Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Launches Full Text Book Search
m00nun1t writes "Amazon have launched a new service that allows you to search the full text of books. This sounds like an incredibly useful function as well as technically impressive at this scale. I wonder if a patent is in the works." Or if a patent is already owned.
can you do it with one click?
How useful is this, considering that we can't see what's in the books before buying?
Sure, you can search for some random phrase. But who's to say it's not out of context, or there's nothing more that's relivent in the book?
I can almost hear the screams of joy from the underground book pirates.
How easy can this service be abused, with automatic webbots doing the searching?
I can imagine there might be filters, time limits, and max searchs/day limits for something of this scale, no?
user@host$ diff
please /. spell your titles right...! launches with an e!
2) It returned a lot of results
Conclusion: It works!!!
It looks like you can see the full page when you do a search. I wonder if searching for (Book Name) 1, (Book Name) 2..., would let you read the book page by page.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Back in the early days of the web, when Yahoo was still a catalog of links and not some super news/search/auction/ebusiness/do-it-all website that it is now, searches were much more fun.
.wav samples and more than likely an artist you'd never heard of before. That was the best part, getting introduced to things you hadn't even thought to look for.
You really never knew what would turn up as you traversed the Yahoo directory structure. You start searching for blues music and you'd end up with a list of 15 or so good links with
As search techniques are becoming more refined, we are now able to do specific word searches on websites and now books. That's fine if you know exactly what you are looking for. For example if you want to get that book about 'replicants' you'll find Blade Runner, but you won't find anything else. You won't get any information except exactly the thing you are looking for.
And I think that that is where the problem with this kind of search lies for books/music/etc. If you want to find a song or a book, it most likely isn't going to be a specific word you remember, it will be the tune or the plot, both of which are not searchable.
I don't see this improvement in Amazon's search system as that much of an improvement. A better improvement could be made to the 'We thought you'd like' feature. Instead of finding only what I'm looking for, I'd like to find other things I might also be interested in.
I remember a teacher once telling a class I was in that our essays may be compared to other essays published online to check for plagiarism.
Granted, Amazon.com's feature will only (for now) include 150,000 books, but this may very well be another way to catch plagiarizers. Just type in a suspicious phrase and see if there are any 'hits'.
Even though he said he was 'blown away' by Amazon's new Search Inside the Book feature, Tim O'Reilly has decided not to participate in the program for now. 'If they end up being a Google for published content...we need to think better about what publishers get out of it,' he said.
There's books about everything:
."
Encyclopedia of New Media : An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology -- Steve Jones (Editor); Hardcover
Excerpt from page 0: ". . . post-ranking system used by members the of Web message board Slashdot.org, began as a result of community self- restraint in the face of unrelenting trolls (pointlessly hostile posters). In addition, some cyberspace forums now require . .
See more references to slashdot troll in this book.
"Amazon have launched a new service..."
You would think that the editors of slashdot would be able to correct a simple subject-verb agreement problem like the one illustrated above. Ironic that this happens in a story about books.
The editors of the world reknowned Slashdot has recently proven to the wrld that they are unable to correct small spelling mistackes and grammar issues.
I did a quick search using their demo for "Curse of the Bambino" in the 'Try Searches' area of the page linked to in the main /. story. After choosing the first book (Curse of the Bambino) I did another search just within that book (from the link on their page) for "Bambino." This turned up 129 of the 240 pages. Browsing through pages. Since you can display a couple of pages before and after the chosen page, it's easy to get to the rest of the pages in the book by just choosing a word on the page preceding/following the one displayed and doing another search for that word. I can't imagine this won't be abused...wonder how Amazon will deal with this. Perhaps a limit on each account for pages viewed per book/time period?
Blame it on the Brits. They like to think that companies are plural entities.
Microsoft are a company.
Amazon have launched a service.
It's a very strange adaptation of the English language. It's not at all logical.
A higher score?!? Let me try...NO CARRI(+5, funny)
Now I can cut+paste my homeworks! yay!
