Ah yes, the joys of a fractured wrist (in a cast) (but luckily not my mouse-clicking hand), with at least 6 weeks medical leave (4 of which have already passed) and nothing to do... But wait, there's the internet..
Yes it's true that 'Rapidshare' & other file hosting sites have tons of technical & academic stuff in the form of books, journals, articles, etc. and yes it's also true that you can't go into their site & search their files (says so in their FAQ), BUT that doesn't mean you can't find what you want.
Googling 'Book Title' & 'File Hosting site' with or w/out 'publisher' will return a slew of hits. For instance, I Googled "Electrochemistry and Corrosion Science"+"Rapidshare" which returned a number of hits. One of them was 'EBOOKEE' which featured the book but also a number of others related to 'Electrochemistry' & 'Corrosion'. I chose another book instead "Handbook of Electrochemistry" (2007) (935pp.) and downloaded it for free. Lots of diagrams and color pics. etc. An excellent textbook. ok, so it won't be on my bookshelf; but free is free.
I've found that searching this way brings interesting results with many foreign-language sites which I do not understand. Google will translate some and others not, but they all have their offerings in english with one or more hosting-site links underneath. Some links are active, others not; you just have to poke around and see what works for you.
Also clicking on 'Cached' (from a Google search) will highlight the words you queried so that you can just drag the scrollbar down the page until the highlighted words pop up, a lot better than searching line by line.
With this method it's sort of like going to the Public Library, you go in looking for one book and come out with five others. Yes the library's divided into sections but with no card catalog, you just have to go through the stacks.
Unfortunately, 'IPMI' doesn't seem to be posting their stuff on file-sharing sites (or maybe I just haven't discovered it yet), but there's loads of other freebies in the sciences etc. Like I said: I've got time on my hand.
Shaul
Yes it's true that 'Rapidshare' & other file hosting sites have tons of technical & academic stuff in the form of books, journals, articles, etc. and yes it's also true that you can't go into their site & search their files (says so in their FAQ), BUT that doesn't mean you can't find what you want.
Googling 'Book Title' & 'File Hosting site' with or w/out 'publisher' will return a slew of hits. For instance, I Googled "Electrochemistry and Corrosion Science"+"Rapidshare" which returned a number of hits. One of them was 'EBOOKEE' which featured the book but also a number of others related to 'Electrochemistry' & 'Corrosion'. I chose another book instead "Handbook of Electrochemistry" (2007) (935pp.) and downloaded it for free. Lots of diagrams and color pics. etc. An excellent textbook. ok, so it won't be on my bookshelf; but free is free.
I've found that searching this way brings interesting results with many foreign-language sites which I do not understand. Google will translate some and others not, but they all have their offerings in english with one or more hosting-site links underneath. Some links are active, others not; you just have to poke around and see what works for you.
Also clicking on 'Cached' (from a Google search) will highlight the words you queried so that you can just drag the scrollbar down the page until the highlighted words pop up, a lot better than searching line by line.
With this method it's sort of like going to the Public Library, you go in looking for one book and come out with five others. Yes the library's divided into sections but with no card catalog, you just have to go through the stacks.
Unfortunately, 'IPMI' doesn't seem to be posting their stuff on file-sharing sites (or maybe I just haven't discovered it yet), but there's loads of other freebies in the sciences etc. Like I said: I've got time on my hand.
Shaul
