[clug] Free Ebook Foundation

[steve jenkin]

Stumbled on this site hosted on github.

It seems to be a Big List of URL’s - at least it’s curated in some fashion.

I’ve concerns over the quality - what gets something on or off the list?
And also over security - this is a targeted list for hackers.

A bigger concern for me is ‘deadlinks’ and orphaned pages and sites.
These can happen for any number of reasons, most beyond the control of the author.

In my quick scan, I didn’t see anything about their scanning and link updating process.
There’s a larger problem of good works disappearing. I understand they aren’t trying to clone every resource - that’d be too expensive in storage, downloads and IO on github for a small operation to afford.

One of the problems I regularly face is trying to track down the contents of old links.
Often ‘archive.org’ has a copy, but it turns out to be spotty and erratic for me. Sometimes I find copies squirrelled away elsewhere.

Which is better than nothing and for something I’ve never paid for, better than I could reasonably expect :)

Does anyone have an idea of how a reliable free archive might be created to conserve important docs?

Is it as ’simple’ as storing MD5 or SHA1’s of downloaded materials and being able to respond if someone ever requests them? That implies a database and a request list and a repo for uploads.

I’ve included a relevant link to an intro to the Command Line - there’s a lack of material for getting started in Unix/ Linux.

I’m sure the collective wisdom of the group has better, newer pages to recommend.

regards
steve jenkin

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Free Ebook Foundation
https://ebookfoundation.org

List of Free Learning Resources 
https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/

List of English resources
https://ebookfoundation.github.io/free-programming-books/free-programming-books.html

An Introduction to Unix
http://oliverelliott.org/article/computing/tut_unix/

Security Engineering, Ross Anderson
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html

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Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin