Except that it works. Taking away the guns results in tremendously fewer gun deaths. There are approximately 150 gun deaths per year in Canada. That's right, one hundred and fifty; that number before the laws were enacted was ten times higher. There are 12,000 gun homicides per year in the US (roughly 100 times as many with just ten times the population).
Seems to me that's a fairly strong case. Gun control didn't take away everyone's guns (you can still have hunting/recreational weapons and you can get handgun licenses); it certainly didn't affect those in military, law enforcement, and other legitimate security-related fields. Same principle here. If you've got a legitimate use for the software and you've used it consistent with that, there's no reason this law would get in your way. What seems more likely is that this is a sensationalized pot-stirrer reacting strongly to a crowd of excitable Slashdotters via an over-cautious bit of speculation by one developer absent any legal advice.
It's only easier to buy them NOW because filesharing is marginalized and against the law. People know it's a prohibited act, so most of them don't get involved with it, and most of those who do use it to supplement and not replace their other acquisition habits. Some people have the opposite reaction and do it more or less because it's prohibited, but that's just a pathological response to authority that is inevitable and inconsequential. The law is the only thing holding the floodgates closed and it is unrealistic to expect that a business will not try to protect itself against destruction.
Your kind keep saying they "need" to develop a new "business model" to account for recent developments. But what is that business model? What do you suggest? Public performances (concerts, cinema) simply do not produce the funds necessary to support the industry. It is expensive to put that commercialized crap in front of large audiences. The prices are too high for middle class consumer comfort without the ability to sell copies. There's no other way for a motion picture to turn a profit. Would you go and pay $11 to see a movie if you could download a perfect digital rip the day before the premiere without even the possibility of negative consequence? Doubtful. Would you buy the DVD? Absolutely not. As much as Slashdot hates copyright, it's essential. Art is expensive; "normal people" can't afford it without copyright. Slashdot's user base doesn't understand why art is expensive and doesn't like that it is; you don't like that you're prohibited from getting it for free when it is SO EASY to do so. That's all it really comes down to. It's not about society or principles. It's simple jealousy and cheapness.
Make it all legal and it will no longer become difficult or time-consuiming to find the content. It won't take days to find and it won't take days to download. It'll be right at your fingertips. Why would anyone pay for the exact same content they could get through ubiquitous P2P services for free without worrying about legality? There is no reason.
Your comment essentially proves the point. It's only Slashdot bias that drives up your moderation.
It's more like Tolkien showing of his English prowess than writing an enjoyable story. That's the entire point. The story is not what makes literary greatness; it's the written word itself. That's not to say that Harry Potter isn't a great book or a great story. It most certainly is both. But it's not great writing.
Different people have different tastes. Some people like to read for the experience with the WRITING. A book that reads like an in-depth novelization of a film doesn't satisfy in that regard. That doesn't make the plainly written book any better or worse, just like a fantasy doesn't have any more or less intrinsic value than a mystery.
We have words to classify books: fantasy, romance, adventure. People who are fans of that style of STORY identify with these genres and know what they might enjoy. People who are fans of the WRITING have their own classification to find books to read. That word is "literature." Yes, it's the same word as that class you took in high school where they made you read James Joyce and Dickens. No, it's not the same meaning.
1. Not reading all seven books does not have any bearing on the writing style of the author. Reading one book and excepts of the others is more than sufficient to inform a decision on Rowling's talents as an author.
2. Guess again. That definition has been provided four times, and it's not my own; simply perusing any sites on writing criticism would lead you in a better direction. But the critical parts have been stated here in every reply. You're apparently missing it each and every time. No one has been "criticized" for being a populist. Anti-elitist != populist.
Your collective responses build on mistaken notions and assumptions which PRESERVE elitism. You become defensive about HP's literary quality, which reinforces the idea that there is an innate superiority to being classified as "literature." A) it's not true and B) it shouldn't matter to a true populist. You perceive its exclusion from a category of writing as a slight. It's not, and no real populist would care. Cretins you may be, since you self-identified as one, but populists you're not.
3. I'm a fan of writing. I'm married to a writer. I'm a fan of books and stories and knowledge. One does not need to be a fan of Harry Potter to make a reasoned review of its strengths. I care because there's a lot of attack here based on false notions of being snubbed. Read the review carefully. I never said a single negative thing about the series, and in fact praised it a number of times. Then a bunch of crazies came out of the woodwork, getting defensive out of some misdirected sense of anti-elitism (which as I've said implies that there is some perceived elitism here that makes Harry Potter somehow "low-brow" when I never said anything of the sort).
Perhaps you're using a different, snootier version of literature than I'm using This was already explained. It's not "snootier." You're mistaking "a literature" with literature. Seriously, read up on the issue in professional journals. "American literature" is a collection of texts by American authors. British literature is a collection of texts by British authors (Harry Potter would fit in here). Harry Potter is part of a literature--but it is not itself part of the literature class.
There are two words 'literature' in writing, and you're mixing them. Lit(1) is the vernacular and simply a body of works--e.g. a nationalist literature; American literature; science fiction. Lit(2) is a class of works describing ones of artistic value for the command and style of language from any genre or format--e.g. Milton, Melville, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Herbert, Orwell, Foer. The age of the book, its popularity, its level of eliteness, and the complexity of vocabulary are all irrelevant. Literature ["Lit(2)"] is *a* literature ["Lit(1)"].
Harry Potter is not Lit(2); it can be grouped in some designated Lit(1) {British literature, children's novels, fantasy}.
