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ktfon Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles

You know what's full of explicit incest? Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor. It's also one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

But it looks like it's not available on Kindle either, now that I check :)

http://www.amazon.com/Ada-Ardor-Chronicle-Vladimir-Nabokov/d...

ktfon Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

It will be available as a PDF, epub, and mobi.

The epub and mobi versions tend to lag about a week behind the PDF because of conversion time, but we push those files out to your account as soon as they're ready. (Assuming you pick the book up from No Starch directly: http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm)

ktfon The best JavaScript guide ever

Eloquent JavaScript is being being published in print form soon as well: http://nostarch.com/ejs.htm

ktfon How to Raise Boys Who Read

I would rather raise my (hypothetical) child as someone who is open minded, who can listen to suggestions and choose what they'd like to read themselves. I'm not into the idea of raising a closed-minded elitist who's only allowed to read the books his father loved as a child.

Incidentally, I can say firsthand that the Captain Underpants series is wonderful. If you have a child (or are one), I highly recommend checking it out.

ktfon Land of Lisp sample chapter available

Read about the book and check out the TOC here: http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm

ktfon Two is the magic number: a new science of creativity

There have also been theories that link that to the enjoyment we get from books, films, and other types of media. Sort of a "science of identification." Interesting stuff.

ktfon How To Read Mathematics

The Manga Guides might fit the bill -- Calculus, Stats, Databases, etc: http://nostarch.com/manga

ktfon Guide to where your cofounders should live in the SF Bay

Deerhoof, Bassnectar, Girls, and Nodzzz are a few just off the top of my head. A lot of great stuff happening in Oakland, as well. The Anticon collective, etc.

There are lots of bars and venues, but I recommend checking out Bottom of the Hill in Potrero -- their shows tend to be cheap and they feature local talent a lot.

I get your point: SF isn't the top dog when it comes to music, but honestly... you can find local music no matter where you are, as long as you look for it. And if you don't look for it, all the local bands you're not going to see are just going to move to Brooklyn (or wherever else is cool that year) along with everyone else.

ktfon Guide to where your cofounders should live in the SF Bay

> I had enough time to go to all of those things...

Sorry, maybe I'm taking you too literally here, but I find that hard to believe. You had time to attend every artistic event in SF, and you just weren't satisfied?

ktfon Guide to where your cofounders should live in the SF Bay

> there are a ton of interesting bands coming out of Brooklyn right now

Not to nitpick, but many of the bands "coming out of Brooklyn right now" are bands that moved there from elsewhere to try to ride the "Brooklyn band = good" wave. It's weird how arbitrary and amorphous these various scenes can be. If you can't find good music coming out of SF, you're probably not looking hard enough.

> Compared to that the whole art-car, techno, cyberpunkish thing in S.F. just seems so provincial and quaint.

It seems odd (and inaccurate) to sum an entire city's culture up with 3 indistinct generalizations.

ktfon Guide to where your cofounders should live in the SF Bay

> there's very little literary, musical, or otherwise artistic culture here and people just don't seem to be very intellectually curious outside of tech

I don't have enough hours in the day to go to all the film festivals, concerts, author readings, dance performances, gallery openings, and other similar events that are occurring all the time in SF.

If you're looking for people who are interested in things outside of tech, you should start going to some of these events, and meeting people. Join the SF Film Society, for a start! Maybe I'll see you around...

ktfon Garden path sentence

Or in Japan!

ktfon Ask HN: Physical skills/activities for programmers

Learn to play go! It's the greatest computer-free brain exercise I've ever experienced, by far.

ktfon Thursday = Thor's day

That's true for Monday as well, which I've always thought was cool:

月曜日 = Monday

月 = Moon, 曜日 = day of the week

ktfon Thursday = Thor's day

I can't believe nobody has brought up the Flying Spaghetti Monster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_monster

ktfon Kindle: Most Highlighted Passages of All Time

I actually find this data interesting, as long as it's anonymous. It should probably be something you have to opt-in for though.

ktfon Roger Ebert: 3D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension

We're just talking degrees of (what we perceive as) realism. The fact that the technology hasn't caught up yet is no reason to dismiss the entire idea.

Think about Technicolor, for instance. Unrealistic, and to some, headache-inducing. But it was an early step toward what we have today.

These days, most films are shot in color, and in a fairly naturalistic way that people don't generally notice. But that certainly doesn't mean there's "no point in having it there." It's just a greater level of immersion, which helps draw people even further into what actually matters (for most films): the story, the characters, etc.

ktfon Roger Ebert: 3D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension

We don't need sound, because we have intertitles. And we don't need color, because we have enough shades of gray to represent color "well enough."

Adding these elements would be far too distracting. And if we weren't distracted by sound and color, then what's the point in having them there?

Artists should work in the most limiting possible way -- in a way that everyone is already accustomed to. Otherwise, they're cheap, tawdry sensationalists. Down with change! Down with innovation!

Wait... what?

ktfon Roger Ebert: 3D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension

People said the same thing about sound. And color. And widescreen. And so on.

Attack the films themselves, not the medium. It's only going to be as good as the artist who uses it. Don't fear new technology, even if you are an over-the-hill critic.

ktfon Ubuntu 10.04 Released

It uses this library: http://libimobiledevice.org/

So presumably, it's available to one and all, regardless of distro. (At least until Apple gets wind of it...)

ktfon Why waste time on a foreign language?

First off: learning anything is not a waste of time.

Second, the same could be said of any subject: most students only learn math because they're forced to, or history because they're forced to, and they're not likely to retain that information after leaving high school unless they have a personal desire to do so. Does that mean we should stop putting kids in math classes, or history classes?

We (the US) should probably focus on making language classes more worthwhile, and putting kids in them when they're younger, like the rest of the world.

ktfon Video Games are already art, Mr Ebert

This was my reaction too, at first.

But Ebert is a hugely influential cultural figure, spreading ill-informed opinions to a public who would rather listen to what he says than think for themselves. Willful ignorance is a metavirus.

ktfon Video Games are already art, Mr Ebert

Kurosawa worked with a team of writers, cinematographers, actors, assistants, producers. Seven Samurai was designed by committee -- Kurosawa just happened to have been at the head of that committee.

This is true for almost every film in existence. Certainly every widely distributed film.

This is also true for games. Some of the best games are driven by a single person -- think Kojima and Metal Gear or Miyamoto and Mario -- but they are the product of many, many talented artists working their asses off.

ktfon Nick Levine abandons his book "Lisp Outside the Box"

Land of Lisp is looming, don't worry!

(I'm editing the book, by the way.)

ktfon Netflix Streaming App Coming to iPad

And yet there's still no Linux support? At this point, I can watch streaming movies on every device I own except my computer.

ktfon Netflix Streaming App Coming to iPad

Yeah... ever since the switch to Silverlight, Netflix streaming has been unwatchable even on my fairly up-to-date desktop machine.

ktfon Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?

Pale Fire, by Nabokov. A story of insane obsession, which I'm sure many HN readers could relate to...

ktfon Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?

Snow Crash is amazing. But it definitely IS related to software :)