He does get the potential for irony, and enjoys using irony - but not on Slashdot, where it's rarely appreciated.
A year ago, I couldn't find a GNU/Linux distro that I was happy with on the desktop. Now I have. SuSE Linux 7.3 installs more easily than Windows XP, runs according to specification, does everything that I need it to do, and costs far less. I've changed my mind based on continues exposure to the alternatives, which is what I advocate for Harry Potter readers as well. Try Harry, but then try something else, even if your friends don't like it or think it's wierd.
We're supposed to root for [Harry] because he's a celebrity. Funny - I basically end up agreeing with his enemies, without even necessarily wanting to, because he's not a likeable character
That's it exactly. And it's deliberate; the characterisation is the strongest part of the Potter books, so it's no accident that Harry is so anodyne and blank.
What I dislike about this is that Harry bumbles through with serendipity and with help from his friends. He is neither pro-active nor decisive. He has no admirable qualities other than loyalty. Dumb and trusting, Harry is the eponymous victim. Not a role model I would choose for my children.
Harry is designed to offend no-one, to act as a non-descript pair of eyes through which children can view a different world. Nobody wants to be Harry; they want to be Hermione or Ron. Harry never sees through the plots around him, and so the reader is never invited to try. It's a passive ride. Muzak in print.
Once more for luck: this isn't bad, just mediocre. There are other ways to write a main character. Read Harry Potter, but then go and read some other books as well.
Don't play to the gallery, I'm right here. I'm even reading your AC post.
These are the kinds of people who just don't get it. They think quoting some obscure names of authors will impress others
The genuine intention was to suggest other books that people could consider in addition to Harry Potter. If you haven't read the books that I suggested, how can you judge their relative worth?
But, on balance, maybe you personally would be better served just waiting for the next Harry Potter.
Subversive, sourpuss, elitist, pick your own derogatory ephithet. The intention is the same; to belittle and ostracise. I note that you don't bother to refute any of what I wrote. On the other hand, small blessing, you don't read into it things that I didn't write, like so many respondants here.
What JK Rowling has done is to sell her entire interest in all rights to the work, trademarks and characters. She is now doing work-for-hire, and could be replaced tomorrow, and even persecuted (as fan fiction writers are) and sued for creating content using the trademarks and characters that she no longer owns. As she has reneged on her promise to write a book a year, choosing instead to go on a promotional tour, she has also ceded any moral right to make cachet off of the books.
JK Rowling has never been short of money, and has now made a series of conscious choices to sell all rights (legal and moral) to Harry Potter in return for fame and fortune. On that basis, while I respect her as a business person, I have no respect at all for her an author.
I havent read the books myself, but after seening the movie, I'm not sure what the hype is about
Despite my original post, I would encourage you to read them (whatever your age). They are fun reads. My only point is that it would be nice if they really did act as gateways to more challenging fiction. Also, popularity should not excuse plagiarism, and it would be nice to see the creators of the borrowed (recent, non public domain) content being credited rather than denied.
Subversive, elitist, santimonious ass. Supply your own epithet, but the core of the issue is the same: suggest that there are better works than Harry Potter (give examples even), and be attacked savagely.
In this kind of climate, I have to wonder about the assumption that Harry Potter is a gateway to other books.
Tolkein made it clear where he took his ideas from and so does Rowling
I beg to bloody well differ. JK Rowling was very careful to never attributed the names, characters and situations that she lifted verbatim or nearly so from recent copyrighted works.
The issue is largely irrelevant now, as JK Rowling no longer owns any interest in the character of Larry - sorry Harry - Potter or any associated trademarks. She is now doing work-for-hire for a third party and could be replaced (legally and morally) tomorrow.
Do. They are rather fun. I said mediocre, not actively bad.
so i have no basis on which to judge the proof of your claim that they're derivative/plagiarized
All books are derivative, and I never claimed that they were plagiarised. I suggested that they might be. You have to make your own decision on that, and I do agree that the bulk of the work is original. But they contain characters, names and situations that can be found with minimal changes in prior recent works. That is the definition of plagiarism. No schoolchild would be allowed to get away with doing this, and I'm uncertain why JK Rowling is not only allowed to do so, but is defended robustly by people who haven't even read her work.
