Slashdot Mirror
O'Reilly Gives Away Free Programming Ebooks (oreilly.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
There's now a section on OReilly.com offering free ebooks about computer programming. There's four free Java ebooks and seven about Python, as well as an "Other" section which contains ebooks like C++ Today, Swift Pocket Reference, and Why Rust? But there's also some broader categories for Open Source and Software Architecture ebooks, as well as separate sections for their free ebooks about Data, Security, Web Development, and the Internet of Things.
Because you are using the wrong torrent client.
You know full well that in this case free just means they aren't charging any money for it. It doesn't mean that they are giving away their rights on these books and so they don't have to make them available for a straight anonymous download. They do these sorts of deals to get potential customers to their site. If you could just at hand out anonymous links to the books then it would fail their goal.
If you don't want to give them you details then don't get the books. Easy!
>> Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
said the user that entered their email address to get a "free" userid for posting on slashdot :-)
Just do these regex replacements on the URLs:
curl 'http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/' | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp">/free\/\1.pdf/'
http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program... http://www.oreilly.com/program...
O'Reillys books are universally really high quality. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, I'd buy their books pretty much sight unseen. They were never cheap, but they were definitely worth every penny.
These days, there are so many amazing online resources, it is rare that I would get use from a printed book. I am a little sad and nostalgic, but I honestly don't see their business model lasting all that much longer. Even if all of their books were readily and cheaply available online, I probably still wouldn't read them. It's simply the wrong way to present the type of information that I need.
You know full well that in this case free just means they aren't charging any money for it. It doesn't mean that they are giving away their rights on these books and so they don't have to make them available for a straight anonymous download. They do these sorts of deals to get potential customers to their site. If you could just at hand out anonymous links to the books then it would fail their goal.
If you don't want to give them you details then don't get the books. Easy!
Or use a disposable email account and junk info like I always do for crap like that, I wonder how much crap info VMWare Cisco or others has in their DB's from people like me giving fake info they demand everytime you download VMWare Player, or cisco drivers
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
If you don't want to give away your e-mail use an anonymous one. Plenty out there.
Yes these are general books about programming but it's still good value. Some publishers like Elsevier take and take and take from the community without giving anything back EXCEPT POLITICAL DONATIONS TO CONGRESSMEN TO KEEP THEIR CARTEL. O'Reilly's done very well out of the programming community but he does give back. Good for him.
As far as I know, O'Reilly hasn't given away many free books. (Maybe they're changing that now.) But they've sold ebooks at a 50% discount.
You can request to be put on their email list. Then most days, you'll get an email that tells you that one or more books are on sale for 50% off for one day.
Also 3 or 4 times a year, they email you, telling you that for a few days, all ebooks, or all ebooks on a particular subject, are on sale for 50%. If I want to get an ebook, but I'm in no hurry to get it, I wait for those sales to get it.
When you get a book on sale this way, you have to type in the discount code that's mentioned in their email.
I find online resources are best when you're staring at code on a monitor looking for specifics. Books are best when you're offline, browsing information you might not otherwise search for.