1. 14 September 2007

    Free Books

    357 days ago

    Walking through the student center, I saw that the annual library book sale. I’d meant to stop by sometime, but I didn’t have my wallet. I bought a few books at the sale last year (25¢ per) and it was a good deal.

    Apparently this year for the last hour of the two-day sale, none of books cost anything.

    I discovered this after walking by on my way home, deciding that I had time to spare, and turning around to go back. When I was about 30 feet away from the door, a guy said something loudly about free books and started trotting there.

    Here’s a list of the books I bought, in order of their physical size.

    • Minnesota Sings, Cooperative Song Service. An old songbook with traditional songs and hymns. This is printed by 4H, I grabbed it because it has a lot of songs that are in the book at Danebod (I can’t remember what it’s called), which means it’s probably got some good other stuff.
    • How to breathe right, Edward Lankow. ©1918. In 5/6th grade class our teacher would spend time teaching us to breathe deeply, to relax. I adapted the breathing style, breathing slow and deep ever since without really thinking about it. What better skill to master than the one you use nonstop, that keeps you alive?
    • The philosophy of existence, Gabriel Marcel. ©1954. Had me at the cover: simple white capitals set into bright red. A french contemporary of Sartre, coming at the same general subject (existentialism) from somewhere else (according to the back cover, red printed on white).
    • Evolution and religion, Problems in american civilization (Readings selected by the department of american studies, Amherst College). ©1957. The cover again, but a before-its-time look into the science v. religion arena.
    • The uses of the past, Herbert Muller. ©1952. History, an overlook of the major ancient civilizations.
    • The combined spanish method, Albert de Tornos. ©1867, reprinted 1943. I’ve wanted to learn spanish lately. We’ll see.
    • Language for men of affairs, Vol 2, Business Writing, James Melvin Lee. ©1920. This one had a nice worn hardcover that caught my eye. And c’mon, Language for men of affairs? I was sold.
    • A logical approach to discrete math, David Gries, Fred B. Schneider. I took 1302 From Elena with a huge, new agey textbook that had zen-like stacked rocks on the cover. My friend took it last year from Nic with a littler gray book with a theorem1 on the cover, and their class looked shitloads harder (also more interesting) than mine was. This is that book, I figured it was worth picking up.
    • Victorian ceramic tiles, Julian Barnard. ©1972. Hopefully worth it for the pictures. Hardcover, 175 pages, let’s hope I like ceramic tiles that much.

    Coming to the checkout for a bag to carry all this stuff in the ladies running the place said that they wanted to give kids a chance to build their bookshelves. They looked at the books I had and told me to go back and get more. I said I didn’t want to go overboard, and these were what caught my eye.

    1 Here’s the cover, merci à amazon

  2. 21 June 2006

    Cambiasso

    807 days ago

    I really want this to post up on my wall. Also a fascinating post on design and architecture and football, but that sort of thing just flies right over my head.

  3. 08 February 2006

    Free Culture

    Lawrence Lessig

    940 days ago

    A real interesting book. Lessig is crusading against those who look to impede our development as a society (the book is quite US centric) by locking up all almost everything produced within our culture in the past 80 years by means of outrageous and unconstitutional copyright law.

    Lessig has a lot of resentment towards the American legal system, and rightly so. On many occasions he deprecates it. He’s not happy about the current state of congress either, openly indicting it of rampant corruption and being disconnected from american society.

    He systematically shows how completely wrongheaded the laws governing copyright have become in america. Works that should have lapsed into the public domain thirty years ago are still protected because those holding the rights to those work mercilessly lobby and provide large sums of dollars to congressmen and women.

    He proposes a solution to the problem in the epilogue, but for the most part the entire book is used to further his (entirely righteous) tirade against what copyright has become. It’s hurting our creativity. We’ve reached a turning point in culture at which we can either cut copyright law back to a much more reasonable set of statutes or live in a society in which creative expression is forbidden to draw upon any previous form of expression.

