pt1a3.106 Weekly_January_25.txt *The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 25, 2006, 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 This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 15 New This Week From PGEu [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70] 1 New This Week From PG PrePrints 64 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright 83 New This Week [Including PG Australia, PG Europe and PrePrints] [I'm sure there are a few bugs in the new accounting] *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* 48th Language Added At http://www.gutenberg.org Lou catounet gascoun, by Guillaume Ader 17544 [Language: Gascon] 48 Languages at http://www.gutenberg.org Original PG Site 65 Languages at http://pge.rastko.net PG of Europe 104 Languages at http//gutenberg.cc PG Consortia Center * New Project Gutenberg PrePrint Site This will contain journal articles, preprints of eBooks not yet ready for prime time, etc. http://preprints.pglaf.org/ [This a temporary URL with only one DejaVu entry at the moment, but 150 new entries have been received and will be processed in the next few weeks] Permanent site with more entries will be at: http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ * 18,321 eBooks As Of Today!!! Including 525 Australian eBooks [+3] and 236 Project Gutenberg Europe [+15] And 1 From The New PrePrint Site [+1] We Are ~92% of the Way to 20,000!!! ***534 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 15,229 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~61 Months We Have Produced 179 eBooks in 2006 1,679 to go to 20,000!!! 28 New eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 7,950 total from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] [Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005 [Including PG Australia] We Are Averaging ~239 eBooks Per Month This Year [Including PGAu, PGEu and PrePrints] [This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org] [Now including totals from both Australia and Europe and PrePrints] [Apologies, it will take a while to integrate everything not all statistics may be totally equalized yet] [PGEu Statistics Are Counted Monthly Not Weekly] All Four Sites Combined Are Averaging 60 eBooks Per Week In 2006 83 This Week It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks 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 ~2.00 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] LIBRARY OF CONGRESS UNDERTAKES DIGITIZATION PROJECT In February, the Library of Congress will begin transferring large collections of vinyl records and video recordings to a single location where they will be archived and digitized. The library has nearly 4 million separate items, currently stored in several states, that will be moved to a facility in Virginia that had been set up in the 1960s as a headquarters for government officials in the event of a nuclear attack. The library's holdings will be stored on 57 miles of shelves, and starting early next year, the library will begin making digital copies of the collection. Because many are covered by copyright, the digital copies will not be available online. Researchers will be able to request digital copies of specific recordings, however, and library staff will pull the original and make a digital version. Federal Computer Week, 13 January 2006 http://www.fcw.com/article91968-01-13-06-Web GOOGLE PONDERS STARTING AN ONLINE BOOKSTORE At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), officials from Google said they are considering launching an online bookstore, though they were quick to say such a venture would depend on permission from copyright holders. Google has been embroiled in ongoing legal disputes with publishers and other copyright holders over its effort to scan millions of texts, creating what CEO Eric Schmidt called "the world's largest card catalogue." Despite Google's contention that the scanning project does not violate copyright, many copyright holders disagree and have challenged the project in court. An online bookstore would be a fundamentally different proposition, according to Google officials, and such a plan would only go forward with the express permission of copyright holders. During the CES, Google unveiled an online video store, the company's first offering that allows consumers to pay for premium content. BBC, 10 January 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4598478.stm 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.] "EARMARKING" You've probably heard the term, but not the details. Earmarking is a way that elected U.S. legislators can put "pork barrel project" into bills with no relationship to the subject matter of the bills and without anyone getting a chance to read the bills again before voting on them. These usually are attached to bills most likely to be passed, recently even the huge approprations bills. Only 1% of these ever make the news outside the various consituencies receiving the benefits, but once in a while attempts to sneak projects through get national attention, such as recent efforts by Alaska's Senator Stevens to build the famous "Bridge To Nowhere" that not even the people who were to receive the benefits were willing to put up with, or his proposed drilling for oil in ANWR [The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] that was so controversial in last years appropriations bill that nearly stopped U.S. government funding entirely. [Try searches for ANWR, oil drilling, Ted Stevens, appropriations, etc. for details, and you'll see just how much major media have avoided all this.] Senator Barack Obama [D-IL] has proposed a bill to force all bills to be put online for at least 72 hours before voting so the earmarks