4 ms·

>I live in a normal house and it doubles as a library with an almost infinite amount of reading material Can you flesh this out a little more? I guess maybe i

>I live in a normal house and it doubles as a library with an almost infinite amount of reading material Can you flesh this out a little more? I guess maybe it is just an artifact of my getting older, but I still see quite a qualitative difference between the information you can find in books, and that which you can find on the web (text, video, etc.) for subjects which are not computer related. Books seem like they can give you more in-depth treatment than you get with most internet based resources. Part of it may be that there is so much more chaff, that finding the wheat is harder.

immad 10y ago
I think he is referring to ebooks
- GregBuchholz 10y ago
  Could be that he is referring to lending of ebooks. And I'd feel sorry for anyone trying to learn physics, electronics, crafts, etc., on tiny e-readers which seem to have horrible support for graphics.
  - baq 10y ago
    one of the ok-ish usecases of laptops with touchscreens.
    - vinay427 10y ago
      Though a tablet would satisfy this use case far more effectively. If the book requires special software (for lending, etc.) that doesn't support mobile operating systems then a Windows 8/10 tablet is ideal in my opinion.
jacquesm 10y ago
There are more books and articles on the net than you can read in several lifetimes and most of them are just a google search (allinurl: .pdf) away. For starters all the scientific papers, all the free books (out of copyright ones) and of course - to set a bad example - the pirated ones. And then there are the commercial suppliers, more like bookstores but the effect is much the same, a kindle is like an infinite bookshelf. Then there are plenty of sources of information that are not quite books but that collectively add up to an equivalent and sometimes even more. Subjects which are not computer related are maybe a little bit harder but not that much harder, it would be hard to find a subject that interests me (say, windmills, renewable energy, genetics) that I couldn't fill a reading list faster than I could consume it, assuming I could consume it all. https://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:.pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:.pdf Says there are 1.4 billion results, now I'm sure that you should take that with a large grain of salt, for instance plenty of those pdfs are not books at all and there will be duplicates and so on. But if even 1% is unique and useful content that's 14 million volumes. I'm not aware of any normal library that I could have access to having that many books.
- GregBuchholz 10y ago
  Getting completely off topic here, but I found it interesting that there were only 27 actual PDF files in the first 10 pages of search results using "allinurl:.pdf". So I tried using "filetype:pdf", and none of the first 10 pages was an actual PDF file. So then I tried: https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+allinurl:.pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+allinurl:.pdf ...and only got 34,900 results. What?
  - grkvlt 10y ago
    That query searches for files of type PDF that contain the text "allinurl:.pdf" because 'allinurl' appears not to work any more. The following query, however, generates 1,410 million results, all of which appear to be PDF type files, and the URLs contain '.pdf' https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf It's an interestingly eclectic bunch of results. I particularly liked the 'International Chronostratigraphic Chart' I found on the second page, immediately followed by 'A Visual Guide To Achieving LinkedIn Profile Perfection' ... http://www.stratigraphy.org/icschart/chronostratchart2015-01.pdf http://www.stratigraphy.org/icschart/chronostratchart2015-01...
    - GregBuchholz 10y ago
      I can't seem to get beyond 59 pages of results. Is this the expected result? https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf&biw=1072&bih=598&noj=1&ei=UhYAWKiCHsv0vATSsYboDg&start=580&sa=N&filter=0 https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf&biw=...
      - grkvlt 10y ago
        Yeah, I found that, too. Sad... It seems to be what happens with any Google search that returns millions of pages; I think the total is an estimate, and they don't actually compute all the results, to save CPU or something? Maybe using the 'advanced query' page, or the programmatic search API would allow paging through the entire result set?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

immad 10y ago

I think he is referring to ebooks

GregBuchholz 10y ago
Could be that he is referring to lending of ebooks. And I'd feel sorry for anyone trying to learn physics, electronics, crafts, etc., on tiny e-readers which seem to have horrible support for graphics.
- baq 10y ago
  one of the ok-ish usecases of laptops with touchscreens.
  - vinay427 10y ago
    Though a tablet would satisfy this use case far more effectively. If the book requires special software (for lending, etc.) that doesn't support mobile operating systems then a Windows 8/10 tablet is ideal in my opinion.

jacquesm 10y ago

There are more books and articles on the net than you can read in several lifetimes and most of them are just a google search (allinurl: .pdf) away. For starters all the scientific papers, all the free books (out of copyright ones) and of course - to set a bad example - the pirated ones. And then there are the commercial suppliers, more like bookstores but the effect is much the same, a kindle is like an infinite bookshelf. Then there are plenty of sources of information that are not quite books but that collectively add up to an equivalent and sometimes even more. Subjects which are not computer related are maybe a little bit harder but not that much harder, it would be hard to find a subject that interests me (say, windmills, renewable energy, genetics) that I couldn't fill a reading list faster than I could consume it, assuming I could consume it all. https://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:.pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:.pdf Says there are 1.4 billion results, now I'm sure that you should take that with a large grain of salt, for instance plenty of those pdfs are not books at all and there will be duplicates and so on. But if even 1% is unique and useful content that's 14 million volumes. I'm not aware of any normal library that I could have access to having that many books.

GregBuchholz 10y ago
Getting completely off topic here, but I found it interesting that there were only 27 actual PDF files in the first 10 pages of search results using "allinurl:.pdf". So I tried using "filetype:pdf", and none of the first 10 pages was an actual PDF file. So then I tried: https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+allinurl:.pdf https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+allinurl:.pdf ...and only got 34,900 results. What?
- grkvlt 10y ago
  That query searches for files of type PDF that contain the text "allinurl:.pdf" because 'allinurl' appears not to work any more. The following query, however, generates 1,410 million results, all of which appear to be PDF type files, and the URLs contain '.pdf' https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf It's an interestingly eclectic bunch of results. I particularly liked the 'International Chronostratigraphic Chart' I found on the second page, immediately followed by 'A Visual Guide To Achieving LinkedIn Profile Perfection' ... http://www.stratigraphy.org/icschart/chronostratchart2015-01.pdf http://www.stratigraphy.org/icschart/chronostratchart2015-01...
  - GregBuchholz 10y ago
    I can't seem to get beyond 59 pages of results. Is this the expected result? https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf&biw=1072&bih=598&noj=1&ei=UhYAWKiCHsv0vATSsYboDg&start=580&sa=N&filter=0 https://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:pdf+inurl:.pdf&biw=...
    - grkvlt 10y ago
      Yeah, I found that, too. Sad... It seems to be what happens with any Google search that returns millions of pages; I think the total is an estimate, and they don't actually compute all the results, to save CPU or something? Maybe using the 'advanced query' page, or the programmatic search API would allow paging through the entire result set?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]