PGWeekly_December_03.txt
*The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, December 03, 2003*
*****eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers Since July 4, 1971******
eBook Milestones
We're ~6.4% Of The Way From 10,000 To 20,000!!!
10638 eBooks As Of Today!!!
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It took 32.25 years from July, 1971 to October, 2003 to do our 1st 10,000
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[From 638 to 10,638]
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***
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In this issue of the Project Gutenberg Weekly newsletter:
- Intro (above)
- Requests For Assistance
- Progress Report
- Flashback
- Continuing Requests For Assistance
- Making Donations
- Access To The Collection
- Information About Mirror Sites
- Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
- Weekly eBook update:
Updates/corrections in separate section
1 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
72 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
- Headline News from Newsscan and Edupage
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*** Progress Report
[Disclaimer: We have several people and programs who count
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we provide. Every once in a while these don't agree, and we
have numbers that slightly disagree, even as to the number of
weeks in a given year. . .for example, 2003 has 53 Wednesdays,
so we will have 53 Newsletters, and thus will count 53 weeks,
at least some of us will. . . . ;-) This week is unusual,
because we are in the process of reestablishing our databases
after reaching eBook #10,000 a few weeks ago, and the programs
are not yet back to running at full capacity. Thus, we have
had several mere mortals counting up the books and disagreeing
on how many there are. I counted 87, George counted 84, and
one day we didn't get any reports at all, so we could both be
somewhat off. Hopefully next week we will get back to normal.]
In the first 11.00 months of this year, we produced 3,907 new eBooks.
It took us from 1971 to 2000 to produce our first 3,907 eBooks!
That's 48 WEEKS as Compared to ~31 Years!
73 New eBooks This Week
169 New eBooks Last Week
412 New eBooks This Month [November]
354 Average Per Month in 2003 <<<
203 Average Per Month in 2002 <<<
103 Average Per Month in 2001 <<<
3,895 New eBooks in 2003
2,441 New eBooks in 2002
1,240 New eBooks in 2001
=====
7,576 New eBooks Since Start Of 2001
That's Only 35 Months!
10,638 Total Project Gutenberg eBooks
6,479 eBooks This Week Last Year
====
4,159 New eBooks In Last 12 Months
299 eBooks From Project Gutenberg of Australia
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eBooks are posted throughout the week. You can even get daily lists.
***
FLASHBACK!!!
3895 New eBooks So Far in 2003
It took us 31 years for the first 3895 !
That's the 48 WEEKS of 2003 as Compared to ~31 YEARS!!!
Here Is A Sample Of What Books Were Being Done Around #3895
Apr 2003 The Entire M, Mme and Bebe, by Gustave Droz[IM#13][im13bxxx.xxx] 3926
Apr 2003 Monsieur, Mme, and Bebe, by Gustave Droz v3[IM#12][im12bxxx.xxx] 3925
Apr 2003 Monsieur, Mme, and Bebe, by Gustave Droz v2[IM#11][im11bxxx.xxx] 3924
Apr 2003 Monsieur, Mme, and Bebe, by Gustave Droz v1[IM#10][im10bxxx.xxx] 3923
[Title of the above: Monsieur, Madame, and Bebe]
Apr 2003 Entire The Red Lily, by Anatole France [IM#09][im09bxxx.xxx] 3922
Apr 2003 The Red Lily, by Anatole France, v3 [IM#08][im08bxxx.xxx] 3921
Apr 2003 The Red Lily, by Anatole France, v2 [IM#07][im07bxxx.xxx] 3920
Apr 2003 The Red Lily, by Anatole France, v1 [IM#06][im06bxxx.xxx] 3919
Apr 2003 The Entire Serge Panine, by Georges Ohnet [IM#05][im05bxxx.xxx] 3918
Apr 2003 Serge Panine, by Georges Ohnet, v4 [IM#04][im04bxxx.xxx] 3917
Apr 2003 Serge Panine, by Georges Ohnet, v3 [IM#03][im03bxxx.xxx] 3916
Apr 2003 Serge Panine, by Georges Ohnet, v2 [IM#02][im02bxxx.xxx] 3915
Apr 2003 Serge Panine, by Georges Ohnet, v1 [IM#01][im01bxxx.xxx] 3914
Apr 2003 Entire Confessions of J.J.Rousseau/Book 13 [JJ#13][jj13bxxx.xxx] 3913
. . .
Apr 2003 The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Book 1 [JJ#01][jj01bxxx.xxx] 3901
[Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau]
Mar 2003 The Entire Court Memoirs of France Series [CM#63][cm63bxxx.xxx] 3900
Mar 2003 The Entire Memoirs of Court of St. Cloud [CM#62][cm62bxxx.xxx] 3899
Mar 2003 Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, v7 [CM#61][cm61bxxx.xxx] 3898
. . .
Mar 2003 Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, v1 [CM#55][cm55bxxx.xxx] 3892
Mar 2003 The Entire Marie Antoinette, by Campan [CM#54][cm54bxxx.xxx] 3891
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Campan, v7 [CM#53][cm53bxxx.xxx] 3890
. . .
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Campan, v1 [CM#47][cm47bxxx.xxx] 3884
Mar 2003 The Entire Louis XV/XVI, by Hausset [CM#46][cm46bxxx.xxx] 3883
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XV/XVI, by Hausset, v7 [CM#45][cm45bxxx.xxx] 3882
. . .
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XV/XVI, by Hausset, v1 [CM#39][cm39bxxx.xxx] 3876
Mar 2003 Entire Memoirs of Louis XIV, by Saint-Simon[CM#38][cm38bxxx.xxx] 3875
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XIV, by Saint-Simon, v15 [CM#37][cm37bxxx.xxx] 3874
. . .
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XIV, by Saint-Simon, v1 [CM#23][cm23bxxx.xxx] 3860
Mar 2003 Entire Memoirs Louis XIV, by Duch d'Orleans[CM#22][cm22bxxx.xxx] 3859
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XIV, by Duch d'Orleans, v4[CM#21][cm21bxxx.xxx] 3858
Mar 2003 Memoirs of Louis XIV, by Duch d'Orleans, v3[CM#20][cm20bxxx.xxx] 3857
Mar 2003 The Entire Memoirs of Madame de Montespan [CM#17][cm17bxxx.xxx] 3854
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, v7 [CM#16][cm16bxxx.xxx] 3853
. . .
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, v1 [CM#10][cm10bxxx.xxx] 3847
Mar 2003 The Entire Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz [CM#09][cm09bxxx.xxx] 3846
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, v4 [CM#08][cm08bxxx.xxx] 3845
. . .
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, v1 [CM#05][cm05bxxx.xxx] 3842
Mar 2003 The Entire Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois [CM#04][cm04bxxx.xxx] 3841
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, v3 [CM#03][cm03bxxx.xxx] 3840
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, v2 [CM#02][cm02bxxx.xxx] 3839
Mar 2003 The Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, v1 [CM#01][cm01bxxx.xxx] 3838
[From: The Entire Court Memoirs of France Series]
***
Today Is Day #336 of 2003
This Completes Week #48
35 Days/07 Weeks To Go [We get 53 Wednesdays this year]
9362 Books To Go To #20,000 [18 months from 4 weeks ago]
We're hoping to do this in 80 to 100 weeks
[Our production year begins/ends
1st Wednesday of the month/year]
Week #6 Of Our *SECOND* 10,000 eBooks
81 Weekly Average in 2003
47 Weekly Average in 2002
24 Weekly Average in 2001
39 Only 39 Numbers Left On Our Reserved Numbers list
[Used to be well over 100]
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*** Have We Given Away A Trillion Books/Dollars Yet???
Statistical Review
In the 48 weeks of this year, we have produced 3895 new eBooks.
It took us from 1971 to 2002 to produce our FIRST 3895 eBooks!!!
That's 48 WEEKS as Compared to ~31 YEARS!!!
With 10,638 eBooks online as of December 03, 2003 it now takes an average
of 100,000,000 readers gaining a nominal value of $0.94 from each book,
for Project Gutenberg to have currently given away $1,000,000,000,000
[One Trillion Dollars] in books.
100,000,000 readers is only about 1.5% of the world's population!
This "cost" is down from about $1.54 when we had 6479 eBooks A Year Ago
Can you imagine 10,000 books each costing $.60 less a year later???
Or. . .would this say it better?
Can you imagine 10,000 books each costing 1/3 less a year later???
At 10,638 eBooks in 32 Years and 5.00 Months We Averaged
329 Per Year [We do more per than that month these days!]
27 Per Month
.88 Per Day
At 3,895 eBooks Done In The 336 Days Of 2003 We Averaged
11.6 Per Day
81.1 Per Week
354.1 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 1st was
the first Wednesday of 2003, and thus ended PG's production
year of 2002 and began the production year of 2003 at noon.
This year there will be 53 Wednesdays, thus one extra week.
***Headline News***
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
TALKING NEWSPAPERS SOUND ALMOST HUMAN
The British Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is teaming up with
Rhetorical Systems to provide partially sighted and blind people with
timely access to newspapers and magazines, using technology that "reads"
the stories in a very human-sounding voice. Rhetorical's rVoice
text-to-speech software is based on the voice files of real people and
sounds, and produces much more natural speech than traditional speech
synthesizers. Subscribers to the new service will receive a portable
AudioRead device that they can use to retrieve information from wherever
they happen to be. Unlike audiotapes used to deliver newspapers to the
visually impaired, AudioRead users can navigate the sections, skipping
between articles and sections as they choose. "We'll be able to produce 400
hours of audio in one hour," says RNIB technology expert Steve Tyler.
"The mainstay of our users who listen to books have never liked the idea of
synthetic speech, they've always wanted a real reader."
(BBC News 25 Nov 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3233340.stm
THIS NUMBER'S READY FOR PRIME TIME
Michigan State University grad student Michael Shafer has succeeded in
identifying the largest known prime number to date, using a distributed
computer network of more than 200,000 computers located around the world.
The new number is 6,320,430 digits long and is only the 40th Mersenne prime
to have ever been discovered (Mersenne primes are an especially rare breed
that take the form of 2-to-the-power-of-P, where P is also a prime number).
Shafer was taking part in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS)
project, when the new number popped up. "I had just finished meeting with
my advisor when I saw the computer had found a new prime. After a short
victory dance, I called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share
the great news," said Shafer. (New Scientist 2 Dec 2003)
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438
[We All Just Know Inside That RFIDs Are Going To Be Inserted In Our Pets,
Put In Our Vehicles, And Even In All Of Our Shoes: No Shoes, No Service]
[Of Course, They Won't Be Put In THEIR Shoes. . . . Heaven Forbid That
Anyone Could Find A Rogue Government Agent. . .There Are Too Darn Many]
[Lifted from an anonymous source and paraphrased]
Sun Microsystems is opening a new center in Scotland to test
radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, in a move that signals the
company's desire to expand beyond the back office. Up until now, Sun has
best been known as a maker of servers used to power corporate networks and
Web sites. Now the company is branching out, selling software designed for
office desktops, for tracking retail sales in stores, and for downloading
games and tunes to mobile phones. "This allows Sun to sell the whole
ecosystem whereas previously we played into only one portion,"
says John Loiacono, VP of Sun's operating platforms group.
(International Herald Tribune 3 Dec 20030
http://www.iht.com/articles/120022.html
[Napster Is Dead! Long Live The New Napsters!]
