Letterman's "10 signs your son is a wizard" (found on the excellent HP fansite darkmark.com):
10. When he enters a room there is a burst of purple smoke
9. You say, "Do you think that lawn is gonna mow itself?" But then it does
8. Your child gets busted shoplifting a newt
7. Can turn lead into gold, but he can't remember to take out the trash -- am I right, parents?
6. He wears shiny red satin robes -- and you're just praying he's a wizard
5. Favorite discount electronics chain: The Wiz
4. Refers to Halloween as "amateur night"
3. He's only 12, but somehow he's dating Gwyneth Paltrow
2. His homework ate the dog
1. You catch him in the bathroom polishing his wand
Ah, you may titter, you may titter, but CmdrTaco's no freak outlier for liking HP at his age. I hadn't realised till today just how popular HP is with adults. My unscientific observations: I'm a 22-year old male, and at the packed 8pm screening here last night about 90% of the cinemagoers were 14 or over (some even over 60), and although HP is particularly popular with girls and women, there were plenty of males, although maybe not a majority. I saw similar proportions standing outside in the queue at the 5pm screening today. Obviously the kids will tend to go to earlier screenings, but still...
Great points. Like you said, don't tell the kids, but Tolkien was - gasp! - derivative as well! It's not like he invented his mythical species etc. "from whole cloth."
You have to wonder whether someone who claims to be part of the free software movement but really but puts down HP for being derivative has really thought through what they're saying, or whether they're just trolling.
Simple time constraints. I was miffed as well, but 5 hour films just aren't done in mainstream cinema - let alone films targeted at children as well as adults! I guess it was bound to be disappointing in that sense.
But JK Rowling gave a lot of input and at a preview screening she said it was just as good as she'd hoped. (But then, she would say that, wouldn't she, or AOL would probably have assassinated her!;)
All in all I think it was worth going to just for:
(a) the "magical moments", like the last-minute points being awarded to Gryffindor ('cause I'm just a softie at heart)
and
(b) the Quidditch match (I was too transfixed to notice the SFX blunders cmdrtaco mentioned!)
Note: There is actually more than one Quidditch match in the book (two?), and they're more nail-biting and more detailed in the book - again, like most scenes, the Quidditch match was substantially condensed and altered.
Another thing to remember about the movie is that even though it was 2 and a half hours long, they still had to cut out an awful lot of details and quite a few subplots. That was my biggest gripe about the movie - even though I can't really blame them because it was unavoidable. I guess I shouldn't have been so naive as to take Chris Columbus literally when he said "You don't change Shakespeare and you don't change this." Er, well, they did actually. Still, compared against other movie adaptations, it apparently stuck very closely to the book.
The book itself is much richer and the plot elements connect much better than in the movie - although, as someone else already said, some of the stuff might only fall into place when you read the later books. Believe me, if you'd read the book and then the movie, you'd really see the pacing differently - so much was taken out that the movie is like 3 times faster than the book! (That doesn't mean the book is boring, it means a lot more goes on in the book.)
Good points both. There ain't a lot of large corporations that don't do something shady or unethical or disagreeable (carpet shops sourcing from factories employing slaves; food companies making tobacco or selling armaments to repressive regimes; computer and cellphone manufacturers sourcing raw materials indirectly from slaves, etc. etc.), but it's not really practicable for many of us to avoid paying our "tithe" to all of them all the time - and those who do manage wouldn't have computers and wouldn't be here on Slashdot to debate the issue!
Personally I do my bit by being a vegan, trying to avoid needless consumerism, and "stealing" music instead of buying it (just kidding on that last one;).
RMS, for once, makes a reasonable halfway-house suggestion, as regards the MPAA at least: only go to movies which you have a credible prior reason to believe are worth going to. That, in his opinion, would cut into the MPAA's profits a lot, because Hollywood produces so much pap.:)
In HP (and this isn't really a spoiler) it does both - well, to be precise, it produces the Elixir of Eternal Life, so it's a bit of a mishmash of old legends. But there's nothing wrong with that - Terry Pratchett does that all the time.;)
The Potter books are derivative (some say plagiarised, and with good reason)
Would you care to back up this claim?
using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion
What exactly do you mean by that? Could you give a specific example?
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
It may sound petty to you, but actually, this is a good example of what not to do. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Unnecessary hard-coding means unnecessary "crosscutting", which means higher maintenance costs. It may seem like a small thing on its own, but these little things add up. And maintainability tips such as this really aren't given the importance they deserve in many programming courses and books, because they usually just teach you the basic tools and never get around to teaching you how (and why) to use them really effectively; thus these things come with experience or (if you're very lucky) through mentoring.
