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Watchbird

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29579/29579-h/29579-h.htm

If a book isn't currently copyrighted, you might be able to get a free copy of it at Project Gutenberg.

Smart phones have a high concentration of information about us that, individually may seem innocuous but when looked at on the whole can tell volumes.

One odd example of that was after I read a H.P. Lovecraft story on my phone's ereader application ("The Shunned House" https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo... ) the text message autocomplete had become seeded with the words H.P. Lovecraft used.

Nyet, Boris and Natasha are busy tryink to make all traffik lights in US turn green at same time. They read about this in American science fiction story, http://www.gutenberg.org/files....

Watchbird by Robert Sheckley: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook... these are autonomous and finally capable of killing. But, everything proceeds via a frog-boiling process, step by step.

I'm a 65 year old Brit and the rot seemed to start when the police were removed from the street (and stuck into Q-cars) because it was 'more efficient'. A person in a remote control room does not have the local knowledge to know that the 'threat' is someone is eccentric but harmless and has a heart problem. Result is judicial manslaughter.

And not literary sophistication, right?

If we're talking pure joy of tech, for me it has to be EE Doc Smith's SPACEHOUNDS OF THE IPC, originally published in Hugo Gernsback's AMAZING STORIES in 1931.

Now remember for readers in 1931 radio was high tech. Ever build a crystal radio set? Did you wonder what the point was? Well if you were a kid in the early 20s, with a wooden plank, a spool of wire, and a hunk of galena, you could build yourself the most advanced, high tech communication instrument on the planet. When the story was published in 1931, the hottest new tech was the vacuum tube radio. This took a few more premanunfactured parts -- the vacuum tubes obviousl, but still if you were ambitious and clever with your hands and could solder wires and cut and bend sheet metal, you still could build the most sophisticated communication receiver on the planet.

The story takes place in a high tech future that seems plausible for someone in '31. There is regular spaceliner service between Earth and Mars. Interesting side note -- these spaceliners operate by a kind of remotely broadcasted power, and use that to power their reactionless drives. If you were *very* sophisticated at the time, you would realize this avoids all the rocket equation related implausibilities of ships that have to carry the reaction mass to maintain constant acceleration. The ships are guided by beacon stations (radio of course!), but the station keepers have been getting sloppy, so the line sends their best computer (a *person* of course!) to pin their ears back.

The liner is attacked by an alien spaceship, cut apart, and towed in pieces to Jupiter.It is built in many small airtight compartments (like an OCEAN liner) so most of the people are still alive, including our hero who is stuck in small piece with a beautiful (yay) rich (double yay) girl. He manages to escape (I forget how), and they crash on Ganymede, which turns out to be just like Earth but with lower gravity.

Now here's the problem: the line is building a new supership; if they only knew everyone was being held at the moons of Jupiter they could rescue them. But as far as they know the liner just disappeared.

So what our hero and is lovely, plucky helpmate must do is something familiar to every red-blooded Depression era nerd: BUILD A RADIO SET! Only they've got nothing; they've got to work their way up from paleolithic tech all the way up to (their) present, figuring out how to smelt metal, blow glass, generate electricity, and reverse engineer the very latest high tech vacuum tube.

This kind of story represents a way of imagining the future of tech that we we never be able to believe in again; one in which a single heroically brilliant nerd can really master everything from banging the rocks together all the way up to the very cutting edge. You can imagine the hero of this book figuring out how to melt silica and blow glass, but you couldn't imagine him improvising a chip fab.

Despite the extended wooshing sound, I would like to suggest that gutenberg.org is your friend, sailor:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2147

--
Cheap, Fast, Good -- you have selected "None of the Above"?

The Constitutional limitations on federal power have never been anything more than a ruse to lull detractors of unlimited government power into a false sense of security. Look into Hobbes and Hamiltonian beliefs and you might be able to detect the real agenda, but it has been an unending shell game since at least The Federalist Papers.
We all need to have a sit-down and talk about what form of government we all want to have. To that end, I have created The Pirate-Ninja-Zombie Party Facebook group.

The Constitutional limitations on federal power have never been anything more than a ruse to lull detractors of unlimited government power into a false sense of security. Look into Hobbes and Hamiltonian beliefs and you might be able to detect the real agenda, but it has been an unending shell game since at least The Federalist Papers.
We all need to have a sit-down and talk about what form of government we all want to have. To that end, I have created The Pirate-Ninja-Zombie Party Facebook group.

The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth.

Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government.

Just what do you think that means?

Tell them to go to Project Gutenberg!

Then, either read on-screen, or print 4-up, double-sided, to take home.

Your post reminds me of a story in South Sea Tales by Jack London in which people ride out a hurricane on a low-lying island by tying themselves to the palm trees.

