Slashdot Mirror

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.pgdp.net/c/

Why are you linking a wikipedia article about a book in the public domain? Here it is, choose your favorite ebook format and read away.

So if an animal with 22 mutated and was accidentally born with 23, it could not breed with it's brethren. Unless another animal was similarly mutated to have 23 chromosomes. What is the likelihood that two mutated animals would even live in close enough proximity to one another to successfully mate?

That's NOT how it works. Genes mutate, not chromosome counts. And chromosome counts does not mean you can't produce hybrids with different chromosome counts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule

A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse.[1] Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny (the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey).

Look up interbreeding in canine family. Not all can interbreed with each other. A coyote can interbreed with some wolfs, but not others. Yet those wolfs can interbreed with each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coywolf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_by_chromosome_count

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

PS. Even humans have different chromosome counts and they are not "different species".

http://www.genome.gov/11508982

lots of "abnormalities". That's how evolution works. "Abnormalities" combined with selection pressure. If there is no selection pressure (ie. death before reproduction), abnormalities just stick around. That's how evolution works. If you want to know, read books. Some are free now, like The Origin of Species.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228

What do you mean? They only provide source, no binaries there, sir! (Although you can also get stuff pre-compiled.)

I'm looking for examples of beautiful open source code in any language. If you know of any, please let me know.

Try this repository.

You're right, it can be downloaded. From Project Gutenberg even.

You're right, it can be downloaded. From Project Gutenberg even.

Well, I never met a math exercise I wouldn't at least try. Here you go.

History says otherwise:

"Besides, of all ways whereby great wealth is acquired by good and honest means, none is more advantageous than mining; for although from fields which are well tilled (not to mention other things) we derive rich yields, yet we obtain richer products from mines; in fact, one mine is often much more beneficial to us than many fields. For this reason we learn from the history of nearly all ages that very many men have been made rich by the mines, and the fortunes of many kings have been much amplified thereby."

From here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38015/38015-h/38015-h.htm

So we are mining energy instead of metals now, anybody know a good book about energy?
Beyond that I first want to see a space efficient fusion reactor that works. What ever happened to Bussards wiffle ball reactor the US Navy swallowed?

We are the only country in world history that acts like this. We waste our national resources on things that are not of vital national interest. Syria doesn't have anything we really want. Even if they did, we are probably better off supporting Assad to undermine the Russians and the Chinese.

Countries have been acting like this since the beginning of countries or even cities. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about this in his famous book called The Prince, which explains why sometimes the actions of a government, especially that government's military, sometimes seems to be at odds with common sense or at least any sort of moral authority and ethical behavior.

There is not right or wrong, just what is in the best interest of whatever part of the world you happen to be in. Even ideology takes a back seat to geography and "national interests".

Link:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19362

I don't know if other people are as cheap as me, but I sure can see how once you find Project Gutenberg you might purchase a lot less at $15/pop.

Personally I quite like supporting authors whose works I enjoy by buying their books. I have this naive theory that if enough people buy their books, they might write some more. But maybe I'm just dreaming ...

(Not dissing PG for a minute, incidentally, and more power to it -- but there's times when the classics don't cut it)

Stop the advertisement-driven madness of "I HAVE TO READ BOOK X NOW!!!".
Read from the massive catalogue of what's out there for free and never pay for e-books. This is how I recommend you go about it:

1. Get your e-ink based reader (I recommend the new Kobo Aurahd).
2. Head over to one of the many sources of out-of-copyright books like http://www.gutenberg.org/. Browse and find stuff you may like. Also keep an eye out for CC-licensed books around the web.
3. Go forth and indulge in http://libgen.info/ or a similar e-book piracy web site and get your fix, because, well fuck 'em.

Maybe you won't find every damn book you desire to have right now, but you will find so many good books that are more than enough to last you a lifetime.
Enjoy the reading and the savings.

There are also countless books in the public domain that you can get for free.

and

You can borrow ebooks from the library,

That and the occasional free book from Amazon constitutes about 99% of the reading done on our Kindle. I don't know if other people are as cheap as me, but I sure can see how once you find Project Gutenberg you might purchase a lot less at $15/pop.

I can't seem to find any useful population-level surveys of lead exposure in the classical world; but Vitruvius does mention the health effects seen in in lead-workers:

"10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:—if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome.

11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste."

(Pages 246-47 of the Project Gutenberg edition.)

The degree to which the recognized the toxic effects doesn't seem to have stopped them from using lead pipes or lead acetate; but it was apparently recognized as an occupational hazard.

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Time to dust of that black flag!

Here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20728

Can the same be said about eBooks 50 years from now?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1

The first ebook from Project Gutenberg, circa 1971. Still fully readable 41 years later. If you think all the copies will disappear in the next 9 years, you're an idiot.

So yeah... the same thing can absolutely be said about ebooks.

I remember the story from Bruce Sterling's book on Operation Sundevil. It's a great read and had a huge impact on me when I was young.

If you want old books, Project Gutenberg might be worth your time.

Alliance: two thieves who have their hands so deeply insert into each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

That sounds like something out of Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

That's because it is.

Great story by H. G. Wells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind
"At the end of his descent, down a snow-slope in the mountain's shadow, he finds a valley, cut off from the rest of the world on all sides by steep precipices. Unbeknownst to Nunez, he has discovered the fabled Country of the Blind. ..."

It does not go as he or the reader might expect. Spoilers at Wikipedia, but here it it is online:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11870

As a possible example, people who would share publicly-funded information freely in violation of copyright are persecuted (Aaron Swartz)...

Also, here's the more handy link to the book page itself, which lets us choose what format we want to read it in, and provides other useful information and links.

Here's a handy link to the Gutenberg Project version of The Trial by Kafka:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7849/pg7849.html

I've never read it, at least until now.

H. Beam Piper posited that an archeological team, finding the remains of a reasonably advanced civilization would be able to puzzle out their language(s) based on the fundamentals of math and chemistry in his novel ``Omnilingual'':

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19445

I wonder what he would have thought of this, and how many other useful representations / arrangements there are of the periodic table.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who remembers this. Consider though that they confirmed the information it out from the electron shells and atomic weights since they had already found reasonable guesses for number symbols and "months", the fact that it was arranged as a table was just one of the clues used to decipher it.

(The concept of a periodic table as Rosetta Stone was reused in a Stargate episode and probably elsewhere, but Omnilingual is the oldest one I know of.)

H. Beam Piper posited that an archeological team, finding the remains of a reasonably advanced civilization would be able to puzzle out their language(s) based on the fundamentals of math and chemistry in his novel ``Omnilingual'':

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19445

I wonder what he would have thought of this, and how many other useful representations / arrangements there are of the periodic table.

This person, "anonymous," clearly needs to read Walden. E-text http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205 Full audio version http://librivox.org/walden-by-henry-david-thoreau/

My relationship with government is a net loss... I make less than the national average salary

Average? The average (mean) income is WAY higher than the median. But lets assume you meant median. You very obviously went to a public school. You use roads and bridges. If you get trapped somewhere, the fire department will extricate you (think Oklahoma City last night). Same if you wreck your car, the paramedics are paid by your taxes.

The government makes sure (or as sure as it can) that when you buy 100 mg of tylenol, it's a full 100mg, is actually acetaminophen.

Read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (full text here) for a glimpse of what it was like before the FDA.

You know how alcohol is different today than it was when it was illegal and unregulated? Then, you didn't have to drink a whole quart to die or go blind, get it from the wrong guy and one shot would kill you.

I was 18 when the EPA was instituted and lived two miles from a Monsanto plant. You literally could not breathe driving past it! Guess who made that place livable? GOVERNMENT REGULATION!

Sorry, but you are completely ignorant about the value of government. Read a little history, son.

For a good insight into the "modern" terrorist, the novel "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907, nails it depressingly well (Gutenberg version here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/974).