I'd love to be able to browse a giant back catalog, knowing that an original or facsimile copy could definitely be delivered to me.
In other news... Amazon announced that the USPTO has granted them a patent on their proprietary "one click search" technology.
When questioned for comment Google CEO Eric Schmidt said "ug".
Youth in the old days: lookup 'vagina' in a dictionary.
Youth nowadays: lookup 'vagina' in all books on this planet.
I tried the search again today and got nearly 5,000 results, with the capability to actually look inside the book and see if the reference is useful to me. Very impressive indeed, patent or no patent.
Peer Pressure
They hire accountants and attorneys to go after teenagers who file-share
And I can tell you how it works. Basically, it's a big hash. A big, big hash.
This was a very expensive add-on.
Now that they have this huge library scanned in, will they make it available for anything _but_ searches?
How long before they patent this "never before seen" technology?
Bash Amazon all you want, but this is a very useful technology.
In five minutes I was able to find three books that talked about findings first listed in two of my own published scientific papers, yet these books did not cite me, or anyone else, as the source of that information. My lawyer is currently preparing three letters.
I also found two other books in which the author used verbatim quotes and original theories from various interviews I have given, yet both authors passed off the statements as their own. My lawyer is now preparing five letters.
Aside from being used to protect my own research rights, I have found the search system useful for finding topics of interest discussed in certain books which are not referenced in any of the descriptions about the books. I just ordered three books I would not otherwise have ever purchased.
While I don't think highly of all of Amazon's practices, I must hand it to them for whatever technical undertaking created this search feature.
Amazon's got a nice idea, but it has already been implemented for Stephen King books at http://www.stephenkingsearch.com. How long until Amazon forces this guy to close down?
Ive tried searching for the following.
1. Rincewind (Character in Terry Pratchett books)
The only reference I could find where books about fantasy/sci fi fiction and no book extracts from TP's books.
2. Various other British and US authors, again to extracts.
3. The first line of 1984. Success I found extracts, but only the first page and the cover. Also the extract seemed only to exist for one version of the book, not all copies.
This seems to be a good idea for academia/study books but, at the moment at least doesnt seem to work as well for fiction. Im guessing this is because of lack of participation by the publishers.
Come on. You all must agree by now...
I tried searching for an exact phrase but it doesn't work - you just get lots of matches on the individual words. It is also very broken if you use quotation marks.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I warmly welcome any initiative that makes more and more books, or parts thereof, available online.
I used to think, like many people, that ebooks just didn't work because 'I like the feel of paper under my fingers'. Since I bought a PDA and discovered the joys of Fictionwise, I just can't go back to these clumsy wood pulp apparels.
Amazon is pretty progressive in this regard, making a great number of their collection available electronically. It was probably fairly easy from there to make their stock searchable. And how I wish the MPAA and RIAA could work like the publishing industry...
The existence of ebooks is NOT threatening traditional books, because people see more value in a printed book over an electronic copy. This is clearly not the case with a CD and a DVD, since most people couldn't care less about the jacket if they have the goods on the CD/DVD. I wish the MPAA and RIAA would understand how to make traditional CDs and DVDs "value-added", and make people less inclined to getting a computer file instead of shelling out the money.
Then again, I guess the case with ebooks is that your typical DVD or CD pirate is just not interested in swapping files to get the latest Stephen King and read it on screen. Not only that, but most of History's greatest books are available for free, and one could probably read free books for the rest of their lives if they chose so.
i just happed to *search* for replicants and found this random link that entertained me for nay on 2 minutes
replicants
i did not see one bladerunner reference ont he first page of links.. ok well there was one but its google! its designed to be good
Since Amazon doesn't own the rights to the book, is there any legal liability if someone determined enough writes a script to steal an entire book?
........ and that you can browse forward and back two pages.
If you are a registered, recognized Amazon.com customer, you will go directly to the page you selected
Since you can see two pages ahead and back of your search result, you can simply take the contents of the second page and place a new search based on the contents of 2 pages forward from your current location. Might take a bit of work, but if the full book is really there it is possible to automate the process.
