O'Reilly Gives Away Free Programming Ebooks (oreilly.com) 87
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
There's now a section on OReilly.com offering free ebooks about computer programming. There's four free Java ebooks and seven about Python, as well as an "Other" section which contains ebooks like C++ Today, Swift Pocket Reference, and Why Rust? But there's also some broader categories for Open Source and Software Architecture ebooks, as well as separate sections for their free ebooks about Data, Security, Web Development, and the Internet of Things.
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don't be so negative about everything.
this is not ideal, but it is good. and not a lie.
Define "free" (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
Re:Define "free" (Score:5, Funny)
Because you are using the wrong torrent client.
Re:Define "free" (Score:5, Insightful)
You know full well that in this case free just means they aren't charging any money for it. It doesn't mean that they are giving away their rights on these books and so they don't have to make them available for a straight anonymous download. They do these sorts of deals to get potential customers to their site. If you could just at hand out anonymous links to the books then it would fail their goal.
If you don't want to give them you details then don't get the books. Easy!
Re:Define "free" (Score:5, Interesting)
You know full well that in this case free just means they aren't charging any money for it. It doesn't mean that they are giving away their rights on these books and so they don't have to make them available for a straight anonymous download. They do these sorts of deals to get potential customers to their site. If you could just at hand out anonymous links to the books then it would fail their goal.
If you don't want to give them you details then don't get the books. Easy!
Or use a disposable email account and junk info like I always do for crap like that, I wonder how much crap info VMWare Cisco or others has in their DB's from people like me giving fake info they demand everytime you download VMWare Player, or cisco drivers
Three Cheers for O'Reilly (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes these are general books about programming but it's still good value. Some publishers like Elsevier take and take and take from the community without giving anything back EXCEPT POLITICAL DONATIONS TO CONGRESSMEN [michaeleisen.org] TO KEEP [opensecrets.org] THEIR CARTEL [sciencemag.org]. O'Reilly's done very well out of the programming community but he does give back. Good for him.
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And here I thought they just had an excess of pink and purple, and needed to run those ink reservoirs dry so they could replace the entire rainbow cartridge all at once, without losing their green cred.
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Well, maybe it's free because doesn't cost you money.
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Well, maybe it's free because doesn't cost you money.
My e-mail costs me money.
Both for bandwidth, storage, and time spent wading through spam.
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Re:Define "free" (Score:5, Funny)
>> Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
said the user that entered their email address to get a "free" userid for posting on slashdot :-)
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Man, you got suckered. I've been posting on Slashdot since the very beginning -- more posts than ANY OTHER USER, and still going -- all without giving them an email address. How they still got my name, I've no idea, though.
AC.
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said the user that entered their email address to get a "free" userid for posting on slashdot :-)
You can certainly post here without entering an e-mail address.
And as far as I remember, I have never seen a pitch like "get FREE accounts" either.
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>> Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
said the user that entered their email address to get a "free" userid for posting on slashdot :-)
ToS says: You agree that by using the site, you consent to the collection and use of this information in accordance with our privacy policy.
Privacy Policy: complies with the U.S. — EU Safe Harbor Framework and the U.S. — Swiss Safe Harbor Framework set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection,
I used an Email address that forwards to me, but did get some good books and in a .PDF format at that.
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Free?.. I paid Anonymous Coward $20 for my Slashdot account.
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They don't verify your email. You can enter in a fake email address.
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Free books to the first 10 customers through the door on Wed. Are the books free if you have to go through the door? Yes
But if entering your name and an email address is too much for you to handle then by all means use mine: John Smith johnsmith@johnsmithsemailaddress.com
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There's no verification. Enter any email address you want.
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Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
You don't HAVE to enter anything.
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I _think_ these are all up on archive.org. At least the Functional Programming in Python one that I'm reading is.
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Why do I have to enter my name and e-mail address, if they're free?
Free as in "I don't have to give money" kind of free (the common sense definition used by the majority of human beings.)
Think of it this way. Someone is going to give you a book for free, but you have to go to his bookstore. That is, you have to walk in. By the logic derived from your silly protestation, you could say "hey, if it is free, why do I have to give you my physical presence.".
You can keep protesting against something you don't have to give money for. It is your right, but it does make you q
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They're relatively recent, but this lot are like "Left-handed data APIs for millenials: A devops manifesto"
Re:Who needs books? (Score:5, Interesting)
O'Reillys books are universally really high quality. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, I'd buy their books pretty much sight unseen. They were never cheap, but they were definitely worth every penny.
These days, there are so many amazing online resources, it is rare that I would get use from a printed book. I am a little sad and nostalgic, but I honestly don't see their business model lasting all that much longer. Even if all of their books were readily and cheaply available online, I probably still wouldn't read them. It's simply the wrong way to present the type of information that I need.
Re:Who needs books? (Score:4, Informative)
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These days, there are so many amazing online resources, it is rare that I would get use from a printed book. I am a little sad and nostalgic, but I honestly don't see their business model lasting all that much longer. Even if all of their books were readily and cheaply available online, I probably still wouldn't read them. It's simply the wrong way to present the type of information that I need.
