211–216 of 216 posts
I'm seeing books get released for 60/70$ a pop now in the tech market. That's insane. I don't mind the 35-40$ price which is kind of pricey, and books have a short shelf life.
The tech market books have such a small market and short lifespan that I'm surprised that they can make it at even $70.
It’s coming to me for the low, low price of FREE from my local library.
It's nice to own books. Read them multiple times, dog-ear the pages, scribble in the margins, risk reading them in the pool. But for the price conscious general reader just inter-library loan. If you want to buy To Kill A Mockingbird or The Hobbit be my guest, but any library in the US would have a few copies of those. Public libraries are awesome. Use it or lose it.
My issue with borrowing books was the logistics of it. Showing up, borrowing, returning on time, remembering to return. I'd rather own. Plus, I really like Kindle. It eliminates the largest annoyance I had with books - keeping them open while reading. It introduced an annoyance of its own though; it has to be charged. Once a week or two. So not that bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The central thesis of the article is this: > Don’t blame books for being too expensive. Everything else is more expensive, and that’s why you can’t afford books. College textbook pricing is a function of the aforementioned rate of increase of everything else becoming more expensive, not a function of the cost of books increasing generally. They are, the author argues, decreasing, unless you introduce external distort…
Only for commodity goods does the cost of production impact the price. As substitutionality lessens, the price more and more approaches the value delivered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't remember the number of times and ways I've tried to get them to re-acquire it. Maybe we should organize a good old sit-in? https://mtpfriends.bigcartel.com/product/what-s-more-punk-ad... Some universities have it, but the only copy in CA public libraries seems to be at the Sharp Park branch in Pacifica (which I believe was acquired in the last couple of years - good on them!). Berkeley public library has copi…
I would prefer my library not buy SICP (at least the Scheme edition) since it's available for free online. https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...
https://linkencore.iii.com/iii/encore/record/C__Rb51571246__...
btw, Andres Raba brought us the preferred online edition of SICP:
https://sarabander.github.io/sicp/
Also, I'd like to note that in my experience no public library can provision online-only books. I've been unable to get any to acquire Mastering Emacs for example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't remember the number of times and ways I've tried to get them to re-acquire it. Maybe we should organize a good old sit-in? https://mtpfriends.bigcartel.com/product/what-s-more-punk-ad... Some universities have it, but the only copy in CA public libraries seems to be at the Sharp Park branch in Pacifica (which I believe was acquired in the last couple of years - good on them!). Berkeley public library has copi…
I would prefer my library not buy SICP (at least the Scheme edition) since it's available for free online. https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b...