If this got patented, I imagine it would put a lot of companies (google) out of business or something. I mean, patenting a search of a specific word or phrase in a document? You've got to be kidding me?
;/
I'm not even sure they could patent the part about "searching through it before you make a purchase". I think some newspaper websites let you search through an article for a specific word and then shows you that part of the article, but if you want to read the whole thing you have to make an account or buy the paper.
I guess I don't understand patents. How can you patent something that every program that deals with text uses, and has used since the beginning, and will keep using?
I sell out to The Man every day.
So you commend Amazon for allowing you to abuse the legal system? It's actually kind of astonishing to see here at Slashdot someone who thinks that copyright law ought to be used as a legal sledgehammer to rob authors.
I guess it takes all kinds.
believe it or not!
...
1.) go to walmart
2.) thumb in the book
3.) look over your shoulder every 30 seconds, we don't want to get caught!
4.)
5.) YOU GENIUS!
I sell out to The Man every day.
You can read the page it is on and +/- two pages.
This is equivalent of the facility you have in a physical bookstore to open a book and browse a few pages before purchasing. I can see it might be very useful, if they get the majority of books in a field accessible like this.
I wanted a PHP book the other day, and it is very difficult to decidew which one of the plethora available I wanted. So I went to my physoical bookstore. Smaller choice, but I could open each and get an impression of whther ther were slow, detail by detail, dummies books or the sort of high-speed summary I wanted.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Why do I need to enter a credit card number?
We require credit card information for security purposes only. We will not charge your credit card account any fees for using the Search Inside the Book feature.
Uhuh. Security. Whose?
Yeah, I want to be financially secure too !
As long as you are searching for "all text"
it spoils the end of a book you're looking up?
You have to have an account to view the pages. Fine, great. But then it brought up this screen:
By publishers' agreement, we are pleased to offer Amazon.com customers with a valid credit card the ability to view copyrighted pages.
Your account will not be charged.
This one-time process enables you to view limited copyrighted material through our Search Inside the Book feature.
So they'll let you browse the search pages, if you can prove your identity on record and provide them with financial information. No thanks.
With that many typos in one post, I sure hope your grammar is better than your spelling.
I was always under the impression that Amazon was so successful because most of the business is handled by the computers unning the site and sales, and they only needed people to work in their warehouses, on their website/software, and some to handle customer support (as opposed to maintaining a chain of retail stores around the world).
But now, this seems to be something that would require an army of people to handle. And that's not to mention the hardware/facilities needed to create this database.
So how is this actually being managed?
As I read this rather interesting post, I am trying to figure out why Amazon took this route rather than the many many routes available to them to publicise or provide a richer experience to the average Joe buyer...
/.ers here i.e., the ability to help researchers to find out obscure stuff that wont find its way even into the google scheme of things but that is not a huge majority so I am left wondering.
Even with a full text search facility I doubt very much if it can come close to matching the experience of flipping through a book at the local book store no matter how effective the searching facility.
I can think of one reason and that has already been mentioned by a few
- ramas opines !!
"Why won't Search Inside the Book let me see more pages from a specific book?
Our Search Inside the Book feature is designed to help our customers discover new books and ensure that they'll be satisfied with their purchases. To be fair to the publishers and authors who participate in our program, we only allow Search Inside the Book users to read a portion of the book."
... can you save it? Is there some workaround/hack so that you can actualy save that page. Ofcoursse, good 'ol "Printscn" will do it, but you have to go thru hassle of pasting it in photoshop, croping..bla bla bla
The blurb says that they have 120,000 books that can be searched by text. This means that they have digitized all of them - and that is 110,000 more books than what Project Gutenberg has managed to achieve. Pretty impressive work in such a short duration of time - since each book has an electronic entry, plus a scanned page for display!
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Come on how about every book ever made in every language just like in the QWEST Commerical! When can I ride the light?!?!?
Trix are for kids!
