PT1A Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Weekly_September_14.txt The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, September 14, 2005 PT1 ******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A 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 We are trying an experiment this month to provide shorter Newsletter files. PT1 of the Newsletter will be split into to sections starting and ending at the points below where you will see this marker" "***BREAK FOR PT1A AND PT1B***" You should receive THREE versions of PT1 today: PT1, PT1A, and PT1B. Please send your comments on this. * HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 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 ***PT1A is above, PT1B is below.*** *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 ***PT1B is above, PT1A is below.*** *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* 17,130 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are 85% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,068 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's 250+ eBooks per Month for ~56 Months We Have Produced 2174 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,826 to go to 20,000!!! 7,439 from Distributed Proofreaders 481 From Project Gutenberg of Australia We Have Now Averaged ~502 eBooks Per Year Since July 4th, 1971 We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging ~264 books Per Month This Year We Are Averaging ~62 eBooks Per Week This Year 24 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. Note well that PT1 is now being send 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] RIAA AND MPAA JOIN INTERNET2 The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have become corporate members of Internet2, joining companies including the Ford Motor Company and C-Span. "Internet2 is a stepping stone between the research lab and the commercial sector," said Lauren Kallens, a spokesperson for the organization. Earlier this year, the entertainment groups sued hundreds of Abilene users for using the network to illegally trade files, but, according to Gayle Osterberg, a spokesperson for the MPAA, the groups' membership in Internet2 is unrelated to their antipiracy efforts. "This particular partnership," she said, "is more of an opportunity for us to have a technology testing ground." The groups plan to collaborate with the Internet2 community to study distribution and digital rights management technologies for networks faster than today's commercial Internet. Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 September 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/09/2005091202t.htm FBI LOSES ROUND ONE [Interesting that the URL mentions "library" but the words do not.] A federal judge has handed the FBI a preliminary defeat in its efforts to continue to suppress information about an investigation of a Connecticut institution. The institution, whose identity has been kept confidential under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the FBI for the right to disclose the institution's identity. Judge Janet C. Hall agreed with the plaintiffs, saying that under the FBI's position, "the very people who might have information regarding investigative abuses and overreaching are peremptorily prevented from sharing that information with the public." Hall did grant a stay of her ruling, however, giving federal authorities until September 20 to try to persuade the Court of Appeals to overturn the ruling. If the appeals court takes no action by then, the plaintiffs are free to disclose the institution's identity. Watching the case closely are groups critical of the PATRIOT Act, who have long argued that the law grants federal authorities excessive investigative powers at the expense of civil liberties. New York Times, 10 September 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/nyregion/10library.html DIGITAL RIGHTS ORGANIZATION OPENS IN UK Modeled on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the United States, a new organization is being launched in the United Kingdom to protect the rights of users of digital resources. According to the Web site of the Open Rights Group (ORG), the group will work to "vigorously defend our digital civil liberties, ensuring that the our hard-won freedoms are not taken away simply because they've moved to the digital world." Suw Charman, one of the group's co-founders, said that ORG intends not to replace but to work alongside organizations with similar goals, of which several already exist in the United Kingdom and Europe, including the Campaign for Digital Rights, the Foundation for Information Policy Research, and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Officials from the rights group Citizens Online expressed skepticism that ORG efforts would be appropriately inclusive. Citizens Online worried that ORG's focus would be "middle class" issues, ignoring technology issues concerning people with disabilities and the digital divide. BBC, 9 September 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4225938.stm KATRINA BOOSTS ONLINE EDUCATION Educators at all levels--from elementary through college--are trying to figure out how to accommodate the estimated 200,000 students from the Gulf states who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and some see the circumstances as a prime opportunity for online education to prove its worth. Advocates of online learning are working to get federal authorities to relax rules governing things ranging from obtaining teacher certification to using public funds to support online schools. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has committed $1.1 million to the Sloan Consortium, an organization that works to improve the quality of online instruction, to provide space for 10,000 students in its program. A number of online programs for elementary and secondary students are hoping to persuade government officials to allow public funds to be used by displaced students in online programs. Julie Young, chief executive of the Florida Virtual School, one of the nation's largest online public schools, said, "It's going to be an opportunity to show the power of online learning." Critics said online programs are a poor substitute for in-class learning. Nat LaCour, secretary general of the American Federation of Teachers, said displaced students "need to be in classrooms with teachers who can provide nurturing experiences." Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112622247296335918,00.html FEDS AWARD NATIONAL ARCHIVE CONTRACT The federal government will spend $308 million to create a national electronic archive that Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United States, said will be of significant value to academic researchers. Weinstein, a former history professor, said the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) will store and make available all federal electronic documents, which otherwise could disappear entirely or at least be very difficult to locate. The federal government is increasingly creating documents online in electronic format, and the ERA is vital in preserving them, said Weinstein. The ERA, which is expected to debut in 2008 and be complete by 2011, could also serve as a model for colleges and universities that create their own digital archive systems, according to Weinstein. Rick Barry, a management consultant in archives and information management, said that the archive itself will not solve the problem of preservation. Bureaucratic and cultural problems must also be overcome, he said. Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/09/2005090901t.htm THIRTEEN COUNTRIES GET BEHIND OPEN STANDARDS Government officials from 13 countries have developed a report to the World Bank on economic growth, efficiency, and innovation in which they argue for the establishment of open technology standards. The report is quick to point out that open standards are not synonymous with open source, in which source code is shared and can be modified by anyone. The open-standards movement advocates defining a set of standards, available to anyone, that allow various applications, whether proprietary or open source, to exchange information. The report is the product of a project led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. According to Charles R. Nesson, law professor at Harvard and founder of the Berkman Center, the goal of the report is to make a "rational business case for having a broad base of open technology standards." The report urges governments to "mandate technology choice, not software development models." New York Times, 9 September 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/technology/09open.html TUTORING ONLINE, OVERSEAS Online tutoring services, which typically offer cost and scheduling advantages over local programs, have begun outsourcing some tutoring positions. Although some online tutoring companies that serve the U.S. market limit tutors to people living in North America, some now employ tutors in countries including India, South Africa, the Philippines, and Chile. As with other examples of outsourcing, the primary motivation is cost: Growing Stars, a California-based tutoring company, charges $30 an hour for U.S.-based tutors and $20 an hour for tutors in India, who are paid the equivalent of $230 per month. Burck Smith, chief executive and co-founder of Washington, D.C.-based online tutoring company SmarThinking, said his company has seen demand grow by 50 percent over the past few years, and the company signed 20 new clients, including high schools and colleges, for services this fall. Critics of online tutoring argue that there is already little oversight to such programs, resulting in questionable quality, and that using tutors from overseas only serves to make monitoring even more difficult. New York Times, 7 September 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/education/07tutor.html CA HOPS ON THE OPEN SOURCE BANDWAGON Following IBM's lead, Computer Associates International (CA) has announced that it will allow open source developers to use 14 of its patents free of charge. Earlier this year, IBM, which has been one of the strongest corporate backers of open source technology, said it would forgo royalties on 500 of its patents. The CA patents that will be offered address application development, data analytics, and systems management. CA also announced an agreement with IBM under which the two companies will exchange license rights. According to Mark Barrenechea, executive vice president of technology strategy and chief technology architect at CA, the deal will give customers easier access to the range of intellectual property available without charge. ZDNet, 7 September 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5852500.html 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 *** *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA Racism Denied At All Levels Of Government. . .but. . . . 1. White People "Found" Food, Black People "Looted Food" Even as far away as Zimbabwe, the news is reporting that two pictures from the Associated Press {?} contrasted in print the racism of the American press, as a white woman was portrayed as having "found food," while a picture of of a black man is portrayed as having "looted" food. Reports of this are popping up in a wide variety of news sources, but they are usually comments rather than whole reports from the news sources, comments from readers, or from distant news services, but not the major US media. 2. Crowds Of Mostly Black New Orleans Refugees Turned Back By Police At The Majority White City Of Gretna Crowds of refugees from the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center area were stopped by Gretna police, as shots were fired, apparently as warnings by police of the majority white City of Gretna, which houses an expressway known as the Crescent City Connector which is one of the major arteries out of New Orleans. The Crescent City Connector was one of the only roads the hurricane left completely open, and many evacuees say they were told to leave New Orleans that way; sources indicate this was at the direction of Governor Blanco. However, the Gretna City Police Chief said: "All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down." "We shut down the bridge," since Gretna was "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit." "There was no food, water or shelter." "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people." "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." These