at once but don't have the time or technology to do the scanning, OCR, and initial proofing yourself? Distributed Proofreaders has the perfect solution! Just send us email telling us that you are interested in post-processing and we will help find a project you would like to work on. Please contact us at: dphelp@pgdp.net if you would like to know more about the Distributed Proofreaders. ***Donation Information We Have Included Quick and Easy Ways to Donate. . .As Per Your Requests! 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Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) *** Statistical Review In the 34 weeks of this year, we have produced 2857 new eBooks. It took us from 07/71 to 10/01 to produce our FIRST 2857 eBooks!!! That's 34 WEEKS as Compared to ~30 YEARS!!! FLASHBACK! Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #2857 Mon Year Title and Author [filename.ext] ### A "C" Following The eText # Indicates That This eText Is Under Copyright [Note: books without month and year entries are now in new catalog format] The Yellow God, by H. Rider Haggard 2857 [Subtitle: An Idol of Africa] Moon of Israel, by H. Rider Haggard 2856 Elissa, by H. Rider Haggard 2855 Sir Francis Drake Revived, by Philip Nichols 2854 Oct 2001 Quo Vadis, The Time of Nero, by Henryk Sienkiewicz[quvdsxxx.xxx] 2853 [Title: Quo Vadis, A Narrative of the Time of Nero] [Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin] Oct 2001 The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle 25[bskrvxxx.xxx] 2852 Sixes and Sevens, by O. Henry 2851 Oct 2001 The Wars of The Jews, by Flavius Josephus [warjexxx.xxx] 2850 [Title: The Wars of The Jews or the History of the Destruction of Jerusalem] Oct 2001 Against Apion, by Flavius Josephus[Tr. Wm. Whiston[agaapxxx.xxx] 2849 Oct 2001 The Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus [taofjxxx.xxx] 2848 Oct 2001 Josephus' Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades[hadesxxx.xxx] 2847 [Title: An Extract out of Josephus's Discourse to The Greeks Concerning Hades] Oct 2001 The Life of Flavius Josephus, Tr. by Wm. Whiston [lfjosxxx.xxx] 2846 Oct 2001 Sir Nigel, by Arthur Conan Doyle [A. C. Doyle #24][nigelxxx.xxx] 2845 The Fatal Boots, by William Makepeace Thackeray 2844 Little Travels and Roadside Sketches, by William Makepeace Thackeray 2843 Black Heart and White Heart, by H. Rider Haggard 2842 The Ivory Child, by H. Rider Haggard 2841 (Note: These three are our first eBooks in Flemish/Dutch:) Sep 2001 De Franse Pers, Heinrich Heine [#3/Flemish/Dutch][fpersxxx.xxx] 2840 [Language: Dutch] Sep 2001 Franse Toestanden, Heinrich Heine[2/Flemish/Dutch][ftoesxxx.xxx] 2839 [Language: Dutch] Sep 2001 De Beurs lacht, Heinrich Heine [#1/Flemish/Dutch][fbeurxxx.xxx] 2838 [Language: Dutch] Sep 2001 Lendas do Sul, by J. Somoes Lopes Netto [lendaxxx.xxx] 2837 [Language: Portuguese] (Note: Our First eBook in Portuguese!) Sep 2001 Abraham Lincoln and the Union, Nath'l W Stephenson[alatuxxx.xxx] 2836 [Author: Nathaniel W. Stephenson] Sep 2001 The Canadian Dominion, by Oscar D. Skelton [cndndxxx.xxx] 2835 Sep 2001 The Portrait of a Lady, Vol 2, by Henry James[#37][2pldyxxx.xxx] 2834 Sep 2001 The Portrait of a Lady, Vol 1, by Henry James[#36][1pldyxxx.xxx] 2833 Sep 2001 Myth, Ritual, and Religion, V1, by Andrew Lang #28[1mrarxxx.xxx] 2832 Sep 2001 A Bundle of Ballads, by Henry Morley [bndbaxxx.xxx] 2831 Sep 2001 Reginald, by Saki (H. H. Munro) [Saki HH Munro #5][rgnldxxx.xxx] 2830 Sep 2001 Fanny and the Servant Problem, by Jerome K. Jerome[fnyspxxx.xxx] 2829 Sep 2001 Under the Deodars, by Rudyard Kipling[Kipling #19][undeoxxx.xxx] 2828 / Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet? If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of 6,540,879,049 that would be 21,002 x 65,408,790 = ~1.37 Trillion !!! With 21,002 eBooks online as of August 30, 2006 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.73 from each book. [1% world population x #eBooks] 65,408,790 x 21,002 x $.73 = ~$1 Trillion [Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.] [By the way, the US "popclock" is about to turn to 300 million people.] [Just turned 299.6 million this week!] A Trillion Dollars Given Away At Just $.48 Value Per Book To 100 Million With 21,002 eBooks online as of August 30, 2006 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.48 from each book. This "cost" is down from about $.59 when we had 17,063 eBooks a year ago. Our Target Audience Is 1.5% Of The World Population = ~100,000,000 people. Next Decade's Target: 15% Of The world Population = 1,000,000,000 people. At 21,002 eBooks in 35 Years and 01.80 Months We Averaged 597 Per Year 50 Per Month 1.64 Per Day At 2857 eBooks Done In The 238 Days Of 2006 We Averaged 12.0 Per Day 84 per Week 366 Per Month If you are interested in the population of the world or of the U.S. you might want to know that these numbers, official as they appear, are just