"Tom Brown's School Days" is the title of the book i think he is referring to.
Which leads to a nice example of how well it can work. George Macdonald Fraser took a character from Tom Brown's School Days, the bully Harry Flashman, and created a long running series of historical novels around him.
This is different from Potter because the source was out of copyright and in the public domain, and Fraser freely acknowledged the re-use of the characters and names.
Don't get me wrong, all fiction is derivative. But lifting characters, names and situations verbatim (or nearly so) out of other recent works is theft.
The Potter books are derivative (some say plagiarised, and with good reason)
Would you care to back up this claim?
Not particularly. It's been covered many times before. Larry Potter, muggles, Aunt Lil(l)y, Books of Magic. It's not a huge issue, most books are derivative. My point is that some children's fantasy fiction is not derivating (e.g. Dianne Wynne Jones), and it would be nice to see this acknowledged and respected rather than being quoshed as being disrespecful to the Cult of Harry. Look at the venom and ire that any questioning of the quality of the Harry Potter books has generated here, and ask yourself if this is really an indicator that Potter acts as a gateway to other books.
using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion
What exactly do you mean by that? Could you give a specific example?
Not from an out of context quote, but thanks for trying. Finish if off: "even though she has sold all rights".
I mean that JK Rowling no longer owns the right to the character of Harry Potter, or to any of the associated trademarks or intellectual property. She is now doing work-for-hire for a third party, and has no legal right to continue to claim an affinity with the character, any more than a fan fictionist does. She writes Potter books on sufference now. In the past year, she has been on a promotional tour with the emphasis heavily on her as a person rather than as an author. During this time, she has broken her promise (to her audience) to write another book, relinquishing any lingering moral right to an affinity with the readership. She is a tax exile who hypocritically claims to be fond of her "home" of Edinburgh. She has (inconsistently) misrepresented herself as writing the first Harry Potter book in cafes while a struggling single mother. The listener is invited to infer an image of, say, Rene Zellweger working in a steamy diner then writing all night while bringing up a child. She wrote the book as a customer in cafes, with the benefit of an arts grant, a luxury most first authors can only dream of.
I respect JK Rowling as a businessperson, but I do not like her sloppy work, nor I do not like the choices that she has made, or the misrepresentations she continues to make regarding her relationship with and control over the series. I view her as now being little more than a well manicured figurehead. JK Rowling and Harry Potter symbolise the commoditisation of books and of authors. I acknowledge that it is inevitable, but I do not have to like it, nor to jump on the bandwagon.
I use SuSE Linux 7.3, because it does everything that I need, it installed flawlessly, works as advertised, and it cost me £35 which lets me install it on all five of my machines..
The (well packaged mediocre) alternative is Windows XP. That does some of the things that I need, had trouble installing (RC1), and didn't perform as advertised (it doesn't run all legacy Win32 applications). Oh, and it costs £165 per machine.
But I'm potentially right. My point is the same as yours; it's unclear, there's no way to know a priori if you are breaking or likely to be prosecuted for breaking this insane law (other than by submitting your entire online content creations for rating). Until there have been plenty of test cases (with the associated human suffering), it's not unfair to give extreme examples to highlight the inadequacy of the definitions in this bill.
And I don't see that the EFA are peddling FUD on this one. I am afraid of this bill, I am uncertain how it will be applied, I doubt that it will be applied sensibly or equitably.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 2
Meanwhile J.K.Rowling was touting her book outline before the Stouffer book was published
According to her and her publisher, who both have extremely vested interests.
Like the plaintiffs in the case I don't think it is a coincidence, however I think the explanation is rather different than the one they alledge.
You think that Stouffer plagiarised Rowling? That's an... interesting... series of events you're postulating there.
To be fair, you might be postulating meddling by alien God Like Beings, the Star Trek excuse for having a low budget universe full of near-humans. That makes about as much sense.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 2
If Dekard in Blade Runner was named "Yoda" instead, would you claim that the entire thing was a plagiarisation of Star Wars....?
