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Comment by tux | Hacker News Reader

for anyone who hate registrations for downloads ^_^ http://learn-rails.com/ebooks/learn-rails.pdf

Here's why I ask you to register to download the book:

1) After working on the book for six months, I'd like to be able to follow up and ask you to contribute to the Kickstarter campaign if you like the book.

2) You are downloading an advance edition of a book that contains code that is likely to change. Within the next week or two, I will release an updated version. I'd like to be able to notify you when the update is available.

3) I am only giving the book away for free for one day, to promote the Kickstarter campaign. If you are willing to provide your email address in exchange for a free copy of the book I am grateful. If you are not, Michael Hartl offers an excellent introduction to Rails that does not require registration or an email address:

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

Yes, but why do I have to create an account? I don't want another one off account somewhere.

So they they can send you unwanted emails. There is no such thing as a free lunch. In order for you to get the book, you have to give away your contact information.

The information wants to be free!

Great books which do not need registration based shilling techniques for your hacking careers:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html

http://htdp.org/

https://gustavus.edu/+max/concrete-abstractions.html

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/

Open and Free FTW!

Jesus christ. The guy gives away his hard work for free and still gets shit for it.

Stay classy, HN.

Seriously, the criticism on here gets ridiculous sometimes.

Not a single one of those are even remotely relevant to this discussion, other than the fact that they aren't behind a contact information 'paywall'.

I think it's relevant

Heres some more:

http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/

http://rubymonk.com/

http://ruby-kickstart.com/

http://railsforzombies.org/

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=459

Give it a fucking rest, UNIXgod, you're just being a wanker now. A guy gives away something for free that cost him money and you go posting links to other resources and start banging on about "open and free"

Could you instead provide some links on relevant things YOU have written and gave away for free ?

You're a jerk.

"They" is me, a solo author who gave up six months of consulting income to produce a book to help Rails beginners. Would you care to contribute to the Kickstarter campaign so the book can reach the people who need it? What do you wish to offer in exchange? How about even offering a thank you? Or do you feel you are entitled to enjoy my work, offering nothing in exchange, and encouraging other people to act with no respect or thanks?

Thanks for writing this book. I'm not a Rails programmer but I'm going to take a look at it so I can help a little more with the Discourse forum code.

Just one thought... please use persona. No password anymore. Anyway, thanks for the hard work.

I understand why you want an E-mail address in exchange for the book. What I don't understand is why, in addition to that E-mail address, do people have to create an account of some kind? Why not just the E-mail address?

The "Get the Book" page does not explain any of this, and left me puzzled as to what I was creating an account for.

Daniel thanks for the books its amazing and I will donate to the kick starter campaign in the near future. I cannot afford it at this moment in time as I am going through a bootcamp. Thank You Daniel

A name and email address is a small and fair price to pay for a book that has had so much effort put into it for a total of $0 today. don't you think? Edit your comment and remove the link mate, seems fair.

Dan, if you are reading this I wanted to say how much I appreciate this book. I've recently decided I am going to learn Rails after years of using and abusing PHP, I want to learn something more substantial and this is good timing for me. Where I can, I will offer you my support.

Registering offers you the benefit of receiving an announcement when a new version is released.

Not sure if it will still be freely downloadable by then though.

Really??

This is why we can't have nice things.

Guys, seriously. You have to understand the the author has put time into this and is still offering this for free. The least that you could do is register, considering you don't have to pay for such a quality book.

Link now points to a text file telling you to register.

Still allows direct download (I registered prior to the comments), also, tux's comment history is about as positive and contributing to the community as you'd expect.

I'm okay with giving my email but when it came to enter a password I stopped since I didn't know what I'm signing up for. There was no logo on that page and the initial Link said "to download"

The password field is for creating a password for this account, you don't have to type the password of any other account. There's no security risk here, since you never ever reuse passwords, right?

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