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Domain: isbn.nu

Stories and comments across the archive that link to isbn.nu.

Comments · 176

  1. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  2. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  3. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  4. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  5. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  6. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  7. Knuth's Stanford Graphbase and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on Computer Books For A Library?

    I think Knuth's best work is The Stanford Graphbase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing

    These would also do well in a library:

    I tend to judge which books should be in the library by which have been stolen from me the most. By that criterion, C Programming Language is running neck-and-neck with SQL Instant Reference, but my most coveted at the moment is Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition

    -- James Salsman
    (please mod me to +1 since I'm actually nonanonymous here -- thank you!)

  8. Re:uses for IPN by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1 · on Interplanetary Internet (IPN)

    Does this remind anyone else of A Deepness in the Sky or Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

  9. Re:uses for IPN by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1 · on Interplanetary Internet (IPN)

    Does this remind anyone else of A Deepness in the Sky or Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

  10. Jessica Litman's _Digital Copyright_ by eries · · Score: 2 · on Searching for Pro-Napster Experts and Speakers?

    The absolutely best book about the state of copyright law in the US for the layperson is Jessica Litman's excellent Digital Copyright. I strongly encourage anybody who has an opinion about copyright to read this book.

  11. Personally by dubl-u · · Score: 1 · on Programming Environment For "Event Correlation"?

    Personally, I'd use some sort of scripting environment, probably Perl, for all of the prototyping, playing around, data translation, and glue work.

    And then for serious stuff, I'd use something more structured and formal. Personally, I like Java; it's well known, pretty well supported, good at handling errors, has a reasonable amount of network stuff built in or available, and from the beginning had threading in mind. But I would certainly use some sort of OO language for this, as this kind of work strikes me as well-suited for an OO approach.

    Oh, and do your work incrementally! Avoid grand plans; code in an exploratory fashion. If you're doing OO work, the book Refactoring is a great one. And if you're doing incremental design in Java, you will soon grow addicted to unit testing; I have grown to love JUnit, a Java unit testing framework.

    But if this is mainly for your own use, use whatever tools you are most familiar with. I find that tackling a new tool and a new problem domain at the same time is generally too much to allow quality work. New problem? Old tool. New tool? Old problem first!

  12. Re:Holocaust is a Myth by jamiemccarthy · · Score: 2 · on Yahoo Knuckles Under
    "Before spouting off about things of which you know nothing, do some research."

    Please do. I'd like to respond to you personally to offer some good research sources, but you posted anonymously so I can't.

    One good source that debunks 66 common Holocaust-denier fantasies is the "66 QAR" (questions, answers, replies). It happens to be written by two friends and myself and it's a little old (1996, I think) but it's still very much on-target. Most of the lies you'll hear about the Holocaust are addressed in here.

    For information specifically about Auschwitz, I recommend The Holocaust History Project's website, at http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/. Disclaimer: I happen to be the site's webmaster. Please note that we include reproductions of several documents which deal specifically with the annihilation of the Jews at that death camp.

    You may want to read and listen to Hitler's own intentions for the Jews, which he and Goebbels made the climax of a 1940 propaganda film so you know it wasn't just something he said off the cuff.

    And you'll also want to listen to Heinrich Himmler's description of the final solution, given in a private talk to SS leaders in 1943. Himmler, Hitler's #2 man, describes how the Nazi intentions are being carried out. Luckily for historians, Himmler recorded his speeches, and this tape was one of the few that survived:

    "I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. ... I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.' ... We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who would kill us."

    If you're interested in the antisemitic movement to deny the Holocaust, which calls itself Holocaust "revisionism," the best source to start with is Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. It discusses the origins of such groups as the Institute for Historical Review, which you name; really they're just fancy, pseudoscientific wrappers around the same racism and hate that the world has known since, well, since human beings existed I suppose.

    If you have any questions about specific matters, please feel free to email me personally.

