

Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It - raju
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/weekinreview/28streitfeld.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

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AndrewWarner
Instead of blaming readers--which this article does--it should blame
publishers. They can sell me a $5 instant download and we'd both be better
off.

Modernize or die.

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Herring
Didn't work for the music companies.

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gruseom
iTunes didn't work?

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Herring
iTunes doesn't belong to the music companies. They're 'trading analog dollars
for digital pennies' & they don't even have control over distribution.

It took iTunes 5 years to serve 3 billion songs. Towards the end, Napster hit
2.79 billion songs in one month. There's little goodwill with textbooks, so
the piracy rates might be a little north of the default 90%. If I were them,
I'd avoid ebooks like the plague.

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foulmouthboy
I've recently rediscovered the library. All the latest stuff including CDs,
DVDs and video games. Sure, there's a waitlist for some of the more popular
items, but you can't beat the price.

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Anon84
I've found great deals on half.com ... Like all three hardcover volumes of
Knuth's TACP for $10 each ($150+ on Amazon). Also a great place for insanely
cheap paperbacks (~$1 + shipping).

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siong1987
TACP? The Art of C Programming? Tactical Air Control Party?

I am not hackeeish enough I think.

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khafra
More often abbreviated TAOCP. But you're right; programmer culture recognizes
acronyms like this and SICP, even if they fall under Mark Twain's classic
definition: "Books that everyone wants to have read, but nobody wants to
read."

[http://www.google.com/search?q=taocp+site%3Anews.ycombinator...](http://www.google.com/search?q=taocp+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)
is one good way to compile a list of references with similar cachet.

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Anon84
Sorry, that should have been TAOCP, The Art Of Computer Programming. And yes,
it is one of those books that everybody wishes they had read at some point
(although not everybody wants to actually read it).