Let me make it easier for you: the L^HHarry Potter books contain plagiarism. If Blade Runner had been set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, if Dekard had been a hot headed young farmboy orphan named Duke Skywalker with an Aunt Berru, if it had contained characters called Jawas and if he had used the Force, then I would (and you would too) have said it plagiarised Star Wars. Let's compare oranges with oranges.
so you choose your OS based on what makes you look "subversive"
What I said was that I choose my OS based on substance over well packaged mediocrity, and that this choice is considered as subversive (or elitist, substitute your own derogatory term) by the peddlars of mediocrity. Brush up on your comprehension skills.
Are [the Potter books] derivative? Sure! What isn't?
Dianne Wynne Jones and (to a lesser extent) Susan Cooper. You're really just making my point about how it's easy to settle for mediocrity when you haven't tried the alternatives.
Precisely. The Worldwide Fund for Nature's behaviour is abusive and predatory. They retained and have protected the name World Wildlife Fund in the USA (and the trademark WWF) because of the same contemptuous contention that Jane Citizen can't deal with the acronym WWF being used by a different company.
You're also correct that the original "licensing" of the trademark was spurious. There is no possibility of confusion between the two spheres of business, and the World Wrestling Federation acted in good faith purely to avoid bad publicity (they could have have said "Screw you" in the first place). The Worldwide Fund for Nature is now abusing the terms of that (good faith) agreement to gain control of the wwf.com domain in bad faith.
Much as I respect the work the Worldwide Fund for Nature does, I really think that in this case they've got it badly wrong and are blowing a lot of money on lawyers to no good purpose.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 2
You are a troll, but ill give you the benifit of the doubt.
I'm an author. But thanks for your condescention.
Reading is reading
But learning remains optional. You made two spelling errors and one punctuation error in a single sentence. This rather makes my point about mediocrity in writing not being something to aspire to. The relevance to Potter is that the writing and editing is so sloppy that the name of a character changes half way through a book. The contempt that this shows for the readership mirrors the laziness you display in your post.
If you don't care enough about your readers to spell or punctuate correctly, why should your readers bother to care about what you have written?
Just putting...sucks... on a domain doesn't offer much in the way of real criticism. Effective activism isn't as easy as calling people names
How condescending of you to bestow your opinion on us. Would you also argue that any company that makes poor or light use of a domain shouldn't be allowed to have it? You might want to ponder that foosucks.bar is the de-facto protest address of choice for groups with real grievances, and it's as well to protect that on freedom of speech grounds if no other.
Because all of the domains end in.sucks, they could not be "confusingly similar" to the original since everyone would know what the purpose of the.sucks domain is.
Nice try, but at the core of UCANT's rulings is the principle that Jane Surfer is a dribbling AOL-Time-Warner-Microserf who is too stupid to figure anything out and needs to be protected from her own idiocy.
It's not just the "bad guys" who're abusing this. The Worldwide Fund for Nature, nee the World Wildlife Fund (and still known as that in the USA) has won the right to wwf.com, on the basis that the World Wresling Federation name and page is "confusingly similar" to the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and Jane Surfer might get all puzzled and donate her money to the wrong organisation. I kid you not. This is currently under appeal, and for once, I'm on the side of the Rock.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
Nice to see one of my comments get a 5 rating *WHEN SOMEONE ELSE POSTS IT*.
Bloody hell, that's harsh. Still, bearing in mind that Potter is plagiarised from several sources anyway, it's pretty apt for this discussion.
Oh, wait, I meant "allegedy plagiarised". ^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W. I'm sorry, I must have been muggled, er, muddled up.
Re:From the "Reminds me of this classic prose" guy
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
Harry Potter got kids who had not read a book on their own in years to actually read something
Which viewed in isolation is admirable. It's just a shame that the books themselves are so plagiaristic, unimaginative and slackly written and edited - you don't just "forget" a character's name half way through a book.
Dianne Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, for example, write truly imaginative and challenging fiction for children and young adults; Potter is Muzak in print. There's very little to dislike (other than Harry's bumbling idiocy) but since when was mediocrity to be praised or aspired to?
Further to that, the books are now well and truly subsumed into the Cult of Potter, and will in future just form a spearhead for the major marketing assult. JK Rowling (who has consistently misrepresented her background in biographies, by the way) has sold all rights to her creation, has no say in Harry's further direction or in what constitutes "fair use" of the Harry trademarks, and is now little than a marketing droid for the Beast. I'd suggest reading some of Bill Watterson's thoughts on this issue.
