For some unfathomable reason I have received four emails containing
various Ruby related ebooks:
Pragmatic Programmer, From Journeyman to Master.pdf
Syngress - Ruby Developer’s Guide.pdf
The Pickaxe.pdf
Game Programming with Python Lua And Ruby.pdf
The Ruby way.chm
Ruby in a nutshell.chm
To my knowledge none of these are free, anyone else get them?
I also received four Emails, but deleted them as spam. I haven’t
looked at the contents.
Oh, they came through my spam filters so I did look at the contents and
they are the genuine article. I would have been more active if there was
some kind of virus in there.
The To: Headers are ofcourse different: collinsj, cribbsj, Daniel Bolt
and Daniel B. in addition to myself.
Oh and I didn’t get the first zip which obviously contains Ruby Way and
Ruby in a Nutshell.
I didn’t really react to it because apart from the Lua/Ruby book (which
is not really my playground) I have a dead tree copy of the others (even
the ones I didn’t get).
Thinking about it the Pickaxe 2nd Ed. is really handy as a reference
therefore nice to have as PDF, but the PP Book is really worth it’s
weight in gold so better get the version that has weight
V.-
For what it’s worth, the Pragmatic Programmer’s series all seem to be
watermarked PDFs if they’re legit - I bought the PDFs legally - and in
the footer of each page in the main part of the books, it will say
“Prepared for…” (in my case it says “Paul R.”) and name the
person involved. I’d suggest sending copies to the PP team so they can
track down who is stealing from them…
The pickaxe shows “Prepared exclusively for Yeganefar”
Oh, they came through my spam filters so I did look at the contents
and
they are the genuine article. I would have been more active if
there was some kind of virus in there.
But the question is, why is somebody sending them out?
I haven’t received them, but then I haven’t posted to this list much
before. At least it means you can eliminate the route that it was
sent to all subscribers to the mailing list - just people who seem to
post.
So, is this a set-up for a “Ruby programmers are all thieves” story?
I just don’t get the purpose. Was there anything else in the mail?
Thinking about it the Pickaxe 2nd Ed. is really handy as a
reference therefore nice to have as PDF, but the PP Book is really
worth it’s weight in gold so better get the version that has weight
I’d advise you destroy all the PDFs that you received illegally.
They’re not yours, you don’t own them, it’s piracy. You might think
having the PDF is handy, so fine, pay for it.
For what it’s worth, the Pragmatic Programmer’s series all seem to be
watermarked PDFs if they’re legit - I bought the PDFs legally - and
in the footer of each page in the main part of the books, it will say
“Prepared for…” (in my case it says “Paul R.”) and name the
person involved. I’d suggest sending copies to the PP team so they
can track down who is stealing from them…
The pickaxe shows “Prepared exclusively for Yeganefar”
I got these this morning too.
I’d assumed they were trojans and deleted them, but
I just pulled them out of ‘deleted items’ (go gmail!) and the pickaxe
pdf I got
has the same tagline.
i got them as well…
i replied with the questions who he was and why he sent me this, and he
told
me he was “just trying to help ruby newbies out”…
i suppose he meant well… he just did the wrong thing
greetings, Dirk.
it seems it was sent to a lot of e-mail adresses, in alphabetical order,
all
e-mail adresses that appeared in my list started with an h or an i…
the only question is why this actually was sent…
anyway, that’s not really my problem…
greetings, Dirk.
The name is placed in the PDF by PragProg when they receive an order by
the named individual and is presumably associated with some form of
payment details. Proving that that person is responsible for the
distribution of the PDF is another matter. There are clues in the other
documents but I suspect that these eBooks have been floating around for
sometime and some fuckwit thought that the best way to promote Ruby was
to send large spam (It works out to around 18Mb in my mailbox) to a list
of people who are already actively engaged in Ruby.
And my wife wonders why I don’t give up programming to become a
technical writer
Ehm, this could be considered a FUD or at least an (uninformed)
exaggeration. Or at least, the legal state in some countries doesn’t
just correspond to it. I’m not (!) questioning the morale, just the
“piracy” and “received illegally” parts. Where I live, it’s just
nonsense and also it’s the very rhetorics currently being used by local
recording companies to intimidate the people from using the rights the
copyright law explicitly grants to them. The “Prepared for…” person
also might have nothing to do with it. Tracking down the culprit might
be much more difficult than that.
An yeah, you don’t own the book even if you pay for it. Or you can have
the paper, but you still don’t have to have the right to read it. Kind
of reminds me the Harry Potter affair, the latest book, AFAIRC…