I'd add the parenthetical that most of us educated in the US consider literature "the collection of works we were subjected to in English and/or English/American Literature Is there some other wording such that "not to be confused with a literature, which is simply a collection of texts" would make more sense to you? The Western Canon (what you were exposed to in literature classes) is *A* literature. Its works are not all literature as a class of writing. American Literature is the second meaning (a collection of works), not the semantic meaning (the literature "genre"). This is why one doesn't fend for himself in a specialized discussion with merely a dictionary.
Are you serious that Hemingway is enjoyable for its writing? Now who's swimming upstream? The Nobel prize begs to differ.
The Dickensian strawman was that some will reject popular and/or serial works as too commercial for literary pretension I'll say it again. Popularity and literary quality are not related. I'm not personally a fan, but I accept Dickens' membership in the class. Likewise, you don't seem to like Hemingway; his work is still part of the class.
...either their commercial success or potentially inelegant prose, as I've demonstrated that neither is excludes a novel from being considered literature in time. Commercial success is irrelevant; 'inelegant prose' is the the sole disqualifier from membership in the literature class. Harry Potter may indeed one day become part of the Western Canon or some other literature of importance. It's already part of several literatures. It will never be literature just as surely as it will never be nonfiction.
Perhaps it was a poor decision by the powers that be to adopt the word literature for a semantic classifier as well as a word for groups, as evidenced by the confusion here. Unfortunately, what's done is done. I hope this is illuminating.
"Large userbase" of approximately one or two million iPhones? In a market with hundreds of millions of handsets (billions if you count the whole world)? Two million iPhones compared to 30 million Macs in the US? Compared to tens of millions of Unix machines?
Userbase isn't what makes a target "big." It's potential media exposure. The iPhone hype makes it a key target. The closed nature of the iPhone means lots of talented people are trying to break in. The iPhone, moreover, probably isn't as secure as a desktop computer. It's not designed to be open and from what I understand about this particular hack, it builds on previous "doors" which can easily be closed. It's not surprising that once you've gained access to a device, you'll be able to manipulate it (particularly when they're all configured with the same username and password).
There's plenty of media attention given to every half-assed attempt to break OS X. So far, nothing worth losing sleep over. You don't think that the media attention for OS X would be worth the payoff? Linux might have some protection because it's somewhat obscure and not mainstream--but while it might not show up on CNN, people here certainly would take note, and so would large corporations using Linux servers.
A dictionary does not provide more than a cursory definition of a specialized term. Dictionaries are meant to provide information for general use and basic purposes. You wouldn't accept the Oxford definition of "internet" as complete, nor would a doctor stop at "myopathy" as 'a disease of muscle tissue.' My 4" thick Black's Law covers a whole slew of words for which the Oxford definition is inadequate or inaccurate for my line of work. Within the field of writing, in which my SO is a professional, it is agreed that 'literature' is a semantic tag for a subset of works of literary artistic merit. It describes works with superior writing exhibiting masterful command of language.
A great book need not be great literature. Great literature need not have a great story. The mistaken idea that "literature" is a superior group of writing continues to persist because people like you try to shoehorn everything they like into the category of "great literature" as if that classification validates your enjoyment of the book. Literature is no more or less valuable than any group of texts of a particular genre or format. It is useful only in that people who enjoy good writing have a descriptor which sets off such works--from all genres. Even nonfiction can be great literature.
Even the populist wonder of Wikipedia discusses this in some depth. A good story doesn't necessarily have (nor should it aspire to have) great literary merit. It's as simple as that.
Hemingway's writing is not plain and uninteresting. There's a difference between a concise style and boring, adolescent writing. This is Slashdot though, so this string of replies is expected. Reading comprehension and nuance clearly don't fit in here.
As for Dickens, lots of people still believe he's a hack. His writing style is not substantially better than Rowling's. More complex does not automatically mean better, but that's the strawman you've built to attack. Popularity and quality are completely unrelated, and literary quality is not the only kind of quality desirable in a novel. Harry Potter has no literary quality. It is a fantastic story, a colorful world, and a brilliant thematic exploration of humanity. It's well worth its popularity. That doesn't make it good literature. The mistaken assumption that a given work should aspire to be a literary heavyweight doesn't fly in my book, so you can take your misdirected anti-elitist crap and play in someone else's sandbox. A book doesn't have to provide a rich literary experience and masterful command of language to be a good book--but those books that are enjoyable because of their writing are literature, not to be confused with "a literature" which is simply a collection of texts.
Now, come on - who has access to your telephone conversations? Your email? The same people GP suggested would charge me with a crime for "fitting the description."
Facebook, on the other hand, by default lets anyone in your network have access to your pictures, your public (wall) discussions with all your other friends, and (the thing which freaks me out most), your complete friends list So change the security settings. If you're too stupid to figure out what you want shared or not shared, then you can't possibly be an obsessively private person. Why you'd care about your friends list showing up is fairly puzzling; the whole point of social networks is to connect with friends of friends you might want to know better. Having a secret list of people you know seems to me an odd and contradictory concept. Why be their friend on a public site if you want to conceal that relationship?
But what tells me that this girl that added me in her network yesterday, and that I vaguely know from one course back in college, is really her? It's not on the phone, so I can't rely on her voice to identify her. If you can't identify her through your interactions and you care about keeping your circle of friends to people you actually know, you wouldn't add her. Case closed. My whole point is that that is exactly the sort of paranoia that should be completely unnecessary. There's no reason anything you put on Facebook should have to be a point of concern. A more open society creates a more tolerant society. Drunk pictures? Who cares? Strange obsessions with really poor TV programs? So what?
