Now, if only we could find a way to make them read books like 1984, Brave New World, Catch 22 and Fahrenheit 451... Being around people who read in a house full of books is what worked for me. I think JK's real achievement was not so much getting the kids reading as getting the kids and the parents reading the same books. I'm optimistic that this will do a lot more to get kids to go on to become adult readers than any number of set texts in high school.
I read a review of Rowling's works the other day that made much this point. But they then rather spoiled things by holding up Lewis and Tolkien as examples of literary depth. Yes, Lewis's writing was informed by his views on Christianity, and Tolkien's by his fascination with Old English legends, but as literature they're paper-thin veneer.
My suspicion is that the reviewer had read Rowling's works quite recently, and hadn't touched Lewis and Tolkien since his childhood. Not an ideal basis for comparison.
Yes, I agree that the Potter stories are probably quite shallow. But they're childrens books, and Rowling is (demonstrably) writing for her audience extremely successfully.
I've got my own problems with her writing (in general and specifically), but your reasons don't hold much water in my eyes.
1. Character consistency. Neville goes from almost a squib to holding his own against death eaters, where does this come from? There was a substantial build up to this in the preceding book.
Hermione becomes stupid. Hermione knows that there is a spell that can destroy horcruxes and _Crabbe_ of all people is capable of casting it, yet Hermione doesn't consider it worth learning as it is too "dangerous". Given that it nearly kills all of them, that seems like a fair judgement call. Hermione was always characterized as more cautious after all.
2. Magic System still isn't explained. Don't be so analytical - of course it isn't explained, there can't be a sense of wonder if you know how it's all supposed to work. And do remember that this is a children's book.
3. The use of house elves as deus ex machina- Oh no Harry Potter is trapped in a dungeon where apparition is impossible. Hah house-elves can teleport where wizards can't, problem solved! Given that Hermione repeatedly states that nobody can apparate within the bounds of Hogwarts, yet both Dobby and Kreacher are shown doing exactly this numerous times in the earlier books, I don't think it's unreasonable to throw this "surprise" in.
4. Magical battles are _boring_. I somewhat agree, but I have to point out that...
...On top of this there are niggling things such as Avada Kedavra being known as the "Unblockable Curse" Is not correct to the best of my recollection. It's "unforgivable", not "unblockable". It's just supposed to be evil and illegal.
5. Voldemort's incompetence isn't believable. He's a super-villain; they're supposed to be unbelievably incompetent. Otherwise a bunch of children/James Bond can't defeat them. But I think you know that.
6. Cliched- Harry martyrs himself and is brought back to life. I don't like this, but for other reasons.
7. Predictable- Who didn't know that Harry was the last Horcrux or that Snape was a good guy, or that Harry wasn't actually dead? Again, fair points, but it's a children's book. It's a book with subtleties, but the basic plot direction has to be accessible to its target audience. See your point 8 as well for this.
9. Unsatisfying epilogue. I rather liked it. It had a nice symmetry with Harry's obsession with his parents; in the end he got to step into their shoes. And it left a lot to the imagination - that's my preference.
Honestly she may as well have said "And they lived happily ever after.", and it would have conveyed essentially the same information. Yes. But maybe that was intentional?
I think it was an Ok book, and indeed that the rest of the books were Ok. Where people criticise them, they often seem to forget that they were written for children and were phenomenally successful.
I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for JK because she wrote some very enjoyable books, but more importantly because she wrote enjoyable books that kids would read and see their parents reading. If that isn't a good thing for literature generally, then I don't know what is.
Oh, and I get really ticked off with the professional literary critics telling us that this isn't "great literature." Maybe, maybe not. But it's never been for the critics to judge that - our descendents will decide that (with a bit of perspective) and the critics rarely have much insight into it.
No offense, but yours is too verbose. I want to read a submissions that reassures me that there is Good Stuff Here [link], not one that stands as a substitute for the original.
[...] some of which are head-scratchers such as "The detector can not consume significant amount of CPU time (say > 90%) for more then, say 1 sec." Perhaps one way to detect the rootkit would be to perform some operations that take a known amount of time, then validate the apparent system time against some external resource to see if something (the rootkit) has stolen any of the cycles.
It would matter to the old you -- would you teleport yourself if you knew it was going to kill you? Okay, so they say that there's a "new" you at the destination, but the old you dies, right? You die. Would you bet your life on the process "keep[ing] your previous cons[c]ious state"?