They fielded it out to third world countries where workers slaved in sweat-shop conditions for 14 hours a day. And no they didn't use scanners, they had to type everything in. In binary. On those old IBM keyboards.
(this should get some whiny liberals all worked up!)
You must be new here.
At least he's not as bad as michael, the resident commmunist gasbag.
Slashdot is the pinnacle of quality journalism [ed. note: no it isn't]
Neat idea, but some excerpts come out all wrong:
See this for example...
Mass-OCR'ing has it's drawbacks..
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I'd imagine it's a simple matter of...
Amazon : Hey Mr Publisher, I'm setting up this database of book texts so the mort..err.customers can search for books.
Publisher : Cool, I'll email the [postscript/tex/...other source] right over.
Every one of those books has to have a electronic version somewhere, most likely in a machine-readable (rather than vector/bitmap) format.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
"grep."
I believe there is a body of prior art for scanning in books and greping them. Is that not one of the oft repeated benefits of ebooks?
Whether or not Amazon can get a patent on a shell script to serve up the results . . . on the web oooooooo, remains to be seen I suppose.
They managed to get one on "Give me one of those, put it on my account and drop it by my house" a "technology" my grocer has been offering over the phone for 40 years that I'm personally aware of.
However, since this sort of "technology" is exactly the sort of thing that the web, and the internet itself for that matter, was invented for I'd have to guess there's a lot of prior art. It's certainly obvious and trivial, but that doesn't seem to count for much these days.
The problem with things that are so obvious and trivial that "everyone" has been doing it for decades is that it's hard to demonstrate in court because no one bothers to document it.
Can you prove your grandfather put his pants on one leg at a time?
Common sense tells you he did, but common sense no longer applies in an age that grants patents to perpetual motion machines and peanut butter sandwiches.
KFG
Searching a single book- an index
Searching multiple books- a card catalog
Not to mention a dozen or so library cataloging systems, at least- especially research quality ones. That being said, this sounds like an awesome feature, and I applaud Amazon for putting it together.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Really, though if they make it fast and reliable - its an excellent excellent idea. I'm sick of buying books that seem to have the right subject matter only to find that at a deeper level - they are just not what I'm looking for. Go Amazon!!
I'm going to patent the two click search and the three click search!
Like that would stop them from trying to patent it again.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Or maybe a first grade spelling book, which says that the third-person verb conjugation of "launch" is spelled "launches", not "launchs."
I mean, c'mon, it's the first thing I noticed when I fired up slashdot this morning. Have people just stopped paying attention to spelling around here?
Article in December Wired talks about Amazon's book scanning, how they legally do it, who does it, how many books so far, and protections.
The Google engine relies upon the fact that web pages tend to link to each other. Most books don't (except maybe scientific publications), so the Google engine doesn't make much sense here.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
with the correct scipting and bot you can extract
the whole book with this tool! simply tie it down to the title. thats $1 argument, then , as the search returns with a rather large sentence for each appearance, simply search for the last word of the sentance...and concatenate each part together.
sorted.
then convert into eBook and read on train with GamePark32
Is someone getting $$$ for driving /. traffic to Amazon?
The latest Slashdot meme.
Yeah! Frank Zappa's daughter on /.!
You go, girl.
Safari.informit.com already has a book search tool that allows you to search their database of a couple thousand tech books. You can search for free, but a subscription is required to read the full text...
You could have robots trolling this section all day.
Uhuh. Security. Whose?
What's your point? You think Amazon is a dishonest porn site that takes your credit card information and disappears the next day?
Yeah, I want to be financially secure too !If that's your mentality, how are you surfing the web?
What the fsck's your point man? What does amazon demanding your credit card number for security have to do with you "wanting to be financially secure"? How did you even get modded up in the first place?
A few million people shop through amazon. You think unauthorized purchases and fradulent credit card transactions show up every month on their statements?Jeez, get a life dude.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
The parent post is totally illogical. I shop frequently on amazon and I don't have any complaints.
How did that post get modded up?