Sure, it sounds far-fetched - but I would say it is comparatively much easier to access someone's Facebook profile by posing as an old friend of his/her The point of which being? You don't do business deals on Facebook. You don't do financial transactions. You should not have to feel obliged to "hide" anything about your personal or social life.
when an ex-"friend" of theirs proves to be a stalker, or for some reason decides that he/she has an axe to grind and gets him fired from his company by using these party pics from 5 years ago. Again, the precise "problem" solved by more openness. Those party pictures shouldn't have to be hidden. You shouldn't feel embarrassed about having a good time. Society is slowly becoming more accepting of what people have been doing for centuries, and that's because of the effect feared by the OP--that younger people don't care as much about what they reveal about themselves. This is a GOOD THING. They shouldn't have to care. I don't. Show those pictures to my employers. I'm not going to get fired for something completely legal five years ago (and even the parts that weren't strictly legal are not grounds for termination).
...and you apparently conflate large vocabulary and good writing, since "vocabulary" is not part of the current discussion. Which is the greater sin? Churchill and Hemingway are prime examples of clear prose and masterful style. Command of language is more than a broad lexicon. It's syntax and nuance and craft. Rowling doesn't have it, and all the sophisticated words in the world wouldn't change that one bit.
Literature is merely the written work... particularly written work that has an impact on the reader No. Literature within the scope of authorship is the body of written work of literary significance. This is not to be confused with a literature which is simply a collection of texts. Baum's Wizard of Oz is a great, seminal work in western culture. It has little literary significance and isn't literature. Neither is Harry Potter. "Literature" status is little more than a semantic tag--whether something is classified as literature or not has absolutely no bearing on how good it is or any other qualitative assessment of worth.
and it's the quality of the world that the author has woven together than determines the greatness of the work. "Greatness of the work" != literary greatness. Harry Potter has zero literary value. That is not the only source, or even the most important source, of value for a novel. There's a difference between enjoying a story and enjoying the prosaic craftsmanship of the story, and that's what makes something literature. Literature status is itself neither necessary nor sufficient for a book to be "great."
You're right; it doesn't. But your comment reeks of misdirected anti-elitism (the trendy faux "populism" of today).
Literature and storytelling are not the same thing. Literature within the greater realm of text is not simply interchangeable with "writing" or "books." You're failing to make the distinction there, and you're reacting to it defensively as though you're projecting an assumption to attack that storytelling is somehow not as good as literature. If, instead of "storytelling" and "literature," the terms were "fiction" and "nonfiction," would you still make such an asinine comment and pat yourself on the back for it?
I imagine that it won't be regarded as one of the finest pieces of prose ever written, but I do think that it will go down as being one of the greatest stories told in print. That's exactly what I said. You're trying to shoehorn it into a way to disagree with me, but that is the precise point I'm making.
Literature--true literature--is an artful display of prose and a phenomenal command of the English language. These are works by Shakespeare and Milton and Hemingway and authors whose mastery of language is as thrilling and rich as the stories themselves.
Neither Rowling nor Vonnegut write to that end. That has no impact on the value or brilliance or entertainment of their work. It has no impact on their endurance or popularity. It is the difference between between good storytelling and good literature, though. They're not interchangeable.
Disclaimer: I have not read the whole Harry Potter and I am not a "fan."
The first movie was insipid and lifeless (outside the visualization of an entire world, which makes it interesting as an introduction). The movies progress with the age of the characters and become better, though I think the latest one fell a bit flat.
I wouldn't judge the series based on the first film, but keep in mind that they're designed to capture the imaginations of children and to resonate with them and I think it's very effective at that. The series really does progress in thematic depth with time, which is somewhat unusual (and redeeming) for contemporary wannabe epics. Harry Potter certainly will never be a literary classic because of its plain and uninteresting writing, but it probably will be an enduring and popular tale because of its imaginative universe and fairly strong internal coherence. It's no Lord of the Rings, but then again it's aimed a little younger, and it is enjoyable as a story and a universe, if not as a rich experience with literature.
It's sort of like Star Wars. It's a fascinating, vast universe and a compelling story by a brilliant *storyteller*; on the other hand, it doesn't have the textual beauty and pleasurable reading experience that truly great *authors* achieve.
Ha. ha ha. ha ha ha. Cynicism just inspires different ideologies and as long as humans exist, there will be politics. They are absolutely integral to human interaction of any kind. Professional politics is just the overblown and theatrical big daddy of the microcosms of our personal lives.
That aside, "more cynical" people would spell the end of any human race anyone would want to be a party of. It's the end of hope, trust, love, and loyalty. You know, the four pillars of a worthwhile life.
Re:"Email is sooo dead", the kids say...
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I see you failed basic reading comprehension. That's not privacy for the sake of privacy. That's "privacy" for self-protection and is patently NOT what I'm talking about. Moreover, none of those problems are the result of increased information--they've always existed. Identity theft isn't really about privacy, it's about proper control of records--it's not "private" information if it's held by a third party in the first place. Profiling, further, does not rely on private information, nor does it amount to anything--you can be accused of a crime at any time, by anyone. But still, not the point.
