pt1a1.106 pt1b1.106 Weekly_January_11.txt *The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 11, 2006, PT1* *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** Including Project Gutenberg of Europe Statistics For The First Time PT1A Due to our weekly Wednesday to Wednesday schedule, this is our FIRST Weekly PG Newsletter of 2006, and January 04 marked our LAST 2005 Weekly Newsletter I'm thinking of moving everything one week earlier in 2007. Comments??? * *** 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 2 New This Week From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 9 New This Month From PG Europe [European Copyrights, Life + 50 and 70] 2 New This Week From PGEu [Dividing Month By 4] 37 New This Week To Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright 41 New This Week [First Week Including PG Europe] [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* We officially start 2006 reporting ~91% of the original goal of 20,000 18,183 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Including 521 Australian eBooks, and 218 Project Gutenberg Europe] [First week PGEu is included] [17,965 eBooks not counting PGEu] [As per the 2005 accounting] We Are ~91% of the Way to 20,000!!! ***527 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 15,121 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~60 Months We Have Produced 41 eBooks in 2006 1,817 to go to 20,000!!! 17 More eBooks From Distributed Proofreaders 7,897 total from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] [Currently over 36,000 DP volunteers] 521 from Project Gutenberg of Australia 218 from Project Gutenberg of Europe Averaged 10.33 Per Month For 2005 27.00 Per Month for 2006 [Added 9 In First 1/3 of January] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005 [Including PG Australia] We Are Averaging ~178 books Per Month This Year [Including PGAu and PGEu] [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] [Apologies, it will take a while to integrate Europe, not all statistics may be totally equalized yet] [PGEu Statistics Are Counted Monthly Not Weekly] All Three Sites Combined Are Averaging 41 eBooks Per Week In 2006 41 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] LEGAL DOWNLOADS SURGE AFTER CHRISTMAS [Likely a result of the 14 million iPods sold in the last quarter] Sales of music tracks online surged over the holidays, indicating what might be new baseline levels for the market. During the Christmas week, 9.5 million tracks were downloaded from legal online music services, a new record for single-week sales. The following week, that number jumped to nearly 20 million tracks, triple the number sold during the same week a year earlier. Analysts attribute much of the gain to the ballooning number of portable MP3 players in the hands of consumers and to strong sales of gift cards. For the year, legal downloads rose 147 percent to 142.6 million. Although a drop always follows the holiday spike, analysts said the holiday numbers could indicate a market that will grow to perhaps 750 million or 1 billion tracks in 2006. Such numbers still pale compared to downloads on P2P services, which are estimated at 250 million per week, but experts say the upswing in legal downloads signals a changing tide for online music. CNET, 8 January 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6023769.html US-VISIT WANTS ALL 10 FINGERS PRINTED Officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have announced a plan to begin requiring visitors to the United States to have all 10 of their fingers to be printed to be admitted to the country. Currently, the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program requires prints of two fingers; the change to 10 will reportedly increase both security and privacy and will decrease the number of visitors who must undergo a second inspection to enter or leave the country. DHS said biometric technology such as fingerprinting is already reliable, but the agency is working with technology vendors to develop products that are more accurate, faster, and more mobile. Federal Computer Week, 5 January 2006 http://www.fcw.com/article91877-01-05-06-Web GOVERNMENT KEEPING TABS WHEN IT SHOULDN'T Despite a federal directive forbidding the use of Web-tracking technologies for federal agencies, recent reports have shown that the majority of agencies do in fact employ permanent cookies or other tools that track users. The technologies can be used to identify repeat visitors to federal Web sites and sometimes to track users' surfing on nongovernmental sites. Last week, the Associated Press found that the National Security Agency was using permanent cookies (temporary cookies are allowed), a practice it has since discontinued. Separately, reporters at CNET News.com looked at the Web sites of all agencies listed in the U.S. Government Manual and evaluated what tracking tools they were using. Results showed dozens of agencies using tools that appear to contravene the directive, including sites for the military, cabinet departments, and election commissions. When contacted about the tracking tools, officials at many agencies reportedly said they were unaware that their sites used such technologies. Peter Swire, law professor at Ohio State University, who participated in the drafting of an earlier Web-tracking policy for the Clinton administration, said, "It's evidence that privacy is not being taken seriously." "It's evidence that privacy is not being taken seriously." CNET, 5 January 2006 http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6018702.html MICROSOFT RELEASES WMF PATCH EARLY Responding to concerns that the recently disclosed Windows Meta File (WMF) vulnerability presented serious risk, Microsoft has released a patch ahead of the company's monthly patch release date. Microsoft said that testing of the patch was completed early and that there was "strong customer sentiment that the release should be made available as soon as possible." Some security experts, warning of the threat posed by the flaw, had even encouraged users to install a third-party patch developed by a European programmer. The patch is for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003; although Microsoft had earlier said the vulnerability also affected Windows 98 and Windows ME, the company now says those operating systems are not affected by the flaw. With the release, Microsoft acknowledged that the risk to unpatched systems is critical, though it said data indicated that the infection rate from attacks that exploit the weakness was low to moderate so far. Some security experts offered a different characterization of the situation, saying they have identified thousands of Web sites that exploit the flaw. ZDNet, 5 January 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6020070.html [as a result of] USERS SWEAT BULLETS WAITING FOR WMF PATCH Security experts are warning about the danger of a currently unpatched vulnerability in all current versions of the Windows operating system, but Microsoft has said the patch won't be released until January 10, its next scheduled patch release date. Sam Curry of Computer Associates International said, "This vulnerability is rising in popularity among hackers, and it is simple to exploit." Others estimate that more than one million computers have