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=astounding+stories+of+super+science

Yep, sometimes oldies are goodies.

there is http://www.gutenberg.org/

and its excellent feeder http://pgdp.net/

Yet another mammon worshiper. How much did you pay for that stuff you're breathing? How much did you pay for that stuff that fell out of couds and watered your garden? How much do you have to pay to read this stuff on slashdot? How much do you pay to read Huckleberry Finn?

How much did I pay for those nectarines that grew on the tree in front of my house?

No, I certainly do not have to pay for stuff. Even food can be free.

In related news, three babies were just born named Tom, Roger, and Astro.

Hello

When I first saw the headline, I thought it was going to be a fossilized bioluminescent sunstone from H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy series of science fiction stories.

Still, a fascinating read, albeit not one as exciting as if H. Beam Piper's fictional sunstones had been found to exist in real life.

Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky

Second Variety is available via the Gutenberg project: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32032
I read it as a kid and it totally creeped me out.

Adam Smith, Wealth of nations, p107, about the ones making profits: " The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38194/38194-h/38194-h.htm Why don't we listen ???

Here's something I used in that way years ago.

I download some books as text files from Project Gutenberg, and had a program which would randomly select a ~10 line section from a random file. It would then encode this file as a simple substitution cypher. Finally I had a little program to aid with decoding - it would display the cypher text, and let me try various cypher-letter to plaintext-letter assignments.

I left word spacing and punctuation intact, which makes the problem pretty easy and entertaining. For example, a cypher word 'ABCA" is very likely to be "that" (or otherwise "else" or "says".) If you see words "ABC" and "DBC" they are probably "the" and "she".

Here is the encyphering program. (I couldn't find my original of this, so I've just rewritten it now. I remember the original was a one-liner using all sorts of trickery, but my Perl is too rusty to reproduce that now.) It acts as a pipe - it takes the text to be encyphered on standard input and writes the cypher text to standard output.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $plain = join "", map{lc}<STDIN>;
my %translate = ();
my $nextCodeChar = 'a';
my $cypher = "";
for my $plainChar (split "", $plain) {
if ($plainChar =~ /[a-z]/) {
if (!defined($translate{$plainChar})) {
$translate{$plainChar}=$nextCodeChar++;
}
print $translate{$plainChar};
} else {
print $plainChar;
}
}

I've managed to find the decoding program, reproduced below. This program is designed to run from a text terminal, and takes the filename of the cyphertext as a command line argument. Automatically extracting the random plain text, encyphering it, and then running the decypherment program on the result is left as an exercise to the programmer.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

# decypher: aids solving simple substitution cyphers.
# usage: decypher filename

my (%freq, %cypher, %decypher);

# Read the cyphertext
my @cyphertext = map{lc}<>;

# Count the characters
my @copy = @cyphertext;
map{s/[a-z]/$freq{$&}++/ge} @copy;

# To do:
# Print cypher and frequency ordered by plaintext
# one, two, three letter words and frequencies.
# digraph frequencies?

# Loop getting commands
while (defined(chomp(my $command=<STDIN>))) {
if ($command eq "f") { freq_table(); }
elsif ($command eq "p") { plain_text(); }
elsif ($command eq "q") { last; }
elsif ($command eq "c") { clear(); }
elsif ($command =~ /^([a-z])=([a-z ])/i) { guess($1,$2); }
elsif ($command =~ /^([a-z])=$/i) { guess($1," "); }
else { print
"Unknown command '$command'
Commands are:
'f': print frequency table
'p': print cypher and partial plain text
'q': quit
'c': clear letter associations
<letter1>=<letter2>: associate cypher letter1 with plaintext letter2
<letter>=: remove plaintext association to plaintext letter\n"; }
}

sub freq_table {

my $count = 0;
for (sort keys %freq) {
printf "%s%s %3d %s", $_, $cypher{$_} ? "=$cypher{$_}" : " ", $freq{$_}, (++$count%5 ? "" : "\n");
}
print $count%6 ? "\n\n" : "\n";
}

sub plain_text {

my $tr = "";
foreach ("a".."z") {

Who owned the Agora, the marketplace, in Athens? Who owned the grounds where farmers sold their produce in medieval villages? This was effectively a commons.

