Will J. K. Rowling ever write again?

A Fandango article this morning reported on an interview with J. K. Rowling, in which she said (yet again) that she's not going to continue the Harry Potter saga. After being pressed relentlessly by the interviewer, she ventured that maybe she would revisit the Hogwarts world, but not for "another ten years" or so. That was enough to satisfy the interviewer.

The article didn't explicitly state this next point, but the flavor of the article prompted a string of reader comments, which asserted and debated the following hypotheses.

- JKR has an obligation to keep the Harry Potter / Hogwarts story going.

- JKR cannot, and will not, be successful at writing anything else.

By now, the JKR story is as famous as the Harry Potter story, and I don't need to go into the details about how she wrote the first book of the famous series. But I have a few opinions of my own.

1. Rowling is a damn good writer. Or she has a damn good editor. Or both. This was crystal clear in her first Harry Potter book. Her writing either stayed at the high level of the first book or improved as the series grew. I wish I could write as well as she does.

(Unfortunately, the books also got fatter. That happens to all successful authors. It also happens to successful automobile brands, mobile phones, and restaurant menus. I would like to read a successful author who can keep their follow-on works as slim and as powerful as their original bestseller.)

2. Rowling is extremely intelligent, and knows a lot about subjects other than the wizarding world. Unlike the loud and vacuous celebrities who appear increasingly stupid every time they open their mouths in public, JKR has chosen her words carefully, limited her public engagements, and never shown every card in her hand. But don't sell her short. She is not a one-trick pony.

3. Related to that second point, I think that JKR is capable of writing in any genre of fiction - or on any nonfiction subject - that she chooses. I would expect her future works to be readable and enjoyable, even compelling. I, for one, would not restrict my expectations of her future writing to Hogwarts, wizardry, or Harry Potter and his friends. I would pay good money to read what else she has to say about the world at large.

4. JKR is now very wealthy. She can spend the rest of her life sailing the world, gambling in Monte Carlo, or relaxing on a private estate and throwing parties for Radcliffe and company, if that's what she wants to do. She has no obligation to do anything, for anyone. And I say more power to her.

5. JKR has chosen a more private lifestyle, concentrating on her family and on a small number of charitable causes. Her fame, her wealth, and her wisdom (and prudence) put her in a unique position in the world. Lucky lady. Absent the fame, I'd like to be in that situation someday.

Edit, June 16, 2011: I'm not sure what this is about, but this link was the countdown to, and eventually the announcement of, Pottermore, an online experience for Rowling fans from all over the world.

Edit, February 23, 2012: A book for adults is in the works. She announced it today.

ProFlightSimulator is now Earth Flight Sim - and still a scam

Wow, that didn't take long. Thanks to the FlightGear community's hounding of ProFlightSimulator, and its subsequent exposure as a scam and a fraud (yes, a fraud- numerous cases of them refusing to honor their 60-day money-back guarantee), ProFlightSim has gone underground ...

... and re-emerged as "Earth Flight Sim." I told you earlier that trying to eradicate a scam of this sort was like playing Whack-A-Mole, and this is a perfect example. What makes this one noteworthy is the speed with which PFS disappeared and took on a new identity.

(Actually, PFS didn't disappear at all, and neither did its previous identity, "Flight Pro Sim". They're both still out there, trawling for suckers.)

Another thing that makes this one noteworthy, and insidious, is the similarity of the name "Earth Flight Sim" to "Google Earth Flight Simulator," which could cause confusion for Web users searching for the latter and finding a mess of links to the former. In the Real World, companies sue each other when product names get too similar like this.

This next point isn't noteworthy, but it's always worth remembering: Earth Flight Sim is nothing more than Pro Flight Simulator repackaged, which is nothing more than Flight Pro Sim repackaged, which is nothing more than FlightGear repackaged. And FlightGear is free. Why would you pay a single penny for something you can get for free?

Like its slimy predecessors, the Earth Flight Sim bundle includes many add-ons and extensions to FlightGear, without the original programmers' permission. Its website includes copyrighted images and videos which were recorded using FlightGear (and in some cases, Microsoft's commercial Flight Sim products) and have been appropriated and used by EFS, without permission.

Earth Flight Sim's "Contact Us" page is empty right now, except for the notation "Coming Soon ...". I would guess that Charlie Taylor, Dan Freeman, Michael Ortiz and Eriz Cremonti is trying to decide what to call himself this time. "Whois" reports that the domain name is registered to Cody Moya, of Short Hills NJ, but most domain names nowadays are registered to a third party, not the entity that actually uses the domain name.

Once again, my recommendation is that you download FlightGear for free and enjoy it. If you want to spend money on FlightGear, then buy FlightGear's own DVDs. Don't waste your money on scams and frauds like ProFlightSimulator and Earth Flight Sim.

ProFlightSimulator revisited: still a scam

It's been over six months since I exposed ProFlightSimulator as a scam. Today, in a brief moment of boredom, I did a Google search for "ProFlightSimulator." Wow.