More open exchange of information (i.e. a more open society) removes the expectation of "privacy" and produces a more tolerant society. I'm not talking about financial records or police records. Nothing on Facebook facilitates "identity theft" nor does it provide a "description" of anything to the general public or to law enforcement that they couldn't get before--if you're being investigate for a crime, your "favorite book" can be found just as easily through your purchase history and library records. You also can't be stalked by a stranger on Facebook if you don't let them see your information. Your entire post is meaningless FUD.
Why should a person be expected to keep anything on Facebook or other social networking sites private? The only possible reason to do so is if society finds it distasteful, which is a problem solved by increased sharing of information. Openness begets tolerance.
The idea that third-party information is "private" in any way is a myth and has always been a myth. There's no reason a person should have to conceal anything about their personal or social lives--the expectation is absurd.
Re:"Email is sooo dead", the kids say...
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but what's with this new thing of "writing" on each other's "wall" instead of just sending emails? More flexible messaging tools. As a fellow "old person" I've never understood why email clients don't provide a simple way of sorting address books and threading conversations with individuals. You're also presented with a message space in a convenient location--looking up someone's profile for their mailing address or current email allows you to send a quick message right there. The profile is self-managed, so you don't have to worry about it being out of date. If the person wants current information available, it's there, and s/he doesn't have to notify anyone.
does not realize what it's doing (basically posting their contact details while broadcasting their private lives on teh internets) As opposed to before when they were using public telephone networks, public electronic infrastructure, or business cards with personally identifying information? "Broadcasting" is an asinine overstatement, considering you have the ability to control who has access to your profile and how much access they have. If I want everyone I consider a "friend" to have access to my telephone number and physical address, I can do it. No one else in the world can see that information. I can show strangers in my "networks" a profile with interests and favorites, but no personal contact information/photos/ability to see my "wall." It's surprisingly robust and flexible. Potential employers doing spying won't be able to see those vacation photos from five years ago, but my friends who were there can and they can enjoy the visual record of those nights we have no memory of.
Society is changing, and it's not so much about privacy as about changing expectations of what should be kept private and what doesn't matter. It's a more open society all around, and privacy simply for the sake of privacy never made sense as a value anyway. It's not even the "nothing to hide" argument--it's "why should I be encouraged to hide anything?" A more open and tolerant society is better for everyone. If you choose to be a privacy nut, have at it, but what would you actually want a society where anything on Facebook of all places should be kept private?
No it's not. Passenger deaths per mile, per trip, and per year are ALL proportionally and numerically lower with air travel. The number of times you do it only reinforces the statistic. If every time you fly, you've got a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying and every time you get in a car you have a 1 in 8000 chance of dying, the answer is clear.
The number of times you roll the dice just increase your own personal odds but don't change the single-instance likelihood of the statistic. If you fly just once in your life and get in a car just once, you're 60-70 times more likely to die in that one car trip. Put another way, you can fly about many times more often without dying than getting in the car. Safer is safer. If more people started flying, the odds would still be roughly the same--the aviation numbers would just increase in proportion with the population increase. More air travel means higher numbers, not worse odds.
No. Disclosure: I am the AC who got logged out while posting.
1. That is not "as strongly worded as decisions" get. You've obviously not spent that much time reading decisions, particularly for SLAPP cases and malicious prosecution litigation. It's not even as strongly worded as commercial law decisions get. There are quite a few colorful decisions out there. This one is fairly typical and matter-of-fact.
2. Any client would be billed for phone calls, email, voicemail, travel, copying, printing, binding, delivery, filing, etc.--any any court order demanding information about counsel costs must be a complete record. Attorneys keep diligent records of time spent and money expected in compensation and do not offer "freebies" unless such arrangements were negotiated in the retainer--a "client like the defendant" would indeed be billed for these costs, like any other client. However, when the client is presented with a bill, the attorney will often work with the client to pare it down to some extent IF it exceeded the ballpark estimates presented to the client at the time the retainer was signed or if the client simply cannot obtain funds to pay entirely. This is usually done by adjusting the hourly rate and taking out some concurrency (more than one person at the same task) and is done wholly in good faith, not because it is required or even an expectation. The actual billed costs of the case ("these fees" in your final sentence) are almost never dropped, because those are the real costs that counsel *must* recover just to break even on expenses. If the client didn't expect to pay in the range of what the attorney said the case was likely to cost, s/he should not have signed the retainer or should have dismissed counsel and opted for someone cheaper once the case dragged on. Finding someone experienced cheaper than $225 an hour would, of course, be a challenge.
You make the mistaken assumption that the goal of MAC address restrictions on university campuses is to crack down with an iron fist. It's not. Since the networks are so large and fluid, with tens of thousands of users and machines, it's pointless to expend tremendous funds to lock down the Internet like a Defense Department project.
MAC address filtering is simply a roadblock to keep the general public off the network. This need must be balanced with the high number of legitimate visitors on campuses (for presentations, symposiums, conferences, guest lectures, and all sorts of other purposes) which need to have a way to access the Internet (simple using preconfigured authentication tokens).
The students and staff are not the concern at all. Their MAC address spoofing and playing around is simply a matter of course. It's people outside the campus community that they want kept out. A combination of authentication and MAC filtering pretty much takes care of that. Even if they do successfully spoof a valid MAC, they don't have a username/password to get past the login screen. If they've gotten all of that, there's really nothing practical that will stop them from gaining access. It's also irrelevant for that handful of people. There's little point to waste any time or money tracking them down or even trying to find those isolated incidents unless a crime or breach occurred as a result.