    Jamie McCarthy

  13. Peer Pressure and Lawrence Lessig by jamiemccarthy · · Score: 5 · on Whistler MAY Refuse To Run All Unsigned Code UPDATED
    If you don't understand why this is important, go read Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, by Lawrence Lessig. The future he fears is one where freedom and anonymity on the net are erased because general-purpose computing devices will no longer be able to connect.

    The only freedom we have exists because we can connect Turing devices to the net. Once we are forced to use hardware or software that can perform only "approved" functions, any freedoms we have are in the hands of the people who approve those functions. You will only be anonymous if Bill Gates wants to allow anonymity. You will only have free speech if Bill Gates prefers it. Even your intellectual property rights will be mediated through Bill Gates' software.

    Here's how the net ends -- not with a bang but an upgrade. The government won't put a gun to your head and make you give up your civil rights online. Instead, Microsoft and other vendors will come out with new features that you've just got to have. Well, maybe not you, but when every other person on the internet blindly upgrades, you will find yourself longing for them.

    That's the dark flipside of the law of network efficiency. A network's value is proporational to the square of the number of people on it. And as the rest of the net flees to a Microsoft-only, proprietary operating system, using proprietary protocols, with none of your code allowed, you will discover that the remaining free network's value to you is being square-rooted.

    No, you say, I'm a hardcore free-software supporter. Sure. You may be the hardest of the hard-core, but will even you continue to use a truly free, non-proprietary internet when the only people on it are you and RMS? How will it feel, being the Amish of the next century? As the world around you embraces Windows 20xx and its wonderful billg-approved code, you'll be stuck in your horse and buggy, refusing to use them newfangled zippers because you think they're the tool of the devil.

    C'mon, you know you'll want to send email to all your friends, and check out the cool new holographic websites (that 2-D stuff is so 2000). All you have to do is install the new version of Windows. No, you might not be able to compile your own programs, or upload websites which the Nonobscenity Certification Board fails to approve, but isn't that a small price to pay?

    Jamie McCarthy

  14. Re:Sustaining privacy isn't easy by tregoweth · · Score: 1 · on Voter Records Exposed

    Another way to be invisible: Don't order from Amazon. Here's more info from ISBN.nu.

    -jon

  15. Re:An honest question. by The+Musician · · Score: 1 · on Python 2.0 Released
    Get a copy of SICP and a good Scheme interpreter, and start there. You'll never be sorry for starting with Scheme.

    --

  16. don't link isbns to amazon by tregoweth · · Score: 1 · on Linux Drivers For Free Barcode Scanner Cease-And-D...

    If you're gonna have ISBNs automatically go to a Web site, it would be better to have 'em go to something like ISBN.nu, which lists prices at many stores, not just the dreaded Amazon.



    -j

  17. BowkerLink, ISBN searches by rothwell · · Score: 1 · on CDDB-like Database for ISBN?
    This site: http://www.booksinprint.com claims it will be live on July 5. It includes an "Add/Update in Books In Print" link which doesn't currently work.

    It would be nice if there was also a free IMDB service. It used to be that IMDB would let you access their database for free. Now they refuse any access -- but they were also bought by Amazon not too long ago.

    The Library of Congress apparently does not stock all books ever printed, ans one might think. I did a search for a Simpsons book (ISBN 0-06-019348-4) at their search page and got back nothing. One less reason to go to D.C. I did not try their gateway service, which seems to include a lot of Universities, which is nice, but probably also not a catalog of all books ever printed.

    However, Google returned the right hit at the top when I sear ched for the ISBN number. Of coursem the top link was to an Amazon affiliate. All the other links were to amazon affiliates as well. Hmmm....

    The site another poster mentioned, http://isbn.nu, is also an Amazon Affiliate run by Glenn Fleishman, a seemingly know-it-all kind of guy. They are at least a comparison-shopping service.