That depends on how you commit sabotage. I refer you to this WW2 OSS manual on Simple Sabotage that showed inventive ways of screwing up productivity without putting saboteurs at undue risk. Many of the techniques would be quite applicable to anyone today who held a grudge against their employer.

All my books on my Kobos, Nook and iPad are DRM free.
And besides one or two "iBooks" they are all *.epub

e.g. see: http://www.obooko.com/, http://www.baen.com/baenebooks, http://www.gutenberg.org/

Plenty of "free" or "trial" download sites you find here:
http://www.freemake.com/blog/2...

Cheap and also free books: https://www.smashwords.com/

That will not work in a free-market capitalist system, where underutilized worked will be considered to be "takers", and the wealthy will work to eliminate their costs.

Some historical context, "A Modest Proposal" , which was taken as a "good idea" by many people who did not understand the satire.

Copyright is based on authorship. So, while the main text of Mein Kampf is in the public domain, this new two-volume work will legitimately claim a new copyright. The new copyright will come from all those notes, which were created through acts of authorship. Contrary to the other contemporary story of Otto Frank, editorship is sweat of the brow, while authorship is creativity (see https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki... , for example). Translation does qualify as authorship, since is an intellectual creative act. (Dunno about machine translation...)

In the US, public domain items often have a copyright claim due to a new preface, or introduction or even cover art. Check some of the "Penguin Classics" in your local bookstore for examples. For Mein Kampf, all that added content will create a mixed item, where extracting just the public domain content (minus notes and whatever else is new) will take some effort. Luckily, the public domain text is already widely available without the new notes.

As mentioned, copyright expiry based on life+70 has no bearing in the US for items published prior to 1978 (https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To). Due to GATT, no copyright renewal was required after 28 years for items published outside of the US to get the full copyright term. The translations into English were not made until after the original German, of course. In the US, copyright will expire 95 years after publication based on the current USC Title 17 (which, as we know, TPP might force to change). But that's another story...
    - gbn

You can download a few of his books from http://gutenberg.org/
I'm reading right now 'The Galaxy Primes', it is a bout psionic humans who find lots of planets settled by humans.
I read the Lensmen as a boy, at least those which where translated into german.
Unfortunately I found only two lensmen cycle books on gutenberg.org, but it is still worth reading.
However the 'escalation to bigger and bigger' is a typical thing at that time in SF ...
Even Honour Harrington suffers from this a bit.

It parallels the advancement of technologies during wartime stresses. Look at the advancement of technology between the beginning of WWI and the end of WWII.

You can download a few of his books from http://gutenberg.org/
I'm reading right now 'The Galaxy Primes', it is a bout psionic humans who find lots of planets settled by humans.
I read the Lensmen as a boy, at least those which where translated into german.
Unfortunately I found only two lensmen cycle books on gutenberg.org, but it is still worth reading.
However the 'escalation to bigger and bigger' is a typical thing at that time in SF ...
Even Honour Harrington suffers from this a bit.

The corpuscular theory of light, which described weightless packets of light, was proposed by Newton. That predates relativity more than "very briefly".

My original use of "rest mass", which is a relativistic concept, was poor, I'll admit. I should have just used "mass".

I think he's channeling Timothy Dexter. The foil is always shifting but the tin remains the same.

The best book on calculus I've ever encountered, beating any modern prescribed text by a country mile in terms of how it explains things, is Sylvanus Thompson's "Calculus Made Easy".

As a free ebook from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

(Note - direct links to project Gutenberg bibliographic details)
Armageddon - 2419 A.D.
The Airlords of Han

I have fairly high confidence that PG has at least one competent lawyer and knows what they're talking about when they say those works are in the public domain.

(Note - direct links to project Gutenberg bibliographic details)
Armageddon - 2419 A.D.
The Airlords of Han

I have fairly high confidence that PG has at least one competent lawyer and knows what they're talking about when they say those works are in the public domain.

The two original stories are in the public domain in the US. Here are Project Gutenberg links.

Armageddonâ"2419 A.D.
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

and

The Airlords of Han
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

Of course no where in the stories was the name Buck Rogers used. That name didn't start until the comic strip.

The two original stories are in the public domain in the US. Here are Project Gutenberg links.

Armageddonâ"2419 A.D.
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

and

The Airlords of Han
https://www.gutenberg.org/eboo...

Of course no where in the stories was the name Buck Rogers used. That name didn't start until the comic strip.

amazon's app may crash, but android has a lot of good apps including the GPLed FBReader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_e-book_reader_software which while it is gpl'ed it doesn't do DRM. this leaves projects like project gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ gutenburg has a lot of old books. however beware, some public domain works like 'a princess of mars' have been converted into movies by disney (john carter is the movie version)

Can't exactly bring the console to Red Lobster

If you want to bring your console to Pinocchio's favorite restaurant (source: chapter 13), sure you can. Just make sure it's a PlayStation Vita.