What connection does financial security have with giving your credit card number to amazon?
"Yeah, I want to be financially secure too !"
What do you mean by that?
You think giving your credit card number to amazon will make you bankrupt?
A full text search of slashdot, so the editors can search for duplicate articles before they post.
Scott
Thus, your searches will tend to return more results from books that are fully indexed.
Now that I think about it - this is a major incentive for publishers to get their books indexed.
the method of putting a sheep and a cow within 100 feet of another for good sheep-cow proximity. Are you infringing on my invention?
...are included in the search?
A check on "the clocks were striking thirteen" yields seventeen hits, including the Cliff's Notes to Nineteen Eighty-Four and a reference in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations...
but none to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four itself.
We must conclude that the coverage is spotty.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
To do this search thing, all the book have to be digital stored.
Next year Amazon is a digital libary.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
What a feat of computing genius! Using computers to search through large bodies of text!!!! Has ANYONE ever done this before?!
If you can read 5 pages of text per search, couldn't you just continually search for a phrase on the 5th page, allowing you to read any book for free with a decent amount of effort?
GL
already has a full-text search for tech books
Interestingly, there seem to be few or no post-OCR filters. Search for "vesterday" for example, and look at the excerpts. Also, some of these books have handwritten pages that went through OCR like the rest.
Look for the "Ducky" result of the "vesterday" search and check the page 14. The excerpt is basically garbled OCR results.
So, what's the idea for the QA plan ?
--f
The Captain's Log!
It's not a lie, if you believe it.
Read all about it here: http://www.nettle.com/archives/000062.html
Or if a patent is already owned.
This type of editorializing is pathetic in that its only purpose is to stir up the masses. Gee...now let's take a look shall we? 20% of the comments are "patents suck" or "isn't this some example prior art"?
This story is about a new feature people...it's not about a patent. Wipe the froth from your mouths and comment on the merits (of lack of) the feature...not on a completely fabricated hypothetical comment meant to incite you into a frenzy.
In case anyone else hasn't mentioned it, this service also provides a way to find the pages containing text in books one already owns. The only drawback is that I wouldn't consider it anywhere near 90% accurate, since a lot of their OCR appears to result in gibberish.
at netLibrary.com. We had 40k books all fully searchable. In cluding noice word thanks to the madness of the CEO. MS even came and took a look at how we were doing it. Too bad they hired the wrong redneck and ran the place into the ground.
But technically this isn't impressive. I worked on programs that did full-text document searches about 20 years ago, and they weren't new then. So simply doing full-text searches in documents is just no big deal. But what about the large number of books, you say? Actually, that's nothing more than what they already do. I believe the scale of website text far exceeds the scale of the book text that they can search. The Wikipedia is simply one of millions of sites, and it has a whole encyclopedia. So, they can simply use their existing schemes that examine websites to examine books as well. I am impressed with Google's ability to manage web searches, but compared to that, book searching is no big deal. It's a very minor extension to what they already do.
Is it patentable? They can probably send in paperwork and get a piece of paper, since the wheel and patterns for swinging on a swing have already been granted patents. Patenting in many countries has become simply a registration process, even though the law says otherwise. Software patents are particularly egregious. But does this basic idea meet the legal requirements of a patent? No. The idea of searching the full text of books - and technology to do it - has been around for decades. If they've done something truly original to handle the scale, then maybe, but as of yet I don't see any evidence of that. Perhaps the evidence of something original and not obvious will come.
I like to hear about major new innovations - I even have a paper on software innovations. But not everything has to be a breathtaking new innovation to be useful. If it's useful, then let's say "thank you" and/or use it, without demanding that it represent a revolutionary change in technology. Some of the things that have most changed our lives aren't radical new ideas, but instead are things that made pre-existing ideas easier or cheaper to use.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I decided to search for a single sentence in a book, chosen thusly:
The correct answer is "Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love" by Dan Rhodes. Did Amazon match it? I don't know, as I didn't have the patience to page through the 963 'matches'.
