Weekly_November_23.txt *The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, November 23, 2005 PT1* *******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971******** PT1A Editor's comments appear in [brackets]. Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart@pobox.com or gbnewby@pglaf.org Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart@pobox.com * WANTED!

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* Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc. * TABLE OF CONTENTS [Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.] *eBook Milestones *Introduction *Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements *Continuing Requests and Announcements *Progress Report *Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report *Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report *Permanent Requests For Assistance: *Donation Information *Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections *Mirror Site Information *Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks *Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet? *Flashback *Weekly eBook update: This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter Corrections in separate section 6 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.] 72 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright *Headline News from Edupage, etc. *Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists *** *eBook Milestones* ***512 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971*** 17,605 eBooks As Of Today!!! [Includes Australian eBooks] We Are ~88% of the Way to 20,000!!! 14,543 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001 That's ~250 eBooks per Month for ~56 Months We Have Produced 2649 eBooks in 2005!!! 2,395 to go to 20,000!!! 7,702 from Distributed Proofreaders Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B] 85 from Project Gutenberg of Europe [We will start including these in 2006] We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004 We Are Averaging ~250 books Per Month This Year [This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org] This Site Is Averaging ~58 eBooks Per Week This Year 78 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 17,600 * ***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] LIBRARIES FOLLOWING RETAILERS' LEAD Libraries increasingly find themselves in a quandary between growing expectations among patrons for personalized services and libraries' traditional stance as a strong advocate for personal privacy. Commercial enterprises such as Amazon and Netflix typically make suggestions to customers based on previous purchases and can notify users when certain products are available. The library at North Carolina State University is implementing a program that offers students similar services based on past usage. To offer such services, however, the library must keep more-detailed patron records than many libraries keep, given the authority of government officials under the USA PATRIOT Act to subpoena those records. Officials from the university report that students are comfortable trading some measure of privacy for the convenience of personalized services. Another program at the University of Notre Dame offers similar suggestions to users, which, according to its developer, should simplify research for many students. Michael Golrick, the city librarian in Bridgeport, Conn., said that the large numbers of immigrants in his community would not be so willing to trade privacy for convenience. Many of them, he said, "came to this country to avoid the kinds of surveillance and persecution we're seeing tinges of today." New York Times, 20 November 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/weekinreview/20cowan.html UNIVERSITY COMBINES EXERCISE AND TECHNOLOGY The recreation center at Minnesota State University now includes computers that can be used while people are exercising. Although many fitness centers include individual TVs for treadmills and other pieces of equipment, officials at Minnesota State wanted to offer something more. They set up 40 adjustable stands, each of which has a computer, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Students using the rec center can surf the Web, check e-mail, or perform other computer tasks while they exercise. One professor at the university said he will incorporate the new facilities into one of his fitness courses, where students will exercise while taking quizzes and doing other activities on the computers. Officials at other schools said they would consider adding similar facilities to their rec centers, noting that more and more students grew up multitasking and expecting to have access to a computer all the time. Some disagree with the approach. Stephanie Maks, who worked as a personal trainer for 20 years, said often the biggest hurdle to an effective exercise program is letting go of technology. "Don't bring the office with you to the gym," she said. Wired News, 20 November 2005 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69633,00.html CITIES AND TOWNS ADDING WIRELESS NETWORKS Cities and towns across the United States are launching, or announcing plans to launch, wireless broadband networks. Wireless technologies are evolving to allow increasingly secure, robust networks in city-wide installations. Large cities, such as Philadelphia and San Francisco, and smaller towns, such as Lebanon, Oregon, are establishing wireless municipal networks for reasons ranging from economic development to improved services for residents. In Tucson, Arizona, a wireless network will allow communication between ambulances and one of the city's hospitals, improving patient care. That network is expected to be online in mid-2006, and the service could be extended to other medical facilities in the city. Other municipalities see wireless Internet access as a valuable step in narrowing the digital divide and bringing the benefits of technology to lower-income residents. In Mountain