First of all, the entity behind PFS has snapped up the .org and .net domain names so that nobody else could use them, and has used them to push the product.

Second, they have created domain names like "proflightsimulatorreviews" and "proflightsimulatorreviewz", where they have posted bogus reviews from bogus users, in an effort to spoof the search engines' rating systems and boost their ratings.

Ah, but third, Web Of Trust has branded the main PFS site, and several of their shill sites, with their lowest rating: a red circle. PFS (and the entity behind it) is now officially a pariah.

Web Of Trust is a browser add-on which rates every web page you visit and every search engine entry on four characteristics: Trustworthiness, Vendor Reliability, Privacy, and Child Safety. If WOT gives a web site low marks or a red alert, that means it's a dangerous website, and you'd best stay away..

Granted, not everybody in the world uses (or even knows about) WOT. Most non-WOT users will blindly click on the links and get themselves in trouble. But WOT's ratings are based on user input, and therefore they represent a good cross-section of Web users; therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that most of the Web by now realizes that ProFlightSimulator and all of its bogus reviews are nothing but a load of kangaroo manure.

The Sony Hacks: A Morality Tale for the New Century

American Public Media aired an interesting story yesterday, comparing the recent storm of hack attacks Sony has endured to the storm of hack attacks Microsoft has, interestingly, not endured.

It all started back in January 2010, when a whiz kid named George Hotz announced that he had found a way to hack into Sony's Playstation 3 console. This was considered quite an achievement for several reasons, first and foremost because the PS3 was the last piece of contemporary game hardware that hadn't been hacked yet.

(For the computerly disinclined, think of "hacking" as finding a secret passage into an electronic fortress, sneaking past all the guard dogs and booby traps and gaining access to the fortress' interior, allowing the hacker to snoop around and to do whatever he wants while inside.

Contrary to popular perceptions, "hacking" is not a malicious or destructive activity in itself. However, some hackers - such as the Chinese hackers who got into Google and hijacked hundreds of personal Gmail accounts - commit malicious acts once they gain entry by hacking. But branding all hackers as vandals, thieves or criminals, makes no more sense than branding all young Muslim men as terrorists. Or all lawyers as crooks. Or all used-car salesmen as ... well, let's not push it.)

The PS3 console was considered hackproof, secure, even hard -- hard as in "armored and bulletproof," not as in "difficult." That's part of what made it a challenge. Hotz announced in 2009 that he was going to hack it, and then he kept an online blog of his progress. He certainly didn't do it in secret.

There was no doubt in Hotz' mind that he could successfully do the hack. After all, he was the first person to hack the iPhone, and he only stopped hacking iOS devices because "it's not as fun as it used to be" (quoting his Wikipedia entry).

Sony responded to Hotz' hack by changing the programming in the PS3. Hotz then hacked the reprogrammed PS3. Hotz and Sony played cat and mouse with the hardware for 12 months, until January 2011, when Sony took Hotz to court in a civil lawsuit.

Hotz' final hack of the PS3 resulted in what's called a "jailbreak." (If you followed my "hacking" analogy above, you can think of a "jailbreak" as freeing the princess trapped inside the electronic fortress. For example, when the iPhone first came out, it could only be used on an AT&T network. Jailbreaking the iPhone allowed it to be used on any cellular network.)

With a jailbroken PS3, users could write their own games and play them on the PS3, which would be a good thing, and they could freely copy commercial PS3 games for other users, which would be a bad thing. Sony's strategy for the PS3 did not include surrendering power over their hardware to the users, and they decided that they needed to enforce that strategy. However, in doing so, they made a huge tactical mistake. To protect their strategy, they could have hired Hotz. They should have hired Hotz. Instead, they sued him. Wikipedia contains the interesting notation that "Sony had to take George Hotz to court" (italics mine).

The worldwide hacker community is huge. It numbers in the millions, I would guess. It's very loosely organized. What it lacks in organization, it makes up in cohesiveness. You could say that its organizational model is that of an anarchic meritocracy. This community is very protective of its members, especially the ones at the top of the heap. When Sony fired its big guns at one of the hackers' own, the hackers fired back.

The result was the endless steam of hack attacks Sony has endured since January, starting with an attack by a group calling itself "Anonymous," and continuing into last week, when Sony's online resources were looking pretty battered.

Contrast this with what happened when hackers got into Microsoft's Kinect. Like the Sony PS3, Microsoft never intended for users to do anything with the Kinect other than play the authorized games. But to any geek, even this geek, the Kinect hardware is fascinating. A geek could drive himself giddy thinking of all the cool things the Kinect could be used for, besides controller-free, multiplayer DDR games - heck, way beyond any kind of games. For example, the Kinect could be used for remotely manipulating C3P0-style robots in radioactive environments.

Yeah. Well, in November 2010, a company called Adafruit offered a prize to the first person to hack the Kinect - more specifically, the first person to produce an open-source driver for the Kinect. It took less than a month for a winner to emerge. Initially, Microsoft said "No, not a good idea; we won't like that." But cooler heads (curious heads? interested heads?) inside Microsoft lobbied for an alternative position. Microsoft's own Alex Kipman, speaking officially for Microsoft, appeared on NPR's Science Friday and basically said, "Well, the hardware wasn't actually 'hacked.' They just monkeyed with the USB interface. And we left that open on purpose, so people could do this."

