I have a reading problem
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.
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.