20 replies to this topic

[dean webb]

Ok, after seeing a few posts here and looking extensively for online PDF books and textbooks for a couple days, I found an AMAZING site that has nearly every book you could ever ask for. I'm not kidding.

www.avaxhome.org

I found hundreds and hundreds of books here, from very recent popular authors to textbooks on any subject you can think of. This site is really amazing. Just go there, click on "ebooks" up at the top, and search for anything you want on the left side column. I downloaded probably about 200 different biology, physics, chemistry, technology, and a few other types of books in the first few hours of finding this site. You might want to get a short subscription to rapidshare.com (only a few dollars for all the amazing books) and you can download a bunch at the same time.

Anyways, I figured I'd make a nice little contribution to the the ever expanding knowledge of the ImmInst members for my first post. Have fun.

[Liquidus]

Thanks Dean,

I checked out that site, and it appears to be legitimate, I was able to get actual direct download prompts for a few magazine eBooks (in PDF I believe).

[dean webb]

Yeah, I got "The Selfish Gene" and "The God Delusion" and a few other Dawkins books, too.
This site is crazy.

[Liquidus]

I think that all informative texts should be available freely on a personal level for non-commercial use (although I guess knowledge is invaluable). To restrict the desire of knowledge for personal growth seems a bit off to me. I think that if someone wants to learn about the complete biology of the human body, they ought to be able to. Hell, there's a good chance that the knowledge will be addicting, and the reader will feel compelled to enter that field of study through schooling, etc...

[dean webb]

Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me. I bought a few books on biology, physics, and futurism, and here I am posting on the Immortality Institutes's forum. Now I plan on going into a related field for school, though I haven't decided exactly which one (because I want to learn them ALL).

This site sure does have many informative texts (and they are free), I have a couple physics and biology books that are over 1200 pages, and over a hundred others, I have been downloading books since I found it and haven't had a chance to start reading any of them.

Just think, books will go out of date (Kurzweil said it in The Singularity is Near) and everyone will have a huge knowledge base downloaded into their brains.
... or something super-mega-amazing like that.

[Live Forever]

I added your link to the list of free online books and stuff in the thread I have on it:
http://www.imminst.o...13&t=10291&st=0

I hope you don't mind, dean

[dean webb]

Of course I don't mind.

I went to every single link on every single post in that thread, and this website has been more helpful to me than all of those put together. I was just looking for a really good biology textbook, and stumbled onto this site because the site ebookee.org uses it in their search engine for books. I guess you could put that site on your list too, though after I started using avaxhome I haven't looked anywhere else since.

[Liquidus]

You're right about the future of knowledge-based intelligence. Kurzweil seems fairly confident that neural interfaces will surface around the time that AI supersedes normal human intelligence.

I think lost in all the chaos of present day life is that, as Kurzweil suggests, the AIs will be very powerful, but I think people forget that those same technologies will enable human beings (those who want it) to literally jump from one evolutionary phase to the next (from human being to cyborg). As impersonal as being called a Cyborg sounds (and I'm confident someone will coin a more personal/humane term in the future), the benefits of being a cyborg when you consider Kurzweil's predictions, is almost unanimous.

To be able to access the internet/information resource from with in your consciousness, or to have a vast amount of information 'installed' into your brain would remove the need for books and formal education. Until then, we have generous people such as yourself who provide the resources .

I plan on going back to school (until such technologies exist), I would change my major now and pursue something in the science/technology field, but I'm already more than half done my current Law undergrad. My brother's current interest in getting into the nanotechnology field might encourage me to join him once he fills me in on the details. I've deviated from science/technology formal education in the pursuit of understanding the social aspects of human beings (philosophy/law, etc...).

The beauty of the life-extension movement once feasible is that it will give me the opportunity to go back and learn as much as I want without feeling the restraints of 'having' to start a career and 'having' to start a family. Although even without LE, I refuse to conform to either of those customs.

[platypus]

I think that all informative texts should be available freely on a personal level for non-commercial use (although I guess knowledge is invaluable).

I agree, but studying for a degree should be looked at as commercial use. Textbooks on obscure subjects don't exactly sell millions of copies at the moment...

[dean webb]

The beauty of the life-extension movement once feasible is that it will give me the opportunity to go back and learn as much as I want ....

Yeah, I planned on this too. I want to get into so many fields, but I think I'll have to get into a field like biotechnology or nanotechnology first in order to help push along transhumanism, then when I can live for as long as I want, I'll go back and learn more subjects and maybe get more degrees (if they still exist).

[Liquidus]

I agree, but studying for a degree should be looked at as commercial use. Textbooks on obscure subjects don't exactly sell millions of copies at the moment...

True, but when you go to a professional institute for education (college/university) you're paying for more than just the content of the book, you pay for the opinions/discussions in the classroom, and you pay for the guidance and expertise provided by the professor. Some people need experts to help them grasp concepts, other people can learn everything properly exclusively through the content of a text.

[Athanasios]

I was just looking for a really good biology textbook

So did you download "molecular biology of the cell" by bruce alberts

I know you can read it at NIH for free but it is kind of a pain.

[eldar]

I added your link to the list of free online books and stuff in the thread I have on it:
http://www.imminst.o...13&t=10291&st=0

I hope you don't mind, dean

You do realize that the material on the site is copyrighted?
That said, I don't think it's such a good idea to add the link to the list of *free* online books.

Edited by ceth, 26 August 2007 - 04:44 PM.

[Live Forever]

I added your link to the list of free online books and stuff in the thread I have on it:
http://www.imminst.o...13&t=10291&st=0

I hope you don't mind, dean

You do realize that the material on the site is copyrighted?
That said, I don't think it's such a good idea to add the link to the list of *free* online books.

Oh, so its like illegal free?

Thats not the good kind of free.

[eldar]

Oh, so its like illegal free?

Thats not the good kind of free.

Yeah, I'm afraid so...

[Liquidus]

Oh, so its like illegal free?

Thats not the good kind of free.

Well, it's the good kind of free here in Canada [sfty]

[Mind]

Is there a different copyright law in Canada? I thought this type of thing (patent & copyright) was fairly normalized around the world.

[eldar]

The site itself might not be breaking any laws since it doesn't host the files itself but only links to the service hosting them.
None the less it is on the gray area, much like torrent sites.

Edited by ceth, 27 August 2007 - 04:38 PM.

[dean webb]

I was just looking for a really good biology textbook

So did you download "molecular biology of the cell" by bruce alberts

I know you can read it at NIH for free but it is kind of a pain.

Yeah, the site I posted above doesn't have Molecular Biology of the Cell. If anyone knows of a great place to download it, please do post. I have found multiple sites where you can read it online, but that is a pain in the ass.

and, technically you could get those books for free with this site by using the sites that host them, but if you want it to be convenient at all (it would take a long time otherwise) you might want to pay a few dollars and get a membership at one of those sites to do many parallel downloads. I did, so I guess I didn't get them completely free, but it is still an amazing site. I found more books on any subject I could think of than I could find on any of the other book downloading sites.

[caston]

I was interested in that biology of the cell book and interative CD ROM but the rapid share link has expired...

[dean webb]

I was interested in that biology of the cell book and interative CD ROM but the rapid share link has expired...

Yeah, many of the links are expired, sadly, but you can still find hundreds of useful books. I got about 25 biology books, not including branches like bioinformatics and other cross-breeds of biology and something else.