The issue I have with printed media, especially tech related, is that by the time it hits the street it's already outdated or deprecated.
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Seriously? I guess it depends on what part of tech you're involved in. My Stevens advanced unix programming book is almost as relevant now as it was back in the mid 90s when I bought it.
Re: Who needs books? (Score:3)
None of the cool kids are using ISO or ANSI-standardized languages against IEEE-defined standardized interfaces like POSIX anymore. That level of stability and portability doesn't allow twenty-somethings to feel like they are revolutionizing the industry and making the world a better place through beautiful design patterns or whatever.
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Sadly you're probably right. And for "revolutionising the industry" read: reinventing the wheel - badly.
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Early 90s O'Reilly books were largely reprints of Linux HOWTOs, and were awesome.
Later 90s O'Reilly books were just as good, without the (freebie) HOWTO background, and were also awesome.
i think you've got it backward, though: In OReilly's proper hay-day, they were printing texts that were easily found online.
(I'd tell you to get off of my lawn, but given your UID, I must respectfully thank you for letting hang out for as long as I have, instead. There aren't many of you left in these parts.)
It depends on your requirements (Score:3)
If all you want is a quick solution to a problem then obviously online resources are far more convenient than flicking through the index of a book. However if you need to learn something from scratch you often really have to READ a lot about it first in a linear manner, and in that situation IMO a book is a lot more user friendly than scrolling around in a browser or pdf reader. But each to their own.
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Who said you have to provide your information?
URLs (Score:5, Informative)
Just do these regex replacements on the URLs:
curl 'http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/' | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp">/free\/\1.pdf/'
http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com] http://www.oreilly.com/program... [oreilly.com]
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Wow, that's great!
For the lazy ones, this is the full command to download the stuff to your disk:
curl 'http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/' | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp">/free\/files\/\1.pdf/' | grep pdf | tr -d '\r' | xargs wget
Re:URLs (Score:5, Informative)
Seems above command doesn't download all files. This one does:
curl 'http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/' | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp.*">/free\/files\/\1.pdf/' | tr -d '\r' | xargs wget
Usual disclaimers apply, ask your lawyer before doing this kind of stuff, etc etc.
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http://stackoverflow.com/quest... [stackoverflow.com]
PS : Just joking, thanks for the books!
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for i in programming web-platform security iot data business webops-perf; do mkdir -p "$i" && curl "http://www.oreilly.com/$i/free/" | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp.*">/free\/files\/\1.pdf/' | tr -d '\r' | xargs wget -P "$i"; done
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Just do these regex replacements on the URLs:
curl 'http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/' | grep '\.csp' | sed 's/^.*href="//' | sed 's/free\/\(.*\).csp">/free\/\1.pdf/'
That is nasty. Now one does not even have to surrender its e-mail address to discover those e-book are not worth it.
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Surprised they didn't do this sooner (Score:1)
While their library is excellent, they have serious competition from everywhere, including countless free sources.
One time I talked to them about signing up for their company subscription service. The prices they wanted were ludicrous, to the point where you would have had to read a minimum of 3 books to make it worth it. Anything less and it was more cost effective to just buy a hard copy of the book.
Meanwhile other publishers like Packt give away daily free books, which helps greatly with mindshare.
Re:Surprised they didn't do this sooner (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I know, O'Reilly hasn't given away many free books. (Maybe they're changing that now.) But they've sold ebooks at a 50% discount.
You can request to be put on their email list. Then most days, you'll get an email that tells you that one or more books are on sale for 50% off for one day.
Also 3 or 4 times a year, they email you, telling you that for a few days, all ebooks, or all ebooks on a particular subject, are on sale for 50%. If I want to get an ebook, but I'm in no hurry to get it, I wait for those sales to get it.
When you get a book on sale this way, you have to type in the discount code that's mentioned in their email.
White papers not reference books (Score:1)
I was hoping they would be reference books or cookbooks that I enjoy so much from Oreilly. But a quick look suggests most of them are closer to white papers or single chapters on a topic. There are 100 books across programming, security IoT etc, and although a few of them look interesting and detailed, most are quite short: the median page length of the PDFs is 43. There are a couple of 100+ page books for each topic, and programming and web topics are longer (57 pages and 71 pages, respectively). Of course
"Picking a Python version" (Score:2)
Wow, I had no idea you needed to read a book before you could even make an informed choice which Python version is appropriate for a project. It really inspires me to want to learn the language.
If the compatibility problems are that bad, maybe they should have given those languages different names. It's not like snake names don't offer any choices. "Yes, I'm developing this in Death Adder. It was the best choice according to a free O'Reilly book I downloaded of the internet..."
Unless of course this is a boo
more sections (Score:2)
There are more sections. So far found:
business
data
design
iot
programming
security
webops-perf
web-platform
O'Reilly always seems get my money (Score:1)