First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
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Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#2Don't forget to search emule, very obscure media is where emule excels. Also, remember to share with the entire class! :)
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#3It's a nice start, but this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. This will be a difficult problem with certain majors.
I've taken several economics classes, and you have to purchase a new book for the semester in order to get a key card inside of the book. This will let you activate an online account, which will open up Flash-based homework. This is all linked into the school's grading system. Many classes _require_ the student to go through this registration process, or you could be dropped from the class entirely.
And economics is just one example. I had the same setup in several business, psychology, and engineering classes.
I'm sure this may work for some of the books, but I wouldn't really look at this as the end of expensive textbooks.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#4It's a nice start, but this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. This will be a difficult problem with certain majors. I've taken several economics classes, and you have to purchase a new book for the semester in order to get a key card inside of the book. This will let you activate an online account, which will open up Flash-based homework. This is all linked into the school's grading system. Many classes _require_ t…
I remember that from an economics class. That is definitely a way of adapting the model to prevent piracy -- kind of like how desktop software is easy to pirate, but SaaS isn't. The electronic component needs to be actually useful to be adopted by teachers. I've bought other books with some kind of electronic component (chemistry, physics), but I never scratched off the keycode to maintain the resale value of the book. Economics is the only class I've had where the software component was required to complete the homework. Damn capitalists.
The biggest barrier to book piracy being useful is new editions. Often older editions (and older solutions manuals!) are available online, but in engineering, at least, they change the order of the problems to deprecate the old editions.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#5I hope the publishers eventually embrace digital downloads, but DRM sucks and they're never going to go for non-DRM because of the obvious reasons. I bought a digital download of a textbook once (it seemed like a good idea at the time), and it took me hours to slowly print the book to .pdf because there were enforced delays to slow down the process.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#6Is the existing level of pricing justified at all ? I mean a $209 book does sound like it carries a huge margin.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#7My community college chooses books that cost $15-$20, it was nice. Then at the University levels they hit me with $200 books. As for new editions, I understand that Biology changes frequently, and the books might need to be changed periodically, but classes like Calc I shouldn't be updated every other year.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#8Create an account at gigapedia.org and you'll see the extent of books available online for free. It's amazing. It's become my new Amazon for checking out new stuff that I'm not sure if I want to buy.
(All yee free market crusaders, don't worry -- I still have a regular truckload of books coming my way from Amazon -- as much as my budget allows.)
How unfortunate that my budget can swallow much less than my brain!
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#9For intro books for self study, I recommend Dover publications - around 12 dollars a book.
Re: First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.
#10Don't forget to search emule, very obscure media is where emule excels. Also, remember to share with the entire class! :)
If you're feeling lazy and don't want to install anything, you can also find websites with links to filesharing sites. They have the same kind of defense as a torrent tracker in that they don't actually host files, they just have links. They frequently feature highend technical books from Springer Verlag, Elsevier, et al.
We're through the looking glass here, people.