Every night I shut down my consciousness and restart it every morning. Ok, maybe I'm semi-conscious during REM, but during deep sleep I'm utterly unconscious. How do I know that my consciousness doesn't die every night and an indistinsguishable one get fired up? I don't - but it makes no practical difference.
In the phenomenally unlikely event that anything like this could ever be used to usefully teleport something macroscopic, I suspect that it would become accepted in a similar pragmatic way. For now it's so spectacularly remote a possibility that even the philosophical arguments seem a bit pointless - what would happen if we could do something that might not even be possible? Hard to say.
Firstly copy prevention, then copy protection, now digital rights management. Sure, it's picked up some bells and whistles along the way, but the copy prevention is what it's all about.
If this image is about making it hard to make copies, then it's DRM, regardless of the intentions the progenitors of the term had when they decided the old word was doubleplus ungood. Commit thoughtcrime. It's your duty.
The other main reason for the geoblocking on online BBC media is the fact that the BBC often are not the sole copyright owner with many productions being produced by studios for the BBC who often retain some rights.
I've always been slightly mystified by this argument. The BBC produces its own content, so it's not beholden to outside suppliers. As such, surely they can simply make it a requirement that they should be allowed to distribute the content unencumbered. If the external production company can afford not to supply the BBC on those terms, then good for them. If they cannot, then they will obviously have to comply, and the shortfall will be made up by new production companies started to fill the gap (a Good Thing).
The idea that the Beeb releasing content in this way is somehow legally impossible just because their current contracts don't permit it is obviously false.
I'm not even arguing that they should do this, incidentally - eventually I expect market forces to kill DRM far deader than any overt actions.
PHP didn't get prepared statements until version 5. I'd say that was a long-standing security problem. JDBC had prepared statements from the outset. You can write insecure code in any language, but PHP made it super-easy. Python I can't speak for, never having used it in earnest, but C and C++ have at least the excuse that their origins pre-date widespread network security concerns.
If you choose to believe that OSS is automatically secure from the outset, more fool you. It can be, it often is, but no law of nature makes it so.
I don't expect it to be less secure, but since I do not know the OP from Adam, I fear that it is possible. Hence I mention it.
I know of no rule that says it is impossible for open source software to be insecure, any more than I know of one that says open source developers cannot be defensive to the point of paranoia.
"it took me hours, and way to much cross-referencing, to get a good handle on the subject"
Which is music, incidentally, not quantum physics.
If he had a good handle on the subject he should have been able to edit the existing text without changing the sense. If he's mistaken in this apprehension then errors he introduces will be corrected.
The time spent complaining about it on Slashdot would have been better spent improving the situation on Wikipedia.
Slashdot Mirror
The Sharp Agenda had its "microwriter" chording keyboard.
http://www.geoff.org.uk/museum/microwriter.htm
Circa 1989, so patent worries should be minimal!
I read a review of Rowling's works the other day that made much this point. But they then rather spoiled things by holding up Lewis and Tolkien as examples of literary depth. Yes, Lewis's writing was informed by his views on Christianity, and Tolkien's by his fascination with Old English legends, but as literature they're paper-thin veneer.
My suspicion is that the reviewer had read Rowling's works quite recently, and hadn't touched Lewis and Tolkien since his childhood. Not an ideal basis for comparison.
Yes, I agree that the Potter stories are probably quite shallow. But they're childrens books, and Rowling is (demonstrably) writing for her audience extremely successfully.
...On top of this there are niggling things such as Avada Kedavra being known as the "Unblockable Curse" Is not correct to the best of my recollection. It's "unforgivable", not "unblockable". It's just supposed to be evil and illegal. 5. Voldemort's incompetence isn't believable. He's a super-villain; they're supposed to be unbelievably incompetent. Otherwise a bunch of children/James Bond can't defeat them. But I think you know that. 6. Cliched- Harry martyrs himself and is brought back to life. I don't like this, but for other reasons. 7. Predictable- Who didn't know that Harry was the last Horcrux or that Snape was a good guy, or that Harry wasn't actually dead? Again, fair points, but it's a children's book. It's a book with subtleties, but the basic plot direction has to be accessible to its target audience. See your point 8 as well for this. 9. Unsatisfying epilogue. I rather liked it. It had a nice symmetry with Harry's obsession with his parents; in the end he got to step into their shoes. And it left a lot to the imagination - that's my preference. Honestly she may as well have said "And they lived happily ever after.", and it would have conveyed essentially the same information. Yes. But maybe that was intentional?I think it was an Ok book, and indeed that the rest of the books were Ok. Where people criticise them, they often seem to forget that they were written for children and were phenomenally successful.