Not really. That's a fairly modestly-priced lawyer. It's expensive to be in the legal profession--between malpractice insurance, bar membership, various subscriptions to legal services, and everything else, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year just to be an attorney. That doesn't even factor in the operating costs of the business (rent, utilities, supplies, voice/data services, etc.) which of course are themselves in the tens of thousands of dollars for just a small firm. I'm not saying that lawyers on the whole are struggling financially, but that $225 an hour is nowhere near raw profit. What it is is extremely high revenue.
If you took your company's (assume you work for a company that doesn't manufacture anything for the moment) annual revenue and divided it by the number of employees, it would work out to a staggering hourly rate. Obviously that doesn't all go into your pocket. Same with lawyers. The hourly rate (and the percentage cuts from awards) are a law firm's *sole* source of income. It's not directly comparable to the hourly rate you get paid at your job.
Further, what seems to be a good windfall more often than not ends up covering debt from a pro bono case somewhere else. Lawyers take on massive debts to argue cases with the hope that they'll get paid. It's hardly a guarantee. Chasing down clients for money they still owe is something every lawyer is familiar with. That's why big wins are celebrated--it's what creates the "rich lawyer." Most cases, including this one, are nothing spectacular, but they're enough to encourage lawyers to take the risk, now that this gate is open.
Wireless networking is username/password only. Wired and campus networking (i.e. staff and student housing) is done by automated MAC registration. Lowly AC students notwithstanding, it is indeed how it's done. I've been in the NOC.
My comment was regarding MAC filtration systems automation, not which parts of which networks on which campuses use it. Hopefully once you earn your degree you'll learn how to read. But you're on Slashdot, so reading comprehension doesn't seem tremendously likely in your future.
Oh come on. MAC registrations are almost wholly automated at any given large university--including Stanford, Berkeley, UBC, UC Davis, and Penn, where I have had personal experience. All you do is login with your staff (or I suppose student) account information and head to a page where you enter the MAC address(es) of your computer(s) along with your employee number and birthday or some other personally identifying information they already have on file. You click submit, and within 30 minutes you get an email saying your computers have been authorized.
The only downside is that some schools require this must be done from an authorized computer, so you have to head to a computer lab or classroom the first time you do it. Other schools allow you to get into the system from any Internet-connected computer, which is the ideal solution, since it's behind a two-part authentication system anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that it works. Taking away the guns results in tremendously fewer gun deaths. There are approximately 150 gun deaths per year in Canada. That's right, one hundred and fifty; that number before the laws were enacted was ten times higher. There are 12,000 gun homicides per year in the US (roughly 100 times as many with just ten times the population).
Seems to me that's a fairly strong case. Gun control didn't take away everyone's guns (you can still have hunting/recreational weapons and you can get handgun licenses); it certainly didn't affect those in military, law enforcement, and other legitimate security-related fields. Same principle here. If you've got a legitimate use for the software and you've used it consistent with that, there's no reason this law would get in your way. What seems more likely is that this is a sensationalized pot-stirrer reacting strongly to a crowd of excitable Slashdotters via an over-cautious bit of speculation by one developer absent any legal advice.
It's only easier to buy them NOW because filesharing is marginalized and against the law. People know it's a prohibited act, so most of them don't get involved with it, and most of those who do use it to supplement and not replace their other acquisition habits. Some people have the opposite reaction and do it more or less because it's prohibited, but that's just a pathological response to authority that is inevitable and inconsequential. The law is the only thing holding the floodgates closed and it is unrealistic to expect that a business will not try to protect itself against destruction.
Your kind keep saying they "need" to develop a new "business model" to account for recent developments. But what is that business model? What do you suggest? Public performances (concerts, cinema) simply do not produce the funds necessary to support the industry. It is expensive to put that commercialized crap in front of large audiences. The prices are too high for middle class consumer comfort without the ability to sell copies. There's no other way for a motion picture to turn a profit. Would you go and pay $11 to see a movie if you could download a perfect digital rip the day before the premiere without even the possibility of negative consequence? Doubtful. Would you buy the DVD? Absolutely not. As much as Slashdot hates copyright, it's essential. Art is expensive; "normal people" can't afford it without copyright. Slashdot's user base doesn't understand why art is expensive and doesn't like that it is; you don't like that you're prohibited from getting it for free when it is SO EASY to do so. That's all it really comes down to. It's not about society or principles. It's simple jealousy and cheapness.
Make it all legal and it will no longer become difficult or time-consuiming to find the content. It won't take days to find and it won't take days to download. It'll be right at your fingertips. Why would anyone pay for the exact same content they could get through ubiquitous P2P services for free without worrying about legality? There is no reason.
Your comment essentially proves the point. It's only Slashdot bias that drives up your moderation.
Google won't own the spectrum. They'll own the government license for the spectrum. They're still publicly owned airwaves, just privately operated.
Different people have different tastes. Some people like to read for the experience with the WRITING. A book that reads like an in-depth novelization of a film doesn't satisfy in that regard. That doesn't make the plainly written book any better or worse, just like a fantasy doesn't have any more or less intrinsic value than a mystery.
We have words to classify books: fantasy, romance, adventure. People who are fans of that style of STORY identify with these genres and know what they might enjoy. People who are fans of the WRITING have their own classification to find books to read. That word is "literature." Yes, it's the same word as that class you took in high school where they made you read James Joyce and Dickens. No, it's not the same meaning.