    I’ve pirated music for quite awhile, and don’t see myself stopping any time soon. I make the kind gesture of buying a CD when I really love it, but every time the RIAA decides to sue another kid, I’m less likely to fiscally support them.

    So like most every other part of our government now, copyright policy has degenerated into a corporate driven engine to assure big media a windfall share in profits. Never before in any free society has the right to expression been so severely limited.

    So Lessig has a radical argument. He points out that this is one of the biggest deals of our time. A few years ago he argued his case, that the Sonny Bono act was blatantly unconstitutional, before the supreme court. he failed, and feels it was his fault.

    He brings up the fact that under the current law, 43% of americans are felons. And this was in 2002, I can’t imagine it’s having shrank. Something is clearly wrong when not only does the current law flout the constitution, which calls for a limited term of copyright, but it entirely flouts common sense.

    The internet is big and scary to entrenched interests, for all the good it does for the average person, it sure fucks up their business model. And we can’t let that happen now, can we?

  4. 06 February 2006

    942 days ago

    No doubt extremists would call these ideas “radical.” (After all, I call them “extremists.”)

    Lawrence Lessig

  5. 24 January 2006

    955 days ago

    Richard Stallman | Freedom Fighter

    Profile on FSF crusader, RMS.

    Says Perens, “He’s entirely consistent and uncompromising, and I think the world needs someone like that.”

    Kjell Olsen955 days ago

  6. 18 December 2005

    992 days ago

    All Systems Go: The Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free Books

    Traditional textbook publishers are insane. They’re looking at the size of the US market for textbooks, which is no longer growing, trying to figure out how to keep their revenue growing and satisfy shareholders. And their solution isn’t to find new markets, to reach out to developing nations, or to cut development and distribution costs by using the new technologies that are available to all of us. Instead, their solution has been to raise prices every year and to try to kill off the used book market with gimmicks and pointless new editions. But their prices are getting so high that they’re actually shooting themselves in the foot—- no one outside of the developed world can afford their product at all, and fewer and fewer of those who can pay are willing to. Jason Turgeson, of TextbookRevolution

    via Kjell Olsen992 days ago

  7. 21 July 2005

    1142 days ago

    Wikisource

    Wiki* is tremendously neat. I (heart) free information.

    via Kjell Olsen1142 days ago

  8. 08 July 2005

    1155 days ago

    Gimp-Savvy.com - Learn the GIMP - Tutorials and Resources

    Instead of pirating photoshop on the new laptop, I decided to go with the gimp, and it kicks ass. Here’s a nice tutorial.

    via Kjell Olsen1155 days ago

  9. 30 June 2005

    1163 days ago

    Apple - Education - Back to School

    If I waited a day or two to buy my powerbook I could’ve had a free mini iPod! Bummer. Maybe if I call customer support. I ordered on the 25, this came to be yesterday, the 28. My brother has a birthday coming up and if it was free…

    via Kjell Olsen1163 days ago

  10. 28 June 2005

    1165 days ago

    Calculators of maths construction

    Neat looking calculator, which calculates from what you input by hand (or mouse). Inkwell anyone?

    via Kjell Olsen1165 days ago

  11. 09 June 2005

    1184 days ago

    MIT OpenCourseWare

    I’ve never actually taken a class here, but fantasized about it lots.

    a free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world. OCW supports MIT’s mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century. It is true to MIT’s values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

    How about intro linguistics?

    Kjell Olsen1184 days ago

  12. 20 May 2005

    1204 days ago

    Phreaking Phones with a Voice Recorder

    Bluebox with your iPod (or computer, cellphone, over VoIP even). also

    via Kjell Olsen1204 days ago

  13. 11 February 2005

    1302 days ago

    Flickr: Stock Repository

    Free stock photos under CC license at flickr – sweet!

    via Kjell Olsen1302 days ago

  14. 05 December 2004

    1370 days ago

    Free Programming and Computer Science Books

    Wow – a collection of books available for free over the greatness which is the internet. All kinds of interesting books.

    Kjell Olsen1370 days ago

  15. Also somewhat recently

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