Who owned the fishing rights for the seas?

From "Mutual Aid" by Petr Kropotkin ( http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4341/pg4341.html ):

Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. [from the Conclusion]

---

From Chapter IV:

Many stems had no force to resist disintegration: they broke up and were lost for history. But the more vigorous ones did not disintegrate. They came out of the ordeal with a new organization—the village community—which kept them together for the next fifteen centuries or more. The conception of a common territory, appropriated or protected by common efforts, was elaborated, and it took the place of the vanishing conceptions of common descent. [...]

It is now known, and scarcely contested, that the village community was not a specific feature of the Slavonians, nor even of the ancient Teutons. It prevailed in England during both the Saxon and Norman times, and partially survived till the last century;(3) it was at the bottom of the social organization of old Scotland, old Ireland, and old Wales. In France, the communal possession and the communal allotment of arable land by the village folkmote persisted from the first centuries of our era till the times of Turgot, who found the folkmotes "too noisy" and therefore abolished them. It survived Roman rule in Italy, and revived after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the rule with the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, the Finns (in the pittaya, as also, probably, the kihla-kunta), the Coures, and the lives. The village community in India—past and present, Aryan and non-Aryan—is well known through the epoch-making works of Sir Henry Maine; and Elphinstone has described it among the Afghans. We also find it in the Mongolian oulous, the Kabyle thaddart, the Javanese dessa, the Malayan kota or tofa, and under a variety of names in Abyssinia, the Soudan, in the interior of Africa, with natives of both Americas, with all the small and large tribes of the Pacific archipelagoes. In short, we do not know one single human race or one single nation which has not had its period of village communities. This fact alone disposes of the theory according to which the village community in Europe would have been a servile growth. It is anterior to serfdom, and even servile submission was powerless to break it. It was a universal phase of evolution, a natural outcome of the clan organization, with all those stems, at least, which have played, or play still, some part in history.(4)

[...]

wealth was conceived exclusively in the shape of movable property, including cattle, implements, arms, and the dwelling house which—"like all things that can be destroyed by fire"—belonged to the same category(6). As to private property in land, the village community did not, and could not, recognize anything of the kind, and, as a rule, it does not recognize it now. The land was the common property of the tribe, or of the whole stem, and the village community itself owned its part of the tribal territory so long only as the tribe did not claim a re-distribution of the village allotments. The clearing of the woods and the breaking of the prairies being mostly done by the communities or, at least, by the joint work of several families—always with the consent of the community—the cleared plots were held by each family for a term of four, twelve,

Excellent suggestion! Turns out it's available free

More than a quiet place to read, why is needed that library? For most digital books for your own e-reader, computer or phone, an access point and knowing where to get the books (i.e. Project Gutenberg) is enough. Even lending, if you want to do it, can be done online.

A more elaborate linguistic dodge (if you were writing a revolutionary manifesto or such) would be to create a detailed outline of your intended message and then set it aside. Go read works from an author, genre, or time period that you normally wouldn't be interested in. Absorb the linguistic quirks of this alter-canon and then "channel" it while you expand your manifesto's outline into a draft.

Take for instance, the distinctive voice of Thomas Paine's Common Sense :

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness.

I normally use "people" instead of "writers" and "confused" instead of "confounded", avoid multiple negatives/inversions in the same sentence ("little or no"... "whereas"... "not only"... "but"), use more parenthetical comments, write complete sentences after a {comma, conjuction} combination, and avoid the words "whereas" or "wicked". So if I channeled Paine successfully (and had some level awareness of my own quirks), I'd probably produce a linguistically distinct text.

Potential drawbacks include (1) being long-winded when you need to be succinct, (2) coming across as gimmicky b/c your speech isn't normal, or (3) coming across as fake b/c you're busy injecting artifice instead of genuine passion.

