PT1 Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Weekly_June_29.txt **The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, June 29, 2005 PT1** *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971****** Project Gutenberg Is 34 Years Old This Week!!! Project Gutenberg of Europe Does 100 eBooks and 65 Articles in 1st Month!!! [Details available in separate documents on request] 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 Please note that we are still in the process of correcting our statistical program data. Last week we subtracted a few that we thought had been in a duplicate count situation, but either that correction didn't stick or some new similar problem has occured. As always, the total count should be the consideration of some attention as to possibly being off by a few eBooks. Please note that PT2 of this Newsletter is currently in flux, as we shift from to an automated PT2 sender. The situation with Monthly Newsletters is in flux to an even greater degree. Our apologies as we make changes. * HOT REQUESTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS PROJECT GUTENBERG OF EUROPE TAKES OFF!!! "EUROPE'S FLAMING JUNE 2005" "PROJECT GUTENBERG EUROPE" STARTS REGULAR ACTIVITY http://pge.rastko.net [Project Gutenberg Europe] http://dp.rastko.net [Distributed Proofreaders Europe] This past month marked the official beginnings of our new companion, Project Gutenberg of Europe with eBook entries expected in over 100 languages. In the first month we have seen a total of 100 about eBooks and an assortment of 65 articles in total, thus representing 62 Eurasian languages and dialects. Volunteer effort is totally responsible for these, and your assistance to PGE would be greatly appreciated in creating eBook titles from all of the ~120 languages and dialects in which PGE hope to produce eBooks. After a year of preparation "Project Gutenberg Europe", organized by "Project Rastko Network" and its "Distributed Proofreaders Europe", started regular activity last month, now having now its own server provided by leading South Eastern European provider "EUnet". PGE and its branches operate under European copyright legislation (life+50 and life+70). It already has volunteers all over the continent: European Community, Comonwealth of Independent States [ex-USSR] and other countries. "Distributed Proofreaders Europe"--as central European PD digitizing system, and only Unicode is capable of that kind in the world at the moment--releases a multilingual "European Proofing Package" of books this month, as special choices of general interest for whole continent. Also, regional and national campaigns in European countries were scheduled between May 31 and June 30, including first wave of physical events-- conferences and promotions--in Eastern Europe (Macedonia, Serbia, etc). [For details please email hart AT pglaf.org] Here is the list of the first 6 PGE languages 1 Afrikaans 2 Albanian 3 Asturian 4 Bable 5 Basque 6 Breton 7 Bulgarian 8 Byelorussian (Belarusian) 9 Catalan 10 Corsican 11 Czech 12 Danish 13 Dutch 14 English 15 Esperanto 16 Estonian 17 Faroese 18 Finnish 19 French 20 Frisian 21 Friulian 22 Gagauz 23 Gallegan (Galician) 24 German 25 Greek 26 Hungarian 27 Icelandic 28 Ido 29 Interlingua 30 Irish 31 Italian 32 Kazakh 33 Kurdish 34 Latin 35 Latvian (Lettish) 36 Letzeburgesch 37 Lithuanian 38 Macedonian 39 Maltese 40 Norwegian 41 Occitan (Provencal) 42 Osetin 43 Polish 44 Portuguese 45 Rhaeto-Romance 46 Romanian 47 Romany 48 Russian 49 Sami 50 Sardinian 51 Scots; Gaelic 52 Serbian 53 Slovak 54 Slovenian 55 Sorbian 56 Spanish 57 Swedish 58 Turkish 59 Ukrainian 60 Vlach 61 Walloon 62 Welsh [63 Whew!] * 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 1 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 74 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones This Weekend We Should Be Twice As Close to 20,000 as 10,000 !!! 16,636 eBooks As Of Today!!! 