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Humble Book Bundle: Unix

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Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#11

Post by kev009 »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

It's a humble bundle so it would have been unusual for print books. The manufacturing cost is quite high for print on demand vs essentially free for digital download.

But I am with you on the print books. I've spend many thousands of dollars building up my home CS library. Nothing helps me learn better than stepping away from the screens and reading paper in a comfortable chair!

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#12

Post by khedoros1 »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #2

"Pay what you want" is a false statement. When I wanted to pay 1 cent they demanded a minimum of one dollar. I may be a cheap ass for wanting these things for a cent but that doesn't change the fact that "Pay what you want" is a total and utter lie.

I just got "10 Steps to Unix Survival" by paying $0.00.

1. Click "Pay what you want"

2. Choose the "Free Stuff" tier

3. Go through the rest of the wizard ("I'm not a robot" and such)

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#13

Post by pfranz »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

I've gone back and forth. I wanted digital books, but frankly they're terrible on Kindle--especially languages like Python because of word-wrapping. Kindles are also awful at skimming or thumbing through. But physical books I don't always have with me at work/home and it's hard to dig them out when you need them.

I've found that I really like buying digital books, but using my iPad or Kindle computer app to read coding books because the formatting is better. Even if you don't copy/paste, it's easier to type in code if it's in the window next to you instead of looking down (yeah, I can type without looking at the keyboard, but I have more trouble in an IDE when I have to match parens and quotes, deal with autocomplete and other syntax things like semicolons).

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#15

Post by dman »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

I would prefer digital but in a way where I downloaded just one pdf file. Searching across multiple pdfs is pretty broken for me. If people have any tips to share that work on Windows / Linux I would appreciate it.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#16

Post by macintux »

That's some serious nostalgia value. UNIX Power Tools came out before GNU had a dedicated website (was still hanging off MIT IIRC), pretty sure I used the CD that came with it to install some software.

Think I've owned 1/3rd of these at some point in time. O'Reilly used to be head and shoulders above everyone else in open source/UNIX books.

(I still remember the first time I ever saw a Linux book on a shelf at a bookstore. I feel old.)

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#18

Post by Jtsummers »

freehunter wrote: post #9
bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

It'd be hard to get even one physical book online for $1, let alone several of them. As long as I have two screens, I've learned to like digital textbooks. It's hard to ctrl+f on a piece of paper.

In the past, they've offered bundles with print copies if you pay at least $xx (40-50, IIRC). Not all the books though, usually some subset of the books available.

Just a third (or fourth) tier in the scheme they already use.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#19

Post by crimsonalucard »

rhizome wrote: post #14
codewritinfool wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they do, but they also say, "Pay what you want"

I don't mean to be glib, but this is a pretty Sheldon-esque line of reasoning.

No it's not. "Pay what you want" is the most prominent statement on the whole page. The one dollar minimum for content is obscure.

edit: why do people vote me down when what I say is true? I'm sorry but I'm not willing to pay for tutorials on open source applications that I can otherwise legally get for free. Humble Bundle isn't even a non-profit corporation. They are a private for-profit corporation where profit is the bottom line and donations to charity are more of a marketing gimmick used to reach that bottom line. Humble Bundle is a highly, highly profitable middle man operation that banks on the altruism of people.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#20

Post by derekp7 »

bathory wrote: post #3

My biggest gripe with this bundle is that they are all digital. I'd rather have less books but then in a printed format. I have noticed that I can't concentrate on reading books when they are presented to me on my computer screen. I do have a kindle (1st or 2nd generation) and that device doesn't support PDF well, furthermore it is rather slow. It works fine for regular books though, where I don't have to flip throug…

My problem with PDF technical books is that they are typically formatted for 8.5x11 or A4 paper, typically with a really huge margin. I wish that there was something in the PDF spec to allow for multiple sizes to be specified in a single file, so that the same file can be used for printing as well as viewing on a 6 inch reader.
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