    Ask Jeeves just returns a short list of places like Amazon and Borders when asked "where can I search for books by ISBN number." When asked, "What is an ISBN number," -- which includes intresting information such as how place of origin is encoded into the number (a 0 or 1 as the first digit means 'english-speaking country', 4 is Japan, 9963 means Cyprus, etc). Here is an interesting bit (emphasis mine):
    Do I need an ISBN?
    If you want to make any sales to bookstores, you need to have an ISBN. If you want people to be able to find your book in the Books in Print directory, you need an ISBN. If you are publishing a book, odds are that not having one will do nothing but hurt your sales.
    Anyone know why that is?

    One thing I've not found is how ISBNs came to be, who governs them -- i.e., is it a government-regulated thing or it more like Dun & Bradstreet numbers? Might be an interesting answer in light of the quote above.
  18. BowkerLink, ISBN searches by rothwell · · Score: 1 · on CDDB-like Database for ISBN?
    This site: http://www.booksinprint.com claims it will be live on July 5. It includes an "Add/Update in Books In Print" link which doesn't currently work.

    It would be nice if there was also a free IMDB service. It used to be that IMDB would let you access their database for free. Now they refuse any access -- but they were also bought by Amazon not too long ago.

    The Library of Congress apparently does not stock all books ever printed, ans one might think. I did a search for a Simpsons book (ISBN 0-06-019348-4) at their search page and got back nothing. One less reason to go to D.C. I did not try their gateway service, which seems to include a lot of Universities, which is nice, but probably also not a catalog of all books ever printed.

    However, Google returned the right hit at the top when I sear ched for the ISBN number. Of coursem the top link was to an Amazon affiliate. All the other links were to amazon affiliates as well. Hmmm....

    The site another poster mentioned, http://isbn.nu, is also an Amazon Affiliate run by Glenn Fleishman, a seemingly know-it-all kind of guy. They are at least a comparison-shopping service.

    Ask Jeeves just returns a short list of places like Amazon and Borders when asked "where can I search for books by ISBN number." When asked, "What is an ISBN number," -- which includes intresting information such as how place of origin is encoded into the number (a 0 or 1 as the first digit means 'english-speaking country', 4 is Japan, 9963 means Cyprus, etc). Here is an interesting bit (emphasis mine):
    Do I need an ISBN?
    If you want to make any sales to bookstores, you need to have an ISBN. If you want people to be able to find your book in the Books in Print directory, you need an ISBN. If you are publishing a book, odds are that not having one will do nothing but hurt your sales.
    Anyone know why that is?

    One thing I've not found is how ISBNs came to be, who governs them -- i.e., is it a government-regulated thing or it more like Dun & Bradstreet numbers? Might be an interesting answer in light of the quote above.
  19. Uh, you can search ISBNs in a bunch of places... by Vito · · Score: 3 · on CDDB-like Database for ISBN?


    Remember, kids: Google is your friend. Try there before you Ask Slashdot.

    First, there's ISBN.nu. It's actually a really sweet portal/price comparison site, and it only searches ISBNs through the bookstores it's affiliated with (not all ISBNs in general), but it's a neat trick. :)

    Now, following the "About ISBN" link takes you to R. R. Bowker, which is the agency that assigns ISBN numbers in the US (not in other countries! Other agencies do that!).

    Now, since they assign the ISBN numbers, they'd be in a great position to produce the Books in Print and Books Out-of-Print series of reference books, wouldn't they? And, lo and behold, they do!

    Bowker's Books in Print website allows you to search all the ISBN numbers of books currently in print -- for a fee. That's right, it's not free, although there is a free trial available. Annual subscription rates range from US$1850 for single site/single user/no reviews, to US$3375 for single site/multiple user/with reviews.

    Bowker also has their Books Out-of-Print site online. It's also non-free, with single-user subscriptions ranging from US$29 for one week of unlimited searching to US$699 for one year of unlimited searching.