13,574 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's 250 eBooks per Month for 54 Months We Have Produced 1680 eBooks in 2005 We Are ~66% of the Way from 10,000 to 20,000 3,364 to go to 20,000!!! We have now averaged ~482 eBooks per year since July 4th, 1971 We Averaged About 339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging About 282 books Per Month This Year We Are Averaging About 67 eBooks Per Week This Year 76 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 ~1.25 years from Oct. 2003 to Jan. 2005 from 10,000 to 15,000 * ***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 * Darwin!!! Would anyone like to work on reproofing our Darwin collection and creating a compilation file as requested by our readers. We could also use some help making some new editions of "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" and "Frankenstein." * Project Gutenberg of Canada needs your help! Please email: pgcanada@lists.pglaf.org To subscribe to the pgcanada list, please visit: http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/pgcanada * v0.2 version of PodReader is out, and it interfaces to PG. This allows users to browse the catalog on their Desktop, pick a book, and have it downloaded to their iPod in the correct format...this is a good plus for PG users since it makes it a lot easier to get to PG documents. http://homepage.mac.com/ptwobrussell/podreader.html * 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. 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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 06.00 months of this year, we produced 1680 new eBooks. It took us from July 1971 to Mar 1999 to produce our first 1680 eBooks! That's 26 WEEKS as Compared to ~27 Years!!! 76 New eBooks This Week 42 New eBooks Last Week 273 New eBooks This Month [Jun] ~280 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 1680 New eBooks in 2005 4049 New eBooks in 2004 4164 New eBooks in 2003 2441 New eBooks in 2002 1240 New eBooks in 2001 ==== 13574 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001 That's Only 54.00 Months! About 250 books per month 16,636 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks 13,155 eBooks This Week Last Year ==== 3,481 New eBooks In Last 12 Months 461 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia * PROJECT GUTENBERG DISTRIBUTED PROOFREADERS UPDATE: Since starting production in October 2000, Distributed Proofreaders has contributed 7,081 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 #182 of 2005 This Completes Week #26 and Month #06.00 [364 days this year] 182 Days/34 Weeks To Go [We get 52 Wednesdays this year] 3,364 Books To Go To #20,000 [Our production year begins/ends 1st Wednesday of the month/year] 65 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. 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Note that updated eBooks usually go in their original directory (e.g., etext99, etext00, etc.) *** Statistical Review In the 26 weeks of this year, we have produced 1680 new eBooks. It took us from 7/71 to 3/99 to produce our FIRST 1680 eBooks!!! That's 26 WEEKS as Compared to ~27 YEARS!!! FLASHBACK! Here's a sample of what books we were doing around eBook #1680 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] Apr 1999 Life of Charlotte Bronte, V2, by E. C. Gaskell[#2][2locbxxx.xxx] 1700 Apr 1999 The Vanished Messenger by E. Phillips Oppenheim #4[vmsgrxxx.xxx] 1699 Apr 1999 The Survivors of the Chancellor, by Jules Verne #9[tsotcxxa.xxx] 1698 (See also #1652, from a different source) Madam How and Lady Why, by Charles Kingsley 1697 Apr 1999 The Club of Queer Trades, by G. K. Chesterton/GKC8[tcoqtxxx.xxx] 1696 Apr 1999 The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton/GKC7[tmwhtxxx.xxx] 1695 Apr 1999 Our Legal Heritage, by S. A. Reilly [rlglhxxx.xxx] 1694C (Updated version in:) [rlglhxxa.xxx] Apr 1999 Dangerous Days, by Mary Roberts Rinehart [MRR #8] [ddaysxxx.xxx] 1693 Mar 1999 1492, by Mary Johnston [For Columbus Day, 1998] [c1492xxx.xxx] 1692 Mar 1999 [Res: I Have A Dream, by Martin Luther King, Jr. [ xxx.xxx] 1691* (See appendix item #7) Mar 1999 Marie, by H. Rider Haggard [H. Rider Haggard #4][mariexxx.xxx] 1690 (Note: the filename mariexxx.xxx is also used for a totally different (eBook, #3451 in etext02) Mar 1999 The Pivot of Civilization, By Margaret Sanger [pvcvlxxx.xxx] 1689 The People of the Abyss, by Jack London 1688 Mar 1999 Parmenides, by Plato [More Socrates] Plato #24][prmdsxxx.xxx] 1687 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 The Secret of the Night, by Gaston Leroux [GL #3][tsotnxxx.xxx] 1686 Mar 1999 Mystery of the Yellow Room, by Gaston Leroux[GL#2][ylormxxx.xxx] 1685 [Contains ASCII diagrams, best viewed with non-proportional fonts.] Mar 1999 The Egoist, by George Meredith[George Meredith #6][egostxxx.xxx] 1684 Honorine, by Honore de Balzac [Tr.: Clara Bell] 1683 Mar 1999 Menexenus, by Plato [Yet More Socrates] [Plato#23][mnxnsxxx.xxx] 1682 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 Eryxias, not by Plato [More Socrates] [Plato#22][ryxisxxx.xxx] 1681 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] At the Sign of the Cat and Racket, by Honore de Balzac [Tr.: Clara Bell] 1680 Mar 1999 Hiram The Young Farmer, by Burbank L. Todd [hrmyfxxx.xxx] 1679 An Historical Mystery, by Honore de Balzac 1678 [Tr.: Katharine Prescott Wormeley] Mar 1999 Alcibiades II, not Plato [More Socrates][Plato#21][2lcbdxxx.xxx] 1677 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 Alcibiades I, by Plato? [More Socrates] [Plato#20][1lcbdxxx.xxx] 1676 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 New Forces in Old China, by Arthur Judson Brown [ldchnxxx.xxx] 1675 .