just estimates, and perhaps not as accurate as we hope. However, for those keeping track of how quickly the U.S. reaches a 300 million population level, and who noticed the passing of 298M, just two weeks ago. . .the U.S. is already 1/6 the way to 299M, so it will probably be 10 more weeks to 299M and 22 more to 300M. Recently the U.S. Congress, pertaining to district reapportionment, who gets to vote for which Congresspeople, decided that many of the districts were undercounted by 5%, perhaps then later deciding that all districts had been undercounted by 5% [can't recall details]. * 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 4th was the first Wednesday of 2006, and thus ended PG's production year of 2005 and began the production year of 2006 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. ***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B*** *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] IZON MISTAKENLY E-MAILS CUSTOMER DATA Verizon Wireless mistakenly e-mailed an Excel spreadsheet containing information on more than 5,200 subscribers to about 1,800 customers of the company. The e-mail was supposed to include an electronic order form for a Bluetooth wireless headset as part of a promotional offer. The Excel file did not contain highly sensitive information such as credit card or Social Security numbers, but it did include names, e-mail addresses, and cell phone models and numbers. Even with such relatively benign information, identity thieves have a head start on committing fraud, according to security experts. James Van Dyke, the principal analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, noted that a skilled con artist could use the information in the spreadsheet to contact someone on the list, posing as a representative of Verizon, and possibly obtain more sensitive information. A spokesperson from Verizon said the company takes seriously its obligation to protect consumer data and has implemented new measures to prevent a recurrence of this kind of incident. The company also encouraged customers to add passwords to their accounts. CNET, 25 August 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6109883.html DETAILS SURFACE ABOUT UC DEAL WITH GOOGLE [This reports seems to have been "sanitized" compared to earlier such reports that made it sound as if the entire contract between Google and whole University of California system had been leaked. In addition, it seems to not quite state flatly that if the deal requires UC to ONLY provide EXCLUSIVE copies to Google, then the deal they made with Yahoo's Brewster Kahle would be void. . .and what would the legal implicaions be?] Details of the recent deal in which the University of California will join Google's book-scanning project have been released through an open-records request. Under the deal, the university will provide as many as 3,000 books per day to the search engine for digitization, eventually totaling at least 2.5 million books. The university and Google will keep copies of the digitized works, but the university is bound by a number of restrictions on how it can use its copies. For example, the university must prevent other search engines from scanning the books. Critics of the project, including Brewster Kahle, cofounder of the Internet Archive, said Google is getting more than it should from the arrangement. He faulted the university for "spend[ing] millions of taxpayers' dollars to benefit a single corporation's interest in building a private library." Daniel Greenstein, director of the California Digital Library and one of the brokers of the deal, said that Google's business model and its interests align well with the university's goal of providing free "public access for the public domain." Chronicle of Higher Education, 25 August 2006 http://chronicle.com/free/2006/08/2006082501t.htm DELL PRIORITIZES BATTERY REPLACEMENTS [This on top of several other reports of poor quality control and other woes for Dell after Michael Dell took a more "hands off" approach to running his company.] Dell has announced certain prioritizations for its recall of 4.1 million laptop batteries. After reports of some batteries overheating and possibly catching fire, Dell reached a voluntary agreement with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to replace the batteries. Troy West, vice president and general manager of Dell's federal segment, said that priority will be given to customers in national security, health care, public safety, and emergency management services for replacement batteries, though he refused to say when the recall would be complete. Early bulk shipments of replacement batteries were sent to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Fort Hood, Texas. West also said that several thousand replacements have been sent to a parts hub in Kuwait that is distributing them to defense contractors. Federal Computer Week, 25 August 