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You mean like the fact that the publications are torrent-hosted?

I import them all them, from Library Genesis. Nothing ever happens.

Well, here are some.

You mean stuff like this?

I'm 40 and I do quite a bit of eBook pirating. http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ makes it so easy. The books are largely in Russian, though there are many English books, but now I have a reason to put learning Russian higher in my priorities.

Check if Library Genesis has an epub of it.

As noted before, it's a pop-sci book, not a scientific article (though it does reference such articles throughout the text). Actually, it's two books, the first one focusing on human physiology, the second one on behavior - both well worth a read.

http://lib.rus.ec/b/363123/read
http://lib.rus.ec/b/362895/read

The few chapters that specifically cover parochial altruism and its consequences (including warfare) start here.

As noted before, it's a pop-sci book, not a scientific article (though it does reference such articles throughout the text). Actually, it's two books, the first one focusing on human physiology, the second one on behavior - both well worth a read.

http://lib.rus.ec/b/363123/read
http://lib.rus.ec/b/362895/read

The few chapters that specifically cover parochial altruism and its consequences (including warfare) start here.

As noted before, it's a pop-sci book, not a scientific article (though it does reference such articles throughout the text). Actually, it's two books, the first one focusing on human physiology, the second one on behavior - both well worth a read.

http://lib.rus.ec/b/363123/read
http://lib.rus.ec/b/362895/read

The few chapters that specifically cover parochial altruism and its consequences (including warfare) start here.

Socialism in USSR lacked the will to live. It was not energetic enough to compete on the international scene. Messages from abroad, with pictures of NYC city streets paved with gold, were not helpful.

I agree with that, however I don't see Capitalism as having "will to live" at this point, either. There just isn't much of an opposition, and its propaganda is still effective.

Many problems could be prevented by stopping Gorbachev (you may want to follow this link.) There would be no Chechnya, for example.

As much as I would be happy if such a thing happened, it's not that simple. I can't claim that I know Gorbachev's motivation, but I have fairly good idea about what Communists, at least sane and smart ones, were thinking.

Let me elaborate on this, putting some things in modern terms and context.

Communists' theory claims that government, laws, social system, and the structure of society in general inevitably adjusts to reflect its foundation in economy. A major change, such as revolution, happens when the economic model forced upon the society by its current structure is inconsistent with the development of its economy, in particular when large segments of populations defined by their role in economy, have their interests in a conflict that can be resolved by changing the rules for their roles.

Most famous is the conflict between capitalists and workers in its original 19th century form -- society recognizes capitalists as exclusive owners of all means of production, workers can only support their lives by working for capitalists, getting only basic life support in return. At the very beginning of Capitalism, worker's efficiency was close to the efficiency of subsistence farmer, and only by pooling combined, organized efforts, they can sustain production and give the capitalist a modest amount of surplus product that he can sell -- most of the product had to be sold for food to feed the workers.

As the efficiency of the workers grew and their salaries did not, capitalists end up with greater and greater amount of surplus product. If workers for some reason happened to be in a position of effective collective bargaining, capitalists would have to increase salaries, thus reducing the conflict between themselves and workers. If capitalists for some reason happened to be in a position to enforce their will upon workers, they would be in a position to keep workers poor, or even keep workers in conditions that are certain to cause disease and early death. High concentration of workers and increased literacy can cause the former condition (workers organize strikes, form unions), but increasing efficiency cause the latter (capitalists become so rich, they can take over cities, control the only source of employment in the area reachable by a worker, control various forms of private armies, force politicians to pass laws, etc.) The second trend eventually outpaces the former, and workers are in a situation when the only way to improve their condition beyond basic sustenance is to strip capitalists of their control over means of production (a.k.a. "have nothing to lose but their chains"), therefore eventually there is a revolution that preserves workers' collective work but removes capitalists' ability to take away the products of their work.

As the history of 20th century shows, this scenario can be staved off by increasing the salaries to the level when workers do not have sufficient motivation to fight, guaranteeing legal protection of unions, etc., however as capitalists (or, now, companies as individual ownership became an obstacle for growth) compete with each other, their collective interest is still to keep workers as close to the poverty line as possible. Except before the problem was with chronically terrible conditions, and now it is with constant threat of unemployment that inevitably results with homelessness and death. So conflict is still alive, it is just bei

Socialism in USSR lacked the will to live. It was not energetic enough to compete on the international scene. Messages from abroad, with pictures of NYC city streets paved with gold, were not helpful.

Many problems could be prevented by stopping Gorbachev (you may want to follow this link.) There would be no Chechnya, for example.

In other words, the path to a Star Trek replicator goes through Communism, and not the other way around.

The path to any sane society goes through people who are moral. This is something that many societies lack. The US society is one of the worst in this respect, but the modern Russian society is also far from being healthy. Amoral people cannot build anything - and they don't; their domain is theft, consumption and destruction. Who builds things these days? Chinese, because they are honest workers.

I want to point out that in Russia books already are napsterized, they have a lot of pirate libraries most popular is http://lib.rus.ec/ (which is often DDosed, by copyright owners) also there is official e-book store http://litres.ru/ which sells almost all new science fiction and fantasy books for a reasonable price (most of the time less than paper book)

Maybe it's just me, but the tech level required to read a book online is pretty high.

It's a matter of distribution of e-books being mostly illegal in the western world. When the means of distribution is not effectively suppressed, it is used by almost everybody. See, for example, http://lib.rus.ec/ (Russian e-books' site).

Add to that the power consumption.

You need some light to read a paper book too.

But given the typical price of a paper book $15, you can consume as much as 150 kWh if you don't buy it. That's a lot of energy. It's enough to keep the laptop on for 100 days. I believe much longer with an e-Ink device. And all these money now is wasted on ineffective legacy distribution network. Eventually, these $15 will be consumed as energy or resources, emitted as CO2 and contribute to toxic land-dump in third-world countries, with an effect probably multiple of what you, personally, can do with 150 kWh (see Multiplier effect)

And the paranoia of knowing the ebook I read today can be changed tomorrow to reflect a different view.

That's why you should download it and keep forever. Forget online readers and DRM schemes, that let you see a page, but don't let you have a _copy_. Hard drives are cheap.

Respectful publishers will sign their e-books.