Slashdot Mirror
Free Books: Under the Radar
bcrowell writes "Remember e-books, anti-books, and print-on-demand books? They didn't pan out. The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits. E-books and their ilk were concentrating on the latter definition, rather than the former. Still, it's good to see free books preferred in some circles based on their merit, and not just the cost.
1. free books
2. ?
3. PROFIT!!!
In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson. If you haven't already read it, it's basicaly a history of operating systems and why they are how they are, intertwined with metaphors on how what parts work and a breakdown of OS/GUI variations and such. His stuff is way better than my explanation. It's free...so download it instead of listen to me ramble. If you hate it, the most you've lost is the time you took to DL and read what told you that. Also available in print.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Chances are the greatest benefactor will be free (but limited) music.
A Brief History of Time might have to be revised yet again..
:P
No free books.
R4NT.com - A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
I know lots of people who read both free and e-books.. but that's not why I haven't taken it on, and why I believe the market hasn't taken off either. Reading a book on the computer screen is the pits. Lots of technology has been promised to fix this, but where are the commercial products?
I glad to see free books are doing well, but I'm not going to read one.
Rob(ert) #3
It would be a great thing if teachers could entice children to take advantage of these free books to extend literacy. This could also possibly show the benefits of shortening the copyrights that keep getting extended by allowing educational institutions distribute the content and reduce overhead costs at the same time.
Bruce Eckel has all of his "Thinking in" books available in pdf format on his webpage. You can also buy the hardbound version in local bookstores. So you can have your cake and eat it too. It seems like he's pretty successful in his method, too.
I, personally, own a copy of Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, and recommend it to all Java/C++ programmers. Check it out on the website, and buy a copy if you like it.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
While the Grifter-In-Charge
continues to rob the U.S.A.
What about a free country?
Respectfully,
Woot
From the article:
. Book publishers like Baen and O'Reilly, however, have found that they can increase sales of their printed books by giving away the digital versions for free. This has also been my own experience with my self-published physics textbooks. It's cheap marketing: readers can browse the digital book to see if it's something they want, and if they like it, they're willing to pay for the convenience of a printed copy.
Strangely, the author fails to link to the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/
It's funny. Publishers are starting to get what Microsoft has known for a while. 'Piracy' is in reality free advertising. Why don't the record companies and movie studios get it?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I have to admit I take a certain joy in seeing that a whole book on fields is a mere 3 Meg download.
The "free book" support of the authors is critical for sucess. Ultimately though, the publishers are typically the biggest foes to 'free' publications. We are at the cross-roads of distribution models. Regardless of online versions of books, and the print at home jobs, I like the heft and smell of a well aged bound book.
As an aside, I heard that it was a neck bone. Ironically, I am savoring a frosty King-Bing right now. Mmmmm, Calamari-Peach blend.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Part of the problem with digital books wasn't just the price, but the format on-screen. Most people (i.e. the general public) won't sit and read from a computer screen for the length of time to read a book. Now, surfing for pron or killin' aliens is a different matter...
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
It would be nice if we also had something like free literary universes. I mean, you could write fiction which would add to an existing universe and its storylines. In the mentioned article, they touch the subject of open-source books. Although there's some intriguing thought there, I don't think the issue is taken broadly. It seems the original article doesn't focus in any specific book genre, but I think it's safe to assume it deals more specifically to reference books, not literary books. Any further thoughts on this?
My neighbor's
I really love the safari service at oreilly. You can basically check out 5 books for 10$ per month. Pretty nice, because I really love oreilly books, but couldn't afford to buy hard copies of them all. Unfortunately, the bastard company that runs this has a pretty crappy pricing model (automatic billing, and when you cancel your account, it is inactive immediately rather than at the end of the billing period).
Still, I think this is a good compromise, in the same way that if artists sold their cd's online for a reasonabele amount of money, people would be less tempted to pirate their respective work.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Eric Raymond's name is closely associated with the bazaar model, while Richard Stallman's evokes the cathedral
I appear to have made a vast mistake when reading and interpreting Mr. Raymond's work - it was my impression that his 'Cathedral' metaphor was used to describe closed, proprietary software design similar to Microsoft's, not Stallman's GPL'd design method. Was I wrong? Or is the author wrong?
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
It's great that with the Internet, it's gotten easier to self-publish your own works. Just like web pages, free books are a way for anybody to get the point out to the general public. However, now that anybody is allowed to do this, now the general public has figure out the difference between the good and the bad.
As far as e-books go, they've been promising that we'll have everything on microfiche since the 60's, and that the book is dead. Until I can read a book online and be able to find a subject quickly by "thumbing" though the book, there will always be room for paper books.
E-Books didnt drop off the face of the planet, they're still around and in wide distribution. They're just not official, authorized, or legal. .txt form. Search around for 'bookwarez'.
Search around and its pretty easy to find whatever book you want in
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) has posted a copy of his short story Angles for free on his website . He also wrote an interesting piece about copyright back in May of this year. An interesting quote:
He also routinely puts up the first few chapters of his books online, before they're published so you can get a taste of them before buying. I'm surprised more people don't have this attitude.ebooks will work as soon as there are viable, usable devices for everyone to read them on.
Pdas at $500 with tiny screens to read on won't do. Sure there are pluses to them, reading in total darkness is cool, it makes you more "attuned" to what you are reading (less distractions around for your eyes to wander). But they are not for everyone. And reading them on your large computer screen sucks for various reasons, posture is not inteneded for reading for one. ITs ok for manuals and on line help, beacuse you are using the program at the same time, but -at lest for me- ebooks? nah.
Free ebooks are another thing altogether. You download them cos they're free, and to "build up" an elibrary, it doesn't mean you actually read them all. Eg: I d/l all Verne's books and only reread 2000 leagues, and Journey, I have a jornada i use almost solely as a contacts and ebook reader.
When they say they're free books, do they mean novel-length stories with real plots, or do they mean things like Seven-of-Nine/Highlander crossover fan-fiction?
Eckel gets it.
Here's more gratis books. Site 1 | Site 2 (Math)
Some people will be interested in BookCrossing.