So sure, let's acknowledge the good, but let's not lose track of the bad. It's also possible to argue that Pokemon trading cards are a great thing because they teach children to interact with each other and use their brains for something more than learning all the "Bone Krunch 5" combo-moves.
I have yet to meet a person who has not loved Harry Potter.
You've met one now. The Potter books are derivative (some say plagiarised, and with good reason) and lazily written. The excuse that this is acceptable because they are aimed at children is bunk: Susan Cooper and Dianne Wynn Jones among others produce truly imaginative and challenging fiction aimed at that market. Potter is Muzak in print.
The Cult of JK Rowling is pretty funny by itself, considering that she's consistenly misrepresented herself (the "struggling single mother" wrote the first book on the back of a literary grant, a luxury most authors can only dream of), and is using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion even though she has sold all rights to the Beast and no longer has any voice in the use of her (ex) property.
No, I don't like the books, and I don't like the hype, and I don't like the Cult. It's well packaged mediocrity triumphing over substance. Granted, that makes me a subversive, but it's also the reason why I prefer GNU/Linux to Microsoft.
What would you rather have? Faster Quake performance at the expense of over all performance or better Quake performance with the best overall performance you can get
I'd rather have the driver do what I damn well tell it to do, and not second guess me based on the application name. As you clearly haven't followed this thread, feel free to take a clue check. These aren't "optimisations" they are "trade offs". The driver ignores the quality settings and drops the quality to up the frame rate, without even telling you it's doing it.
What that means in real terms is that on kick ass hardware, the peak frame rate goes from a theoretical 150fps to 160fps (which you never get to see because of your monitor refresh) while at the same time reducing the image quality, which you will see on a big enough monitor.
If this kludge attempted to do something sensible, like dynamically reduce texture bandwidth to increase minumum framerate in busy scenes (which is what matters), I'd be more inclined to like it, but that's not what it does at all.
I'm a games developer (hobby, ex commercial), by the way. I do not appreciate having my engines run differently depending on what application I use them in.
Maybe I'm wrong, and folks just haven't taken the time to think about this issue and instead are reacting w/o understanding
Are you a games or gfx developer? If not, then please feel free to take a long walk off a short pier. This ATI driver kludge blows my stack; when I tell the driver what to do, I expect it to damn well do it and not to second guess me without even having the common courtesy to document that it's doing so.
Picture the situation where I write a generic 3D engine that I use in multiple applications. Do I want the driver to decide how to act based on the application name? Do I hell. It's a support nightmare, and ATI should be roundly cuffed not for doing it per se, but for failing to be upfront that they have done it and for failing to disclose exactly what they've done.
Slashdot Mirror
He does get the potential for irony, and enjoys using irony - but not on Slashdot, where it's rarely appreciated.
A year ago, I couldn't find a GNU/Linux distro that I was happy with on the desktop. Now I have. SuSE Linux 7.3 installs more easily than Windows XP, runs according to specification, does everything that I need it to do, and costs far less. I've changed my mind based on continues exposure to the alternatives, which is what I advocate for Harry Potter readers as well. Try Harry, but then try something else, even if your friends don't like it or think it's wierd.
What's cultish about my behaviour?
That's it exactly. And it's deliberate; the characterisation is the strongest part of the Potter books, so it's no accident that Harry is so anodyne and blank.
What I dislike about this is that Harry bumbles through with serendipity and with help from his friends. He is neither pro-active nor decisive. He has no admirable qualities other than loyalty. Dumb and trusting, Harry is the eponymous victim. Not a role model I would choose for my children.
Harry is designed to offend no-one, to act as a non-descript pair of eyes through which children can view a different world. Nobody wants to be Harry; they want to be Hermione or Ron. Harry never sees through the plots around him, and so the reader is never invited to try. It's a passive ride. Muzak in print.
Once more for luck: this isn't bad, just mediocre. There are other ways to write a main character. Read Harry Potter, but then go and read some other books as well.
Don't play to the gallery, I'm right here. I'm even reading your AC post.
The genuine intention was to suggest other books that people could consider in addition to Harry Potter. If you haven't read the books that I suggested, how can you judge their relative worth?