have a chance to be detected and then possibly removed. Republicans have charged that Democrats have used earmarking, along with lobbying, in the same manner as have Republicans, but figures show that the number of both earmarks and lobbyists have multiplied tenfold over the last decade since the Democrats were in power. The number of earmarks was ~14,000 in 2005, up from 1,439 in 1995. As for lobbyists, they managed to kill bills that would have required they identify who paid them, how much, who they represent and what issues they have lobbied for or against. Ten years ago only ~100 companies had lobbyists representing them to Congress, today there are 50 lobbyists for every member. Wired Magazine reported that Microsoft alone has raised its number of lobbyists in D.C. over 50 in the last decade. Public Citizen reported the pharmaceutical industry employes as many many lobbyists as their are legislators. Their average salaries: $300,000 to $400,000 per year. Of these, 23 are former Congressmen, and 340, over half, are former government employees. The Wall St. Journal reports the number of lobbyists in D.C. doubled between 2000-2005. ~14,000 lobbyists are registered under a 10 year old law that apparently is not monitored all that well. According to The Washington Post, there might be 14,000 more disclosure documents that were not filed in this period, "including documents that should have come from 49 of the nations' 50 largest lobbying firms." Estimates are that some of these lobbies, such as for the drug companies, may have spent $1 billion over this ten year period. And this is only for national legislators: according to The Center for Public Integrity state legislators are outnumbered by their lobbyists 5 to 1 nationally, and as much as 18 to 1 in New York, 13 to 1 in Florida, 12 to 1 in Illinois, 10 to 1 in Ohio, and 9 to 1 in California and Michigan. Nor is this limited to the U.S., ~15,000 lobbyists are at work in Europe, 40% of whom are registered to the EU Parliament. Source: Time Magazine, Wired, Public Citizen, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wall St. Journal, New York Times. * Iraqi General's Death By Sitting On Him After Stuffing Him Headfirst Into A Sleeping Bag Declared Not Murder Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr., was fined $6,000 and reprimanded for killing Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a loyalist to Saddam Hussein, suspected of abetting the Iraqi insurgency near Syria. The Washington Post revealed General Mowhoush was beaten harshly "by a secret group of Iraqi paramilitaries, code-named `Scorpions,' who worked with the CIA. Welshofer was convicted of negligent dereliction of duty and of negigent homicide rather than murder, meaning he did not intend to kill General Mowhoush, but should have known that tying him into a sleeping back headfirst, and then sitting on his chest while questionning him, could lead to his death. Source: The Washington Post *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Bush versus Google The Bush administration claimed that other unspecified search engine and information providers had acceded to administration demands for access to information, when demanding that Google provide such information. However, when the other information providers answered press queries, it turned out that not all the sources, perhaps not any, had provided complete access. [Exact quotes below] Plenty to read about all this: Los Angeles Times: http://tinyurl.com/a7wtt Baltimore Sun: http://tinyurl.com/aq6fz Lower Hudson Journal News (NY): http://tinyurl.com/b9k3x USA Today: http://tinyurl.com/9lqpq The Columbian (Clark County, WA): http://tinyurl.com/8rf2n Chicago Sun Times: http://tinyurl.com/93bf5 Unofficial Google Weblog: http://tinyurl.com/afuvl "The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. "The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court." * "The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google." San Jose Mercury News, 01/19/06 http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13657386.htm *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK Other U.S. auto makers will follow Ford's lead, and even more auto plants will be closed, costing up to 100,000 lost jobs. *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK FORD Motor Company Calls Its New CutBACKS of 14 Plants: "THE WAY FORWARD" Source: Detroit News [Since when is cutting BACK a way FORWARD?] [This sounds suspiciously like the terminology used by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged to describe the plans of an assortment of non-competitive industrialists as desire to slow down so we can catch our stride.] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK 2/3 of Americans say prevention of terrorism trumps privacy. 1/2 of Americans say Bush's wiretap policy is wrong. Source: BBC, 01/23/06 * America's #2 Bank Says Bankruptcies Are Causing Decline In Profits Bank Of America reported its first decline in earnings in years as resulting from the increasing number of bankruptcies in America. Profits were listed as $3.77 bn for 2005, $3.85 bn for 2004. This from gross revenues of $14.12 bn for 2005, which leaves the net income as $.27% of the gross. [= 3.77/14.12]. This might be due to new laws making it much more difficult to declare bankruptcy, with much less debt protection, which may have sparked a surge in bankruptcy filings, and the bank says bankruptcies have fallen off since. Source: BBC, 01/23/06 * Steve Jobs bought 50% of Pixar for $10 million, sold it for $3.7 billion. [Some do not report this was only 50%] Source: San Francisco Chronicle * 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. * *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