From the site: "What is BookCrossing, you ask? It's a global book club that crosses time and space. It's a reading group that knows no geographical boundaries. Do you like free books? How about free book clubs?. Well, the books our members leave in the wild are free... but it's the act of freeing books that points to the heart of BookCrossing. Book trading has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a book exchange of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind."
How to Download YouTube Videos
His Travels With Samantha was one of the first online free books ever, circa 1992-3. Later, he wrote the stupendous book on web publishing, Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing with his samoyed, Alex.
Two very good reads by a very good writer. Sorry, I know some people don't like Philip and this isn't flamebait -- I truly admire many of his initiatives, like the free Remindme and Clickthrough services, in addition to the remarkable photo.net which has grown enormous tentacles nowadays. Both books are intimately related to those efforts.
a staple on my PDA ever since I acquired it. No it is not convenient to read in that format but it is very handy to have a dozen or so books on my Handspring, especially while traveling. I will certainly embrace the addition of newer titles- most of what has been availble until mow has been Project Gutenberg/public domain stuff.
Funny that no one has mentionned Project Gutenberg so far. If you don't know what they do, check it out here.
Well, I kinda with I had my $40, but I was glad in the end to have paid for it. Kudos to O'Reilly, Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet for doing it, like I need another reason to like O'Reilly. I hope examples like these will encourage others to do the same, after all, free software can be close to useless without documentation.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
When I pick up a book, it is to escape from staring at the monitor all day. I like to kick back with a nice hot cup of tea and one of my cats in my lap & relax, which somehow isn't possible even with my comfy computer setup.
While I have never depended on a "publisher to make an editorial decision," I do depend on my friends & get most of my recommendations from folks who only turn on a PC to check e-mail. This resulted in my dropping over $100 yesterday, alone on stuff such as Dylan Thomas, Bukowski, Pratchett, Le Guin, Naipail, and Hardy. Many of these are copyrighted classics that won't be available online for another 75+ years and all are well worth paying $7-35 for a lifetime of enjoyment. Yes, they'll sit on my shelf and represent killed trees, but the electricity required to power my PC long enough was probably generated with coal that will shorten the lives of even more trees and people as well. My library, on the other hand, is passed around to all my interested friends and family, a warm, physical, and comforting way to share enjoyment of the greatest poetry and prose. As with all great electronic innovations, "free" online books bypass the enjoyable interpersonal element, be it of sharing a story or chatting with the librarian.
Yes, there could be some great literature online & maybe someday I'll find something work getting a headache to read. For now, however, I'm content with a system that ain't broke; the bookstore when I've got the money and the library when I don't.
Yes, and that is the incentative!
It's frustrating seeing all these objections to the format. Much of the point of these free books is to get people hooked and get them to buy the real thing, right? Right?
It's not dead-tree _versus_ electronic. It's dead-tree _in addition to_ electronic. That's the key.
The electronic version; cheap, not as comfortable to read, good for searching/citing.
dead-tree version; expensive, very comfortable to read, not made for searching, looks good on shelf.
See how they complement each other?
I love the free books out there. I think it's brilliant. I've read Eckels material and I've recommended it to many many people based on the "check out the electronic version". I hope he's doing well.
The format issue notwithstanding, one great point is reader interaction and feedback. Publishing during the drafting period seems like a good way to get extra proofing and feedback, which makes for a better product, and better products sell more (music excepted :-o)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
For all the open-source software movement's successes, I'm not aware of any case in which an entrenched proprietary program was pushed out of first place in the market by open-source software.
Linux was in 1999 (I don't know how it is today) the most widely used server operating system on the internet.
Apache is the top web server.
PHP has surpassed ASP in terms of number of users and is now the most widely used server side scripting language.
Sendmail is the leading email server (over, for example, Microsoft Exchange).
OpenSSH is the Internet's most widely used implementation of SSH.
Granted, some of these may never have pushed anything other than other OSS/FS products out of first place (such as Apache, whose predecessor was the NCSA web server), but aren't there a gazillion other examples anyway? I have a hard time taking anyone who makes such bold assertions, without even trying to first evaluate them, seriously.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
People always seem to be at their best when in small groups. The internet has the positive affect of cutting out the middleman and in some cases, perhaps slows down globalization (sometimes a good thing, but usually not - globalization tends to hurt people in developing countries who have the least).
It is a great feeling to publish a real physical book, but I have found that I have had to make at least two compromises with the traditional publishing process, mainly:
- constrained to write about popular subjects
- books that get out of date technologically are still sold (for many of my published books, I really liked them when they were fresh, but 4 or 5 years later, they seemed really dated, but were still being sold)
Anyway, when writing free web books, an author (like me!) can choose topics that are interesting but niche. I beg for small donations for my free web books, and I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of donations that I receive (currently, I get 3 or 4 cents per download, on the average, in donations).I am working on a third free web book (The Software Design Book), so I do believe in this process.
-Mark
I have the feeling that palm-held devices are becoming the most widely-used platforms for e-books, not computers with their monitors. Owning a Sony Clie, I have't read a paper-based book for over a year now. In fact, my eyes adjust to the small screen better than to printed books.
It's not much of a collection right now, but the quality level is high. Especially good is 'How to Think Like a Computer Scientist', a good introduction to programming that lives up to the title. It covers several languages.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
By getting this story to slashdot, I wonder how many additional books they will find. I don't really understand what the author is saying about open source software never replacing proprietary software and becoming #1 for a particular use. What about apache, perl, and a boatload of other best in class open source software apps?
I like having a physical book. I like being able to make marks on pages, put sticky notes on pages that I can feel on turn to, have the book in my hand, take it where I want to and it never needs electricty.
Sure, some people may like it. But that's why a free market is so great. You can use what you like. I also learned in a technical writing class that reading from a computer screen is 25% slower than reading from a book. My own experience tells me this is true as well.
I am totally unsurprised that the non-free eBook market is languishing. The other day I go to Amazon to look for a new book. The hardcover edition was on sale for $18. The digital eBook was $21. This kind of greed (eBooks are arguably less expensive to distribute and have almost no chance of being re-read in a secondary market) is why the established publishers are in for a hard lesson in reality. Same goes with music, etc, etc...
usenet (abeb) and irc (bookz)
read the faq!
http://ebook.ultraslack.net/
The Assayer appears to be partially slashdotted right now. It's still serving up static HTML, but it won't let you use any of the CGIs, so you can't browse the database, read reviews, sign on as a member, or write reviews right now. That's a shame, since I ended the article with a plea for reviews! I hope people will try back later when the server is able to handle the load. Lots of people have already posted here on Slashdot about their favorite free books, and it would be great if they could put reviews on The Assayer eventually.
Find free books.
So how's that affecting Dover's business (Dover produces no new titles, apart from original translations of non-copyrighted work)? They're booming.
Heck, with those sort of results, Dover ought to be providing financial support for PG (or at least releasing edited/translated titles into the public domain). Though I guess I'll settle for that nice brief they filed in Eldred's behalf.
Slight disclaimer here, Dover was bought by a big printing company that's really helped them with distribution (just came back from the beach and all the little bookstores there were well-stocked with Dover thrifts), but every other publisher on the planet has seen sales fall, while Dover's sales, since the acquisition, have grown tremendously.
A great place for free book is over at www.andamooka.org
It has some great books there, although some may be outdated
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
... because it's like mentioning that water is wet in.. um.. well, any discussion at all.
Some thing's you're simply assumed to know.
at least two of [these free books] [4],[5] seem to be the standard textbooks in their field today
Reference 4 is by no means the standard textbook in the field of biophysics. I've been in the field for at least 6 years and this is the first I've heard of this book. None of my professors have ever mentioned it either.
Microsoft can't just say, "Romeo and Juliet was a big success for Shakespeare, so we'll write something similar."
Doesn't this happen all the time? Isn't West Side Story just Romeo and Juliet again? Isn't any star-crossed lover movie that women flock and drag their men to a remake of Romeo and Juliet? Wasn't the Leonardo DiCrapio remake an embraced and extended version of R&J?
Books, however, are easy to use, and most computer users know how to use an electronic book that is in the ubiquitous (and nonproprietary) Adobe Acrobat format.
Isn't pdf proprietary?
Finally, a story on free literature that doesn't link the asstr is not complete by any means :)
Well, it's not entirely true that community writing doesn't pan out. The author mentions Nupedia as a failed effort, but there are many examples of places where this kind of "group writing" has worked very well.
The best I can think of is Everything. I spend many hours reading the stuff there every week. Though it cannot be called an encyclopedia by any stretch of imagination, I've found it to be a very valuable source of general contemporary info.
Then there's the Encyclopedia Mythica.
Someone just mentioned Project Gutenberg too. It's a community effort that's coming out very well indeed. I know that it's not not community authorship, but a community effort.
There are many more counter-examples I can provide. Hell, even the usenet archives are a very useful source of info sometimes.
Community writing should not be written off (pardon the pun) lightly.
All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
...just like communism?
(I never know what people mean when they say that...."Free software is just like communism"....what... the workers control the means of production? Die yanqui dogs? I just don't get it)
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I thought the title meant that "Under the Radar", Red Hat head honcho Bob Young's book, was now freely downloadable. This excellent tome covers RH's early history, and aside from the alarming moment where Young refers to glibc as a "graphics library", it's well worth reading.
Anyway, pointless meandering finished. Mod down to the Earth's core!
That chapter is a lot out of date w/ regards to the flexability and openess of Darwin and Mac OS X.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It seems to me that most of the free books mentioned on this thread are sci-fi, and popular fiction. It is by virtue of this fact that these dispersion methods for books have not caught on more. The more popular the book, the more likely one is to charge for it. Perhaps we ought to start organizing things in the public domain, and things like classics, technical works, etc, that are more likely to be thought of as "free". Make these books accessible, and create a good interface, to show proof of concept in terms of readers and the bigger guys may come around, at least to publishing on and off-line works (the online versions being free or very cheap). Here are my links to some stellar classics archives. Aside from some of the more obscure math and science works, I believe my whole school's curriculum is available for free on the web:
Perseus Project
Great Books Index
The Internet Classics Archive
Bartleby
Enjoy these free reads. They are the greatest books ever written.
Copyright is the figment of a diseased, greed-fevered imagination.
"Looming on the horizon instead, with every prospect of success, were the "anti-books:" electronic books encumbered with {odious licensing terms} and {restrictive digital rights management technology.[2]} You wouldn't be able to loan such a book to a friend, public libraries couldn't acquire it, and if you stopped paying your rental fee, it would expire and become unreadable! "
That sounds exactly like Safari (which I am currently a member of). The {} may or may not apply. The only digital rights management there exists is that which will make it very inconvenient to say print the entire book out. I believe Safari is a success and does not include only O'Reilly books. It is a lot cheaper than buying a book, for access to a few.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
was written by Rick Cook.
:)
Wizard's Bane, Compiled, and Cursed are all available online.
They're stories about a normal guy who is transported using magic to a fantasy world where he's the man because he's an excellent programmer.
Mix of my favorite genre's - fantasy and computers. He brings up TLAs (three letter acronyms), R2D2, the power of caffiene, the dragon book (for compiler writers), a spell called "hello world," emacs, and a lot of other funny stuff I can't remember. And it all seems to fit (not just puns thrown in there for their own sake, like the often-criticized Xanth books).
Now I REALLY want to go buy the next three.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
did is strike anyone else as ironic that one of the mentioned websites, theassayer.org, which said it had more than 350 free books on it's site, is not accessable by public?
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
I found this awhile back by linking back from a Google search. I was pleasantly surprised to a) learn of its existence and b) find it being offered for free. For those of you into tales of hacking/cracking this is a good read that keeps me 'scared whitehat'. http://www.underground-book.com/ It's strange how much is out there out there in terms of free literature and documentation, but the only unified, exhaustive index is Google. :P
Are any of the Mortimer Adler "great" books not public domain? I wonder if he would think a book could be capital-g "Great" if you could not create derivative works from it.
(plus, glad to see another Johnny on /.)
