A little slow off the mark here, but library.nu was recently taken down:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html
(Its old domain names--ebooksclub.org and gigapedia.com--redirect to this article)
It was a fantastic website that hosted hundreds of thousands of high-quality textbooks. Given the paywalls and high markup of academic content, this is a pretty huge blow to students and NEETs alike.
How do you guys feel about this? I am actually very upset. It's like a modern burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Do you guys think these sort of sites are fair?
Of course, textbooks are extortionate and knowledge should be free. But is "pirating" John A. Author's monograph on mathematics published by Foo Publications all that ethical?
>>9
I see what you mean, and I think I might agree with it.
Information, skill teaching, reference books. Maybe pirating those is okay. But I'd rather not pirate a work of fiction that an author put his feelings and heart and above all, hard work, into.
Is there some form of a replacement up?
>>11
Only Ebookee and random Blogspot pages come to mind. I suppose there are IRC channels too.
They all lack the organization and metadata of library.nu, though. It was really one of a kind.
>>12
IRC Channels? Not to sound useless, but what ones?
I'm going to college soon and they want me to get over 300 USD in programming books.
>>9
Fundamental misunderstanding of the business. Academic monographs aren't marketed to people, they're marketed to university libraries which are compelled to buy them at whatever price in order to maintain their function as a research library. Academics are compelled to publish articles in prestigious (read: owned by one of the main academic publishing companies and not open access) journals and monographs via the same thanks to an archaic system of determining their worth as academics. No one likes this arrangement but the publishers, who are free to take advantage of the duress of the buyers and sellers to rake in the big bucks. Look at the recent dust up between Elsevier and several academic mathematics communities.
>>14
True. And with digital distribution of ebooks and scientific articles, the gloves are off at this point.
I have no problem with piracy and I don't consider it stealing. But I'd admittedly feel guilty if I downloaded, say, The Art of Computer Programming rather than buying it and supporting decades of hard work (even if most of the money ends up in the pocket of some rich publishing executive).
Plus, I just like having physical books. I really wish public libraries paid the same attention to textbooks as academic libraries do.
legalreads.com has millions of ebooks and is a good alternative to LNU
Out of all the marvel characters, who would your top six be for a team of avengers? They can be Avengers already, or X-men, or Defenders, or dead, or bad guys, or anyone else, just who would it be out of everybody?
Mine are easy
The team's leader-Captain America
Then HAWKEYE if you can't tell by the name
Then Daredevil
Then Wolverine
Then The Scarlett Witch
And last and least, Spiderman, but Red Hulk was a close 7th
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! In all honesty, that truly sucks.
It's not like he wrote anything else besides that.
Godspeed, Mr. Bradbury.
I'm Japanese university student. I'd like to hear that American students are doing for their future. Everything ok. Please tell me something.
I am sorry for the delay in my response.
I want to remedy injustice too.
But, I think it is so difficult to directly corrupt politic.
So, I'll indirectly remedy the world's injustice by using Internet.
I think I can do it, because now we can redistribute various education to the world by using e-learning.
In the larger community, We should think that we have learned at university.
4wJblYt5 is my Mac PC'ID.
IN7Mnwi3 is my Windows ID.
I am too poor to go to a college or University. I wish I could be an English teacher in Japan.
I'm a high school student, planning on majoring in literature and going into writing for novels, news, and possibly even games
either that or a coroner (死因裁判官) I hope the kanji is the same in japanese, I've learned a little bit, but I mostly rely on my Chinese for my kanji
You can do it.
Now in Japan, it is said Japanese people have to study English more.
So, there are many chances to get English teacher.
I find a chance.
This is one way to work in Japan.
If other people want to work in Japan too, let's check this URL!
I find a chance.
This is one way to work in Japan.
If other people want to work in Japan too, let's check this URL!
>>13
Here I will copy/paste the some of the school prices.
Chiyoda -near electric town
year= 724,500.00 JPY = 8,977.91 USD
6mths= 399,000.00 JPY = 4,913.19 USD
Yoshida -beatiful building -second cheapest
year= 706,100.00 JPY = 8,694.74 USD
6mths= 410,100.00 JPY = 5,049.87 USD
3mths= 148,050.00 JPY = 1,823.05 USD
System Toyo Gaiyo -cheapest
year= 684,600.00 JPY = 8,430.00 USD
6mths= 394,800.00 JPY = 4,861.47 USD
>>13 Oh woops.
I am >>14. What I mean to post was Thank you for that link. And I also found this site that helps you get into Japanese learning schools.
http://gogonihon.com/en/learn-japanese-study-in-japan
And then I converted the prices for most of the school into USD in>>14.
There. Done.
I been looking to open up to new things ( regarding literature), and wanted to know about some good titles. :)
What are you interested in? What have been good reads for you, so far?
>>2
He wants us to divine his tastes. Let's do this.
Okay.
3... 2... 1...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY! CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE IDIOT, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV! LARRY NIVEN! A WORLD OUT OF TIME, THE INTEGRAL TREES, THE SMOKE RING! STEPHEN BAXTER! MANIFOLD TIME, THE RING, VACUUM DIAGRAMS! GO!
Well, I second Dostoyevsky, and would start with the Brothers Karamasov (my favorite band of brothers). On the other hand, if you want a quick read from old Dosto, check out Letters from the Underground, a foundational novel.
