
The Pirate Book - zwetan
http://thepiratebook.net/
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methou
This reminds me of a few years ago, in almost every supermarket in China,
there are third-party vendors selling electronic stuff also sells pirated MP3s
and videos, for 5 Yuan(~84c) they'll load up your iPod Classic/MP4s(how video
player called in China, as succeeder of MP3) with titles of your choice.

Until Apple has enhanced their DRM in apps, if you buy iPhones/iPads from a
third party "authorized" resellers, you could ask them to install any paid
apps, and/or jailbreak your iOS. Only difference was those kiosks are fancier.

But days are better now, I see people around me are starting to pay for Music
and Applications, at least in larger cities.

~~~
mindslight
How is it better that fewer people are taking ownership of their computers and
more are being pushed into following laws dictated from Washington?

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vinceguidry
Lots of African immigrants come to Atlanta, they will play music or talk
loudly into their phones at the coffee shop I frequent. Did not know it was a
cultural thing, will have to be less annoyed and just ask them nicely to go
outside with it.

~~~
dave2000
It happens in London too. It's just bad manners to sit and loudly play your
poor taste in music out loud on a bus or train rather than on headphones. It's
not limited to any particular racial group though; it's usually just young
men.

~~~
vinceguidry
Yeah, there's a difference though between having been raised in a different
culture and not being aware of local norms and being just ignorant. One you
can simply and easily solve with a short conversation, the other you just have
to grin and bear because any attempt to better the situation could easily make
it worse. At my coffee shop, very few people are actually trying to be rude.

Hell, even if they are, what happened to that famous English weaponized
politeness? Does nobody bother to develop that anymore?

~~~
david-given
Someone in Zurich once stepped in front of me in the queue, and I gave them my
best British passive-aggressive glare. They didn't even _notice_ , the cad.

So it's not as easy as you might think.

~~~
vinceguidry
If a glare is insufficient, you have to step up the game. A stern glare did
not the British Empire make. You should have solicitously pointed out the
location of the end of the queue for him. After all, he may not have known
where it was.

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fffrad
This book is fascinating. Piracy certainly have different meaning in different
places.

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brooklyndude
It's been a long time since I've gone to a site and just said WOW! Flooded
with zillions of links daily, media overload for me, finding this one was well
worth the minutes spent on the site.

~~~
tombrossman
Definitely worth reading, but after the first 30 seconds I had to fix the
10.5px monospace font as it was not at all suitable for extended reading.
Great content, but the 'style over substance' presentation means there is no
chance I would buy a hard copy of the book because I couldn't override the CSS
like I did with my browser.

If you like reading about this subject you should also try two earlier books
"Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation" by J D Lasica and
"The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism" by Matt
Mason. Both cover similar subject matter in depth.

~~~
mbrock
Fortunately the site is excellently responsive so you can just hit the zoom
button in browser and enjoy the text size of your choice.

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dave2000
Only pdf format download? Why not epub/mobi? PDF is a terrible format and it's
not like there are tables etc to maintain.

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TimGremalm
The ASCII art is very beautiful. So much culture! How is the printing quality
from lulu.com?

~~~
zapt02
also interested

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keithpeter
Just bought the black and white version from Lulu as I find reading on paper
easier for actual reading. I can download the colour pdf for the photography.

Interesting approach to academic publishing and I hope it does well.

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SFjulie1
I love surcouf. I cannot wait to read this book.

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EliRivers
Unreadable. Great big floating "The Pirate Book" book occupying left quarter
of the screen. Obscures text, covers pictures. Readable, I'm sure, for the
vast majority, but this is a static set of pictures and text. Great job.

~~~
RankingMember
I, too, found the format and text size troublesome. I get that they're going
for a style, but it obscures the content rather than emphasizing it.

Otherwise, very interesting.

~~~
dave2000
You've got to love "style". It's just text. How do people manage to screw up
something so simple?

