101–110 of 132 posts
"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.
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> 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…
Every ebook I bought (which is over a thousand now) from O'reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, Manning, and Apress in the past ten years or so has been DRM free.
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.
In the browser console:
$('.js-start-download > a').each(function(a, b) {
console.log($(b).attr('href'))
})
wget --content-disposition --trust-server-names -i list.txtLast time I attempted to read The Art Of Electronics on a eink reader it required like 10 seconds for each page, so I gave the reader to a relative of mine who reads text only novels and stuck with the paper version of TAoE. Wake me up when technology is there.
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I think it is reasonably obvious that "pay what you want" can never be 100% literal. Can I pay π dollars? Obviously not. Can I pay negative one trillion? Of course I can't. Can I pay 'what I want' for all reasonable values of 'what'? Yes.
I have encountered pay what you want deals that included zero dollars, just never at Humble Bundle.
Edit: In fact, they still do this, and you can get the Mobile or Games bundles for $0.01.
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It may be imprecise, but "deceptive" is a bit harsh.
Deceptive is a bit harsh, but is it not the truth? One can be deceptive by being imprecise.
The books don't have a $0.01 tier. When you look at the page, the first line of content that isn't a headline makes it clear that it's a $1 minimum. When you hover over the "Pay what you want" text, it clarifies that, on this page, it's "Name your price of $1 or more." When you attempt to pay less than $1, it displays a warning that you won't get any content if you pay less than $1. The fact that you're here moaning about it makes it clear that you understand that it's a $1 minimum. So where's the deception?
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…
The typesetting and layout of textbooks is also very important. It's not just free flowing text. This means they are simple not compatible with the screen sizes of computers or ebook readers.
The ability to flip through a book is surely one of the best features of the format. When I'm familiar with a textbook I can find the page I want in seconds based on some vague intuition about where it will be (for some textbooks I can do this with my eyes closed). I'm not aware of any electronic formats that offers such fast random access.
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I have encountered pay what you want deals that included zero dollars, just never at Humble Bundle.
When HB was new, they did exactly this. The minimum $1 has presumably come about because the people who buy at $0.01 are only there fore free stuff - they don't actually want the content, so why make a loss for them? Edit: In fact, they still do this, and you can get the Mobile or Games bundles for $0.01.