Oolite Bulletins

O'Reilly Books, is having a sale on their beginning Javascript book, HeadFirst Javascript. You can get the digital version for only $9.99. It's available in PDF format and is completely DRM-free. So you can copy it to a laptop, search through it, anything you like. The HeadFirst series is a set of programming books aimed at beginners. I bought HeadFirst Programming which featured Python language and found it interesting and informative and not at all dry like other books can be. I have been told that other HeadFirst books are much the same way.
Since OXP are written in Javascript, this is an excellent opportunity for new people, to get a good reference and start on the OXP they have been dreaming of.
The link to the 'Deals of the Day' is below and despite the name each deal actually goes for a few days.
A good deal for both sides of the Atlantic since it's a PDF download,there are no shipping fees. Just $9.99 and that's it.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/ebookdealoftheday

And that's like a book for a fiver isn't it ?

Chrisfs wrote:

And that's like a book for a fiver isn't it ?

Seems more like a tenner to me.

Darn, credit cards only. I refuse to use those evil things, but online life is getting increasinly frustrating with a lifestyle-choice like that

Indeed.

I only have a credit card for a week now, never had one before. And the only reason why I reluctantly decided to get one are these darn payments over the intertubes which most of the time can only be done through a credit card.

Kind of a fact of life here. Most car rental and hotels require one to make a reservation.

In Europe (at least in Germany) the facts of life used to be different. For instance everybody does most of their financial transactions by wire transfer. No need for either a credit card or cheques. Wire transfer is by far the simplest (especially over online banking) and cheapest (it is cost-free in most banks, provided you have a monthly income) solution. I was a little shocked to learn from wikipedia that it's ridiculously expensive in the US.

Commander McLane wrote:

In Europe (at least in Germany) the facts of life used to be different. For instance everybody does most of their financial transactions by wire transfer. No need for either a credit card or cheques. Wire transfer is by far the simplest (especially over online banking) and cheapest (it is cost-free in most banks, provided you have a monthly income) solution. I was a little shocked to learn from wikipedia that it's ridiculously expensive in the US.

Because the US relies on the transfer of debt, not actually real money (of which there doesn't seem to be any).

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Because the US relies on the transfer of debt, not actually real money (of which there doesn't seem to be any).

There isn't any real money involved in wiring. It simply works by balancing the accounts which the sender's and receiver's bank are required to have with the central bank against each other. If sender and receiver have their accounts with the same bank, it doesn't even go to the central bank, but the accounts are simply internally balanced. No real money involved at any point.

Commander McLane wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Because the US relies on the transfer of debt, not actually real money (of which there doesn't seem to be any).

There isn't any real money involved in wiring. It simply works by balancing the accounts which the sender's and receiver's bank are required to have with the central bank against each other. If sender and receiver have their accounts with the same bank, it doesn't even go to the central bank, but the accounts are simply internally balanced. No real money involved at any point.

I know how it works - but the US relies on payment by credit (card) because nobody in US has any *actual* money - therefore payment by actual transfer of existing funds shatters that illusion and is therefore prohibitively expensive (this is at least how it was in 1999 when I lived there - and judging by the sub-prime induced credit crunch clearly hasn't got any better)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

the US relies on payment by credit (card) because nobody in US has any *actual* money

Ah, so you mean things like savings or money in the bank. That's of course also weird for my continental background. I tend to try to leave at least about half a month's wages in my current account at any time. So, how did it work in the US? Everybody uses their credit cards, living in permanent debt and the monthly paycheck is only supposed to cancel the debt and bring the account back to zero?

All money is imaginary anyway. Any non-barter economy is faith-based: as soon as people stop believing in the "value" of gold, or cowrie shells, or special bits of paper, or complex packages of mixed debts dreamed up by cocaine-addled bankers, everything vanishes in a puff of doubt.

Oh no! Don't destroy our illusions!

My cowrie shells! What do I do now with my cowrie shells!

Tsk ... the cowrie market has been underperforming for years. You should put everything in Rai stones! A good, solid, stable currency. Unless someone pushes it down a hill.

I think the Aztecs had the best idea...cacao beans! If you were rich you could 'invest' in a nice chocolaty drink, and if you weren't, well money really did grow on trees!