Weekly_August_24.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, Auguest 24, 2005 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

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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 8 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 51 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* 17,020 eBooks As Of Today!!! We Are 85% of the Way to 20,000!!! 13,978 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months We Have Produced 2064 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,980 to go to 20,000!!! We have now averaged ~498 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971 We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging About 266 books Per Month This Year We Are Averaging About 63 eBooks Per Week This Year 59 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 ~1.75 years from Oct. 2003 to Aug. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,000 * ***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.] [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 *** ***Continuing Requests New Sites and Announcements * 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 a new 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. 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Please note that we can only use DVDs which are burnt in the dvd-r format, as we have had some compatibility issues with the dvd+r format. *** Project Gutenberg is seeking graphics we can use for our Web pages and publicity materials. If you have original graphics depicting Project Gutenberg themes, please contribute them! 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 07.75 months of this year, we produced 2064 new eBooks. It took us from July 1971 to Feb 2000 to produce our first 2064 eBooks! That's 33 WEEKS as Compared to ~28 Years!!! 59 New eBooks This Week 34 New eBooks Last Week 178 New eBooks This Month [Aug] ~266 Average Per Month in 2005 336 Average Per Month in 2004 355 Average Per Month in 2003 203 Average Per Month in 2002 103 Average Per Month in 2001 2064 New eBooks in 2005 4049 New eBooks in 2004 4164 New eBooks in 2003 2441 New eBooks in 2002 1240 New eBooks in 2001 ==== 13978 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 55.75 Months! Over 250 books per month! 17,020 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks 13,611 eBooks This Week Last Year ==== 3,409 New eBooks In Last 12 Months 476 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia [This does NOT include PGAu eBooks posted at the U.S. site: www.gutenberg.org ] * PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE: Since starting production in October 2000, Distributed Proofreaders has contributed 7,361 eBooks to Project Gutenberg. 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 Please note the addition of the Internet Archive marked with <<< below. PGCC's current eBook and eDocument Collections listings of 18 collections. . .with this week's listing as: 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 Renaisscance 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 *** Please also note that over 23,000 eBooks are listed via The Online Books Page, of which over 5,300 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 #231 of 2005 This Completes Week #33 and Month #07.75 [364 days this year] 133 Days/22 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 2,980 Books To Go To #20,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 63 Weekly Average in 2005 78 Weekly Average in 2004 79 Weekly Average in 2003 47 Weekly Average in 2002 24 Weekly Average in 2001 41 Only 41 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers list [Used to be well over 100] *** 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 33 weeks of this year, we have produced 2064 new eBooks. It took us from 7/71 to 02/00 to produce our FIRST 2064 eBooks!!! That's 33 WEEKS as Compared to ~29 YEARS!!! FLASHBACK! Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #2064 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 have been reposted] Feb 2000 To The Last Man, by Zane Grey [Zane Grey #12][lstmnxxx.xxx] 2070 Feb 2000 The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Pinches [?rbaaxxx.xxx] 2069 Feb 2000 Keziah Coffin, by Joseph C. Lincoln [kziacxxx.xxx] 2068 Feb 2000 Beasts, Men and Gods, by F. Ossendowski [bmgdsxxx.xxx] 2067 Feb 2000 Wildfire, by Zane Grey [Zane Grey #11][wldfrxxx.xxx] 2066 Feb 2000 Dick Hamiliton's Airship, by Howard R. Garis [arshpxxx.xxx] 2065 A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson 2064 [Title: A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland] Feb 2000 The Trail of the White Mule, by B.M. Bower[BMB#11][tttwmxxx.xxx] 2063 Feb 2000 All For Love, by John Dryden [John Dryden #1][al4lvxxx.xxx] 2062 Feb 2000 Shorter Prose Pieces by Oscar Wilde[Oscar Wilde22][wldspxxx.xxx] 2061 The History of the Caliph Vathek, by William Beckford 2060 Feb 2000 The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come by John Fox Jr[lsokcxxx.xxx] 2059 Feb 2000 Messer Marco Polo, by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne [mpoloxxx.xxx] 2058 Feb 2000 The Last of the Plainsmen, by Zane Grey [Grey #10][plnsmxxx.xxx] 2057 Feb 2000 Life of William Carey, by George Smith [wmcryxxx.xxx] 2056 Feb 2000 Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana [2yb4mxxx.xxx] 2055 Jan 2000 Iphigenie auf Tauris, Johann von Goethe[#4] German[iphgnxxx.xxx] 2054 Jan 2000 The American Republic, by O. A. Brownson [amrepxxx.xxx] 2053 Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business, by Daniel Defoe 2052 Dickory Cronke, by Daniel Defoe 2051 [Subtitle: The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder] Jan 2000 Old John Brown, by Walter Hawkins [ojbrnxxx.xxx] 2050 Jan 2000 Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion, by Wm Hazlitt[nwpygxxx.xxx] 2049 Jan 2000 The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by W. Irving #5[sbogcxxx.xxx] 2048 Jan 2000 Stories of Modern French Novels: Scribners Ed. [sbmfaxxx.xxx] 2047 (This is part of Julian Hawthorne's Lock and Key Library) Contains: Victor Cherbuliez: Count Kostia Paul Bourget: Andre Cornelis Anonymous: The Last of the Costellos; Lady Betty's Indiscretion Jan 2000 Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, by Wm. Brown[clotlxxa.xxx] 2046 (See also #241) * Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet??? 1.1 Trillion eBooks Given Away If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of 6,462,207,246 that would be 17,020 x 64,622,072 = ~1.1 Trillion !!! With 16,960 eBooks online as of August 24, 2005 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.91 from each book. 1% of the world population is 64,622,072 x 17,020 x $.91 = ~$1 Trillion] [Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.] With 17,020 eBooks online as of August 24, 2005 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.59 from each book. This "cost" is down from about $.73 when we had 13,611 eBooks a year ago. 100 million readers is only ~1.5% of the world's population! At 17,020 eBooks in 34 Years and 01.75 Months We Averaged ~498 Per Year 41.5 Per Month 1.36 Per Day At 2064 eBooks Done In The 231 Days Of 2005 We Averaged 8.9 Per Day 63 Per Week 266 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. 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]. However, I just this moment heard a news item that made me wonder a bit more about the accuracy of the U.S. Census. A "Special Census" is taking place in Normal, Illinois, that is expected to count more people, by a factor of 3,000 or 3,400, depending on which source. 45,386 was the population as per the 2000 Census, so 3,000 added to this would be an increase of 6.6%, and 3,400 would be 7.5%, above a possibly automatic increase of 5% as per the same terms above but I presume this is in addition to previous adjustments. Of course, we should consider that we would have to double figures, perhaps to 15% from those above, if are considering the normal time between censuses of 10 years, these are for 5 years' growth. In previous news I heard about the U.S. Census, no mention was made about the annexation of various nearly locations as a cause of this normally unexpected growth, but it is mentioned at the site I found on the subject of the current Special Census. If annexation is the primary cause of such increases, country wide, then we should not be expecting a huge rise in the 2010 Census, but rather should expect something more along the norm. However, if it is not annexation, but more actual people on the average, then this might be an indicator that the population of the U.S. may have seen 300 million go by some time ago. For more details, see: www.normal.org/WhatsNew/Census.htm 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 5th was the first Wednesday of 2005, and thus ended PG's production year of 2004 and began the production year of 2005 at noon. This year there will be 52 Wednesdays, thus no extra week. *** *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] ARIZONA HIGH SCHOOL DROPS TEXTBOOKS FOR IBOOKS Trading printed textbooks for electronic texts, Empire High School in Arizona issued iBook laptops to all of its 340 students when they started the fall semester. Empire High is a new school, conceived as one that does not use printed textbooks, though it does include a library with printed books. According to Calvin Baker, the superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, which includes Empire, the idea was to move technology from being an add-on component of education to a central role. In addition to having no printed textbooks, the school incorporates technology deeply into the curriculum and the design of the facility, which features a school-wide wireless network. Balancing the risks introduced by such technology, the school's network uses a central filter to control inappropriate downloads or distracting applications such as chats and instant messaging. Homework assignments submitted by computer are checked by another application against published material and against other students' work for plagiarism. Wired News, 18 August 2005 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68578,00.html WARNER MUSIC GROUP CREATES E-LABEL Warner Music Group plans to launch an online business model called an e-label that will use digital downloads rather than compact discs to distribute music. Artists will release music in groups of three songs every few months rather than a CD every few years. Artists who sign with the e-label will also retain copyright and ownership of their master recordings. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, about 180 million songs were sold online in the first half of 2005 compared to 57 million in the first half of 2004. In addition, Apple Computer's iTunes service recently exceeded 500 million downloads. ZDNet, 22 August 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5841355.html [Please note: this still requires the likely purchase of two songs you don't want for every song you do want, and thus I predict will not fly as well as the single song download model now in practice. By the way, I think Warner and co. are well aware of this, and have some hopes of actually getting away with it.] [On a similar note, it would appear that SUN Microsystems is trying their own co-optation route to change the Open Source Movement. . .] SUN PUSHES OPEN SOURCE DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT Sun Microsystems announced the Open Media Commons initiative in an effort to rally support behind an open source standard for digital rights management (DRM). The company is releasing code from the Project DReaM (DRM/everywhere available) program under the open source Community Development and Distribution License. The initiative involves developing a device-independent DRM standard called DRM Opera and user-based (versus device-based) licensing. The Register, 22 August 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/22/sun_open_source_drm/ VENDORS SUPPORT COMMUNITY WIRELESS PROJECTS [In spite of the legal pressures companies who want commercial monopoly] High-tech companies led by Intel joined in an international effort to support wireless technology and applications for governments and communities. The Digital Communities initiative supports 13 communities that are