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I wish more libraries would work with Google.

The fact is that libraries are the good guys in the fight to preserve information for the future generations, while the Googles and Microsofts are just corporate fly by night outfits in comparison.

It's not even that their scanning secrets are worth that much. Generally, the quality of Google's scans is not very good, and somebody will have to do it all again in the future anyway. They skimp on resolution, and don't clean the pages properly.

If you'd like to see scanning done right, take a look at Goettingen's Library. Their scans of historical math works are of a very high standard, the best I've seen around the web, certainly better than the Michigan, Cornell or Gallica offerings. Another project with the right humanitarian attitude is the Million Books Project, which is doing highly interesting work in the Chinese universities.

About 20 seconds of searching led me to this:
http://www.ulib.org/cgi-bin/udlcgi/ULIBMetainfo.cgi?&barcode=820923

Looks like the full play to me

I'm quite impressed by the years of books they have offered. While I figured that many of the books would be out of copyright and a few would be done with permission, I was shocked to see that they have nearly 1/2 million books published after 1981.

Check out their progress report here.

Hmm, true... it has a lot of entries, but not many proper ones. That's a pretty odd omission, too... maybe it's just their wonky search engine that's doing it, though. I can't imagine anyone could have overlooked such a big part of English literary history...

Because apparently the Slashdot editors can't be bothered...

http://www.ulib.org/

This site (which is found at ulib.org BTW) seems to have a pretty good collection of obvious titles to choose from, though having to download a custom plug-in to read anything is a bit annoying (and apparently temporary). I played around for a while, seeing what I could dig up, and didn't see any obvious gaps (though I purposely avoided anything modern).

As an author, I was always a bit worried having Google as the sole gatekeeper for this kind of service... not that I necessarily distrust Google's intentions, but if they changed their worldview one day, it'd be a pity to have so much work invested in only one place, and have to re-build it all somewhere else. It's nice that there are proper choices, and not all from a commercial stance either.

I don't know how smooth the integration process is (I submitted one of my books, but it appears it's a very un-automated system involving email etc, so it will probably take a while to see results). But still, I'm glad they're giving authors a way to help grow the library. Here's hoping it becomes even better than its promise!

Carnegie-Mellon University is in a process of setting up a Universal Digital Library. Got an impressive list of partners, including the richest pilgrimage in the world(no, it's not the Vactican). The pilot project is to scan a million books first.

O'Reilly Open Books Project
Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in..." books
Data Structures and Algorithms books
MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Programming Languages
Numerical Recipes series
Handbook of Applied Cryptography
The Art of Assembly Language Programming
Object-Oriented System Development
GTK+/Gnome Application Development
GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool
Effective Perl (partial)
Programming Pearls (partial)

Carnegie Mellon University has been working on the ulib project for a number of years now.

This is also a shameless plug for one of my IRC friends responsible for this. Hi Latinum.

You asked me where other free references etc could be
found online.

Hogan Books has a pretty nice list:


ftp://hoganbooks.com/weball.zip

`Numerical Recipes in C/F77/F90'. I think it may be
included above.


http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/Numerical_Reci pe s/

Mostly science books, but has `A Simplified
Introduction to LaTeX'.


http://samizdat.mines.edu/


Of course, the Linux Documentation Project has its
HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs and Guides in .ps or .pdf or
sometimes .dvi format:


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/othe r- formats/


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/mini /o ther-formats/


http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/linux-doc- pr oject/

Adobe keeps all of their specs online; the PDF and
PostScript language references, stuff about TrueType
and the new Compact Font Format, etc etc.


http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technote s/ main.html

`Thinking in PostScript', posted by the author in some
ridiculous proprietary format, as well as in PDF.


http://www.rightbrain.com/pages/book-download.sh tm l

A whole variety of programming books; most seem to be
available in PDF/PS:


http://www.free-book.co.uk/computers-internet/pr og ramming/index.htm

A variety of free online programming references.


http://www.thefreecountry.com/developercity/onli ne references.shtml

(psst! don't let Amazon know!! :) LOLOLOL)
FREE BOOKS ONLINE! NO credit card required! No obligation!

RIGHT HERE!!1 Just click on a link on the left and be taken to the uncensored full texts!!!
Hurry! THey're going fast@ REmember: NO credit card required, it's FREE, no obligation!!1


Here's an excerpt!! (direct from link to full text!!1 http://www.ulib.org/webRoot/Books/_Gutenberg_Etext _Books/etext97/memho10.txt



Adventure VI


The Reigate Puzzle



It was some time before the health of my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes recovered from the strain caused by
his immense exertions in the spring of '87. The whole
question of the Netherland-Sumatra Company and of the
colossal schemes of Baron Maupertuis are too recent in
the minds of the public, and are too intimately
concerned with politics and finance to be fitting
subjects for this series of sketches. They led,
however, in an indirect fashion to a singular and
complex problem which gave my friend an opportunity of
demonstrating the value of a fresh weapon among the
many with which he waged his life-long battle against
crime.