Note: I didn't actually expect this to work, but it would have been cool!
I searched for "It was the best of times", and got back these results in the top 10.
1. The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children (New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children)
2. The Best Of Times
3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
4. The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time
5. How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time
6. What Works on Wall Street: A Guide to the Best-Performing Investment Strategies of All Time
7. The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years
8. The New York Times Guide to the Best 1000
9. Time Machines: The Best Time Travel Stories Ever Written
10. 100 Best Poems of All Time
Poor Mr. Dickens.
Obvious trolling.......
It would be nice if some sort of interface to this could be included in Google.
Since Amazon.com has some sort of API for external applications, it shouldn't be impossible.
I would be a big fan of this idea - if you could choose when you wanted to use the feature, and when you wanted to search the "old way". I clearly see how this could be extremely useful when looking for obscure and/or highly specialized topics. But for anything more general, or that simply gets mentioned in passing often, this can create huge numbers of results that actually aren't that great of matches...
"What we play is life." - Louis Armstrong
The web is made from paper?
How can this possibly be Amazon making "fair use" of their inventory? If Amazon happens to be selling my book, do they automatically get the right to copy it into their database WORD-FOR-WORD (effectively?)
How can this possibly be Amazon making "fair use" of their inventory? If Amazon happens to be selling my book, do they automatically get the right to copy it into their database?
This is nothing new, I have been using books24x7.com for several years now and all of their books are fully text searchable.
I was stuck when working on a problem set; I Googled for a while and found out that there's a bunch of helpful info in one particular problems and solutions book. Curious about the book, I went on Amazon, and lo and behold, I can actually read the book. So, I look at the table of contents, find the relevant section, and search for the heading of that section. I can now read two pages from it. Not a problem; just pick a phrase on the second page and use it as a search query. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That, of course, would be impractical to do for more than ~4 pages (which was what I needed), but you get the point.
In a couple of hours I joined a few other guys working on the set, and it turned out they had just bought the book. There was a big "Doh!" when I showed them my printouts.
Now, if I actually found the book genuinely useful as a result of this experience, I'd buy a hardcopy. But I for now I think I'll stick with the current method. And I suspect many people might do just that: oftentimes there are references that aren't crucial to have, but convenient to turn to on a few occasions. The book search feature is perfect for those.
it was interesting. Hope you're modded up to 5.
Would it be possible to dictionary attack a book, parse the words and come up with a plain text version of the book?
That would be very seriously impressive!
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
This is what has being bugging me and I can't seem to find an answer. News reports talk of the books being 'scanned'. Is this really true? Surely they must be getting the books in pdf form or something from the publishers?? Otherwise the costs of scanning and OCRing 33 million pages are just beyond my comprehension.
Amazon says that for books that allow a "Search Inside the Book", a passage would be shown from the book with the search term highlighted. Couldn someone search for one thing, then search within the same book for a phrase appearing at the end of the displayed passage, thus recentering the displayed text? If it worked, someone could write a script to do this, and obtain an electronic copy of books not released in e-book or not yet scanned by the bookwarez folk. Obviously, the displayed passage would have to be fairly big then, so that a phrase toward the end wouldn't occur more than once in the same book. I have tried this with some books and got screenshots of what appears to be every single page of the book. It's a pain to navigate, but it would seem that someone could make a script (not me). Searching for a common word also works (though "the" appears to be blocked), and gives you links for every page or so in the book I have tried searching.
Totally on-target. And if you disagree, then don't ever quote anything by anyone else; that includes everything that's ever been said or written, whether you know about it specifically or not.
I thought it was illegal to obtain someone's credit card number if you don't intend to charge it.
There is a submission form on their site for publishers to use that says all they require is a physical copy of the book.
http://www.books24x7.com offers content search not a free service but a load of technical books. Luckily, work pays for my subscription
I'll continue this conversation if you provide me with your credit card number. This conversation is a free service, and I will not charge your credit card. Your credit card number is just required for security purposes.