The trouble is we teach students to code in totally artificial environments (i.e. universities etc.), and then throw them into real projects and, not surprisingly, they often make all the classical mistakes (write-only code, last-minute rushes, underestimating schedules, etc. etc.). It's quite depressing to see easily-preventable mishaps repeat themselves over and over (students saving as Foo.java~ not Foo.java and then wondering why all their work seems to have vanished next session! NOO! Learn to fucking READ!). Then again many of them just don't take it in when you tell them about these things.
Assignment-statement-free languages are a nice idea for certain kinds of tasks (I find XSLT useful for simple data manipulation, for example). However, I haven't found many papers on object-oriented databases (or long-term persistence) in functional languages. That's probably because object-oriented databases really need imperative programming.
Yes you can dump and reload RAM, and yes you can use virtual memory. But that just brings out the main gripe I have against the idea of an assignment-free language - it seems to me that there is lack of sufficient control over performance, which is important. (If something is going to page in and out for 5 minutes before doing anything useful, like my installation of VMWare used to do sometimes before I upgraded my RAM, it's simply unacceptable.)
That and the lack of flexibility. I would rather try to formalise contracts in imperative languages, building on things like Eiffel's Design by Contract, even though it might be perceived as more "dangerous" than assignment-free languages in some theoretical, ivory-tower sense. (Which I don't believe because the most important fact about programming is that it is a human activity, and if the human beings involved don't understand the code, it's unlikely to work - and not everyone can understand all the intracies of even say Java, so I don't hold out much hope for even more counterintuitive languages!)
That would indeed be stupid if this were an education context - but Linux, unlike Minix, isn't primarily designed for educational poking around, it's designed primarily to work well and efficiently. If you were a kung-fu kernel hacker, you'd probably just laugh at that comment and continue on your merry way. If like me you're not a kung-fu kernel hacker, I would guess that it's likely to be a true statement!
Anything with conflicting name resolutions fails the "hassle-free email" test. I just want to send an email to an existing email address, I do NOT want to be hassled with trying to figure out some "context". Just think of all the existing code this would break!
Just think of the hidden cam porn possibilities... yum!!
Re:PayPal. Nice idea, but it has it's problems.
on
The PayPal Phenomenon
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· Score: 2
The point is sometimes it just doesn't seem worth it. It's like voting in a way - some people don't vote because they don't see any tangible benefit out of one vote in a sea of a million others. Similar here - you may get a judgement, but will they pay up? Maybe, maybe not. Will it be worth the cost? Maybe not. Why take that risk? To protect other people in future? Some people may choose to, some people may not. Which I think is fair enough.
GNU/Linux has built-in protection against (at least some) fork bombs, as you'll find out if you ever misconfigure X so that it can't come up in runlevel 5. "Respawning too fast" it'll say.
15 USC S2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Australia's largest bank started a similar project to replace all their retail, stock, bond, and exchange systems with one uber-"risk management" system based on some advanced algebric theory.
Hmmm... doesn't sound like they were very good at risk management when it came to software projects...
This very useful for beating you customer into submission when they change their minds 3 months into the project.
This is a bad attitude to have. If you or even your customer misunderstands their requirements, you can't just beat them over the head. You have to fix it. And in the real world not every system can be specced out and fixed in stone on Day 1. Requirements creep exists; we have to deal with it. Hence ideas like extreme programming. You can try and sell them a useless system but they probably won't patronise you again (unless they're a branch of government, in which case they'll probably come back again and again!)
It's a logical error. You are scheduling a buffer zone for anything that could go wrong, not any one particular thing. Of course, some things are so disastrous that no buffer zone will help...
So many people complain that Microsoft got where it was through trickery and cheating and illegal methods.
Including Judge Jackson in his Findings of Fact. These are hardly unsubstantiated rumors we're talking about here. But of course the antitrust case only scratches the surface of why some people hate microsoft.
Of course, the millions of Microsoft software users and developers don't seem to notice this for some reason.
I think more than a few of them have heard of the antitrust trial. Anyway, you can't necessarily invalidate an argument by merely pointing at an ignorant person and saying "he/she doesn't agree with you". That's like saying "Global warming can't possibly be true because people are still using more and more energy." Um, no, that is not a valid form of argument.
This is the Libertarian Jock school of thought. "They hate me/it/Microsoft/[Insert_name_here] because I'm/it's/they're popular". No evidence provided, complete dismissal of other arguments as "manufactured" almost by definition. It's like "They [Al Quaeda] hate America because of our freedom"... Um, no, it's rather more than that...
