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Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds

(torrentfreak.com)
326 points hn_acker | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 23:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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bastard_op ◴[21 Nov 24 01:17 UTC] No.42200020[source]▶
Some 28 years ago I taught myself everything could get/find from graphic design, basic development, server administration, etc, all downloading commercial warez over dial-up with AOL and Usenet. I didn't need a class or subscriptions, with every software and book I could have wanted, I had the best lab in the world with any software available I could want with piracy.

Fast forward 30 years now it's mostly the same as it was, only open source replaced all the commercial, and little has changed that I can still get the rest too. You can pay as much or little as you want in life if you know how.

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jjtheblunt ◴[21 Nov 24 01:26 UTC] No.42200079[source]▶
You said you relied on piracy.

But piracy means you were in spirit and partly in reality stealing the work product of those who learned a few years before you.

Would you want your work value to be diluted by piracy?

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1. al_borland ◴[21 Nov 24 02:26 UTC] No.42200466[source]▶
There is value in freely available copies of software for people to learn on. This increases the number of people in the market who can use it, which in turn increases the number of businesses that can effectively run it.

I don’t think the preference for open source these days is an accident. It’s what kids learned on growing up, because it was the easiest to access, and they kept using it.

Give away the software to people learning, then change corporations to use it. The companies get changed more, and absorb the cost, because it’s subsidizing the education of their future employees.