But, on balance, maybe you personally would be better served just waiting for the next Harry Potter.
- Subversive? No.
Sourpuss? Maybe.Subversive, sourpuss, elitist, pick your own derogatory ephithet. The intention is the same; to belittle and ostracise. I note that you don't bother to refute any of what I wrote. On the other hand, small blessing, you don't read into it things that I didn't write, like so many respondants here.
The way that it generally works (in the UK) is that the auther retains copyright and rights to the trademarks and intellectual property, and sells limited rights in limited media for a limited time. Scientific and technical books tend to be different, but it doesn't have to be that way. A quick scan of my desk reveals that "Effective C++ 2nd Edition" is © Addison-Wesley, but "Programming Windows 95" is © Charles Petzold.
What JK Rowling has done is to sell her entire interest in all rights to the work, trademarks and characters. She is now doing work-for-hire, and could be replaced tomorrow, and even persecuted (as fan fiction writers are) and sued for creating content using the trademarks and characters that she no longer owns. As she has reneged on her promise to write a book a year, choosing instead to go on a promotional tour, she has also ceded any moral right to make cachet off of the books.
JK Rowling has never been short of money, and has now made a series of conscious choices to sell all rights (legal and moral) to Harry Potter in return for fame and fortune. On that basis, while I respect her as a business person, I have no respect at all for her an author.
Despite my original post, I would encourage you to read them (whatever your age). They are fun reads. My only point is that it would be nice if they really did act as gateways to more challenging fiction. Also, popularity should not excuse plagiarism, and it would be nice to see the creators of the borrowed (recent, non public domain) content being credited rather than denied.
Subversive, elitist, santimonious ass. Supply your own epithet, but the core of the issue is the same: suggest that there are better works than Harry Potter (give examples even), and be attacked savagely.
In this kind of climate, I have to wonder about the assumption that Harry Potter is a gateway to other books.
I beg to bloody well differ. JK Rowling was very careful to never attributed the names, characters and situations that she lifted verbatim or nearly so from recent copyrighted works.
The issue is largely irrelevant now, as JK Rowling no longer owns any interest in the character of Larry - sorry Harry - Potter or any associated trademarks. She is now doing work-for-hire for a third party and could be replaced (legally and morally) tomorrow.
Do. They are rather fun. I said mediocre, not actively bad.
All books are derivative, and I never claimed that they were plagiarised. I suggested that they might be. You have to make your own decision on that, and I do agree that the bulk of the work is original. But they contain characters, names and situations that can be found with minimal changes in prior recent works. That is the definition of plagiarism. No schoolchild would be allowed to get away with doing this, and I'm uncertain why JK Rowling is not only allowed to do so, but is defended robustly by people who haven't even read her work.
Which leads to a nice example of how well it can work. George Macdonald Fraser took a character from Tom Brown's School Days, the bully Harry Flashman, and created a long running series of historical novels around him.
This is different from Potter because the source was out of copyright and in the public domain, and Fraser freely acknowledged the re-use of the characters and names.
Don't get me wrong, all fiction is derivative. But lifting characters, names and situations verbatim (or nearly so) out of other recent works is theft.
- The Potter books are derivative (some say plagiarised, and with good reason)
Would you care to back up this claim?Not particularly. It's been covered many times before. Larry Potter, muggles, Aunt Lil(l)y, Books of Magic. It's not a huge issue, most books are derivative. My point is that some children's fantasy fiction is not derivating (e.g. Dianne Wynne Jones), and it would be nice to see this acknowledged and respected rather than being quoshed as being disrespecful to the Cult of Harry. Look at the venom and ire that any questioning of the quality of the Harry Potter books has generated here, and ask yourself if this is really an indicator that Potter acts as a gateway to other books.
- using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion
What exactly do you mean by that? Could you give a specific example?Not from an out of context quote, but thanks for trying. Finish if off: "even though she has sold all rights".
