Weekly_October_26.txt *The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, October 26, 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 HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS STATISTICAL CHANGES Due to various changes in our statistical reporting and coverage, the accuracy of the weekly count of the number of eBooks will not be as redundantly checked by a human count, and we will rely more on the automated system. ***If you notice any inconsistencies, please send email to: hart AT pglaf DOT org * 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 5 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 47 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* ***500+ eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 17,405 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are ~87% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,343 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months We Have Produced 2449 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,596 to go to 20,000!!! 7,590 from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] 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 52 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 Oct. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,350 * ***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] HIGHER EDUCATION RESPONDS TO CALEA ORDER The higher education community is preparing several responses to an order by the Federal Communications Commission to extend the provisions of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to Internet service providers, including institutions of higher education, libraries, and municipalities that provide Internet access. The order would require covered entities to configure their networks to allow law enforcement officials--with the authority of a court order--to tap into data streams remotely. Currently, such taps typically require the assistance of network personnel. Making networks compliant with the new regulations would in most cases require significant investment in new switches and routers, and higher education officials contend that the expense would not be justified by the number of taps placed on their networks. By some accounts, U.S. colleges and universities would incur costs of at least $7 billion to redesign their networks. Those seeking an exception from CALEA for education noted that in 2003, just 12 of nearly 1,500 wiretap orders were issued for computer networks. Representatives of higher education are working on responses including appeals, possible lawsuits, and negotiations with federal officials. Higher education officials said that the objection is not with providing appropriate assistance to law enforcement but that lower-cost solutions would provide the needed capability without placing a large financial burden on colleges and universities and their students. New York Times, 23 October 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/technology/23college.html STANFORD PODCASTS GO TO ITUNES Under a new deal with Apple Computer, podcasts from various aspects of campus life at Stanford University will be available on the iTunes Web site. The arrangement is the first one in which a university has made an institution-wide commitment to provide podcasts to iTunes. The podcasts will include academic content such as lectures, coverage of sporting events, and podcasts created by students. About 400 podcasts are currently included, and Stanford officials said they plan to regularly add content to the site, which is its own section of the iTunes Music Store. Other institutions are said to be considering similar programs, and the addition of capacity to handle video files in iTunes could make the service appealing to still others. In a separate project, Stanford podcasts are being made available through iTunes only to students and professors involved in a group of university courses. Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 October 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005102102t.htm MORE SUITS TARGET GOOGLE'S BOOK SCANNING PROJECT After failing to reach an agreement during several months of negotiations, a group of five publishers has filed a lawsuit against Google over its book-scanning project. The project has come under fire since it was announced, with publishers and copyright holders arguing that scanning their texts constitutes a violation of their copyright, regardless of whether the digital copy is made available online in its entirety. Penguin, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Simon and Schuster, and John Wiley and Sons have sued Google, seeking to have the project cancelled. The publishers are asking for Google to pay court costs but not damages. All five are members of the Association of American Publishers, which had been in talks with Google for months. Last month, an organization representing writers sued Google over the book-scanning project. Google continues to maintain that it respects the rights of publishers and copyright holders and that the project will bring wider exposure for the scanned text. BBC, 19 October 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4358768.stm 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 *** News from other sources: The Parents Television Council announced their Top Ten list of recommended television programs this week, only they did not seem to be able to find ten shows they could recommend. *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.] White House and Congressional "Spin Cycle" from Monday to Friday. Nomination for new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank [actually NOT a part of the United States government, for those interested] with another White House insider on Monday, October 24. Designed perhaps to distract this news cycle from the impending indictment of several even more prominent White House insiders. [BBC] *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK The White House refuses to comment on ongoing investigations. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK The Valerie Plame incident will continue to be kept low key. *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK New releases of conversation between US Vice President Dick Cheney and Lewis "Scooter" Libby on June 12, 2003 have focused attention on Mr. Cheney's possible connection with revealing the identity of covert CIA agent Valeria Plame, and appear to contradict Mr. Libby's previous testimony that he never knew about Ms. Plame until he spoke with newspaper reporters. [See also: Judith Miller and Robert Novak] Ms. Plame had been described as "a working soccer mom," but in fact was a clandestine CIA agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction. The question being investigated is if the Bush administration revealed her identity to the press as retaliation when her husband, Ambassador Joeseph Wilson, publicly announced the Bush administration falsified reports of Iraq buying the now infamous "yellow cake uranium" that was used as an exuse to invade Iraq. Libby's notes indicate Mr. Cheney knew Ms. Plame was CIA over a month before Robert Novak's article revealing her as an agent was published. [Scotsman.com News - International - Cheney drawn into row] [The New York Times] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK Virtual Reference Service Notes 40% Increase This Year [KnowItNow, Ohio] [However, other places that have stopped promoting such services say the user level has plateaued. * 2,000 dead in Iraq. However, this is an artifical statistic, as reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Miami Herald. In addition, The UK's Herald adds commentary on the return to Vietnam War style of statistical reporting. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/49465.html * Top Ten for kids The Parents Television Council yesterday released its annual list of This week the 10 best and worst shows for family viewing were limited to 10, as they could only find 9 shows they actually approved of. * The first "Tropical Storm Alpha" of recorded history occured this week, the 22nd tropical storm of the season, killing many in the Caribbean. * 882 millibars of air pressure in hurricane Wilma, the lowest air pressure ever recorded in Atlantic hurricanes. * 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 I Can't I can't be with you only because it makes you happy, I told the Leaf, for I was a Bird singing much too often about freedom unaware that I shared with the Leaf a whole branch 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. 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