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Letterman's "10 signs your son is a wizard" (found on the excellent HP fansite darkmark.com):
10. When he enters a room there is a burst of purple smoke
9. You say, "Do you think that lawn is gonna mow itself?" But then it does
8. Your child gets busted shoplifting a newt
7. Can turn lead into gold, but he can't remember to take out the trash -- am I right, parents?
6. He wears shiny red satin robes -- and you're just praying he's a wizard
5. Favorite discount electronics chain: The Wiz
4. Refers to Halloween as "amateur night"
3. He's only 12, but somehow he's dating Gwyneth Paltrow
2. His homework ate the dog
1. You catch him in the bathroom polishing his wand
You have to wonder whether someone who claims to be part of the free software movement but really but puts down HP for being derivative has really thought through what they're saying, or whether they're just trolling.
Sorry, this has been a 100% derivative post. ;-)
But JK Rowling gave a lot of input and at a preview screening she said it was just as good as she'd hoped. (But then, she would say that, wouldn't she, or AOL would probably have assassinated her! ;)
All in all I think it was worth going to just for:
- (a) the "magical moments", like the last-minute points being awarded to Gryffindor ('cause I'm just a softie at heart)
- and
- (b) the Quidditch match (I was too transfixed to notice the SFX blunders cmdrtaco mentioned!)
Note: There is actually more than one Quidditch match in the book (two?), and they're more nail-biting and more detailed in the book - again, like most scenes, the Quidditch match was substantially condensed and altered.The book itself is much richer and the plot elements connect much better than in the movie - although, as someone else already said, some of the stuff might only fall into place when you read the later books. Believe me, if you'd read the book and then the movie, you'd really see the pacing differently - so much was taken out that the movie is like 3 times faster than the book! (That doesn't mean the book is boring, it means a lot more goes on in the book.)
Personally I do my bit by being a vegan, trying to avoid needless consumerism, and "stealing" music instead of buying it (just kidding on that last one ;).
RMS, for once, makes a reasonable halfway-house suggestion, as regards the MPAA at least: only go to movies which you have a credible prior reason to believe are worth going to. That, in his opinion, would cut into the MPAA's profits a lot, because Hollywood produces so much pap. :)
Would you care to back up this claim?
using Potter as a vehicle for self promotion
What exactly do you mean by that? Could you give a specific example?
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
Non sequitir.
The trouble is we teach students to code in totally artificial environments (i.e. universities etc.), and then throw them into real projects and, not surprisingly, they often make all the classical mistakes (write-only code, last-minute rushes, underestimating schedules, etc. etc.). It's quite depressing to see easily-preventable mishaps repeat themselves over and over (students saving as Foo.java~ not Foo.java and then wondering why all their work seems to have vanished next session! NOO! Learn to fucking READ!). Then again many of them just don't take it in when you tell them about these things.
Yes you can dump and reload RAM, and yes you can use virtual memory. But that just brings out the main gripe I have against the idea of an assignment-free language - it seems to me that there is lack of sufficient control over performance, which is important. (If something is going to page in and out for 5 minutes before doing anything useful, like my installation of VMWare used to do sometimes before I upgraded my RAM, it's simply unacceptable.)
That and the lack of flexibility. I would rather try to formalise contracts in imperative languages, building on things like Eiffel's Design by Contract, even though it might be perceived as more "dangerous" than assignment-free languages in some theoretical, ivory-tower sense. (Which I don't believe because the most important fact about programming is that it is a human activity, and if the human beings involved don't understand the code, it's unlikely to work - and not everyone can understand all the intracies of even say Java, so I don't hold out much hope for even more counterintuitive languages!)
Anything with conflicting name resolutions fails the "hassle-free email" test. I just want to send an email to an existing email address, I do NOT want to be hassled with trying to figure out some "context". Just think of all the existing code this would break!
Just think of the hidden cam porn possibilities... yum!!
Hmmm... doesn't sound like they were very good at risk management when it came to software projects...
This is a bad attitude to have. If you or even your customer misunderstands their requirements, you can't just beat them over the head. You have to fix it. And in the real world not every system can be specced out and fixed in stone on Day 1. Requirements creep exists; we have to deal with it. Hence ideas like extreme programming. You can try and sell them a useless system but they probably won't patronise you again (unless they're a branch of government, in which case they'll probably come back again and again!)
Including Judge Jackson in his Findings of Fact. These are hardly unsubstantiated rumors we're talking about here. But of course the antitrust case only scratches the surface of why some people hate microsoft.
Of course, the millions of Microsoft software users and developers don't seem to notice this for some reason.
I think more than a few of them have heard of the antitrust trial. Anyway, you can't necessarily invalidate an argument by merely pointing at an ignorant person and saying "he/she doesn't agree with you". That's like saying "Global warming can't possibly be true because people are still using more and more energy." Um, no, that is not a valid form of argument.
Uh, no...