I mean that JK Rowling no longer owns the right to the character of Harry Potter, or to any of the associated trademarks or intellectual property. She is now doing work-for-hire for a third party, and has no legal right to continue to claim an affinity with the character, any more than a fan fictionist does. She writes Potter books on sufference now. In the past year, she has been on a promotional tour with the emphasis heavily on her as a person rather than as an author. During this time, she has broken her promise (to her audience) to write another book, relinquishing any lingering moral right to an affinity with the readership. She is a tax exile who hypocritically claims to be fond of her "home" of Edinburgh. She has (inconsistently) misrepresented herself as writing the first Harry Potter book in cafes while a struggling single mother. The listener is invited to infer an image of, say, Rene Zellweger working in a steamy diner then writing all night while bringing up a child. She wrote the book as a customer in cafes, with the benefit of an arts grant, a luxury most first authors can only dream of.
I respect JK Rowling as a businessperson, but I do not like her sloppy work, nor I do not like the choices that she has made, or the misrepresentations she continues to make regarding her relationship with and control over the series. I view her as now being little more than a well manicured figurehead. JK Rowling and Harry Potter symbolise the commoditisation of books and of authors. I acknowledge that it is inevitable, but I do not have to like it, nor to jump on the bandwagon.
I use SuSE Linux 7.3, because it does everything that I need, it installed flawlessly, works as advertised, and it cost me £35 which lets me install it on all five of my machines..
The (well packaged mediocre) alternative is Windows XP. That does some of the things that I need, had trouble installing (RC1), and didn't perform as advertised (it doesn't run all legacy Win32 applications). Oh, and it costs £165 per machine.
Explain why my choice is cultish.
But I'm potentially right. My point is the same as yours; it's unclear, there's no way to know a priori if you are breaking or likely to be prosecuted for breaking this insane law (other than by submitting your entire online content creations for rating). Until there have been plenty of test cases (with the associated human suffering), it's not unfair to give extreme examples to highlight the inadequacy of the definitions in this bill.
And I don't see that the EFA are peddling FUD on this one. I am afraid of this bill, I am uncertain how it will be applied, I doubt that it will be applied sensibly or equitably.
According to her and her publisher, who both have extremely vested interests.
You think that Stouffer plagiarised Rowling? That's an... interesting... series of events you're postulating there.
To be fair, you might be postulating meddling by alien God Like Beings, the Star Trek excuse for having a low budget universe full of near-humans. That makes about as much sense.
Let me make it easier for you: the L^HHarry Potter books contain plagiarism. If Blade Runner had been set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, if Dekard had been a hot headed young farmboy orphan named Duke Skywalker with an Aunt Berru, if it had contained characters called Jawas and if he had used the Force, then I would (and you would too) have said it plagiarised Star Wars. Let's compare oranges with oranges.
What I said was that I choose my OS based on substance over well packaged mediocrity, and that this choice is considered as subversive (or elitist, substitute your own derogatory term) by the peddlars of mediocrity. Brush up on your comprehension skills.
Dianne Wynne Jones and (to a lesser extent) Susan Cooper. You're really just making my point about how it's easy to settle for mediocrity when you haven't tried the alternatives.
Precisely. The Worldwide Fund for Nature's behaviour is abusive and predatory. They retained and have protected the name World Wildlife Fund in the USA (and the trademark WWF) because of the same contemptuous contention that Jane Citizen can't deal with the acronym WWF being used by a different company.
You're also correct that the original "licensing" of the trademark was spurious. There is no possibility of confusion between the two spheres of business, and the World Wrestling Federation acted in good faith purely to avoid bad publicity (they could have have said "Screw you" in the first place). The Worldwide Fund for Nature is now abusing the terms of that (good faith) agreement to gain control of the wwf.com domain in bad faith.
Much as I respect the work the Worldwide Fund for Nature does, I really think that in this case they've got it badly wrong and are blowing a lot of money on lawyers to no good purpose.
I'm an author. But thanks for your condescention.
But learning remains optional. You made two spelling errors and one punctuation error in a single sentence. This rather makes my point about mediocrity in writing not being something to aspire to. The relevance to Potter is that the writing and editing is so sloppy that the name of a character changes half way through a book. The contempt that this shows for the readership mirrors the laziness you display in your post.
If you don't care enough about your readers to spell or punctuate correctly, why should your readers bother to care about what you have written?