already been infected worldwide, noting that attacks have taken the form of malicious Web sites, Trojan horses, and instant messaging worms. The flaw, which affects how Windows handles Windows Meta File (WMF) images, is especially dangerous because users need only view an image designed to take advantage of the vulnerability to have their computers infected. Despite the calls for an immediate patch, Microsoft, which adopted a schedule of monthly patch updates, has said the fix for the current bug will not be released until the next scheduled group of patches. In the meantime, Microsoft is warning users to be careful about what sites they visit. Most Internet users, however, do not have a level of awareness of such security concerns to protect themselves, according to Stacey Quandt, an analyst with the Aberdeen Group. ZDNet, 3 January 2006 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6016747.html EEF SEEKS PROTECTION FOR COMPUTER RESEARCHERS The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on Sony EMI to pledge not to pursue prosecution of computer researchers who investigate the security of the company's products. Last fall, the company was caught in a public outcry over technology included in music CDs. The technology installed itself on users' computers and scanned them for potentially illegal activities. The company has removed those tools from CDs, but security researchers believe they have reason to reverse engineer copy protections on EMI CDs, a practice which would violate not only the Digital Millennium Copyright Act but also EMI's end user license agreement. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with EFF, said, "When it comes to computer security, it pays to have as many independent experts kick the tires as possible, and that can only happen if EMI assures those experts that they won't be sued for their trouble." You have been reading excerpts from Edupage: Internet News, 5 January 2006 If you have questions or comments about Edupage, http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3575441 send e-mail to: edupage@educause.edu SPAMMER HIT WITH $11.2 BILLION FINE A court has slapped a Florida spammer with an $11.2 billion fine, setting a new precedent for fines against spammers, though the ruling is unlikely to have much effect on the volume of spam. Internet service provider CIS Internet Services, which provides Internet service to parts of Iowa and Illinois, had sued James McCalla for sending more than 28 million e-mail solicitations that fraudulently used the CIS domain as the return address. In addition to the fine, McCalla is forbidden from accessing the Internet for three years. Robert Kramer III, owner of CIS, welcomed the ruling, calling it the "economic death penalty," though he acknowledged that he does not expect to receive any of the money awarded. John Mozena, co-founder and vice president of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, said this and other rulings against spammers have not had a significant effect on the total volume of spam, which he estimated continues to be about two-thirds of all e-mail traffic. What is needed, he argued, rather than current laws, which only forbid deceptive or fraudulent spam, is a prohibition against all spam. Wired News, 5 January 2006 MICROSOFT AGREES TO CLOSE CHINESE BLOGGER'S SITE Following a formal request from Chinese officials, Microsoft has shut down the blog of a high-profile Chinese journalist. China is well known for censoring public speech it considers critical of the government, and Microsoft's actions are not the first in which non-Chinese companies have complied with Chinese authorities. Officials from Microsoft noted that if their services are to be available in China, the company must comply with local laws. As Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN said, "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there." Last year Yahoo was faulted by some for cooperating with Chinese officials, and it too stated then that a requirement of continuing operation in the country is to conform to local laws and regulations. Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, expressed concerns on her blog about Microsoft's action. "Can we be sure," she said, "they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an overzealous government agency in our own country?" New York Times, 6 January 2006 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/technology/06blog.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 [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.] *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell [Maker of voting machines that leave no paper trail for recounts.] *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK This is going to be big year for investigations of United States government operations. Tom Delay, now has permanently resigned as the Speaker of the House of Representatives Scooter Libby is under indictment. [Top White House Procurement Officer] Jack Abramoff has pled guilty, gateway to more. Michael Scanlon has pled guilty, gateway to more. [Former Abramoff partner and Delay aide] Russ Tice and James Risen giving information about possible millions of illegal NSA wiretaps, not just the select few admitted to by President Bush. ABC Nightly News, 01/10/06 News out about Project Echelon to listen to ATMs, computers, etc., from half a mile away, and other eavesdropping projects that can record conversations through a foot or two of solid concrete. [DARPA = Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the same people who brought you the Internet, nee DARPANet] But Judge Alito's listing of his membership in the Princeton CAP organization as one of his three top choices for his resume won't make any difference. [CAP = Concerned Alumni of Princeton, ultra-conservative campus group dedicated to returning Princeton to the days when women and blacks were not allowed into colleges. A critic of CAP was dropped from the Alito witness list on 01/07/06 before any testimony could be given.] * China won't take strong action against Iran nuclear program because China just made a deal to buy lots of Iranian oil [Economic Warfare] *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK Former NSA official Russell Tice wants to testify before Congress, but the White House is blocking his testimony on the grounds that Congress does not have high enough classified clearance. "I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency." December 16, 2004 The same day The New York Times broke the story of wiretaps without warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. [FISA court] Washington Times, New York Times, ABC Nightly News *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK 90% of cars do not achieve their sticker ad mileage. ABC Nightly News, 01/10/06 * 14 million iPods were sold in the last quarter of 2005, one of the biggest holiday hits. Compare to 1 1/4 million Apple computers in same period. Apple has now sold 42 million iPods, 1/3 of them in the last quarter. . .Wow! iTunes is coming up on 1 billion total sales. 83% of the total online music figures. Washington post [Now that Apple is switching from Motorola chips to Intel, perhaps they can finally get more than 5% share in computers.] * 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