Perhaps a more interesting use of this approach would be to "frame" or draw suspicion to someone by producing an manifesto that matches other works they have published.

No free books and music
No free games

Wtf is wrong with the world

Free books you say? How about here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ and here: http://www.baen.com/library/

Free music? Probably plenty here: http://archive.org/ and here: http://www.youtube.com/ (I'm sure there are plenty of worthwhile indy artists that put there music up there on YouTube to be freely downloaded and enjoyed. As for games, I don't know. Perhaps someone else can post a site with games that are freely downloadable.

minority report is $1.99 on the kindle

And if it were in the Public Domain, it would be available for $1.99 less than that - both free and libre.

I’d rather take the risk of being wrong than not be talking about that.'"

OK, you're wrong. One aspect of the raw, awfulness that is anonymous internet commentary is far more important than polite reasoned discourse. It represents the true feelings of the participants, unhindered by social inhibitions and cultural conditioning. It is digital drunkenness, and like drunkenness, often reveals ugly facts about human nature, which remain facts, nonetheless.

Perhaps you prefer the sweet simpering smiles of courtesy. I do not. I would rather know who and what people really are. Reality rules. Fantasy is for fools.

I think the poster neglects something very important here, that the nature of our discussions and interactions changes us. If our default level of discussion is the internet equivalent of a bar room brawl, it will tend to bring out, to accentuate, to amplify those irrational and cruel tendencies. If this becomes too widespread, it will not end well for society.

The poster refers to the "ugly facts" about human nature. If I want to discover these "ugly facts", a quick survey of Roman history will suffice. Roman legions entering a town and indiscriminately kill 300 000 men, women and children. The mad emperors Caligula, Nero and Commodus committed atrocities that would make most readers want to throw up upon reading about them. Never mind the barbarism of slavery. We humans are quite messed up. We have the potential to be good, but we also have the potential to be monsters. Does that mean that we should tolerate, nay, encourage those traits?

Interestingly enough, to say all religions are made up is probably generalizing too much. There are "revealed" religions and "natural" religions. Most major religions are revealed religions at this point in time. Basically, revealed religions are those in which God/gods reveal themselves, generally through intermediaries. Essentially, revealed religions are those in which someone has to tell you about the religion and how you relate to God/gods. Meanwhile, natural religions involve finding the nature of god by examining the world around us. An awesome book on natural religions and some of the paradoxes that result is Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4583

Russia took the conquest of Kosovo by the US and the EUSSR as a precedent: "If you can legitimize an invasion and a land grab simply by proclaming the regions you want to grab as independent first, so can we." And they did. And they will again if they feel like it, because no international law exists any more to stop them.

Russia did nothing of the sort. If you really want to understand why Russia went into Georgia, I would suggest reading this book or you can simply read the Cliff Notes.

It was simply in the national interest to do what Russia did, as was also the case with Kosovo. In the case of the USA, it was even more about the personal ambition and the need to establish a "lasting legacy" on the part of Bill Clinton.... and ditto for Putin in regards to Georgia. Russia wanted a strong leader, so that is what they got.

It won't be too long before our friends at Raytheon etc. convince our others friends in the government that their newest drone is capable of making the 'kill decision' all by itself using some fancy schmancy software.

Yep. It will probably go something like this.

All the non-techys I know that have kindles have no idea how to put books on it that aren't on the Amazon store and think that it sounds too hard.. . . I have months of reading ahead of me on mine thanks to Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/

But I think that expecting the average Joe to know and find out about this stuff is a stretch. Amazon has made it too convenient.

  Not being a regular on the Amazon store, I have only just learned that they offer free books (thanks to your post).

I don't think I've paid for a book since I got my Kindle a year ago. Even if you could somehow exhaust the tens of thousands of books at Project Gutenberg, they now loan eBooks at your friendly neighborhood library. If the veterans are even a tiny bit technically inclined, they can run Calibre and convert almost anything into a Kindle-friendly ebook.

Lord of the World! Volors! Fr. Robert Hugh Benson predicted it back in 1915!