All's true that is mistrusted
I understand tech books, but for the types of books you read once...novels, fiction, that sort of thing, the paperback book is a thing of beauty.
It fits comfortably in hand, requires no power, can be stored in a large pocket or small backpack, and its cheap enough that if it gets lots, you don't care, I can loan it to my friends if I want, I can throw it away, I can store it on a shelf, virtually indestructable, theft resistant and it requires no electricity to use. I can even use it in the hot tub or swimming pool, and it if gets wet, well, when you dry it out, it usually pretty usable. Its perfect packaging for the human animal.
So if I have a reader for my ebook, I'm getting a fragile device that will have DRM built into it, will require electricity, and will be difficult to read.
Rather than try to improve one of the perfect human inventions (the paperback book), why not work on something useful like a good, cheap DVD player for linux?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Along the same lines, check out Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. Information wants to be free; hopefully this is one small step towards that goal.
Free books are a good idea, but will face the same struggle as OSS, primarily because of the monopolies already existing. MS we all know about, but how many of you good people here tonight know the extent of the Bertelsmann firm's media dominance? It's the only Big Six corp not to have a key US TV outlet, and that (AFAIK) is because the US has laws to make sure all US TV is by American corporations, and Bertelsmann is German.
To cut a long story short, the Big Corps will do anything and everything to wipe out "free books", or at the very least, prevent their gaining a significant market share. In terms of styles of books, the mass markets will be catered for, so free books will fill the unprofitable/undesirable topics that publishers will not touch. They will also be quite a few people releasing books for free as a statement, like the morons who struggle to use Linux just because its "cool", aparrently. Finally, the genuineley intelligent books whose authors really are in it for the spirit of it, the virtually unread minority, drowned under the crapflooders whose crap has no profit for the big publishing houses and no worth to the independent publishers.
In short, this could, and hopefully will, be a force for good in the literature arena. Until the lawyers move in...
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
I have known authors of niche type books and have learned from them that they make exceptionally small amounts of money on the sale of these books. Specifically, I am talking about the PhD candidate who turns his thesis over to a publisher. Here's an example of this: The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1994. This was a book written by my professor.
Getting back to my point, though, I believe that he would probably make more money today posting that entire book on the web for free and putting up a paypal tip jar than he would by going through a publisher or attempting subsidy publishing.
There are a lot of content sites out there using this method and, when you cut out the agent, the publisher, the printer, the retailer, and all the other middlemen, direct sales based on paypal type donations might be the way to go (please spare me on the evils of paypal, you know I mean the concept of micropayments.)
... did anyone else read "At the height of the dot-com bubble, twenty-somethings with goatees" as "At the height of the dot-com bubble, twenty-somethings with goatses"? No? OK, I need to cut out some slashdot from my diet.
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
The books are in DjVu format (viewer for Linux available here).
I dunno about the rest of you, but I wasn't going to buy a rocketbook or any of the others so that I could pay a bunch of money to download books over a slow-as-molasses modem. Why the heck can't I download them over my broadband connection to my PC and maintain my own library? And I wasn't going to buy books that I could only read on my PC, which I don't happen to be sitting in front of at any time when I want to be reading books.
I want to read books wherever I am, like you'd be able to do with a dedicated ebook reader, but I don't want to pay for or carry around a dedicated ebook reader.
As it turns out, I've been carrying a portable computer since early 1997 - a palm. So why not use that? The screen is small, but I always have it with me, and its print is really not all that much smaller than a lot of paperbacks anyway.
I thought that was a natural fit. I started reading ebooks on it in I think 1998, but certainly by the end of 1999. Back then there were only a few places you could get them, and peanutpress was the only place I could get contemporary stuff from well-known authors (plus the peanut reader did a very nice display job given the limitations of the device).
Since that time the number of ebook vendors has exploded. I still can't get them from Barnes and Noble or Amazon in a palm reader format (isn't it interesting that both support Microsoft's format but neither supports the much more popular palm reader format) but there has been an explosion of free and commercial ebook services serving the palmtop market. My current favorite is fictionwise.
Anyway, my point in all of this is that ebooks are selling commercially and have been selling for years. Not on high volumes, but I wonder if that's not because of the failure of the large booksellers to target the largest of the palmtop markets. The smaller vendors have existed for years and are obviously doing something right given that they're still around and their inventories are exploding, but they don't have the marketing push to really get ebooks out there.
Whatever, ebooks really are here if you want them and most likely you don't have to buy anything extra to read them.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
For example, I wanted to quote that great pseudo-riddle from Lewis Carroll -- "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" But which Alice book did it come from? In two minutes I found both text files at Gutenberg, searched for "raven", and there it was. (The Mad Hatter came up with it, in _Alice in Wonderland_. )
The Internet is, IMO, the best free ebook--it sure is the biggest. Unlike dead tree books, you get a wide choice of search engines. Of course, you can pick up a lot of weird stuff there too. So, surf safely--I myself always wear a condom.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
You have to move your head and eyes around too much.
:)
I wouldn't mind reading a book on a PDA though. It's a little small but I don't think that would bother me too much.
Somebody needs to build a version of a PDA that's more comfortable for reading. It would be too big to carry around like today's PDAs but you would leave it at the house and use it for misc stuff. Kinda like the star trek PADs (personal access device I think it stands for). A large thin PDA with touch screen buttons large enough to use your finger. That woud be cool. And if it had built in wireless networking it would rock. I would buy 2.
We all know there is "book warez" out there, along with hacked versions or ebook readers. Still, instead of filling the greedy with money, we ought to look at a richer source of information: Gutenberg Library.
.lockout formats. They use text with a copyright warning at the beginning. The are truley free. The library may be quite old though...
;-)
They don't use
Still I've got this idea talking about this. Gutenberg has "how many documents?"... Add the amount of space (uncompressed) to a database like MySql along with a web interface. Also have some way of grepping text inside all those files. Slap it al together using Linux, and you now have a "Library Server". That one server could be put under a desk or wherever and have web interfaces to it. Even the medium-small librarys could legitly quadruple thier colllections fo books, wether it be dead tree or electronic.