View, California, Google, which is headquartered there, will develop a wireless broadband network at no cost to the city. Federal Computer Week, 21 November 2005 http://www.fcw.com/article91475-11-18-05-Web ONLINE EDUCATION EXPANDS IN AFRICA The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has announced a grant to fund online education efforts in Africa. The $900,000 grant will support the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa consortium, which is working to develop an online portal that will offer a broad array of educational materials from institutions such as MIT, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and Chinese Open Resources for Education. According to Kuzvinetsa Peter Dzvimbo, rector of the African Virtual University, which is part of the consortium, Africa is in great need of math and science teachers, and the new portal will be used in "teach the teacher" programs to educate new instructors in sub-Saharan Africa. The online resources will not be limited to teachers, however. Beginning in Tanzania and South Africa and spreading to other African countries, the portal will be openly available to anyone with Internet access. Dzvimbo said he hopes that eventually teachers in Africa will join the online efforts alongside the professors and students in the United States who will be initially involved. Inside Higher Ed, 17 November 2005 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/11/17/africa 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 *** News from other sources: The US "Patriot Act" has suffered several defeats of bills attempting to extend its powers. and *HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA The US "Patriot Act" has suffered several defeats of bills attempting to extend its powers. * Iran's third proposed oil minister has been rejected due to "strong ties to the US and the UK." This third time around puts Iran in "uncharted constitutional waters" that might end up with the elimination of the minister of oil as a position. The first two were eliminated as lacking expertise, and the third was said to have strong ties to the US and the UK, as his daughter is citizen of the UK, and that he, himself, is the possessor of a US green card, both of which he denies. Source: BBC * Michael Scanlon, former aide to Congressional power Tom Delay, and partner of famous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, pled guilty to a conspiracy to bribe public officials stemming from investigations into attempted fraud of his Indian tribe clients and corruption of a Congressman. Source: Washington Post, 11/21/05 *DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK The Russian government now requires registration of all "non- governmental organizations." [NGO's] This is expected to end all such organizations other then the select few kept for display purposes. This would include New York-based Human Rights Watch, who has maintained their Moscow office for years, as well as a number of other such organizations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, etc. The new law, just passed by the Duma, would ban those foreign NGO's altogether, and also ban foreign workers and money from being used in Russian NGO's. NGO leaders have protested, saying this will end civil rights in Russia. The law was passed 380 to 18. Source: Reuters *PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK Japan's landing of a spacecraft on an asteroid to take samples and return them to Earth laboratories for scientific analysis, will renew interest in the old science fiction idea of "meteor mining" as a potential economic force. Even a tiny gold, platinum, or iridium asteroid under 100 feet in diameter could destroy the world's economic system, because in spacefaring terms, our finanical institutions are based on, still to this day, "beads and trinkets" that could still buy a Manhattan Island for $24 worth of such beads and trickets from the perspective of any spacefaring race that could simply pull such an asteroid out of orbit and give it to us for Manhattan. Think such asteroids don't exist? Just ask any dinosaur expert what wiped out those dinosaurs. It was an iridium asteroid, and a lot bigger than 100 feet. *STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK "Television exists to create advertizing." "Politics demands we have access to those oil fields." "Nobody on their death bed says, I wish I'd spent more time at the office." [Quoting Barbara Bush] [_I_ might say that, if there aren't a million freely downloadable eBooks by the time I am lying there.] Charlie Rose and Ted Koppel, 11/22/05 *ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK German companies now occupy 0 of Europe's Top 10 20 years ago there were 7 in the Top 10 [Interestingly enough, in reporting this story, I could not find one single online report, even from the BBC, from whose radio broadcasts I first heard it. MSNBC *had* done a story on it, but it vanished.] However, from another perspective, Germany's GDP is twice as much as the United Kingdom's, so it may be that while the largest companies, at least in Germany, aren't growing as fast, the economy is still an awfully large factor in Europe. Source: Global E-Commerce, Nov 21, 2005 In related news, since the year 2000, the list of the Top 100 Economic World Powers names more than half of these as companies, not countries: "Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are now global corporations; only 49 are countries." www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/top200.htm *** 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. * POEM OF THE WEEK sounds my flute fills with sandalwood fragrance the air is adorned with jewels of smoke they tenderly encircle the heart of a cloud the skies ablaze return caressing rain my helpless lips have found delicious burden a garland of melodies is my breath 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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