1. Not reading all seven books does not have any bearing on the writing style of the author. Reading one book and excepts of the others is more than sufficient to inform a decision on Rowling's talents as an author. 2. Guess again. That definition has been provided four times, and it's not my own; simply perusing any sites on writing criticism would lead you in a better direction. But the critical parts have been stated here in every reply. You're apparently missing it each and every time. No one has been "criticized" for being a populist. Anti-elitist != populist. Your collective responses build on mistaken notions and assumptions which PRESERVE elitism. You become defensive about HP's literary quality, which reinforces the idea that there is an innate superiority to being classified as "literature." A) it's not true and B) it shouldn't matter to a true populist. You perceive its exclusion from a category of writing as a slight. It's not, and no real populist would care. Cretins you may be, since you self-identified as one, but populists you're not. 3. I'm a fan of writing. I'm married to a writer. I'm a fan of books and stories and knowledge. One does not need to be a fan of Harry Potter to make a reasoned review of its strengths. I care because there's a lot of attack here based on false notions of being snubbed. Read the review carefully. I never said a single negative thing about the series, and in fact praised it a number of times. Then a bunch of crazies came out of the woodwork, getting defensive out of some misdirected sense of anti-elitism (which as I've said implies that there is some perceived elitism here that makes Harry Potter somehow "low-brow" when I never said anything of the sort).
There are two words 'literature' in writing, and you're mixing them. Lit(1) is the vernacular and simply a body of works--e.g. a nationalist literature; American literature; science fiction. Lit(2) is a class of works describing ones of artistic value for the command and style of language from any genre or format--e.g. Milton, Melville, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Herbert, Orwell, Foer. The age of the book, its popularity, its level of eliteness, and the complexity of vocabulary are all irrelevant. Literature ["Lit(2)"] is *a* literature ["Lit(1)"].
Harry Potter is not Lit(2); it can be grouped in some designated Lit(1) {British literature, children's novels, fantasy}. I'd add the parenthetical that most of us educated in the US consider literature "the collection of works we were subjected to in English and/or English/American Literature Is there some other wording such that "not to be confused with a literature, which is simply a collection of texts" would make more sense to you? The Western Canon (what you were exposed to in literature classes) is *A* literature. Its works are not all literature as a class of writing. American Literature is the second meaning (a collection of works), not the semantic meaning (the literature "genre"). This is why one doesn't fend for himself in a specialized discussion with merely a dictionary. Are you serious that Hemingway is enjoyable for its writing? Now who's swimming upstream? The Nobel prize begs to differ. The Dickensian strawman was that some will reject popular and/or serial works as too commercial for literary pretension I'll say it again. Popularity and literary quality are not related. I'm not personally a fan, but I accept Dickens' membership in the class. Likewise, you don't seem to like Hemingway; his work is still part of the class.
...either their commercial success or potentially inelegant prose, as I've demonstrated that neither is excludes a novel from being considered literature in time. Commercial success is irrelevant; 'inelegant prose' is the the sole disqualifier from membership in the literature class. Harry Potter may indeed one day become part of the Western Canon or some other literature of importance. It's already part of several literatures. It will never be literature just as surely as it will never be nonfiction.Perhaps it was a poor decision by the powers that be to adopt the word literature for a semantic classifier as well as a word for groups, as evidenced by the confusion here. Unfortunately, what's done is done. I hope this is illuminating.
"Large userbase" of approximately one or two million iPhones? In a market with hundreds of millions of handsets (billions if you count the whole world)? Two million iPhones compared to 30 million Macs in the US? Compared to tens of millions of Unix machines?
Userbase isn't what makes a target "big." It's potential media exposure. The iPhone hype makes it a key target. The closed nature of the iPhone means lots of talented people are trying to break in. The iPhone, moreover, probably isn't as secure as a desktop computer. It's not designed to be open and from what I understand about this particular hack, it builds on previous "doors" which can easily be closed. It's not surprising that once you've gained access to a device, you'll be able to manipulate it (particularly when they're all configured with the same username and password).
There's plenty of media attention given to every half-assed attempt to break OS X. So far, nothing worth losing sleep over. You don't think that the media attention for OS X would be worth the payoff? Linux might have some protection because it's somewhat obscure and not mainstream--but while it might not show up on CNN, people here certainly would take note, and so would large corporations using Linux servers.
A dictionary does not provide more than a cursory definition of a specialized term. Dictionaries are meant to provide information for general use and basic purposes. You wouldn't accept the Oxford definition of "internet" as complete, nor would a doctor stop at "myopathy" as 'a disease of muscle tissue.' My 4" thick Black's Law covers a whole slew of words for which the Oxford definition is inadequate or inaccurate for my line of work. Within the field of writing, in which my SO is a professional, it is agreed that 'literature' is a semantic tag for a subset of works of literary artistic merit. It describes works with superior writing exhibiting masterful command of language.
A great book need not be great literature. Great literature need not have a great story. The mistaken idea that "literature" is a superior group of writing continues to persist because people like you try to shoehorn everything they like into the category of "great literature" as if that classification validates your enjoyment of the book. Literature is no more or less valuable than any group of texts of a particular genre or format. It is useful only in that people who enjoy good writing have a descriptor which sets off such works--from all genres. Even nonfiction can be great literature.
Even the populist wonder of Wikipedia discusses this in some depth. A good story doesn't necessarily have (nor should it aspire to have) great literary merit. It's as simple as that.
