books
Counting the World’s Books
The Google Books blog has an explanation of how they attempt to answer a difficult but commonly asked question: how many different books are there? Various cataloging systems are fraught with duplicates and input errors, and only encompass a fraction of the total distinct titles.Slashdot
What DARPA’s Been Up To, At Length
The New York Times takes an inside look at DARPA, the secretive defense agency, mentioned frequently on Slashdot, that is "changing the way we use machines — and the way they use us" in the form of a review of Michael Belfiore's The Department of Mad Scientists.Slashdot
Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books
theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ...Slashdot
“Authors Guild” Skims Half of Google Book-Rights Settlement
Miracle Jones writes "A recent memo from the 'Author's Guild' to the writers and publishers that it supposedly represents shows that only $45 million of the $125 million dollar settlement with Google will be paid to writers, and that the most a writer can receive for a book is $300.Slashdot
Terry Pratchett Knighted
ackthpt writes "Headlines have been popping up on Google News: 'Terry Pratchett declared himself "flabbergasted" to receive a knighthood as he led a group of writers, actors and performers honoured today.' The Discworld author and stalwart adversary of Alzheimers Disease has been a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Literature since 1998.Slashdot
An Ethical Question Regarding Ebooks
tytso writes "Suppose there is a book that you want to read on your ebook reader, but it is out of print (so even if you purchase the dead-tree version of the book used, the author won't receive any royalties) and the publisher has refused to make it available as an ebook.Slashdot
Opus the Penguin Retired
garylian writes "Berkley Breathed has announced that he has drawn the final comic containing the greatest penguin ever, Opus. The author is now going to write children's books.Slashdot
Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem” Due In September
Alexander Rose writes "Neal Stephenson's new novel, ANATHEM, germinated in 01999 when Danny Hillis asked him and several other contributors to sketch out their ideas of what the Millennium Clock might look like.Slashdot
Douglas Hofstadter Looks At the Future
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "detailed and fascinating interview with Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel Escher Bach fame) about his latest book, science fiction, Kurzweil's singularity and more ...Slashdot
Have You Changed Your Opinion On eBook Readers?
An anonymous reader writes "The Kindle made waves when it came out, but they've now had the chance to calm. How many of you have been using your eBook readers since you've received them? How many of you forgot you had one, and how many of you swear by your reader? I like my single-purpose (well, dual — music player) Sony Reader because I actually use it to read, rather than multitasking myself to death.Slashdot
French Fine Amazon For Free Shipping
strech writes "Ars Technica reports that France is fining Amazon for offering free shipping on some orders. A French high court ruled in December that the practice violated a law preventing discounting the price of a book more than 5% off of the publisher's recommended price.Slashdot
Which eBook Reader is the Best?
Mistress.Erin writes "I cannot decide between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. I've read some reviews, but their motives can be somewhat suspect. So, I come to the most tech savvy group around to ask: which eBook reader is the best? If not Kindle or Reader, then what?" We've discussed this question before, but things have changed a bit since 2005. .Slashdot
Amazon Can Empty Bookstore Shelves
The Kindle might just be the iPod of digital reading, according to one excited author, who predicts the device will improve the publishing landscape for allBusinessWeek Online --
books
Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait
Hugh Pickens writes "The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death.Slashdot
Jeff Bezos Offers Apology For Erasing 1984
levicivita writes "From the down-but-not-out NYT comes an article (warning: login may be required) about user backlash against Kindle's embedded DRM: 'Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's "1984" were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices.Slashdot
Alleged Plagiarism In Chris Anderson’s New Book
ScorpFromHell writes "Blogger Waldo Jaquith alleges in his blog that Chris Anderson, Wired magazine's editor-in-chief and writer of The Long Tail, has apparently plagiarized content from various sources without attribution for his soon-to-be-published book.Slashdot
Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech
On Wednesday we discussed news that the Authors Guild had objected to the text-to-speech function on Amazon's Kindle 2, claiming that it infringed on audio book copyright.Slashdot
Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books?