(Note: the filename ldchnxxx.xxx is also used for a totally different .(eBook, #3313 in etext02) Mar 1999 The Narrative of Sojourner Truth [Slavery] [sjrnrxxx.xxx] 1674 [Author: Dictated by Sojourner Truth] [Editor: Olive Gilbert] Mar 1999 Lesser Hippias, by [?]Plato[More Socrates]Plato19][lhppsxxx.xxx] 1673 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 Gorgias, by Plato [A Socratic Dialog] [Plato #18][grgisxxx.xxx] 1672 [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] Mar 1999 When a Man Marries, by Mary Roberts Rinehart [#7][whammxxx.xxx] 1671 Martin Luther's Small Catechism, Tr.: by Robert E. Smith 1670 The Human Drift, by Jack London 1669 Mar 1999 Death of the Laird's Jock, by Walter Scott [WS #8][tpschxxx.xxx] 1668 * Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet??? If our average eBook has reached just 1% of the world population of 6,452,222,645 that would be 16,636 x 64,522,226 = 1.07 Trillion !!! With 16,636 eBooks online as of July 06, 2005 it now takes an average of ~1% of the world gaining a nominal value of ~$.93 from each book. 1% of the world population is 64,522,226 x 16,636 x $.93 = ~$1 trillion] [Google "world population" "popclock" to get the most current figures.] With 16,636 eBooks online as of July 06, 2005 it now takes an average of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.60 from each book, This "cost" is down from about $.76 when we had 13,155 eBooks a year ago. 100 million readers is only ~1.5% of the world's population! At 16,636 eBooks in 34 Years and 00.00 Months We Averaged ~489 Per Year 40.8 Per Month 1.40 Per Day At 1680 eBooks Done In The 182 Days Of 2005 We Averaged 9.2 Per Day 65 Per Week 280 Per Month 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] U.S. WILL KEEP CONTROL OF INTERNET ROOT Despite previous statements from U.S. officials that the country would cede its control over the Internet to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a set of principles outlined this week by the Bush administration states that no such transfer of control will take place. The United States maintains control of the "root" system that determines which domains will function, including not just generic domains such as .com and .org but also country-specific domains. The principles, which were announced unexpectedly at a conference in Washington, D.C., are seen by many as a snub of the world community in general and of certain of its critics in particular. Pakistan and Brazil, for example, have long complained that the United States has too much control over the Internet and should give the world's poorer countries the opportunity to be equal participants. ZDNet, 30 June 2005 http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5770937.html ONLINE ENROLLMENTS CONTINUE TO RISE Research firm Eduventures has released a new report that puts the number of students enrolled in wholly online courses last year at close to one million, doubling the number from just two years earlier. The report predicts another 500,000 or more students will enroll in online courses over the next two years. The company estimates that by the end of 2005, students enrolled in entirely online courses will constitute more than 15 percent of the total number of students enrolled at degree-granting institutions in the United States. Although much of the growth in online course enrollments is taking place in the for-profit higher education market, nonprofit institutions are closing the gap, according to Sean Gallagher, senior analyst at Eduventures. As more and more nonprofit institutions put their courses online, he said, "the rate at which for-profits are stealing market share is beginning to slow down." Chronicle of Higher Education, 28 June 2005 (sub. req'd) http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/06/2005062802t.htm BRITAIN SEES FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT IN PUBLISHING A new study by the British Library predicts that by the year 2020, 90 percent of newly published work in the United Kingdom will be available electronically. Just 10 percent of works published then will be printed only, and half of those published electronically will also be printed, according to the study. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the library, said such a "seismic shift" in publishing requires different methods to ensure adequate protection and storage of the electronic materials. The library is developing a digital storage system that it hopes will prove sufficiently robust. Three copies of every item will exist, with one stored off-site for recovery in the event of a catastrophic failure. A spokesperson from the library noted that as published content is increasingly in electronic format, officials must make decisions about what new types of content they will archive, such as Web sites and possibly even blog content. BBC, 29 June 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4633423.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 *** *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA As you may have just heard, London was just reported to have "beaten out" Paris for the 2012 Olympic Games, along with Madrid, Moscow and New York. I listened to a dozen various reports and references to politics and globalization were made, but no one, not one single interviewee or reporter would come out right up front and say the decision was in retaliation for France upsetting the European Union apple cart by voting against the proposed EU Constitution. By the way, the oddsmakers favored Paris, but perhaps didn't take the French vote against the EU seriously, perhap along with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac denigrating the food in England only yesterday. Apparently the vote was extremely close, and we might never find out just how much politics intervened. *STRANGE WORDS OF THE WEEK Cooper and Miller Not Off the Hook, Novak Not On It Even though Time magazine handed over the papers in question only a day after last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision, it appears that the White House is still insisting that Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times still go to jail, even though no such pressures have ever been put upon Robert Novak, the originator of the story. Sources say that this is simply because Novak is a partisan player, from the side of the Conservatives. DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK Last night ABC's Nightline special on North Korea said that North Koreans only know about the U.S. and other countries via what their government tells them, without mentioning at all that most U.S. citizens know little or nothing about any other countries, much less about any other U.S. states. Most U.S. citizens still never move outside a 50 mile range of their birthplace and have serious trouble with geography, both inside and outside their own country. *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times will go to jail rather than divulge their sources, and Time and the New York Times will stand behind them, and so will most of the world press corps. Wow! Was I wrong about THAT one!!! It took only ONE DAY for TIME to cave in !!! Why wasn't Mr. Novak, the columnist who intitially outed Mrs. Valerie Plame ever given this threat of contempt charges? *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK The median worth of US black households is 10% of white households. * ALA figures for Library Internet Access [If you think Internet access hasn't spread a lot in 10 years, just think about these American Library Association figures] 99% 2005 95% 2002 21% 1994 Wireless Internet in Libraries 18% 2005 39% 2006 [predicted by FSU study] * 50 million Americans live in various kinds "gated communites." That means out of just a handful of people, one is most likely living in such an "arranged community." * 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 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 The Demon of Poetry poetry has become a demon harrassment is its game thoughts upon thoughts of perfectly shaped fertile colorful rhymes incessantly harrass my spirit and then lose strength, meaning, and color as soon as I grab my pen to pin them down my thoughts, like caterpillars my words, like butterflies the mirror shows a wrinkled forehead and dark, unrested 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. 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
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Michael Hart