comments were made by Arthur Lawson, Police Chief of the City of Gretna United Press International. Jefferson Parrish and Bridge Police assisted in the shut down of the three major access points to stop foot traffic trying to flee across the west bank of the river. Quoting The State of Louisiana's Disaster Plan: "The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating." No mention is made of what to do about those for whom no transportation is available. . .those were obviously beneath the radar scope of planning. Some of the less censored headlines: "Racist police blocked bridge and forced evacuees back at gunpoint." "Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans" "On the Edge Without an Exit" The Los Angeles Times Somehow it seems that those farthest from the situation are the only ones willing to state what is obvious locally. * FEMA Never Intended Thousands Of Imported Firefighters To Fight Fires Perhaps as many as 4,000 firefighters have been anxiously sitting on their hands for over a week as they have been locked away from action for which they have been trained by administrators who have little or no training in handling emergency situations. Many administrators are not commenting, while others say that these firefighters are being used solely for "community outreach" since they have not been "cleared" for the actual purpose they were trained for by unadept administrators, who sent for no background checks and now say they are required. Source: CBS 9/12/05 [Also see The Dayton Daily News ?] * 40 Died In A Hospital, There Was No Evacuation Plan For Them. * Palestinians Burn Gaza Synagogues *STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK I supposed the strangest words of the week were those NOT heard, as NBC censored Kanye West's comments as the news went from the East Coast to the West Coast. . .his picture was included, but a "18 second gap" replaced his commentary. Some sources reported that Kanye West's microphone didn't work, but those one the earlier East Coast verson of the NBC news and most obviously Jon Stewart, noticed the difference and reported that the news had been censored in transit. Here is the quote as it is being referenced: "If you see a black family it's looting, but if it's a white family they are looking for food. George Bush doesn't care about black people." * Oxford English Dictionary, or Bullchevy English Dictionary? The OED fake: Another Strange Word of the Week: "esquivalience" As you may have heard as one of the unfounded urban legends, but which turn out to be true, at least the fiction is fact, many publications, perhaps even most of those of the Fortune 500 type of publishers, contain intentional errors--ERRORS! You may have heard of maps either containing locations never in existence or in the wrong place, but those at least maybe were legally required for such errors to be around the edges and NOT in the "field of play," so that a person using error ridden maps for the intended purpose, the land or sea named, would not get into trouble using them for directions. Since I am originally from a seaport, I am personally aware of map laws that require a rather large red disclaimer on every one of the maps stating that these sea charts are NOT navigation tools, but merely recreational items. Much as software were once labeled as not merchantable, meaning good for nothing. At any rate, Oxford has admitted, though under some cloud of smoke, that the New Oxford English Dictionary does, in fact, contain intentional errors, which reduces their standing for this act to the point of having been caught out, and made to stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap. I presume next time they will "fingerprint" their work in an even less discoverable manner, in the hopes not to be caught out so soon next time around. I wonder if they didn't think to do it in a less obvious manner, such as varying commas or periods or semi-colons in a coded manner? Thus the CONTENTS of their dictionary would be accurate, while the FORM was an investigative tool as accurate as a fingerprint. DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Comments On How The Katrina Relief Efforts Are Going: Laura Bush: "very very well." VP Dick Cheney: "extremely well." President Bush: the situations in Iran and New Orleans are going well. [Of course, this stance was reversed yesterday when President Bush finally admitted that things were not going very well and that he was taking responsibility for that.] *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK Keep watching China, India and Indonesia for economic growth. *QUOTE OF THE WEEK "If you see a black family it's looting, but if it's a white family they are looking for food. George Bush doesn't care about black people." *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK 5/8 of Bush's emergency management appointees had no experience, were simply pork barrel jobs for his campaign workers. Michael Brown was simply the college roommate of the original FEMA chief, not other recommendation or expertise, not even a real job on his resume, other than the Arabian Horse group. * Meat consumption in China us up 400% in 20 years. * One Ohio high school was reported to have 63% of the girls pregnant. * In some communities blacks are 9 times as likely to be pulled over for traffic stops than are whites. A film crew trying to record such statistics locally was stopped by the police and taken to court. * Nearly 3/4 of a million dollars for 30 second American Idol ad! About $600,000 for 30 seconds on Desperate Housewives. The average for all prime time shows: $150,000. *** POEM OF THE WEEK Tonight is hard to get in touch with my thoughts as my eyelids are heavy with a dreamless sleep in which I feel I am floating like a feather dettached from the wings of a mother swan who once knew about a lake, and how the vivid waters felt to the touch but then she got bored, took off and learned about the lighness of air, like the angels who sit on my eyelids tonight Alas, I must be dreaming of flight while I cry myself to sleep under the starry skies of your eyes. 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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Michael Hart