Which is more important? Truth or Source

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
-Unknown (Not Julius Ceasar)

I LOVE O'Reilly Safari Library

A year ago I extolled the Safari O'Reilly Bookshelf for granting the ability (depending on subscription) to have complete access to 30 technical books at once (each with a required stay on ones "favorites" for at least a month). In addition to O'Reilly's HUGE stable of titles, publishers like Microsoft Press and Addison Wesley also made their titles available.

The current publisher list includes (but is not limited to): O'Reilly, Addison Wesley, Sams, Prentice Hall, Que, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press,Peachpit Press, New Riders Publishing, Alpha Books, Course Technology, IBM Press, Macromedia, Adobe Press, Syngress, Financial Times Prentice HallMuska & Lipman, MySQL Press, No Starch, Novell Press, Premier Press, Prima Publishing, SitePoint, & Wharton School Publishing. The only one missing of note (to me) is Apress, but they have their own service.

Towards the end of last year, a new subscription option was enabled: The Safari Library. Unrestricted access to ALL titles [GLEE!!]. Currently going for $439.99 (10 hardcovers) it was a no brainer. I was regularly maxing out my bookshelf (30 books), but now have over 80. You might think one can't possibly consume that much information in any reasonable time period, but it's not about reading every book from cover to cover. It's about taking the information you need from every resource available. Now my resources are almost unlimited. Though my quick answers frequently come from Google Groups (formerly Deja) and a good bit of R&D happens via web searches, there is still no real equivalent to a (good) published text (or 5) on a given topic. What about the books with Code Samples, etc on an accompanying CD/DVD? Available via a link at the top of every page. Frequently, these links go the the authors web site with additional info as well. In addition to regularly published titles, one also has access to "Safari Guides", "Short Cuts" and "Rough Cuts".

I've been labeled as obsessive about learning on more than one occasion. Knowledge without application, however, is useless. The more I learn the more I can do. With tools like the Safari Library, I may have more than I can ever use, but I'll almost always have what I need.

As for gripes about the service. No major ones. The Library Subscription comes with 5 tokes a month. A token usually allows for the download of 1 chapter, sometimes a subsection. Each token expires if not used in 3 months. I find the token system a bit too restrictive, but use them because they expire if I don't. Downloaded chapters are watermarked pdfs with account information, allowing any copies in the wild to be traced back to the source. I like this approach Much better than password protected pdfs, but reading a chapter at a time can be a pain. Some books I read through, others I hop around looking for topics I need. The greatest flexibility is available while online.