Other suggestions would be Metamorphosis (Kafka), haikus from Basho and Issa, The Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), On the Road (Kerouac), Foucault's Pendulum (Eco), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Márquez), At the Mountains of Madness (Lovecraft), Princes of Amber (Zelazny), etc...
It's the frist of November and the annual National Novel Writing Month has begun! Who, other than me, is competing?
Seems nobody. Myself I am very busy with grad school.
Oh hey. I'm doing it. I'm at 33300 words. I basically just keep up with the cumulative count. I haven't been more than a few hundred words or so off. Less than two weeks to go!
bumping in case anyone is doing it this year. I'm at 7000 words so far.
What if you had been working on a project for years and were somehow unaware that there was such a thing as this month. By which I mean November. You could make it like a Groundhog Day thing or alternate universe with only eleven months in the year... Seriously, though...
What if you had been working on a novel for years and found yourself done with it at the end of November? You'd get lost in a sea of hipster girls trying to sell their novels about how they wrote a novel (or whatever it is these stories end up being and my other guess is Twilight clones).
I'd hate to be a literary agent on the first of December, is all I'm saying...
I'd finish a novel if I weren't so damned lazy with words. Poetry and short stories are more my thing.
Novels strike me as excessive. Much better to write a tightly controlled short story
I am currently reading The Mote in Gods Eye. It is very good so far.
Your turn.
"Machines that think"
A wonderful sci-fi short-story anthology about robots. One of the editors is Asimov.
Finally getting around to reading A Confederacy of Dunces. Starts pretty weak, in my opinion.
>>4
One of my favorite books, though haven't read it in a long time, so can't remember if it starts weakly, but I'd say it should get better...
I'm reading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. It's one of his most well known treatises on political philosophy.
The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
I am an exciting man.
Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton. Its really good mostly since its pretty different from the other stuff he's written.
An Introduction to Buddhist Philosophy, by Stephen J. Laumakis
Informative, but I could have done without the academic style wrinkles.
I think this board needs a thread for recommending good series of fanfiction. A cursory search of the list of subject lines suggested that we have none so far, though I welcome any corrections. So I'm gonna start off this thread with two series I have grown fond of in the past six months.
First, there's "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" by Less Wrong (and indeed inspired by the "Less Wrong" website). I loved it pretty much from the first chapter, though I am none too fond of the Harry Potter franchise as a whole. It can be found at http://m.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality in case you're interested.
The other series I would like to recommend is "Kyon: Big Damn Hero", a sort of crossover between the Haruhi Suzumiya series and TV Tropes. I would recommend reading the Haruhi novels before starting on this one. I had only read the first two novels before I started reading it, and most of the in-universe references went right over my head. Still, it is possible to read with nothing more than knowledge of the anime series, or so I am told. The best place to find this series is at http://pishoque.net/brian/fanfic/kbdh/index.htm
That's all I can recommend at this point. As a fan of the Star Trek tie-in novels, I would be especially delighted to find out about good Trek fanfic series I haven't discovered yet, but I've deliberately kept the scope of this thread as wide as possible in order to maximise participation. Bring it on, 4channellers!
Seconding HP&tMoR and K:BDH.
"Luminosity" + the sequel "Radiance" at http://luminous.elcenia.com/
I wouldn't touch the original Twilight series with a 10 foot pole, but the description of this alternative series intrigued me, and I like it.
its summary:
"Luminosity is an AU reworking of the Twilight story where Bella is a rational self-knowledge junkie. Inspired by 'Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality'. Requires no knowledge of or affection for Twilight canon."
I'll probably post more suggestions later, I have read a ton of misc fandom fanfics: if I like a fic I end to read the author's other works, even if I know nothing about the source material (though I tend to read the wiki page about the source material to get the gist of it), and then the linked-to other people's fics that the author liked enough to favourite.
Lately, I've been getting into reading cyberculture stuff found around the web. Donna Harraway, Sherry turkle and the like. It's all very interesting and new to me, so I'm just wondering:
Does literature know anything about cyberculture and can it recommend me anything good to read/look at on the subject? It doesn't have to be books, I'd be happy to see youtube videos as well. Cyberpunk is fine too.
So you know what I'm talking about, I'll give you a few links:
http://www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/space99.html
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfvRA0zrL4
http://www.anti-thesis.net/contents/texts/suicide.pdf
Cyberfeminism seems to have most of the incoherent and niche stuff I tend to look for, but general material is always nice as well
So, anybody?
i read this novel back in junior high and for the life of my i cant remember the author or the title of the novel, and i have only a vauge recollection of the plot. if you guys could help it would be great. It is a fantasy novel
The lead character is a female slave and she has a lazy eye. Her and her people mine for rocks or stones or gems of some sort as a source of heat and energy. For some reason she runs away and finds the woods. apperntly there are no longer any trees in her land as they have all be consumed by industrialism. She must go back and lead a revolt with the other people she has found who have also escaped their former life of slavery.
this is all i cant remember. for all i know i dreamed it up, if so i am going to freaking write it, but if not i really want to read it again.
let me know if it sounds familiar. and if it helps it was in paper back novel in.... 1998
Don't know what it is, but sounds cool. Let me know if you find it again (or if you write it).
Found it!! :D
Two years later....
Its called Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
Just as good now as it ever was!