chris_eineke writes "I like to read and to collect good books related to computer science. I'm talking about stuff like the classic textbooks (Introduction to Algorithms 2nd ed., Tanenbaum's Operating Systems series) and practitioners' books (The Practice of Programming, Code Complete) and all-around excellent books (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Practical Common Lisp).Slashdot
On the Economics of the Kindle
perlow writes "Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon's Kindle is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried.Slashdot
David Foster Wallace an Apparent Suicide
snydeq passes along the news that David Foster Wallace was found dead Friday at his home in Claremont, California. Wallace's wife found her husband had hanged himself when she returned home at 9:30 PM Friday.Slashdot
Boiling Down Books, Algorithmically
destinyland writes "A year ago, Aaron Stanton harangued Google over his new project, a web site analyzing patterns in books to generate infallible recommendations. In March he finally finished a prototype which he showed to Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, and he's just announced that he's finally received a big contract which 'gives us a great deal of potential data to work with.' The 25-year-old's original prototype examined over 200 books, plotting 729,000 data points across 30,293 scenes — but its universe of analyzed novels is about to become much, much bigger." .Slashdot
Relics of Science History For Sale At Christie’s
circletimessquare writes "Dennis Overbye at the New York Times has some ruminations on some of the historical totems of science going up for auction at Christie's next week.Slashdot
Orson Scott Card Blasts J.K. Rowling’s Lawsuit
Wanker writes "In the wake of a lawsuit by J.K. Rowling against the author of a Harry Potter encyclopedia, the Greensboro Rhino Times has an article by Orson Scott Card blasting J.K.Slashdot
Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline
destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing.Slashdot
The Home Library Problem Solved
Zack Grossbart writes "About 18 months ago I posted the following question to Ask Slashdot: 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?' I have read all the responses, reviewed most of the available software, and come up with a good solution described in the article The Library Problem.Slashdot
Amazon Can Empty Bookstore Shelves
The Kindle might just be the iPod of digital reading, according to one author, who predicts the device will improve the publishing landscape for all except retailersBusinessWeek Online -- Technology
books
Hacking Vim 7.2
briancarper writes "Vim is an open-source text editor with a power and flexibility matched only by the steepness of its learning curve. As the author of this book states, 'Vim Can Do Everything' but configuring it to do so is sometimes daunting.Slashdot
Why Amazon’s Kindle Should Use Open Standards
Tim O'Reilly wrote in Forbes a while back that he thinks the Kindle only has another two or three years of life left, unless Amazon wises up and embraces open standards.Slashdot
Blackwell Launches Print-On-Demand Trial In the UK
krou writes "In Dec. 2006, we discussed the Espresso Book Machine. Well, on April 27 the bookseller Blackwell will launch a three-month trial of the machine in its Charing Cross Road branch in London as a 'print on demand' service for shoppers in an effort 'to consign to history the idea that you can walk into a bookshop and not find the book you want.' When the trial begins, it will be able to print any of some 400,000 titles; Blackwell's overall goal is to extend this to a million titles by the summer, and to spread out more machines to the rest of its sixty stores once it works out pricing.Slashdot
Authors Guild President Wants To End Royalty-Free TTS On Kindle
An anonymous reader writes "The president of the Authors Guild has launched a rant in the NY Times about how the Kindle 2 provides Text-to-Speech capabilities that, oh the horror, allow the user to have any text on the Kindle read to her.Slashdot
Reading Guide To AI Design & Neural Networks?
Raistlin84 writes "I'm a PhD student in theoretical physics who's recently gotten quite interested in AI design. During my high school days I spent most of my spare time coding various stuff, so I have a good working knowledge of some application programming languages (C/C++, Pascal/Delphi, Assembler) and how a computer works internally.Slashdot
Multiple Upcoming Games, Movies Based On Jordan’s Wheel of Time
Today film studio Red Eagle Entertainment announced plans to establish Red Eagle Games, a studio that will produce games based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.Slashdot
World’s Oldest Bible Going Online
99luftballon writes "The British Museum is putting online the remaining fragments of the world's oldest Bible. The Codex Sinaiticus dates to the fourth century BCE and was discovered in the 19th century.Slashdot
Researchers Demo Flippable-Page E-book Reader
holy_calamity writes "E-readers are getting better but still limit users to keyboard-style interaction. Researchers at Berkeley and Maryland Universities have changed that with a reader that has two "pages".Slashdot
No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy Is Not a Given
adamengst writes "David Pogue recently wrote a widely read blog post in which he explains that piracy is the reason he doesn't make his books available in PDF format.Slashdot
German Wikipedia To Be Published As a Book
David Gerard writes "Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. It will cost 20 Euros, and 1 Euro from each copy will go to Wikimedia.Slashdot
GUI Design Book Recommendations?