This might help: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki...
And, the updated "Rule 6 How-To" at https://copy.pglaf.org/

For something published in the US after 1923 and before 1964, renewal of copyright was necessary to get a further 28-year extension. (Term extensions in 1998 extended copyright of items published in 1964 onward, and removed the need to renew.)

The Rule 6 how-to has a template for non-renewal research that might satisfy YouTube, if you do the research and send it in.

Only around 10% of items published from 1923 onwards were renewed. (It's no longer required, but you can still renew today.) The US Library of Congress has records of copyright registrations and renewals, and the Rule 6 How-To describes where to get the records. For items from 1923-1963, the renewals for printed items are comprehensive.

Serialization is sometimes a problem. Items might have been published, then published in another form (say, a magazine article that was published as a book), and if the timing is close enough one renewal might cover both items.

Proving something is in the public domain in the US, for printed items, is not that hard for items published from 1923-1963. It takes some time and expertise, and there is always a chance there is a renewal that you didn't find. Proving it is still copyrighted is also easy: show me the renewal.

    - Greg

> complete disregard for her oath.

She didn't take an oath you stupid Republican liar. She isn't in the military, and she isn't the President yet. Maybe you took one, but that doesn't mean everyone else did. Why do you Republicans constantly project? You think just because your kind is stupid and violent that everyone else must be. Well, we aren't. We are not you. Not. No way. Not in any way. And, stop with that spew of lies about Hillary. It is very telling that she is so innocent that you have to lie to try to attack her.

As usual, Republicans have nothing on her so they make-up ridiculous fantasies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVxLzs4YQPY

This links to footage of Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office as the Secretary of State

https://www.gutenberg.org/
https://mises.org/library/books
https://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/index.html

Here you go kid. read some books learn something

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

Here's Philip K. Dick's take on this from 1953- Second Variety, https://www.gutenberg.org/file...

Yeah, give teenage boys technical power - that worked so well for the phone company....

http://www.gutenberg.org/files...

How much is that in library of congress?
Please, I'm no nerd, I don't know this "technology" stuff.

6 Shakespeares... or
16.5 gzip-Shakespeares... or a whopping
22.6 bzip2-Shakespeares.

The Bard fares well by the Burrows-Wheeler algorithm for his works are so oft-repeated he even runs on and repeats himself. "...So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent" as RLE (run length encoding) and "To smother up the English in our throngs, If any order might be thought upon..." as MTF (Move to Front) Transform. "We render you the tenth; to be ta'en forth! Before the common distribution at your only choice... as encode to Huffmans and selection of the sweetest table, and "Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns. Once, and a million!... symbol usage stored as sparse array.

Here is a brief video clip showing the moment the LightSail team browsed the log file to discover the error.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook... It's a Kurt Vonnegut Jr. story. Essentially, to get a license to reproduce somebody had to go in a suicide booth for you.

The others aren't just prepared to murder Wilders. They want to abolish democracy and replace it with sharia law, and kill the Untermenschen i.e. the unbelievers.

Please don't try and conflate Islamic fundamentalism and the Nazis.
Untermenschen does not mean "the unbelievers" it means "the under-man"

The American who first used the term in the context of inherent inferiority, which is how we understand it, said thusly:
"This term is The Under-Man the man who measures under the standards of capacity and adaptability imposed by the social order in which he lives."

That same year, he also published The New World of Islam where, if you glance at the chapter titles, you'll notice he calls Muslims "Bolsheviks."
Unsurprisingly, this is the same label that the Nazis attached to the Jews in an effort to slur them.
(And no, Bolshevism and communism are not the same as national socialism. The Nazis weren't commies.)

I guess this might be due to a 32-bit signed integer being incremented at 100 Hz: 2^31 / 24 / 3600 / 100 = 248.5 days.

Yes, the moment the big bird would shut down was correctly prognosticated by the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. While testing a crowbar circuit he ran out of time and came to while munching on phattened feasant at Medieval Times, in a daze of King Arthur. He noticed an unused carrion bit, and realized that birds of prayer who managed the King's affairs were hard-sinewed to pluck quills for signing and always discarded the carrion bit. He caught the underflow was heralded by the people and befriended by the King, who set him to work hacking the Code of Chivalry and cracking the Y1K problem. In that time there were only punch cards and knights on horseback only had a resolution of 1 bit, so tournaments were long the fields were full of snakes, to avoid spooking the horses the knights would dismount and cleave them with sword, leaving half-adders strewn about. It was Pendragon who had built the famous Round Table with 12 seats, two complete I Chings, where Arthur and the knights would drop in and punch out binary sums in a rudimentary form of patty-cake, which inspired the mechanical circular adder of later years. The Yankee's refinement was a 13th chair left unoccupied to mark the betrayal of Judas, and also to serve as a carrion bit.

