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Humble Book Bundle: Unix

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Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#41

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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.

While it is true, they have minimum pricing, if you want the items without compensating the publisher for them, you CAN stiff them. For instance, you can change the sliders so 100% of your money goes to charity, and then you didn't pay them for the books at all.

Sure, not what you want, but worth noting. Particularly useful if you want something on offer, but don't like the company selling them and don't want to support them. For instance, I can imagine a lot of people stiff EA when EA has a bundle available, and go 100% charity. :)

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#42

Post by r3bl »

Jtsummers wrote: post #21
marklawrutgers wrote: post #17

Does anyone know the legality of putting the DRM free pdf files into a public Dropbox folder? Not sure what copyrights or licenses still apply if I decide to buy these and share this with other people.

http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/if_i_buy_pdf_versi... This is O'Reilly's take on it. You can lend it, but you can't have access to it while it's lent out. Really, really hard to enforce. But I believe PDFs are watermarked (don't know how they'll do it with this bundle), so if you lend it out and the copy gets into the wild, so to speak, they can trace it back to your account.

> But I believe PDFs are watermarked (don't know how they'll do it with this bundle), so if you lend it out and the copy gets into the wild, so to speak, they can trace it back to your account.

The thing that distinguishes Humble Bundle from the rest of the "book sellers" for me (I know you can't really call them "book sellers") is that they offer no DRM what so ever, and, by purchasing a pack for a ridiculously low price, you're contributing to a usually pretty good NGO/foundation in the process.

I usually share the hell out of a current bundle that looks interesting to me to everyone that I think might be interested in it while the offer lasts.

Me personally, I could never provide a copy of the bundle in public (however, I would share a book or two with someone I personally trust in case they missed the offer) because Humble Bundle is doing something that I don't see anyone else doing: providing awesome things for cheap and supporting some awesome organization in the process.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#43

Post by kccqzy »

derekp7 wrote: post #20
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.

I looked at a few technical books I have and none of them are in 8.5x11 or A4 sizes. Most books I have are much smaller than that, and more easily handled.

PDF spec actually supports different page sizes (crop box, trim box, bleed box, media box, etc) for different pages. But it seems like what you what is essentially two separate PDFs with different page sizes combined together, and the reader picks one based on the viewport. I'm not sure PDF spec natively supports that, but PDF does support JavaScript and I can imagine JavaScript querying the viewport and then hiding/showing pages.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#44

Post by crimsonalucard »

ehec wrote: post #33
crimsonalucard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a german word for your behaviour. i-Tüpferl-Reiter http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/i_Tuepferl_Reiter Which roughly translates to: The need to make something better even if it is already as good as it gets

I never mentioned such a need. What I mentioned was deception conducted by the company. Perhaps it is just misguided perception. People can't take a statement at face value, they must always make an assumption.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#45

Post by crimsonalucard »

__jal wrote: post #32
crimsonalucard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't down vote you, but was tempted, so I'll explain. Yes, you are stating a true fact. However, I'm pretty sure that the vast number of people who see these things do not consider the distinction you draw vastly more deceptive than, well, any other advertising out there, and much less so than most. Compare with, say, Comcast, and this is a model of clarity. An additional reason is that it is somewhat derailing t…

Nothing was derailed, I think my comment was the first.

Additionally, I believe it is more deceptive then your traditional advertisement. How much "Pay what you want" deals are out there? It is a very unique marketing strategy.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#46

Post by themoat »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #19
rhizome wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't down vote you, but it seems like you're being intentionally literal to the point of being a bit obtuse.

Technically you are correct, I understand that. The majority of people can look past the technicality but you, for some reason, won't.

It's like complaining about an all you can eat restaurant being falsely named because technically, I can eat more at home. Technically, they made a false claim, it's really only all I can eat in one visit, but nobody would be so petty as to complain about that. Would they?

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#47

Post by simondedalus »

SwellJoe wrote: post #38

I think the best of these books (at least of the ones I've read) are in the $15 tier. Several of the books in the lower tiers are ones I'd recommend skipping and go to online resources, instead. It may not still be so, but when I last looked at the O'Reilly bash books, many years ago, the TLDP bash programming HOWTOs were more pragmatic and easy to follow (I think that's here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HO…

Totally agree, DNS and Bind and Essential System Administration alone are completely worth it if you're at all interested in (using) Unix-like systems.

As for being dated, I think simply reading (and understanding) Essential System Administration and then spending an afternoon looking at grub and systemd could get you pretty far in the RHEL certification cycle.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#48

Post by contras1970 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #38

I think the best of these books (at least of the ones I've read) are in the $15 tier. Several of the books in the lower tiers are ones I'd recommend skipping and go to online resources, instead. It may not still be so, but when I last looked at the O'Reilly bash books, many years ago, the TLDP bash programming HOWTOs were more pragmatic and easy to follow (I think that's here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HO…

I have to mention DJB whenever there's a mention of DNS. Thank you PRJ, JdeBP, smarden, skarnet. You have done a shitload for me and my close (and distant) ones.

https://cr.yp.to/donations.html

PS In case you've been wondering, djbdns+curvedns is a very capable implementation of DNS servers and client-side utilities. Both authoritative server and recursive cache; each independent of the other. Plus wonderful commandline utilities for various kinds of DNS queries.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#49

Post by _kst_ »

I just bought these. My only complaint is the same one I had last time I bought one of these bundles: I had to download each of the 51 files (17 books, 3 formats each) manually, one at a time. An option to download a zip file or tarball would have been very helpful.

Re: Humble Book Bundle: Unix

#50

Post by runeb »

noir_lord wrote: post #39
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 bought an ipad mini for safari testing (grrr) and it turned out to be my favourite way to read computer books. Screen is adequately large and the DPI is so high that they look great, it turned out to be a useful device.

How is the backlight affecting your eyes? I ended up buying a Kindle because reading on an iPad was straining my eyes too much, specially at bedtime.
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