Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:00:39 PM
Has anyone heard of the book
Little Brother? Apparently it is a "dystopian fantasy" written by a blogger for young adults. However, from the comments it also appears to be both
badly written and
filled with propaganda against the DHS, the "state of fear" and all the other left-wing whipping boys through which they try to portray Bush as the second coming of Hitler.
I read the good and bad reviews and form them it sounds as if it is filled with
purple prose and senseless technological digressions, as well as geek-speak attempts to make the author seem "teh UB3R L337 H4X0R". I see one can
download the book, so I may actually read it, however I have to check if that is "download" as in "free" or "download" as in "crossing this twit's palms with silver", as the latter isn't going to happen.
Well, if it is free, look for an upcoming review. If it is as bad as the "amateur" reviews suggest, and is getting as much good press as the "professional" reviews suggest, it will make another good post about yet one more milepost on the road to Hell along which our society is headed (possibly in a hand basket, I haven't decided yet).
But if anyone has had the misfortune to read this, please let me know, and let me know what you think. Apparently it is considered quite witty and insightful among younger liberal leaning techno-hipsters, but I don't have an iPhone, Blackberry, Facebook account or an IM network numbering in the thousands, I don't even have an iPod or a YouTube profile, so I am a poor judge of such things. So please, let me know if you have any more knowledge than I do.
And now, having yet again drifted off into the topic of pop culture, I try one more time to abide by my promise to return to political matters and leave pop culture alone. (Hey, I did write about the Senate's attempts to abrogate the Constitution... and about wage disparities. So not all pop culture.)
POSTSCRIPT
In the interest of disclosure I will admit to having had a Slashdot user name at one time. However, I was not particularly well liked there, in fact it where I was dubbed a "grammar nazi", nor were my political views well liked. So I still don't fit well the profile of this book's target audience.
For your amusement, here is a debate I had in 2006 on slashdot, just to give an example of why I spent so little time on that site:
Ergo98:Read the article, it explains it in more detail.
The
article is just another guy giving his differing opinion on what "Web
2.0" is. You can find those in the thousands, and there is nothing
about this one that makes it more compelling (in fact, and all
apologies to Mr. Hinchcliffe, but his take seems even more vacuous and
ignorant than most).
To quote from the article: "Web 2.0 is not
a technology, it's a way of architecting software and businesses and
companies see the value in the Web 2.0 way of doing business.". What an
awesomely vague and useless statement that is. Basically what he's
saying is "We'll pick whatever is successful and call it Web 2.0". The
mention of MySpace is telling, given that MySpace is nothing more than
a continuation of the sorts of social sites that appeared when HTML
first hit the mainstream.
Me:The use of the word "architeching" made my brain hurt. "Building"?
Doesn't that word still exist? Why make up a new one? Or, if you mean
designing, why not use, oh, I don't know... "designing"? I hate people
who create new verbs for exisiting concepts. Especially if they create
especially ugly ones.
Heinousjay:The problem is, building and designing already have different meanings
in software, and it's not useful to make confusing statements. Sure,
'architecting' is an ugly word, but your suggested replacements don't
cover the activity of creating an architecture the same way.
Me:I don't see how "designing architecture X" is really any less clear
than "architecting architecture X" is. "Design" is not a term of art
with a clear and contradictory meaning. And don't tell me it is a
software thing, after a decade plus of development work, "design" is
used as loosely in software development as anywhere else.
Heinousjay:I'm sorry your preferences don't rule the world. I'll make sure to
check with you from now on when I attempt to speak with precision to my
team.
Me:Yes, this is all about my preferences. Not about people inventing
needless words and focing language to be even more ugly than necessary.
"Architecting" is not a word, and it serves no purpose that is not
better served by an existing word. I don't know why you are getting so
worked up about this. I simply pointed out that in coining a new word
one should avoid words that are unnecessary and especially ones that
are ugly. Why is that such an objectionable position?
As you can see, my interests have changed little, I simply found a slightly more receptive audience. (And I did improve my tone a bit, I tended to be a bit more brusque and a little less civil on slashdot, but considering the general tone there, anything short of nonstop four letter words is being a gentleman.)