There is a great deal more about gum-powder and 99 cent gamut of Steampunk-driven micro commerce, a Debian release called 'Guinevere' and a whole lotta Lancelot, but time is fun when you're having flies.

I suspect availability of good things to read isn't really the big problem here. You know, because, libraries.

And let's not forget Project Gutenberg, over 46,000 free ebooks.

So how about some copyright reform! Fuck, give the $250m directly to the MPAA/RIAA. Do something about the ludicrous copyright period. Imagine how many more great books would enter the public domain?!

Hasn't anyone developing these weapons read any science-fiction? Is Fred Saberhagen so far out of vogue that no one has read *any* of the Berserker novels or stories?
How about Phillip K. Dick? He's been pretty popular with Hollywood recently, and his story Second Variety was not only about this very thing, but made into a movie starring Peter Weller called "Screamers". You can read it for free via Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

Edward Bellamy, cousin of Francis Bellamy who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance along with prescribing its Nazi-like flag salute, wrote Looking Backward in 1888 which included a prediction of "almost instantaneous, Internet-like delivery of goods". Well, that quote was from Wikipedia. Because the book predates Mickey Mouse, the full text is available on gutenberg.org:

But, Mr. West, you must not fail to ask father to take you to the central warehouse some day, where they receive the orders from the different sample houses all over the city and parcel out and send the goods to their destinations. He took me there not long ago, and it was a wonderful sight. The system is certainly perfect; for example, over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders, as they are taken by the different departments in the store, are sent by transmitters to him. His assistants sort them and enclose each class in a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatic transmitters before him answering to the general classes of goods, each communicating with the corresponding department at the warehouse. He drops the box of orders into the tube it calls for, and in a few moments later it drops on the proper desk in the warehouse, together with all the orders of the same sort from the other sample stores. The orders are read off, recorded, and sent to be filled, like lightning. The filling I thought the most interesting part. Bales of cloth are placed on spindles and turned by machinery, and the cutter, who also has a machine, works right through one bale after another till exhausted, when another man takes his place; and it is the same with those who fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are then delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributed to the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all done when I tell you that my order will probably be at home sooner than I could have carried it from here.

LETTERS ON AN ELK HUNT
By a Woman Homesteader
Copyright, 1915, by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
http://www.gutenberg.org/files...

Gort.

Remember Leviathan by Hobbes? The idea is that peace only comes when somebody has overwhelming power, enough to shut down small wars between 'vassal' states. Now, I want to be 'in charge' too, but that probably won't happen, and the next best thing is for whomever IS in charge to be able to kick the shit out of anybody who tries to hurt me.

Although his might have come a little closer. As an aside, you won't see gender-sensitive writing like this anymore, except as comedy:

And voice after voice repeated, "It is nearer," and the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. "It is nearer." Men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, "It is nearer." It hurried along wakening streets, it was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet villages; men who had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passersby. "It is nearer." Pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel. "Nearer! Indeed. How curious! How very, very clever people must be to find out things like that!"

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

No, there's nothing in the book about silver killing vampires. A "sacred bullet" would kill it in its coffin, though.

Excellent quote; thank you.

I am reminded of a passage from A Tale of Two Cities, where Monsieur runs down and kills a young boy:

He took out his purse.

“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.”

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”

A Tale of Two Cities

Thanks! I always confuse Sheckley and Silverberg :)
It seems to be available legally online on Project Gutenberg, if you found the article interesting go read it for a laugh: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook...

Ah, so you haven't read it. It's not that long, check it out. Certainly better-written and more interesting than 'Atlas Shrugged'.

Enjoy:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files...

H. Beam Piper wrote about this in 1952, in his book Null ABC. The author detailed how literacy in schools continued to decline, as more and more educational gadgets became available, until society was divided between "literates" and "illiterates." The illiterates controlled the vast majority of business, but literacy was still required to practice law, and serve in the judicial branch of government.

Check out a physical version of the book here, an audio link here, a free eBook version here and a free audio book (that is probably the same as the paid one I linked to you above) here.

I really enjoyed the audio version I listened to. It was extremely entertaining, and a scathing social commentary on the future of public education as H. Beam Piper (correctly) envisioned it.

The difference between his book and SO MANY of the other textbooks I have is that his is actually good. Why do you think everyone recognizes the name "James Stewart" as the calculus author?

I recognise Silvanus Thompson as the calculus author. He died a quarter of a century before this Stewart newbie was born. And since his calculus text was written in 1910, the cost to students is $0.

Here is a story with an unexpected twist:

http://libertydwells.com/archi...

BTW, I miss Sheckley so much....I yet have to discover another master of the short Sci-Fi story that measures to him.

Of course he did wrote one that is in line with the "what could possibly go wrong" meme:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files...

Enjoy:))