HP JOINS INTERNET MUSIC FRENZY
Hewlett-Packard is diving into the online music fray with a branded
Internet music store and a portable digital music player that will compete
with similar offerings from Apple and Dell. HP, which ranks No. 2 in PC
sales and No. 1 in printers, is the latest computer maker to aggressively
expand their consumer electronics business in the face of stagnant PC sales
and weakened corporate spending. In addition to the music venture, HP
recently indicated it would soon start selling flat screen TVs, following
in the footsteps of Gateway and Dell. (Financial Times 3 Dec 2003)
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=Sto
ryFT&cid=1069493676868
SPAMMERS TARGET ANTI-SPAM GROUPS WITH E-MAIL WORM
Virus experts say a new worm, dubbed W32/Mimail-L, has been unleashed by a
vengeful spammonger intent on paralyzing anti-spam groups via a crippling
barrage of data -- a so-called denial of service attack. "It's the third
Mimail variation to come after us, except this one is trying to do more,"
says Steve Linford, founder of the Spamhaus Project. The nasty worm comes
as an attachment to an e-mail from "Wendy" who describes an erotic
encounter and then offers photos. Clicking on the attachment launches the
worm. In a new twist, a follow-up e-mail is sent to the infected user
announcing that an order for a CD containing child pornography images will
be sent to their mailing address. Virus experts say the impact of this
latest worm has been minimal, compared with the problems caused by last
summer's plague of viruses, "but what this shows is that there is more
evidence that virus writers and spammers are now colluding," says Sophos
senior technology consultant Graham Cluley. (Reuters 2 Dec 2003)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=AK2C1KNGSFTWSCRBAEZSFFA?type
=technologyNews&storyID=3925183
You have been reading excerpts from NewsScan:
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***
Headline News Mostly Avoided By The Major U.S. Media
Those of you who watch the evening news undoubtedly saw
a video tape made by some rebels in Iraq shooting a DHL
cargo plane with a shoulder fired SAM [Surface to Air Missle].
A U.S. helicopter can be seen cruising nearby in the tape.
The moment of the hit was edited out of all the American
media and they were sure to say that there was no evidence
that THIS missle was the cause of the damage to THAT plane.
The tape was received by a French journalist and then
relayed to the rest of the media. The entire length is
some 6 minutes, and even the BBC didn't show all of it,
but it didn't appear as if they edited it internally,
as did their U.S. counterparts.
[For those of you unfamiliar with DHL shipping, think of
"Airborne" in the U.S., a competitor to Fed-X, UPS, etc.
DHL is larger than any of them, and even owns Airborne.
There is a date stamp on the videtape, but not a time stamp,
so we can't easily tell over how many minutes it was taken.
I'm sure someone will analyze the sun's position and should
be able to say over how many minutes the video was taken.
[Apparently someone already thought of this, and confirmed
that the sun's angle is consistent with the time of day:
"At approximately 6:30 GMT this morning, a DHL aircraft,
an Airbus A300 freighter, departing from Baghdad to Bahrain,
had to return to Baghdad and effect an emergency landing,"
company spokeswoman Patricia Thomson said in Brussels."
I saw what appeared to be the entire segment of tape on the
BBC World News including the moment when the missle hit.
You can find copies of this online:
KEYWORDS: ATTACK; BAGHDAD; DHL; FRANCE; JAPAN; SAM; SHOULDER;
MISSILE; TERROR; TERRORISTS; VIDEO
I just used "dhl, missle, videotape"
Here are some URLs:
56k Stream:
http://www.bcast.co.jp/cgi-bin/yahoo/news.asx?cid=20031125-00000019-jn
n-int-movie-001&media=wm300k
300k Stream:
http://www.bcast.co.jp/cgi-bin/yahoo/news.asx?cid=20031125-00000019-jn
n-int-movie-001&media=wm56k
***
ANTI-FREE TRADE AND GLOBALIZATION. . .ECONOMIC HOME FRONT WARFARE!!!
In a "Think Globally, Act Locally" sort of response to Globalization,
some counties started advertising campaigns to encourage residents to
"Think Locally, Buy Locally," to keep revenues inside their counties.