Hemingway's writing is not plain and uninteresting. There's a difference between a concise style and boring, adolescent writing. This is Slashdot though, so this string of replies is expected. Reading comprehension and nuance clearly don't fit in here.
As for Dickens, lots of people still believe he's a hack. His writing style is not substantially better than Rowling's. More complex does not automatically mean better, but that's the strawman you've built to attack. Popularity and quality are completely unrelated, and literary quality is not the only kind of quality desirable in a novel. Harry Potter has no literary quality. It is a fantastic story, a colorful world, and a brilliant thematic exploration of humanity. It's well worth its popularity. That doesn't make it good literature. The mistaken assumption that a given work should aspire to be a literary heavyweight doesn't fly in my book, so you can take your misdirected anti-elitist crap and play in someone else's sandbox. A book doesn't have to provide a rich literary experience and masterful command of language to be a good book--but those books that are enjoyable because of their writing are literature, not to be confused with "a literature" which is simply a collection of texts.
...and you apparently conflate large vocabulary and good writing, since "vocabulary" is not part of the current discussion. Which is the greater sin? Churchill and Hemingway are prime examples of clear prose and masterful style. Command of language is more than a broad lexicon. It's syntax and nuance and craft. Rowling doesn't have it, and all the sophisticated words in the world wouldn't change that one bit.
If you can find one who reads the books for the pleasure of the writing and not for the pleasure of the story, I'd be happy to.
You're right; it doesn't. But your comment reeks of misdirected anti-elitism (the trendy faux "populism" of today).
Literature and storytelling are not the same thing. Literature within the greater realm of text is not simply interchangeable with "writing" or "books." You're failing to make the distinction there, and you're reacting to it defensively as though you're projecting an assumption to attack that storytelling is somehow not as good as literature. If, instead of "storytelling" and "literature," the terms were "fiction" and "nonfiction," would you still make such an asinine comment and pat yourself on the back for it?
Literature--true literature--is an artful display of prose and a phenomenal command of the English language. These are works by Shakespeare and Milton and Hemingway and authors whose mastery of language is as thrilling and rich as the stories themselves.
Neither Rowling nor Vonnegut write to that end. That has no impact on the value or brilliance or entertainment of their work. It has no impact on their endurance or popularity. It is the difference between between good storytelling and good literature, though. They're not interchangeable.
Disclaimer: I have not read the whole Harry Potter and I am not a "fan."
The first movie was insipid and lifeless (outside the visualization of an entire world, which makes it interesting as an introduction). The movies progress with the age of the characters and become better, though I think the latest one fell a bit flat.
I wouldn't judge the series based on the first film, but keep in mind that they're designed to capture the imaginations of children and to resonate with them and I think it's very effective at that. The series really does progress in thematic depth with time, which is somewhat unusual (and redeeming) for contemporary wannabe epics. Harry Potter certainly will never be a literary classic because of its plain and uninteresting writing, but it probably will be an enduring and popular tale because of its imaginative universe and fairly strong internal coherence. It's no Lord of the Rings, but then again it's aimed a little younger, and it is enjoyable as a story and a universe, if not as a rich experience with literature.
It's sort of like Star Wars. It's a fascinating, vast universe and a compelling story by a brilliant *storyteller*; on the other hand, it doesn't have the textual beauty and pleasurable reading experience that truly great *authors* achieve.
Ha. ha ha. ha ha ha. Cynicism just inspires different ideologies and as long as humans exist, there will be politics. They are absolutely integral to human interaction of any kind. Professional politics is just the overblown and theatrical big daddy of the microcosms of our personal lives.
That aside, "more cynical" people would spell the end of any human race anyone would want to be a party of. It's the end of hope, trust, love, and loyalty. You know, the four pillars of a worthwhile life.
I see you failed basic reading comprehension. That's not privacy for the sake of privacy. That's "privacy" for self-protection and is patently NOT what I'm talking about. Moreover, none of those problems are the result of increased information--they've always existed. Identity theft isn't really about privacy, it's about proper control of records--it's not "private" information if it's held by a third party in the first place. Profiling, further, does not rely on private information, nor does it amount to anything--you can be accused of a crime at any time, by anyone. But still, not the point.
More open exchange of information (i.e. a more open society) removes the expectation of "privacy" and produces a more tolerant society. I'm not talking about financial records or police records. Nothing on Facebook facilitates "identity theft" nor does it provide a "description" of anything to the general public or to law enforcement that they couldn't get before--if you're being investigate for a crime, your "favorite book" can be found just as easily through your purchase history and library records. You also can't be stalked by a stranger on Facebook if you don't let them see your information. Your entire post is meaningless FUD.
Why should a person be expected to keep anything on Facebook or other social networking sites private? The only possible reason to do so is if society finds it distasteful, which is a problem solved by increased sharing of information. Openness begets tolerance.
The idea that third-party information is "private" in any way is a myth and has always been a myth. There's no reason a person should have to conceal anything about their personal or social lives--the expectation is absurd.
Society is changing, and it's not so much about privacy as about changing expectations of what should be kept private and what doesn't matter. It's a more open society all around, and privacy simply for the sake of privacy never made sense as a value anyway. It's not even the "nothing to hide" argument--it's "why should I be encouraged to hide anything?" A more open and tolerant society is better for everyone. If you choose to be a privacy nut, have at it, but what would you actually want a society where anything on Facebook of all places should be kept private?