Thinking of that, I just might do that..... I bet the library would pay a bif for the setup like that. Get a decent machine like a 1.4 Athlon with 1 gig of ram. Depending on the load, you might be able to store everything Gzipped.
Just a thought from a crazy
Funny that no one has mentionned Project Gutenberg so far.
Project Gutenberg, unfortunately, has had its hands tied by the late Sen. Sonny "Watch out for that tree" Bono.
Or are you so sure that Eldred will win?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I claim DRM will fail for similar reasons to 'anti-books' as they are called. If what they do (with DRM) to a CD or DVD to make it uncopyable, and usable on exactly one computer also makes it less usable on standard audio and video hardware, I think they could lose it all very quickly. As long as the average consumer can use the media he bought in any number of players (including old ones), they have a chance of selling them. But if DRM means you lose the right of first sale property, which includes the right to lend the media to a friend and such, the average joe will quickly reject this junk.
There is also a growing number of people that won't buy it unless they retain basic fair use copying rights. I'm one of them, as are a lot of people on slashdot. I don't have any MP3 or Ogg devices yet, but I'm likely to convert my entire music collection to this type of system in the next five years (give or take). I'm quite confident that there will be enough material that doesn't have these ridiculous restrictions that I won't feel I'm missing anything, and frankly if an artist lets their work get released in this way, I don't need them.
It is times like these that I rejoice to the sounds of failure. Corporations and your typical money making "joe" make it hard these days to separate superficial monkey bait from superb works of literary merit. Much like this man.
That is why the market hasn't taken off.
But... it's close.
I use Windows XP on my Toshiba Satelite 5100...
1600x1200, with windows set to 120dpi and Cleartype properly tuned... and the fonts look absolutely gorgeous. Extremely fine detail.. it's almost like looking at print.
Fanfic is borderline-legal, but is almost always written by the most hardcore fans of the (show|books|comics)---no creator is going to alienate their biggest fans. Legal action has only been undertaken when the fic's author sought to profit from their use of the copyrighted universe---in this way, all fic works must be de facto free. Nifty, eh?
See The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek and so on for examples.
Actually, I'll start you off with my favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic. (Sex and violence the way it should be!) Read [skin]. Googling for "fanfic" and the name of your favorite series should produce good results. Most of it is dreck, but there's a lot of good stuff in there too.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For the MPAA, I think it is different as the barriers to entry are pretty high for motion pictures. They don't like their own DVD products cutting into theature box office, so maybe they really are more concerned with piracy. At current bandwidth, I'd be surprised if P2P style exchanges are really that big of a problem for them, but mass produced grey market sales of actual discs probably is. They should be able to attack this problem without pissing off customers with restrictive DRM, but they seem to be heading down the wrong path.
Is that you're computer screen has very crappy resolution compared to the resolution on a piece of paper. When computer screen's are 300dpi like decent printers, then reading stuff on them will be much more fun.
Until then, the thing to do is offer books in pdf and html format. PDF to print out. HTML to read on the computer, which will allow you to change font settings and sizes to your preference, making it easier to read.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It was called a culture's mythology.
I guess we still have it in a way, but it's all been fenced in.
DNA just wants to be free...
Laser printers a cheaper per page than an inkjet, by far.
No, I'm not.
Karma: Undead.
For a similar set of reasons as to why the public rejected the divx "loaning scheme" for movies, they'll reject e-books as they currently stand.
People would always rather get something for free than have to pay for it; and they'd always rather have the rights laid out according to the FSF than not have those rights.
But people will pay for books. We've been doing that forever, since the beginning of this nation. But when people pay for books, they expect certain rights; the right to read as often as they like, to loan, to mark-up, to give away, to take quotes from, to put in a library, etc. Until e-books give people all the same rights they have with regular paper-back books, they will not catch on.
Asking people to buy e-books as they currently exist is like saying "why don't you pay me 30,000 dollars for the same Ford except that you can't loan it to anyone, modify it, etc etc". People aren't going to buy into this bullshit.
What should happen is that when we buy a paper-back book, we should get access to an e-book automatically, and have the same rights to utilize the e-book as we would the paper-back book.
The reason why free-books online are catching on is because they offer the consumers all the same rights they'd have with paper-back books.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
1) Your photos are horrible (click to view tips about travel photography here)
2) Your "photos" should be called "thumbnails"
3) You have obviously not taken even one of the Photo Workshops advertised on your site, and people don't like to be around hypocrites
There has been some experimentation with collaborative fiction, but I suspect it is rare that it gains any traction. The example in the sibling comment of 'fanfic' is probably most workable because there is an existing 'created world' to establish a framework and characters, etc. I would say this type of thing is completely different and has different motivations than what drives authors to create original fiction. Software is naturally a more collaborative process. Design in general is; maybe it is that complexity requires many minds.
The surprise success story is free books." Of course, this defines "success" as number of readers, not in terms of monetary profits.
I wish amazon defined success this way, then I would only have to pay shipping to support my crack-like book collecting habit (at least until amazon went out of business).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
As an avid reader I have been getting free books for years... from the public library. Seriously, there are plenty of good books to be found there and it wont cost you a penny. And for the newer stuff I can always drop in to barnes and nobles and either return it or make a nice library donation and write it off in taxes.
Even with CD's which yield perfect copies so easily, you still get more than just the music in a high quality format - you get the liner notes (often with lyrics or cool art) and in any case support the artist.
And with movies, sure you can download a divx but then you miss out on a lot of extra stuff that makes DVD's so great. Even if you download a straight rip of a DVD you probably are not getting the extra discs, as why would anyone put them up? I think extra DVD's are a great way to combat piracy, they more discs thre are the less likley all of them will be availiable for DL and thus if you really like the movie you'll probably buy the DVD.
Even with downloading copies of things, DVD and CD sales are still great so obviosuly people see some value in the physical medium.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Clearly, none of these are true. Many people like to read ebooks; I'm one. Enough people are buying them to keep sites like Fictionwise going. And yet dead-tree books aren't going away; each format has its own advantages and disadvantages - the important thing is for people to have the choice.