jetpack writes "I've always hated writing user interfaces, and graphical user interfaces in particular. However, I suspect that is largely because I have no clue how to write a good one.Slashdot
New Wheel of Time Author Chosen
kdean06 writes "Brandon Sanderson has been chosen by Tor Books to finish the best-selling Wheel of Time fantasy series by the late Robert Jordan. Harriet, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading his Mistborn series.Slashdot
books
Sponsored by:
Amazon Sells More Ebooks On Christmas Than Real Books
ctmurray writes "Amazon reports for the first time ever they sold more ebooks on one day than real books. My wife is an ebook-only author and reported her largest single day sales on Christmas day, and December has been her best month ever as well.Slashdot
Good PDF Reader Device With Internet Browsing?
ranjix writes "I need a handheld device which would allow me to read ebooks and/or browse the internet while actively and intensely laying in the hammock (and Yes, I do have a hammock in my mom's basement).Slashdot
Is Salacious Content Driving E-Book Sales?
narramissic writes "Having already abandoned ebooks once, Barnes & Noble is jumping back into ebooks with the purchase this week of ebook seller Fictionwise. Why is the format suddenly hot? Look no further than the top 10 Fictionwise bestsellers, says blogger Peter Smith.Slashdot
A Look Back At Kurzweil’s Predictions For 2009
marciot writes "It's interesting to look back at Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 from a decade ago. He was dead on in predicting the ubiquity of portable computers, wireless, the emergency of digital objects, and the rise of privacy concerns.Slashdot
James Boyle’s New Book Under CC License
An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle has released his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press) under a Creative Commons License.Slashdot
Fraud Threat Halts Knuth’s Hexadecimal-Dollar Checks
Barence writes "You may be aware of Donald Knuth, the creator of TeX and author of The Art of Computer Programming, who used to post checks to anyone who spotted an error in one of his books — one hexadecimal dollar, or $2.56.Slashdot
Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem” Due in September
Alexander Rose writes "Neal Stephenson's new novel, ANATHEM, germinated in 01999 when Danny Hillis asked him and several other contributors to sketch out their ideas of what the Millennium Clock might look like.Slashdot
Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books
Bryan writes "A recent headline at Entertainment Weekly suggests that the '100 Best Reads' of the last 25 years do not include a single science book (not even a popular science book).Slashdot
Offline Wikipedia Reader For iRex Iliad
An anonymous reader writes with a link to "an offline Wikipedia viewer for the iRex Iliad e-ink e-book reader (similar to Amazon's Kindle). Take it anywhere — and you don't need to be connected to the Internet in any way!" (You'll need a 4GB flash card and the ability to follow the directions.) .Slashdot
Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money. Author Paulo 'Pirate' Coelho leapt out of obscurity and onto the best-seller list by giving away his books on the Net.Slashdot
Gen Y Hits the Library the Most — But Not For Books
Lucas123 writes "More than half of all Americans visited a library this past year and, of those, most were from Generation Y, the tech-loving young adults aged 18-30 years, according to a recent survey.Slashdot
An Acerbic Look At the Future of Reading
theodp writes "Using Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' own words against him, Mark Pilgrim offers his chilling take on The Future of Reading with a mash-up of Bezos' Open Letter to the Authors Guild, the Amazon Kindle Terms of Service, Steven Levy's Newsweek article on the Kindle, 1984, and Richard Stallman's 'The Right to Read.'"Slashdot