desiging, developing, and deploying Wi-Fi, mesh, or other wireless networks and applications. In the United States, Portland, Oregon; Corpus Christi, Texas; Philadelphia, and Cleveland are participants. Applications include support for municipal inspections and repair, law enforcement, and emergency response. Taipei, Taiwan, and Jerusalem, Israel, will also test Wi-Max. Federal Computer Week, 22 August 2005 http://www.fcw.com/article90237-08-22-05-Web [more] WI-FI INITIATIVE SUPPORTS MUNICIPAL NETWORKS A group of leading technology companies has started a program to offer cities resources and discounts to encourage development of wireless networks, both for city services and for residents. The "Digital Communities" program is supported by Intel, Cisco, Dell, and IBM, among others, and more than a dozen cities around the world are currently participating. Organizers of the program believe that wireless municipal networks have the potential to improve services and save money in areas including emergency responders, such as firefighters and police, and civil servants, such as meter readers and building inspectors. Beyond city services, wireless networks allow cities to provide Internet access to all of their citizens, including poor and otherwise underserved communities, argue supporters. In addition to saving money over other communication systems for city workers, the networks can create revenue for cities that choose to charge for Internet access. Taipei, Taiwan, one of the cities involved in the program, is planning to use the network to create an online university program for its 2.63 million residents. CNET, 18 August 2005 NSF GRANT FUNDS STUDY OF ELECTRONIC VOTING A team of researchers will use a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study electronic voting. The grant will support a research center called ACCURATE, A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections. Based at Johns Hopkins University, the center includes researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Rice University; the University of Iowa; and California-based research firm SRI International. According to Dan Wallach, associate professor of computer science at Rice, "The basic question is, 'How can we employ computer systems as trustworthy election systems when we know computers are not totally reliable, totally secure, or bug-free?'" The ACCURATE project is expected to produce technical standards for electronic voting and to develop secure voting systems that are easy to use. Washington Times, 17 August 2005 http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20050817-124413-4457r.htm 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 *** More news from alternate sources: BONES REVEAL FIRST SHOE-WEARERS from BBC News Online Sturdy shoes first came into widespread use between 40,000 and 26,000 years ago, according to a US scientist. Humans' small toes became weaker during this time, says physical anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who has studied scores of early human foot bones. He attributes this anatomical change to the invention of rugged shoes, that reduced our need for strong, flexible toes to grip and balance. http://tinyurl.com/bf835 * *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA A new terabyte DVD recorder unit was announced today by Japanese Hitachi, LTD for about $2,500 [230,000 yen]. Before you get TOO excited, it is really TWO recorders in one box, but it can simultanously record two HDTV shows. Another reason not to get too excited, unless you are in Japan, is that they will be mostly available only there, at least in the current marketing plan. However, presuming that you will be able to get one, you could then copy virtually every word in any of the major libraries of the world on a handful of these DVDs. * More Global Warming *STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK The public domain is worthless, because anything over 45 years old is worthless, and copyright is 95 years. DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Iraq is not another Viet Nam. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK China will continue bidding for, and buying, more and more of the world's infrastructure, to the sad detriment of U.S. Congress' inability to veto purchases in other countries. [This has obviously been continuing this week, and likely will become an ongoing event for the next decade or two: the real question is will the media give the full story?] *QUOTE OF THE WEEK US spending on tutors rose to $4 billion is 2004 from $3.4 billion in 2003. [This is enough for 4 million families each to spend $1,000 per year, just on extra tutoring to augment our failing classroom instruction.] Source: The New York Times via Edupage [paraphrased for stand alone grammar]. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/technology/22soft.html [sub. required] *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK In Rio de Janeiro over 1,000 people are killed each year by police. [This reported in response to the reporting of the single person killed by London police as a suspected terrorist bomber.] Source: NPR, via WILL-AM, ~9:20AM today In related news, the British Home Secretary announced the "grounds" for deportation on the basis of unBritish behaviour, but experts on the UK legal system say these "laws," not passed by Parliament will never stand up in the courts [and thus are nothing more than "scare tactics" aimed at fear mongering among the general population]. * LaSalle county, Illinois, is reporting the driest summer since 1936, of the infamous "Dust Bowl" era. * 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 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 This is number four of a series of five poems from a volume named: "Thoughts of My Exiled Self." The motto for this poetry volume is, "Upon this Word I shall build my life." On The Seventh Day On the seventh day, let your soul light up your eyes like two candles in the Easter night, like a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean where feelings swim, and hope floats. 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. 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