Do you really believe that large companies do no wrong, and make no mistakes? Are you really such a bunny that you give your credit card to anyone with a brand name who asks for it?
That's my point, "man". Wake up to the real world. Look around you. Observe corporate malfeance. Now wonder if you really want to give your credit card number out every time you're asked. It's not a matter of paranoia. It's a matter of not being a schmuck.
Excerpt from page 47: ". . . say, just loud enough for us to hear it, "Fuckin' freaks." Phoebe gives them a big shit-eating smile and blows them a huge kiss. They look away, . . ."
Excerpt from page 97: ". . . stop" is counterproductive. The victim already feels like a "walking freak" and further blame- inducing language . . . of the severity of an eating disorder. If you suspect a loved one has an eating . . ."
Excerpt from page 127: ". . . Big D are explaining the law to Floyd. BIG D Shit, any nigger say he don't . . . by the dominant white, pussy- eating ideology of America, bringing oppression . . . boys. And white boys are freaks for that shit ... Then, after a while sisters get . . ."
Excerpt from page 269: ". . . made me mad. "Are you swallowing your own line of shit, Arty Binewski? Aren't you forgetting . . . that you're just a two-bit freak with a gimmick?" "Get out," . . . make sure the twins were eating and not flushing their food. Arty let me do chores . . ."
Excerpt from page 200: ". . . strain of depression remained impervious to lithium, and as Jenny's "shit year" ended and a new . . . forget how I feel about eating and won't think not to . . . basis." "My sisters are gonna freak out about my having shock treatments." "How do you feel . . ."
Excerpt from page 156: ". . . in reception? She'd know that you left the office. She'd freak! It's not worth the risk. Hold on a sec-I11 get . . ."
Excerpt from page 81: ". . . waves leapt up, if life went on as usual and freak accidents peppered a calm shore. That same week she found . . ."
Excerpt from page 256: ". . . to have on him. "Look at me!" he shouts. "I'm shit and ev- erybody who looks at me knows I'm shit. . . ."
Excerpt from page 176: ". . . signed her new identity on it below the little Irish freak. "I was just thinking of Billy," she explained. "Remember that . . ."
Excerpt from page 90: ". . . been to that Salvadorian bistro on Eighty-third?" he asks. "We're eating there tonight." "Yeah. I mean . . . somewhere, and this, in turn, freaks me out. "The Fisher account," . . . Fisher account," Reeves says. "Oh shit," I say. "Don't remind us." "Lucky bastard," Hamlin says. "Has . . ."
RS
There is no superior technology.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Actually this is a 'feature' I dont need. Today a search for five science books took over half an hour instead of a few minutes. The stupid search program searched inside other books instead searching for the title and authors AS IT SHOULD. Yes I know there is an advanced search feature but I HATE using it. For years I used the the fast search just typing in the title. Is there a possibility of disabling this new 'damn feature' in the fast search and make it work the way it used to?
They got it wrong, The fast search should be as simple as possible, otherwise it is not fast. The text search should be a choice in the advanced search.
so did this just knock them over? for a sec i thought it was all the reviews pouring in for The Bush Boom but that would be silly.
shut the fuck up you dirty hippie.
That credit card number is going over the internet you know...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1019 7041/104-8011833-2636716
In particular:
Why won't Search Inside the Book let me see more pages from a specific book?
Our Search Inside the Book feature is designed to help our customers discover new books and ensure that they'll be satisfied with their purchases. To be fair to the publishers and authors who participate in our program, we only allow Search Inside the Book users to read a portion of the book.
So, you can only see some % of the books pages as a unique customer (with a unique associated credit card).
I don't see how they can patent full-text search in general. It's been around for decades. (Well, other than the usual way of some complete idiot in the patent office letting something nonsensical through.)
As for full-text search on books, we launched the book search on dragaera.info a couple of weeks ago. Of course US patent goes by invention rather than exploitation -- but we had an in-house beta well over a year ago, too.
I set up a Citibank Virtual Account number with a $1 limit. It worked fine.