On referring to my notes I see that it was upon the
14th of April that I received a telegram from Lyons
which informed me that Holmes was lying ill in the
Hotel Dulong. Within twenty-four hours I was in his
sick-room, and was relieved to find that there was
nothing formidable in his symptoms. Even his iron
constitution, however, had broken down under the
strain of an investigation which had extended over two
months, during which period he had never worked less
than fifteen hours a day, and had more than once, as
he assured me, kept to his task for five days at a
stretch. Even the triumphant issue of his labors
could not save him from reaction after so terrible an
exertion, and at a time when Europe was ringing with
his name and when his room was literally ankle-deep
with congratulatory telegrams I found him a prey to
the blackest depression. Even the knowledge that he
had succeeded where the police of three countries had
failed, and that he had outmanoeuvred at every point
the most accomplished swindler in Europe, was
insufficient to rouse him from his nervous
prostration.

Three days later we were back in Baker Street
together; but it was evident that my friend would be
much the better for a change, and the thought of a
week of spring time in the country was full of
attractions to me also. My old friend, Colonel
Hayter, who had come under my professional care in
Afghanistan, had now taken a house near Reigate in
Surrey, and had frequently asked me to come down to
him upon a visit. On the last occasion he had
remarked that if my friend would only come with me he
would be glad to extend his hospitality to him also.
A little diplomacy was needed, but when Holmes
understood that the establishment was a bachelor one,
and that he would be allowed the fullest freedom, he
fell in with my plans and a week after our return from
Lyons we were under the Colonel's roof. Hayter was a
fine old soldier who had seen much of the world, and
he soon found, as I had expected, that Holmes and he
had much in common.

On the evening of our arrival we were sitting in the
Colonel's gun-room after dinner, Holmes stretched upon
the sofa, while Hayter and I looked over his little
armory of Eastern weapons.

"By the way," said he suddenly, "I think I'll take one
of these pistols upstairs with me in case we have an
alarm."

"An alarm!" said I.

After a jaunt to my local library, I can say with reasonable authority that we were both wrong.

Out of my head, about 200,000 died on Aug. 6, 1945

The best accepted figures say approximately 80,000 were killed by blast/fire at Hiroshima, and another 60,000 died later of radiation. Some articles claim 60,000 more long-term deaths (leading to the 200k you cited), but causation is often disputed. A comparable number died in the firebombing of Tokyo and Yokohama (March 10, 1945). A total of 500,000 were killed by firebombs in Japan, with similar counts (a bit lower) in Germany.

found this article. (Dresden around 20,000.)

Other souces say the Dresden bombing killed over 100,000 people. However, the best respected figures are about 40,000 -- same as the people blown up at Nagasaki (plus another 40k from radiation).

Although any single incident is not quite equivalent, the total firebombings killed more civilians.

"Light and Matter Physics" High School/Community college level.

"Handbook Of Applied Cryptography"

"Numerical Recipes in {c, fortran}"

"The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing"

"Using Z"

"The Red Book"

etc. I'm sure there are a ton of others.

Forgive me. I thought we were talking about a desktop here. Anyway, that reminds me of this hyperbolic tree and the brain. The first can't show multidimensional data. The second can, though it just makes semi-transparent links between categories and objects and isn't good for anything other than traversing its tree/web in a single context.

This lecture describes not only how you can cheat these systems, but how and why it's so hard to get an accurate count (not to mention why it's nearly impossible to count the same number of votes twice , mechanically OR manually).

The lecture is in .ASF and powerpoint format... sorry. Click http://wean1.ulib.org/cgi-bin/metawin-lectures.pl? target=Lectures/Distinguished%20Lectures /2000 and select the bottom row (Michael Shamos's "What's happening in Florida")! For some reason, slashdot is mangling the URL, so there are some spaces on it when you click there... just remove them in your netscape window.

Yes, some of the predictions that he made are somewhat dated (as the lecture happened on the 15th), but it is a very interesting overview of what can and *does* happen to your votes that you may not have thought about. It's a little long, but worth the time!

I know it might be hard to read the entire site linked to (all those PDFS)...but its worth it. 20.1 (Diagnosing Machine Parameters) deals with the so called "secondary Fourier transform", the brother of the fast Fourier transform. MP4 compression is based (to a degree) on this idea, and several embedded chipsets in various RTOS machines are starting to ship with the secondary Fourier transform algorithms programmed in to aid on data compression.

Also, 6.7 Bessel Functions of Fractional Order, Airy Functions, SphericalBessel Functions deals with the general funkiness as a result of N=5 (This article deals some with N=8) - lossy compression, failed bubble sorts, etc.

It all depends on what kind of programming you want to do. If you want to do scientific programming then calculus and all sorts of numerical methods are absolutely essential. Numerical Recipes in C provides most of what you'll need to know... but in order to understand what you're doing you'll need to have studied some mathematics at degree level.