“Even though the company (Heathkit) stopped making and selling kits back in 1992, it apparently just sold the copyrights on its old manuals to another company, which is going around forcing any old manuals offline and demanding people buy them instead…”
Read all about it here.
Ron Charles pretty well sums up my feelings about Harry Potter.
Instead of regurgitating what he wrote, you can read it here.
Here are some true words about the business I am in.
I don’t read as much fiction as I should.
I read tons of fiction when I attended college, but after I graduated and got more and more into ham radio and computers, I read less fiction and more non-fiction in order to learn about and keep up with technology. However, I usually dropped whatever I was reading whenever there was a release of a new book by Kurt Vonnegut.
By far, Vonnegut is my favorite author. I’ve read and enjoyed most of his books and I learned something from each one. But, Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. There will be no new Vonnegut books to read and the world will be worse for it.
Astronomy was my first scientific interest. As a kid, I had a blast with a inexpensive no-name refractor telescope that my folks bought me for Christmas many years ago.
After I saw everything I could see with that telescope, I bugged my folks for an upgrade and eventually they bought me a less inexpensive no-name refractor, which I still own and use today.
Today, slashdot had a story titled “A Free Guide to Naked-Eye Astronomy.”
Tammy Plotner, president of Warren Rupp Observatory, writes “Are you looking for all the best of what’s up in the night sky for the year 2007? Then be my guest and download my free e.book — ’365 Days of SkyWatching’! (Brought to you courtesy of The Universe Today.) Each day is specifically geared to give you the best of what can be seen with the unaided eye, binoculars, and small telescopes and even has challenge objects for seasoned observers. It’s beautifully illustrated and contains many special features, such as anotated lunar maps. Please feel free to pass it along to anyone in the astronomy community and enjoy!”
I downloaded the book and after perusing it, I recommend it highly.