This was a response to the building of large "Mega-Malls" that traded
in the retail arena with residents of multiple surrounding counties.
Since then, the "Mega-Mall" counties have retorted with the very same
campaign ads, encouraging their own resident to shop at home, rather
than supporting the non-local economies, and tax bases, of any of the
nearby counties.
If this trend continues, perhaps neighborhood stores will return, and
put the malls out of business, eh?
***
MORE ECONOMIC WARFARE, ON AN EVEN MORE LOCAL FRONT
Recent reports show that 60% of American workers are
planning to quit their jobs and go elsewhere to work
in the next two years. [Source NPR]
Indeed, other reports show that when employers snoop
on employees' email, most of their spying effort is
searching for keywords such as: resume, job-search,
and other items that would indicate workers are not
satisfied with their current positions.
The reason for this may be that while only 25% are
willing to say they are dissatisfied with the job,
60% are searching for something else.
With this kind of transitional labor force, the U.S.
worker could easily become labeled as "part time,"
or "migrant". . .with most workers planning on the
move to a new job in two years. . . .
But isn't this exactly what U.S. businesses WANTED
to create?. . .a totally mobile workforce that will
move to a new location at the drop of a hat?
Of course, they ONLY wanted those workers to move
when and where they were told to, within the same
multi-national corporations, such as IBM, but it
was only a matter of time before such mobility
went outside the corporate walls with the advent
of a cannibalistic "headhunter" mentality. . . .
Just out:
(San Jose Mercury News 2 Dec, 2002)
About half the workers would switch jobs just to
get a signing bonus of $1,000 in stock! Or even
just a better chance at earning a yearly bonus.
Apparently employees are also now willing to
consider that having their company get to know them
is of increasing importance, as companies are now
being bought and sold left and right. . . .
An engineer who quit when his company was bought out
confirmed this was a growing issue:
"You've got to know your employees. If you don't have a
personal relationship with them, somebody else will."
***
CORRECTION:
Only 40 minutes of TV programming per hour?
I mentioned that TV shows have 6 commercial breaks per hour,
but a recent show I logged showed 7 commercial breaks:
at 8, 15, 23, 33, 43, 52 and 58 minutes. This seems opposite
to what I recall, as all 4 middle ones had about 10 minutes
between them, with only the first 2 and last 2 being shorter.
I recall that they used to get more often as the show went on,
with the first segment being the longest. . .I'll do more testing.
During the 7 breaks there were some 25 full length commericals,
3 or 4 to a break, along with about half as many promotional ads
for upcoming shows [some are as long as full length commericals].
The last break was an exception, as it contained only 2 full length
commercials, 2 promos, and the credits. My old statistics probably
need to be updated, as it appears commercials are now taking nearly
20 minutes out of each hour, leaving only 40 for programming. The
networks like to say that the shows have 45 minutes per hour, but I
think that may have changed recently, that's why I was checking.
By the way, the study that said we were generating half a million
Libraries of Congress worth of information yearly also said that:
Only 31 television hours out of every 123 are original, and thus
92 hours are reruns of something that has been seen before, either
on television or some other medium [including movies, I presume].
That's about 3/4 of everything on television has been shown before,
and only about 1/4 is actually something prepared for current showing.
***
And, from one of our readers:
Have you seen this report:
"MPAA, RIAA seek permanent antitrust exemption"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34191.html
Their latest solution to all those pesky antitrust suits:
buy a law which makes them exempt!
***
NPR'S PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BLUNDER
It seems that in a recent debate in which college students were
supposed to be asking the candidates questions, that some of the
questions were actually being fed to the students against their will.
It was basically a case of "Ask this question, or you don't get to
ask anything," at least in the case of the now infamous "Mac or PC"
question asked of the candidates. Only one used a Mac, but that
was higher than the national average of some 1 out of 20.
So far it would appear that NPR is keeping the name of the producer
who did this a secret.
***
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pgweekly_2003_12_03_part_1.txt
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