Personally, I much prefer an (open) electronic format. I can keep a library on my palmtop, taking up no extra physical space at all, and have access to reading matter and reference material whether at home, in my lunch hour, on the train, on holiday, or wherever. I can search, cut-and-paste quotations, and easily use long-term bookmarks. Plus I can edit the text as necessary (for example, I've developed a program to Anglicise US spellings, which really annoy me - try that with a dead-tree edition!) My library's about ½GB, mostly compressed.
Of course, I'm in a minority; many folks find palmtop screens or even monitors inappropriate for that sort of reading. And that's fine. But I hope they'll appreciate that some others find them useful.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I was reading an E-Book on the PC and it was like beeeeep beep beep beep beep beeeep! And then like half of my book was gone, and I was like unnnhhh...? It devoured my book.
It was a really good book.
And then I had to download it again and I had to do it fast so it wasn't as good.
It's kind of...
a bummer.
Note to moderators: It's Funny, not off-topic.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Two years ago, the idea of a free book --- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet --- was largely unknown and untested.
My arse it was largely unknown and untested. If that's your first sentence I'm not going to bother read the rest. BTW, Bruce Eckel has an interesting note about this at http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Raymond described a model of collaborative software development in which a large, geographically dispersed group of programmers worked together in a seemingly chaotic way. This bazaar model was to be contrasted with the cathedral model, in which everything is done according to a detailed, preexisting plan.
[...]
The bazaar model seems to have been almost a complete failure in the world of free books, although not for want of trying. Tellingly, The Cathedral and the Bazaar was itself written cathedral-style by Raymond. He has also started a bazaar-style book project, The Art of Unix Programming[7], which appears to be languishing.
[...]
The failure of the bazaar model with free books might not seem surprising
This depends largely on where one draws the line between bizzar and cathedral, or put another way, with what granularity one considers a project or body of work. The Star Trek and Star Wars universes are examples where there is a large body of Cathedralesque work, as well as an even larger body of "fan fiction." While many stories (perhaps most) are themselves written by a single author (as, in fact, my own (soon-to-be released under a free license) novel has been), the overall, net effect of the body of work which comprises the fan fiction of the Star Trek and Star Wars universes (and undoubtably other settings as well) is in many ways more remeniscent of the Bizzar than a Cathedral approach. The Linux kernel is a bizzar-type project, yet within that kernel are modules and subsystems that are quite 'cathedralesque' in how they were managed and written.
The definition in many ways becomeds one of granularity, and while I agree with much the article writes, I think the author overlooks the bizzar aspect of the cultural commons from which all authors draw inspiration. This is readilly seen in the collections of fan fiction which abound and, were it not for the often extremely repressive aspects of copyright in limiting how and when a person can incorporate another's work in their own project (no, I'm not advocating plagerism, I'm advocating broader definitions of fair use that including giving the original creator credit for their contribution, if not exclusive use).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
In recent years, I've fed my kids through the work I attract via my contributions to open source and the publication of free software on my web site. It is possible to make a living from free software.
I hope to use a similar model for a fantasy novel I'm writing.
The novel in question was first completed some years back, tentatively sold to a big name publisher, and then "lost" in a series of mergers. Quite discouraging. Writing is a damned tough business; I know, because I made a living for twelve years with magazine columns and programming books.
I write fiction for two reasons -- because I enjoy it, and to entertain people. But getting into the fiction market (as in making money) is very, very hard. The publishing industry is terribly conservative and biased in the most incredible ways.
Success as a writer -- especially as a fiction writer -- is elusive. Lost in a sea of lousy over-the-transom manuscripts, agents, and myopic publishers, how does an author stand out and make themselves known?
Well, I'm told that John Grisham started his career by self-publishing his first books, and selling them from the trunk of his car at fairs and flea markets. Self-promotion is the root of all success...
And perhaps people will pay me directly, if they believe my book worthy.
So I'm publishing a book in a few weeks via my website, complete with full-color plates (artwork by my talented wife), and a story written exactly the way I want it, without the interference (or grammatical safety net!) of an editor. The complete book will be available under exactly the same terms as a paper book -- you can give it away, make copies for your friends, or print it out, all without paying me a dime.
BUT, I'll also have a honor-based online payment system; for less than the cost of a typical paperback, people who enjoy the book can pay for it. They are not required to pay me -- it is a matter of honor and ethics.
I don't expect most people to pay for what they download; if they simply enjoy the book, pass it on to friends, read it to their kids -- that will be victory (in a different sense.) What I'm giving people is an honest chance to compensate me, the author, for my work, if they deem it worthy.
How many times have you bought a paperback, found it unreadable, and put it on the shelf unfinished or dissatisfied? How often does a pretty cover conceal a lousy book? It happens often enough for me, especially when buying a new science fiction or fantasy book. Wouldn't it be better if you could read the book first, and then only pay the authors whose work you considered worthy?
Perhaps I'm too optimistic about people; if nothing else, this will be an interesting experiment in publishing and human relations.
All about me
One of the things I have always appreciated about the Free Software community is the way help of all kinds is given (to those seen as deserving!) freely.
My perception of the way books are normally written is very close to my perception of how proprietary software is developed. In secret, with help only from those with a financial interest in the book.
I'm in the process of writing my first book, which I intend to distribute under the FDL.
So, my actual question is, does anybody know of a mailing list or other "support group" for (aspiring) Free Book authors?
-Peter
Another great one is http://www.blackmask.com he has a lot of great stuff in a variety of formats so that you do not have to format it to your reader to use it.
I have a Sony Clie with about twenty ebooks on it right now. I use it to read daily. The narrow screen is actual better than dead trees for reading fast because there is less need to move the eyes side to side, just up and down. With the back light I am able to read in bed at night without bothering my wife (and that is a big plus because she has to get up about two hours before I do).
In general it is a great device if you like to read. But, with the law purchased by Disney Corp. there is less Public Domain stuff than there should be.