    --Vito

  20. Re:Great modern textbook: "Unix Internals" by Technik~ · · Score: 1 · on Minix Now Under BSD License
    It may be a great book, but in my opinion Amazon is not a great company to buy from. Try these:

    Before typing amazon dot com try isbn.nu.

    No, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I just appreciate their service to the bibliophile community.

    - technik
  21. Do we have the capability to eliminate NASA? by roystgnr · · Score: 3 · on NASA Will Have To Wait For Mars

    I fear we don't; like a Mars landing, we've had the technology for decades but the political obstacles are insurmountable.

    If you believe the most die-hard grassroots space advocates, the controversial question is no longer "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than money going directly to tax breaks on orbital R&D and industry?" the controversial question is "Are expenditures on NASA programs more beneficial for space development than setting money on fire?"

    It's horrifying that we're spending billions of dollars per year on Space Shuttle "operations", and a billion dollars on the worst submission (currently falling behind schedule, over weight, and over budget as you read this) for the X-33 project, while companies like Kistler Aerospace and Rotary Rocket are stalling on creating the world's first truely reusable orbital rockets because they can't raise a fraction of that money in investments.

    It's shameful that they never bothered to even build a second DC-X rocket after NASA took over the program and crashed the first one.

    On the one hand, NASA keeps lots of aerospace engineers employed doing something; on the other hand that something is arguably much less efficient than what they would be doing in more dynamic private companies.

    On the one hand, NASA is a nice customer for the big commercial aerospace companies' rockets; on the other hand, the government is a hell of a competitor to explain to potential investors in aerospace start-up companies.

    And now NASA says we don't have the technology to put an Earth Return Vehicle on Mars capable of lifting a few pounds of rocks, less than a month after Scientific American spent an article detailing plans (specifically Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct Plan outlined in The Case For Mars and NASA's Mars Semi-Direct modification) which would put humans on Mars (and leave infrastructure there, unlike Apollo) in this decade for less money than we spend on the Shuttle and ISS.

  22. Sounds like Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" by jamiemccarthy · · Score: 2 · on The Physics of Consciousness
    I haven't read the book but this sounds rather like Roger Penrose's 1990 effort The Emperor's New Mind. Short version: Penrose suspects consciousness is what happens at the quantum level before an infinity of superimposed states collapses into what we call reality. It involves a lot of conjecture and isn't really very convincing.

    (But Penrose explores a maze of fascinating concepts in math, physics, and other disciplines, in order to give the reader enough background that he can make his point. He's an engaging writer, and the book's worth it just for the ride, even if you think as I do that his conclusion is bunk.)

    Jamie McCarthy

  23. Find lowest prices on books by rnelsonee · · Score: 1 · on Richard Stallman Calls for Amazon Boycott

    For those that think that Amazon has the best prices, make sure to try www.isbn.nu/, it will search several book stores for the lowest price, based on ISBN number.

    Rick

  24. Re:Amazon alternatives by DMuse · · Score: 1 · on Richard Stallman Calls for Amazon Boycott
    Here are more alternatives:
    ISBN Price Shopping will retrieve prices for an ISBN from a dozen or so online stores.

    Even though they are in Canada I would still recommend Indigo or Chapters. I found some books that were the same price in CAD as in USD. That makes for a 33% discount over the average American price, given the exchange rate. I've used Indigo and was quite pleased.

  25. Re:Amazon Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Darwin's Radio

    Maybe they could link to something like ISBN.nu and allow their readers to access the bookseller of choice (ISBN.nu lists several). Or maybe there is another similar service that they would like to use.

    For demonstration: Darwin's Radio ISBN 034542333x.

  26. Re:man, depressing. by Kazir · · Score: 2 · on The End Of The Amazon Era

    Next time you are looking for a book you might want to try out:

    "Price Compare or Search Online Bookstores by ISBN" http://isbn.nu

    ... a great way to find out who REALLY has the best prices for books on the net.

    -Kazir (c: