I have a reading problem

[giza]

I went to see the movie Moon yesterday with some local furries (alsaihn, Turtyl, desteredra, and finnishfox), and if you like science fiction, you should see it too! I can't say too much without giving things away, but the movie explores a scenario which could happen in the near future.

After the movie, we wandered around Bryn Mawr and visited the local Borders, where I picked up a few things:



This was partly because I was running out of things to read, and partly because I wanted to say "screw you" to Amazon's online presence. For those who haven't heard about the current controversy with the Kindle, Amazon recently took it upon themselves to remove purchased content from the customers' Kindles. There was no warning or announcement, just *poof*, and peoples' purchases disappeared.

While customers were refunded their money, that's little consolation for someone who might have been halfway through reading the book in question. Furthermore, I find this sort of unilateral action on Amazon's part to be very disturbing. It would be like if Borders employees were to walk into my apartment and remove the books I just purchased. It's one of the reasons why I feel DRM on "purchases" is illegal. ("rentals" are another story) Anyway...

Some folks might find my purchase of books on Calculus and Physics to be surprising, but that's because my background in higher math is kinda weak. The furthest I went in school was pre-Calculus in the 12th grade. Part of the problem is that during that period of my life, I had a real attitude problem and didn't try very hard in school. If I wasn't going to use something in real life, I didn't see the point of trying to learn it.

Recently, I was having that discussion with a colleague at work, and he pointed out to me that not knowing calculus can still be a problem, because if I don't know something, I won't know when it's a skill that I might need to solve a real life problem. So I figured it can't hurt to buy this book and try to educate myself a little more about that particular field.

Comments

[andrew7782.livejournal.com]

Calc is pretty much the reason I'm not still in school, I really need to learn on it so I can actually take a course and pass it.

[silent-o.livejournal.com]

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

Weird and disturbing, with regard to the Kindle fiasco? Two of the books that suddenly vanished from the devices were Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. The only way they could have been more disturbing about it would have been to yank the e-copies of, say, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 as well.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Given the rate of screwups from Amazon (http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books), I'd say in a couple of months. :-P

[silent-o.livejournal.com]

Arther C. Clarke was full of win. Can't say I ever liked Stephen King though.

[kitt3ns.livejournal.com]

I've picked up some of the self-learning books but I can never seem to stay with 'em.

[redrob.livejournal.com]

FYI - you can (and I would) download your kindle purchases and store them on the hard drive of your computer, and copy them from the computer to your kindle. As long as Amazon ran the deleter just as a one-time event, and wasn't running a continuous sweeper for the books, you could just reload the book from your hard drive and keep going.

Of course, this is all theoretical, as I do not (yet) have a Kindle. I'm still bumbling along with the eBookwise.

Alex

[kellic.livejournal.com]

The problem is that as far as I know there is DRM in the book itself. The minute you try copying it back and opening it it would try and verify the book with Amazon and wouldn't be able to open it.

[kreggan.livejournal.com]

Interesting on the Calculus books. I've been looking at these:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Endeavor-Harold-R-Jacobs/dp/071672426X
http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Understanding-Harold-R-Jacobs/dp/0716743612
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Algebra-Harold-R-Jacobs/dp/0716710471

[nrr.livejournal.com]

I'm not incredibly sure about Jacobs, but I'm rather fond of Keisler, Hartshorne, Axler, and Lang when it comes to putting together a bookshelf that a computer scientist might find useful. Add Herstein and others in the modern algebra realm if you're working on cryptosystems, other authors that currently escape me if you're working in computer graphics, and so on and so forth. :)

Keisler's book is, alas, not in dead tree format anymore, so one could possibly supplement that with something like Spivak or, if one particularly likes a concise text with lots of exposure to examples and notation, not to mention exercises, Rigdon et al.

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html
http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Euclid-Beyond-Robin-Hartshorne/dp/0387986502
http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon-Axler/dp/0387982582
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/0387967877

(Disclaimer: I'm an advanced mathematics undergrad, so I appreciate this stuff way more than any normal human being should, but given the response from friends of mine in the CS department here, these texts are pretty reasonable even if they don't all have solutions guides or similar. The important part is having someone to lean on who can help you through various problems that leave you baffled or stuck. :)

[sethb.livejournal.com]

I'm still partial to Nonstandard Analysis. If infinitesimals were good enough for Newton and Leibnitz, they're good enough for me. (Besides, in the 1960's Robinson proved that you could legitimately do calculus that way.)

[taral.livejournal.com]

It's so interesting to see the contrast between the inside and the outside view.

FYI, Amazon won't delete any more books: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UA22SLTRZ52OWQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=218501227&subSection=News

[giza.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure you're aware of things you can't talk about.

It's nice to know that they won't delete any more books, but this still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And the previous GLBT issue with book reviews being not displayed (and their subsequent dropping the ball) did not help.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Well, I can say that the previous issue with reviews had nothing to do with GLBT. And that neither case was the result of an intentional policy decision by Amazon.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Granting that this is true, my real issue with how poorly Amazon responded to it. I recall a full 48 hours of #amazonfail posts all over Twitter, with nothing but silence from Amazon.

In Internet time, 48 hours is an eternity.

[taral.livejournal.com]

It sounds from your original post like you've decided that Amazon is "evil" somehow. Failure to respond isn't evil. Inept, perhaps, but not evil.

[adelheid-p.livejournal.com]

I have a math minor and don't really use calculus now. I did have a calculus teacher in college that showed us real life applications for it and that helped me understand it and want to learn it. Then I went on to differential equations and applied math which I really enjoyed.