2006 http://www.fcw.com/article95806-08-25-06-Web DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION EXPOSES LOAN DATA The U.S. Department of Education said it is working to fix a computer problem that allowed student borrowers to see loan information for other students. According to the agency, the problem resulted from a routine software upgrade by Affiliated Computers Services Inc., a contractor to the agency. Evidently, that upgrade caused student loan data for borrowers to be accessed by others when using the Education Department's Web site. A spokesperson from the Education Department said that four users of the Web system had notified the agency since last Sunday of the problem. The breach was said to have affected only a "limited number" of the 6.4 million students who borrowed money under the Federal Direct Student Loan program. Those with loans through other lenders are not affected. The agency said it has temporarily turned off the features of the student loan Web site that were leading to the problems and would keep those features off until the problem is resolved. Houston Chronicle, 23 August 2006 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4136336.html 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 *QUOTATION OF THE WEEK "When nations create secure, secret, or classified documents, the object is more to preserve their secrecy from their own population than from their stated enemies. To them, the real enemies are their own people, [the people who could vote them out of office." Noam Chomsky Paraphrase of statement on Alternative Radio as on WILL-AM ~6:30PM, 08/26/06 / "Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, and 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains." ---Herbert Hoover *STATISTICS OF THE WEEK 1/8 of the official population of the United States is composed of immigrants. / 85% of Americans Graduate from High School 28% of Americans Graduate from College That means about 1/3 of the high school grads finish college. However, equally true is that about 1/3 of the high school grads have never attained the reading skills required to read a dozen, or so, books required of them every single year. President White of the University of Illinois says that colleges are dropping the ball by graduating only 28% of of Americans for whom 85% have already managed a high school diploma. He said at the opening of the Fall semester than government should spend an increasing amount on education to fill this gap. Let's look into these statistics a little more: 28% / 85% = ~1/3 of all high school students graduate college. When I was a kid the percentage of college degress was only some half as much of the total population. . .~14%, so I would say it is obvious that college plays an ever incrasing role in lives of Americans. . .twice as much as it used to, in fact. However, official US Adult Literacy statistics show that about a half of all adult Americans would be challenged in reading this, much less by reading all the materials for a college degree. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), found little change between 1992 and 2003 in adults' ability to read and understand sentences and paragraphs or to understand documents such as job applications. December 15, 2005 Contacts: Mike Bowler, (202) 219-1662 or David Thomas, (202)401-1576 If you read far enough in their documents, and add up the totals they refuse to give you outright, you will see that just about a half of US Adults could be expected to read such materials while the other half would be challenged to do so. As with so many other negative government statistics, these were presented in a manner that diguised their actual meaning. However, even more negative is the fact that 85% get high school diplomas, while only about half of them can read at satisfactory high school graduation levels. [I suppose this could also qualify for the doublespeak section.] *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK "Hezbollah suffered defeat." Multiple sources MORE DOUBLESPEAK If Congress were honest about estimating the National Debt, they would give you figures 2 to 10 times as high. McLaughlin Group, Sunday, August 27 *QUOTES OF THE WEEK *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK There will be another war between Israel and Lebanon, simply because no one will stop them. The Iraq War will continue until officials finally manage to admit it is another viet Nam. Or, even more unlikely, until there is a real plan. *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK [I think the inflation/growth statistics in the news were plenty odd enough. However, I should add that manufacturing costs rose sharply around the world, up 1.1% in the UK in July alone, though those have not yet reached the consumer markets.] * 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. * 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