The problem is that though ClearType looks great subjectively it gives me a massive headache on my 17" ViewSonic VA800 LCD screen if I leave it on for a day or two of heavy computer use, even after I "tuned" it. I haven't set it up on a PDA and tried reading a Gutentext or other ebook because of that (well, and cuz I got rid of my PocketPC device and am back to a Clie for now... doh).
Luckily there are still some immediate options if you are one of the many who *know* about Project Gutenberg etexts (for those of us whose taste in books, e- and otherwise is somewhat antiquated) but have never actually *read* one due to their well, umm, rather plain text look and feel. In particular GutenMark should do the trick. So download a couple of GutenTexts and GutenMark them into PDF/PS and you have something you might not exactly be able to curl up with, but at least it's readable.
I mean, it would be possible for eBooks to be available for most current books you see out there in the stores... if it weren't for the pirates who don't respect the authors' rights to earn a profit on their works. All the trees being chopped because leeches are unwilling to spend a few bucks to read a book that it took someone months or years to write.
Argue all you want regarding the merits of intelletual property rights... but the fact is, not many authors who write for a living would, in their right minds, would ever release a book complete in eBook form just so crackers can put it on Kazaa for everybody to download.
eTrade SUCKS
The Safari service just got an upgrade about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Its leaps and bounds better than the previous incarnation.
I've been looking at the tablet PCs that are supposed to hit the scene around Nov 7th. To me, these seem like they would be perfect (in portrait mode) for deep reading.
My only hope is that we may someday be able to get tablets PCs with something other than WinXP Tablet edition.
Anyone hear any rumors of a MAC or other non-MS tablet PC offering on the horizon?
One of my favorite e-libraries is The Gutenberg Project which houses thousands of pieces of classic literature.
And if I can make a shameless plug, the following is the address of a mailing list based bookclub that aims to read one Gutenberg text a month:
iBookclub
Share data. Share code. Share ideas. Share the wealth.
http://stockfilter.org
Anyhow, reading on the iPaq is very pleasant in many ways; nice screen contrast, high quality ClearType fonts, ability to look up works in the dictionary easily, and so forth. However, it can be physically fatiquing on the hands, because of the need to push the button to change pages. The requires a relatively large amount of force, in a fairly awkward manner, as compared to reaching over your other hand, and flipping a thin piece of paper. And because each virtual page holds less, you do it more.
I think that once some of the more subtle ergonmic issues are taken care of, the selection of titles is greater, and Pocket PC-style devices are much cheaper (Palm devices still aren't up to the quality of MS Reader), you'll see it become a far more common and preferred way to read.
Nothing beats carrying a dozen virtual books around with you, in addition to your calendar, todo list, some games, and so on. Makes waiting in long lines, waiting at the doctor, far less annoying.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Don't for their Honorverse Disc CD-Rom included with the hardcover "War of Honor". It has 22+ novels (including all 13 of the Honor Harrington ones) and all of which are unencrypted in multiple formats. This is perfect for loading the old ones on my Ipaq, and introducing someone to the series!
Yes, you can get some in the free library, but they have gone out of their way to make this CD and nice thank you for those who buy "War of Honor". Very cool!
http://www.baen.com/orientation.htm
that you can't take your monitor to the can with you...yet ;)
--Joey
Have you read any sword and sorcery books? The characters are SUPPOSED to be cardboard cutouts. That's the genre. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Its not a romance novel - its the literary equivalent of a Conan movie (or Conan book, for that matter). You know - something that should be consumable by someone with a sixth grade reading level and with a plot which is merely a twist around a single (sometimes two, if they really push it) major idea.
I was overjoyed to find a book in this genre that could actually appeal to programmers.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This is really comparing apples and oranges. The "anti-book" is a product no one wants, at least not yet. The free book isn't a product at all - from a commercial perspective, it's a promotional tool at most. How can the latter possibly be said to have "displaced" the former? The anti-book, so far, is just another Edsel or Betamax. The fact that people are interested in downloading a free book they can read on a PC or PDA doesn't have much bearing on the fact that they aren't willing to spend $300 on a Rocketbook.
Remember a few years ago when they were predicting that print-on-demand publishing would be the wave of the future? You were supposed to be able to go to your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, ask for an obscure book on medieval Bulgaria, and have it printed and bound while you sipped a $5 cappucino. It didn't happen,...
Correction: it hasn't happened...yet. Print-on-demand technology is still developing and still being invested in by publishers and distributors, mainly as a way to reduce inventory. Whether it will develop to the point fantasized about in the article is anyone's guess, but that's hardly the value of the technology to the publishing industry; and if it doesn't, that's certainly no indication that it's a failure. When a store places a 10-copy order to a publisher, if that publisher can print & bind & ship those 10 copies in one day, then POD will be a huge success and will greatly lower publishers' cost of doing business. That's what they're working toward, and it looks like they will get there.
Self-publishing a book is much more difficult than self-publishing a program, and print publishing is a capital-intensive business. Nearly all authors need to work with a publishing house if they want to see their books in print. In most cases, the book contract gives the copyright to the publisher.
POD technology has made self-publishing easier than ever. Companies like POD publisher Exlibris (in which Barnes & Noble has a stake) are replacing the role of the old-style vanity presses. They make it relatively cheap for anyone to have available a printed & bound copy of his masterpiece. The only trick for the author is to create demand. Even authors with track records at major publishers have gone this route for certain projects they want to handle themselves. It's precisely that "capital intensive" quality of publishing that POD technology has already taken a bite out of, and will take a bigger bite out of in the future.
And the article incorrectly claims that authors sign away their copyrights when they contract with publishers. This is only true of books that are "work-for-hire," when the publisher hires writers to do a specific project that the publisher has conceived. The vast majority of books published are not work-for-hire, and almost all trade fiction and non-fiction is copyrighted by the author, not the publisher.
We still need intelligent, qualified people to help us sift the wheat from the chaff, but when it comes to free books, the judgment of quality can come after publication, not before. This is a wonderful thing!
The only judgment of quality that matters comes after a book is published, no matter whether it's free or published by a corporate publisher or small press. The single biggest factor in determining a book's success is word-of-mouth. The biggest ad campaign in history won't get people reading something they aren't interested in, no matter how low the price. Yes, this is a wonderful thing. But it's as true for corporate publishing as it is for free books online.