I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for JK because she wrote some very enjoyable books, but more importantly because she wrote enjoyable books that kids would read and see their parents reading. If that isn't a good thing for literature generally, then I don't know what is.
Oh, and I get really ticked off with the professional literary critics telling us that this isn't "great literature." Maybe, maybe not. But it's never been for the critics to judge that - our descendents will decide that (with a bit of perspective) and the critics rarely have much insight into it.
"Want a kitten? Want it now?"
The accepted version is preferable to my eyes.
No offense, but yours is too verbose. I want to read a submissions that reassures me that there is Good Stuff Here [link], not one that stands as a substitute for the original.
I used to know a masochist who liked to have a cold shower every morning.
So he had a hot one instead.
Read Strata, which takes this idea to its logical conclusion (and is somewhat a spoof of Ringworld).
Every night I shut down my consciousness and restart it every morning. Ok, maybe I'm semi-conscious during REM, but during deep sleep I'm utterly unconscious. How do I know that my consciousness doesn't die every night and an indistinsguishable one get fired up? I don't - but it makes no practical difference.
In the phenomenally unlikely event that anything like this could ever be used to usefully teleport something macroscopic, I suspect that it would become accepted in a similar pragmatic way. For now it's so spectacularly remote a possibility that even the philosophical arguments seem a bit pointless - what would happen if we could do something that might not even be possible? Hard to say.
The term "DRM" is newspeak.
Firstly copy prevention, then copy protection, now digital rights management. Sure, it's picked up some bells and whistles along the way, but the copy prevention is what it's all about.
If this image is about making it hard to make copies, then it's DRM, regardless of the intentions the progenitors of the term had when they decided the old word was doubleplus ungood. Commit thoughtcrime. It's your duty.
I've always been slightly mystified by this argument. The BBC produces its own content, so it's not beholden to outside suppliers. As such, surely they can simply make it a requirement that they should be allowed to distribute the content unencumbered. If the external production company can afford not to supply the BBC on those terms, then good for them. If they cannot, then they will obviously have to comply, and the shortfall will be made up by new production companies started to fill the gap (a Good Thing).
The idea that the Beeb releasing content in this way is somehow legally impossible just because their current contracts don't permit it is obviously false.
I'm not even arguing that they should do this, incidentally - eventually I expect market forces to kill DRM far deader than any overt actions.
PHP didn't get prepared statements until version 5. I'd say that was a long-standing security problem. JDBC had prepared statements from the outset. You can write insecure code in any language, but PHP made it super-easy. Python I can't speak for, never having used it in earnest, but C and C++ have at least the excuse that their origins pre-date widespread network security concerns.
If you choose to believe that OSS is automatically secure from the outset, more fool you. It can be, it often is, but no law of nature makes it so.
PHP - badly designed up front, and thus perpetually vulnerable to injection attacks.
I don't expect it to be less secure, but since I do not know the OP from Adam, I fear that it is possible. Hence I mention it.
I know of no rule that says it is impossible for open source software to be insecure, any more than I know of one that says open source developers cannot be defensive to the point of paranoia.
Who said I did?
Oh I entirely agree. But the parlous state of the alternatives isn't a reason to ignore security.
Do not let this become a new attack vector.
Maybe it is a banana. The bible doesn't specify the particular variety of fruit.
Alan Turing believed it was a quince for some reason.
Insightful!?
You've been watching too much Life On Mars... come back to the 21st Century.
I read it. You're humour impaired.
He's saying it makes no sense for the machine to be non-responsive when allegedly "idle".
Which is music, incidentally, not quantum physics.
If he had a good handle on the subject he should have been able to edit the existing text without changing the sense. If he's mistaken in this apprehension then errors he introduces will be corrected.
The time spent complaining about it on Slashdot would have been better spent improving the situation on Wikipedia.
Ok. Fair point, reasonable argument.
Wikipedia is publically editable. What did you do to fix the problem?
(For non-UK readers, Panorama is the BBC's flagship investigative journalism programme)
Panorama
Monday 14 May
8:30pm - 9:00pm
BBC1
Scientology and Me
I liked this version...