Oookay, maybe they did that on purpose, and maybe they didn't. But MS's approval of Kinect hacking activities has led to all sorts of interesting applications for the Kinect - applications that do in fact go way beyond dance games. Go search the Web for "Kinect hack" for some examples. There exists an active community of indie Kinect developers, supported in varying degrees (both officially and unofficially) by Microsoft people. The Kinect is still alive, it hasn't turned into a monster, and its proprietor, rather than defending itself from revenge attacks by the hacker community, has to some degree welcomed them to its table.

It's a pity that Sony didn't have the foresight that Microsoft did in this case. Faced with nearly identical challenges, both companies reacted differently, and ... well, the Law of the Harvest is still true: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Afternote 1: It appears that I have become a reluctant Microsoft fan. I used to be very anti-MS, back when MS looked like Pinky and the Brain, trying to take over the world and doing a very clumsy job at it. Today, Microsoft The Corporate Entity seem to have given up on their quest for world domination, and are relying more on their products' merits, than on ruthless business strategies, to make a buck. And, as I said before, their product lines are fragmented enough that it's possible to admire one part of the company while detesting another. Insert smiley here.

Afternote 2: Sources. I have given links for the American Public Media and National Public Radio stories in the text. I also used the Wall Street Journal print edition, June 3, 2011, and Wikipedia entries on "George Hotz" and "Kinect" for details. I couldn't resist adding the New Scientist link about the race to hack the Kinect, after this blog entry had already been published. I would mention the Google search engine, since I used it extensively, but that's like mentioning oxygen: everybody uses it and nobody even thinks about it; it has become second nature. And let's not forget Galatians 6:7.

Looking at the Rapture thing from a different angle

You know, we've all had a lot of fun laughing at Harold Camping and his obviously crackpot ideas about the Rapture and the upcoming End of the World. He has gone incommunicado today, and for good reason: he is a laughingstock.

But Mr. Camping doesn't deserve all that ridicule. He went through the Bible looking for clues, thought he'd found them all (though he missed the most important one), and came up with a reasonable (to him) date for the Rapture and the EOW. He spent months spreading his message to the world, not with a "nyah nyah, you're all gonna burn" attitude, but with a "repent so you don't burn, pleeeaaase" attitude.

This episode reminds me of another Biblical story, the story of Noah. Noah spent forty years building his ark and warning the people about the impending flood. They mocked him and laughed at him and had a lot of fun at his expense - right up until the moment that the rain started falling.

Noah never faltered or turned aside from his message, even though he knew people were laughing at him and nobody believed him. Mr. Camping pursued his mission with the same faith and vigor as Noah.

I'm not saying Mr. Camping was a prophet, or even that we should have believed him. I have also participated in the mockery, and I firmly believe he was wrong. But he acted on the strength of his convictions, and he acted with integrity. Very few people act that way in today's world, and the world is poorer as a result. I honor Harold Camping for his convictions and his integrity.

Maybe I should buy him a T-shirt.

What's to like about Internet Explorer 9? Here's one thing!

I have written before about how Microsoft is a huge company, so huge and diversified that it's possible to praise and admire one part of the company or product line while badmouthing and hating another. Well, I have some words of praise for one part.

One of the things that has always bothered me about Microsoft's flagship products - their Office suite, their email offerings, and their Web access tools - is that their incessant advertisement of themselves and Microsoft gets in the way of using the software.

I mean, in every version of MS Word, I always felt like MS was pounding on my head saying "You're using MICROSOFT Word, a MICROSOFT product" with every keystroke. And Internet Explorer always screamed "M1CROS0FT 4 EVRRRRR!!!1!!".

Not anymore. Okay, MS Word is still full of itself - and so are all of its competitors. But Internet Explorer 9? Wow. MS took a cue from Google Chrome and made a singularly unobtrusive interface. Nowhere in the default window does it say "Microsoft," not in upper case or lower case. The only clue that you're using a Microsoft product is the default IE icon that shows up in a browser tab if the web page you're accessing doesn't have its own fav icon.

IE9 is also faster and more intuitive than its predecessors. It looks like the software gang might have done something right this time.

On Mathematical Models of Things

This month's Stanford magazine quotes origami expert Robert Lang on the relationship between mathematics and origami - well, between mathematics and everything in the world.

"One of the things you learn in a technical education - physics or engineering - is that, you enter a field, you try to build a mathematical model of the phenomena in that field. And once you've got a mathematical model you can use the tools of math to exercise that model and sort of learn stuff for free."

He related this to origami:

"Origami felt the same. it was clear there were underlying natural laws that limit what you can and can't do. And if I could identify what these laws were explicitly, then I could use mathematical tools to make the things I really wanted to make."

But it also applies to music, gardening, and so many other right-brain activities that we don't normally think of as mathematical in nature.