Michael"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
will anyone buy the annual everything2 encyclopedia ????
As I was doing another 5 hour drive this weekend I thought to myself, "Self, why is it so hard to get books on CD's. It would seem like the logical progression, use CD's instead of crappy tapes that will work in my CD player on long drives when I can't read. Why are there always books-on-tape at gas stations but never any books-on-CD's....." This conversation went on in my mind for most of my drive.
Now I am curious. Is there a pocket PC/PDA that has an audio out jack, and can have a text->audio converter installed onto it??? I admit that I would be highly interested in one....
When I mirrored Project Gutenberg, I litterally gave away thousands of books, mostly to eastern Europe. I don't have exact numbers in my head anymore, but it was in the 100s of K downloads (number of files). Personally, I have read many books published by project gutenberg on my PalmIIIx on trains and airplanes.
The biggest Threat to Project Gutenberg is the extension of copyright laws. A lot of famous and interesting works ought to be copyright-free by now, but the constant extensions to copyright laws prevent them from entering the public domain. This is really a pity.Useable (used) PCs can be had for as little as $30. Combined with free software and free books, this could be a great tool for underpriviliged people and countries to "catch up" a little.
We need more free information, damnit.
Free library at
http://www.baen.com/library/
They also explain why they're doing it. Basically,
they hook you in with the free book, so you'll buy the rest of the series.
- Lnr
you said "it's difficult and time-consuming to copy the data"
If ebooks catch on the way the media companies do, they expect it to be impossible to copy the data from an ebook.
...follow the link in my .sig to read them.
One is fantasy, for teenagers, and would be maybe 120 pages in paperback. The other is dystopian science fiction, for adults, and would be about 200 pages. Both are in plain HTML, without any kind of DRM. Older browsers might have trouble rendering the quotation marks and apostrophes properly, but Mozilla handles them fine, and that's [Ff]ree too.
Many people in this thread have grumbled that computer screens, whatever technology they may be based on, aren't suitable for reading large amounts of text. Here's a suggestion. Read as much of the book as you can bear on-screen, or as much as you need to decide whether it's worth finishing, whichever comes first. Then, if you think it's good enough, print it out and read the rest like that. Simple, eh? (It's so simple that I should patent it... no, let's not go there.)
OK, a printout isn't as nice to handle as a well-made paperback or hardback, but it's about as portable, it's a lot cheaper, you can print another if it gets lost or too dog-eared, and the words are the same in any case. Best of all, if you decide the book isn't worth reading, all it's cost you is the time you needed to reach that decision. (Yes, there's the cost of your net access while you download the book, and the running cost of your computer, but if money is tight enough that you have to worry about that, you probably shouldn't be wasting time reading novels ;-)
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
I'm not surprised by the success of free electronic books at all. Libraries have been making access to books something that everyone can afford for years. Publishers of copyrighted works should remember that the library has been one of their best sources of publicity for their products AND a great consumer of their products. I have probably 40-50 books that I've bought because I was first exposed to them at the library.
Please remember to do your part to support your local public library. They serve a very important role in our society.
$G
-- $G
"Sonny Bono is dead." -- Project Gutenberg
"Project Gutenberg is still dead." -- Mary Bono, executor of Sonny Bono's estate
Will I retire or break 10K?
A few years ago crime-fiction novelist Andrew Vachss searialized his first unpublished novel called A BOMB BUILT IN HELL on Amazon. Amazon posted a few chapters a day and gave the thing away for free.
Shortly after, Vachss posted the entire novel on his website in PDF format for free download.
Vachss certainly seems to embrace the give-em-something-free and they'll buy something too model. His website is full of short stories, novel excerpts and years worth of his non-fiction writing. [Samples: short stories & novel excerpts]
From what I've read in interviews and heard him say at book signings, he's been really pleased with the reaction others have to the free stuff. He also feels it gives him a wider audience, because novels are slow to be published overseas. So he can build new, loyal readers for when work is available for them to buy there.
Return it after you read it?
Common, have some morals...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But certainly go local is the best advice.
Good luck.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is unless of course you have a RoadRunner. Believe me, I tried reading ebooks (mostly the Project Gutenberg Stuff, but sometimes the news with AvantGo) but reading on a palmV, a Casiopia, Compaq, and a full width (640 pixels) HP Jornada don't compare to the RoadRunner. The RoadRunner is a text-to-speech box that you can load a couple of book on (not much in the way of documentation but I have seen that it'll hold 2mb of files). Basically you can load up a bunch of book on it al listen to them anywhere. I know, books on tape/CD right? Wrong! Books on tape/CD are expensive, abridged, take forever to listen to (set reading speed), and you have to change the CD/tape all the time, (which I have also tried) My RoadRunner has been in use for over 60 hours without having to change the batteries! By my calculations it's running at 600+ WPM (10x faster than a book on tape). I listen to it everywhere I go and get questions about it all the time. It's the greatest electronic gizmo I've ever bought! Originally they were really expensive and aparently a new company has started making them and they're really cheap now. I stumbled upon their web-site www.CompanionDevices.com looking to see if there was any up to date info on the unit (I bought my unit off a friend of a blind friend of mine). In any case, I think it would be cool to see kids running around listening to books rather than that darn Rap music or the Rock and Roll. -=/ MLFnet /=-
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40690&threshol d=-1&commentsort=0&tid=109&mode=thread&pid=4330655
;)
;)
Sorry this is the only way I could respond that I know you would read. Sorry also that I so late is responding - I don'y spend everyday looking at Slashdot - which looking at your logs you do.
Response:
You said I am crazy? What kind of lame debating technique is that?
You say "Bin Laden is Rich" compared to the US? Are you nuts? He has $300 million while the US budget is in the TRILLIONS (that is the comparison I made if you read my post). The goal of my post was to draw a comparison of two powerful (and unpopular) monopolies who are being attacked by smaller less organized and far less funded organizations. That is all. I didn't draw any conclusions about the worth or righteousness of the struggles, just that they exist.
-ShieldWolf (anonymous to save my karma).