No it's not. Passenger deaths per mile, per trip, and per year are ALL proportionally and numerically lower with air travel. The number of times you do it only reinforces the statistic. If every time you fly, you've got a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying and every time you get in a car you have a 1 in 8000 chance of dying, the answer is clear.
The number of times you roll the dice just increase your own personal odds but don't change the single-instance likelihood of the statistic. If you fly just once in your life and get in a car just once, you're 60-70 times more likely to die in that one car trip. Put another way, you can fly about many times more often without dying than getting in the car. Safer is safer. If more people started flying, the odds would still be roughly the same--the aviation numbers would just increase in proportion with the population increase. More air travel means higher numbers, not worse odds.
No. Disclosure: I am the AC who got logged out while posting.
1. That is not "as strongly worded as decisions" get. You've obviously not spent that much time reading decisions, particularly for SLAPP cases and malicious prosecution litigation. It's not even as strongly worded as commercial law decisions get. There are quite a few colorful decisions out there. This one is fairly typical and matter-of-fact.
2. Any client would be billed for phone calls, email, voicemail, travel, copying, printing, binding, delivery, filing, etc.--any any court order demanding information about counsel costs must be a complete record. Attorneys keep diligent records of time spent and money expected in compensation and do not offer "freebies" unless such arrangements were negotiated in the retainer--a "client like the defendant" would indeed be billed for these costs, like any other client. However, when the client is presented with a bill, the attorney will often work with the client to pare it down to some extent IF it exceeded the ballpark estimates presented to the client at the time the retainer was signed or if the client simply cannot obtain funds to pay entirely. This is usually done by adjusting the hourly rate and taking out some concurrency (more than one person at the same task) and is done wholly in good faith, not because it is required or even an expectation. The actual billed costs of the case ("these fees" in your final sentence) are almost never dropped, because those are the real costs that counsel *must* recover just to break even on expenses. If the client didn't expect to pay in the range of what the attorney said the case was likely to cost, s/he should not have signed the retainer or should have dismissed counsel and opted for someone cheaper once the case dragged on. Finding someone experienced cheaper than $225 an hour would, of course, be a challenge.
So no, the point does not remain.
You make the mistaken assumption that the goal of MAC address restrictions on university campuses is to crack down with an iron fist. It's not. Since the networks are so large and fluid, with tens of thousands of users and machines, it's pointless to expend tremendous funds to lock down the Internet like a Defense Department project.
MAC address filtering is simply a roadblock to keep the general public off the network. This need must be balanced with the high number of legitimate visitors on campuses (for presentations, symposiums, conferences, guest lectures, and all sorts of other purposes) which need to have a way to access the Internet (simple using preconfigured authentication tokens).
The students and staff are not the concern at all. Their MAC address spoofing and playing around is simply a matter of course. It's people outside the campus community that they want kept out. A combination of authentication and MAC filtering pretty much takes care of that. Even if they do successfully spoof a valid MAC, they don't have a username/password to get past the login screen. If they've gotten all of that, there's really nothing practical that will stop them from gaining access. It's also irrelevant for that handful of people. There's little point to waste any time or money tracking them down or even trying to find those isolated incidents unless a crime or breach occurred as a result.
Not really. That's a fairly modestly-priced lawyer. It's expensive to be in the legal profession--between malpractice insurance, bar membership, various subscriptions to legal services, and everything else, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year just to be an attorney. That doesn't even factor in the operating costs of the business (rent, utilities, supplies, voice/data services, etc.) which of course are themselves in the tens of thousands of dollars for just a small firm. I'm not saying that lawyers on the whole are struggling financially, but that $225 an hour is nowhere near raw profit. What it is is extremely high revenue.
If you took your company's (assume you work for a company that doesn't manufacture anything for the moment) annual revenue and divided it by the number of employees, it would work out to a staggering hourly rate. Obviously that doesn't all go into your pocket. Same with lawyers. The hourly rate (and the percentage cuts from awards) are a law firm's *sole* source of income. It's not directly comparable to the hourly rate you get paid at your job.
Further, what seems to be a good windfall more often than not ends up covering debt from a pro bono case somewhere else. Lawyers take on massive debts to argue cases with the hope that they'll get paid. It's hardly a guarantee. Chasing down clients for money they still owe is something every lawyer is familiar with. That's why big wins are celebrated--it's what creates the "rich lawyer." Most cases, including this one, are nothing spectacular, but they're enough to encourage lawyers to take the risk, now that this gate is open.
Wireless networking is username/password only. Wired and campus networking (i.e. staff and student housing) is done by automated MAC registration. Lowly AC students notwithstanding, it is indeed how it's done. I've been in the NOC.
My comment was regarding MAC filtration systems automation, not which parts of which networks on which campuses use it. Hopefully once you earn your degree you'll learn how to read. But you're on Slashdot, so reading comprehension doesn't seem tremendously likely in your future.
Oh come on. MAC registrations are almost wholly automated at any given large university--including Stanford, Berkeley, UBC, UC Davis, and Penn, where I have had personal experience. All you do is login with your staff (or I suppose student) account information and head to a page where you enter the MAC address(es) of your computer(s) along with your employee number and birthday or some other personally identifying information they already have on file. You click submit, and within 30 minutes you get an email saying your computers have been authorized.
The only downside is that some schools require this must be done from an authorized computer, so you have to head to a computer lab or classroom the first time you do it. Other schools allow you to get into the system from any Internet-connected computer, which is the ideal solution, since it's behind a two-part authentication system anyway.