How condescending of you to bestow your opinion on us. Would you also argue that any company that makes poor or light use of a domain shouldn't be allowed to have it? You might want to ponder that foosucks.bar is the de-facto protest address of choice for groups with real grievances, and it's as well to protect that on freedom of speech grounds if no other.
Nice try, but at the core of UCANT's rulings is the principle that Jane Surfer is a dribbling AOL-Time-Warner-Microserf who is too stupid to figure anything out and needs to be protected from her own idiocy.
It's not just the "bad guys" who're abusing this. The Worldwide Fund for Nature, nee the World Wildlife Fund (and still known as that in the USA) has won the right to wwf.com, on the basis that the World Wresling Federation name and page is "confusingly similar" to the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and Jane Surfer might get all puzzled and donate her money to the wrong organisation. I kid you not. This is currently under appeal, and for once, I'm on the side of the Rock.
Bloody hell, that's harsh. Still, bearing in mind that Potter is plagiarised from several sources anyway, it's pretty apt for this discussion.
Oh, wait, I meant "allegedy plagiarised". ^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W. I'm sorry, I must have been muggled, er, muddled up.
Which viewed in isolation is admirable. It's just a shame that the books themselves are so plagiaristic, unimaginative and slackly written and edited - you don't just "forget" a character's name half way through a book.
Dianne Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, for example, write truly imaginative and challenging fiction for children and young adults; Potter is Muzak in print. There's very little to dislike (other than Harry's bumbling idiocy) but since when was mediocrity to be praised or aspired to?
Further to that, the books are now well and truly subsumed into the Cult of Potter, and will in future just form a spearhead for the major marketing assult. JK Rowling (who has consistently misrepresented her background in biographies, by the way) has sold all rights to her creation, has no say in Harry's further direction or in what constitutes "fair use" of the Harry trademarks, and is now little than a marketing droid for the Beast. I'd suggest reading some of Bill Watterson's thoughts on this issue.
So sure, let's acknowledge the good, but let's not lose track of the bad. It's also possible to argue that Pokemon trading cards are a great thing because they teach children to interact with each other and use their brains for something more than learning all the "Bone Krunch 5" combo-moves.
You've met one now. The Potter books are derivative (some say plagiarised, and with good reason) and lazily written. The excuse that this is acceptable because they are aimed at children is bunk: Susan Cooper and Dianne Wynn Jones among others produce truly imaginative and challenging fiction aimed at that market. Potter is Muzak in print.
The Cult of JK Rowling is pretty funny by itself, considering that she's consistenly misrepresented herself (the "struggling single mother" wrote the first book on the back of a literary grant, a luxury most authors can only dream of), and is using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion even though she has sold all rights to the Beast and no longer has any voice in the use of her (ex) property.
No, I don't like the books, and I don't like the hype, and I don't like the Cult. It's well packaged mediocrity triumphing over substance. Granted, that makes me a subversive, but it's also the reason why I prefer GNU/Linux to Microsoft.
I'd rather have the driver do what I damn well tell it to do, and not second guess me based on the application name. As you clearly haven't followed this thread, feel free to take a clue check. These aren't "optimisations" they are "trade offs". The driver ignores the quality settings and drops the quality to up the frame rate, without even telling you it's doing it.
What that means in real terms is that on kick ass hardware, the peak frame rate goes from a theoretical 150fps to 160fps (which you never get to see because of your monitor refresh) while at the same time reducing the image quality, which you will see on a big enough monitor.
If this kludge attempted to do something sensible, like dynamically reduce texture bandwidth to increase minumum framerate in busy scenes (which is what matters), I'd be more inclined to like it, but that's not what it does at all.
I'm a games developer (hobby, ex commercial), by the way. I do not appreciate having my engines run differently depending on what application I use them in.
Are you a games or gfx developer? If not, then please feel free to take a long walk off a short pier. This ATI driver kludge blows my stack; when I tell the driver what to do, I expect it to damn well do it and not to second guess me without even having the common courtesy to document that it's doing so.
Picture the situation where I write a generic 3D engine that I use in multiple applications. Do I want the driver to decide how to act based on the application name? Do I hell. It's a support nightmare, and ATI should be roundly cuffed not for doing it per se, but for failing to be upfront that they have done it and for failing to disclose exactly what they've done.