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Comment by lionize | Hacker News Reader

Sad news, however how is this related to Hackery?

Well, it's a stretch, but when I saw Die Hard I just barely caught the BSD reference when they log into the CEO's terminal. I found a screen shot on flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/armenws/9516176127/

That's a pretty hackerish reference for a film made in 1988 that wasn't particularly about computers or tech. There was probably a BSD fan at the company that created the computer screens. FreeBSD 9.2 had a tribute to this in it's boot screen:

https://mebsd.com/make-build-your-freebsd-word/freebsd-9-2-d...

Damn you did your research. I approve.

Everyone who dies has probably used a smart phone or the internet so lets start the avalanche!

Your ignorant statement is not even accurate.

Well, everyone who has ever lived has also died.

Not me!

You have that backwards. Everyone who has ever died had previously lived.

Besides that, all people still currently living have not died.

>You have that backwards.

Parent didn't put it in time terms. Just noted that everyone who ever lived, has also died ("A && B", as opposed to "A then B").

>Besides that, all people still currently living have not died.

Yes, though one could say that those people are still "living", not yet in a state having "lived" (past tense), as parent put it.

I've lived. I'm currently living, but I used to, too.

You haven't "lived" (period) until you're dead, and it's settled.

You might have e.g. "lived in London" (if you don't know, so it's a settled thing and a specific period of your life). Or "I've lived in poverty", etc.

But "I've lived", period, without such a qualifier is not that common or useful when one is still alive.

If you truly want to argue that the verb tense chosen means "Everyone who ever lived [and then died] has died," then the statement becomes a tautology: "Everyone who has died has died."

All true equivalency statements are tautologies -- since both sides "resolve" to the same thing. That doesn't mean they are useless.

In this case, though, it's not "Everyone who has died has died", but "To have lived means you're dead".

The same way that "to be a corpse means that you've died". That's not a tautology (it's not "to be a corpse means you're a corpse"), just informs us of a prerequisite for the other thing to happen.

I think that you lack consensus on the meaning that can be drawn from use of the past tense.

Either way, the statement as given does not support the unstated implication that everyone now living will eventually die.

Well there are still >7 billion people that don't fit your categorization, which means only 93% of people who have lived have died. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-li...

The article seems to say that the estimate of all who have lived is about 106 billion, so the number of currently-alive is estimated at about 6% of those who have ever lived.

Arthur C. Clarke wrote "Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." I wondered if that ratio needed updating. It does, but not, it seems, in the direction I expected.

The article is from 2007; the earth's population has increased to 7 billion now.

I never understand comments like these. It's on HN because someone found it interesting enough to submit. It gained traction because enough someone's found it interesting enough to upvote.

I'm not sure much more explanation is required. If you disagree, you can downvote the story and / or not click through.

Alan Rickman played the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book series well-beloved by hackers.

But before the book series, there was the Radio series, with Marvin played by the incomparable Stephen Moore

From the guidelines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I'm a hacker. I found this interesting (and sad).

HN has gone downhill since they let all the squibs and muggles in.

Quite easy. I expected a title like: Snape (from Harry Potter) is dead.

Prepare to be downvoted you clod. HN is about hacking and obituaries.

David Bowie was sort of justifiable as a tech person, but this is just weird. HN has never been a general news site.

If you look up the term "dies" in HN Search, you can find obituaries for all kinds of people submitted to HN in the past, from Gabriel García Márquez to Roger Ebert to Kim Jong Il.

If you had ever been to Hogwarts you wouldn't need to ask that. Professor Snape will be missed.

Harry Potter is a poorly written kids fantasy, how does that relate to programming?

While we're straying from hackery... I'm curious to hear your recommendations for well written kids' fantasy.

CS Lewis..look him up

I try to keep Christian apologists away from my children.

So edgy.

It's not about edge. My children are free to make up their own minds about what they do with their lives when they reach an age where they can reason for themselves. Until then, I do my best to keep any ideological or religious influence from trying to exert itself upon them.

> My children are free to make up their own minds about what they do with their lives when they reach an age where they can reason for themselves.

That assumes that reason, not emotion, is the primary motivator, no?

> Until then, I do my best to keep any ideological or religious influence from trying to exert itself upon them.

'Be nice to others' is ideology (albeit very weak). I imagine that you don't keep that from them.

>'Be nice to others' is ideology

I don't think 'Be nice to others' is ideology. It may be part of an ideology, but I don't think that it an ideology in itself.

'Be nice to others' is also not a totalizing idea in the same way that Christianity is - not everything in the world happens because somebody was or was not nice to others. Christianity takes as its base that everything is/was the will of their god.

Narnia is only an "ideological or religious influence" if you're already very familiar with Christian symbolism. 99% of children will never get the references.

Narnia's a good story despite the propaganda lurking under the surface. His other writing is awful, though.

CS Lewis is pretty good... I read the Chronicles of Narnia around the same time I started reading Harry Potter. What do you think about Philip Reeve?

By the way, I wasn't asking to challenge you... I'm just a big fan of childrens' fantasy!

Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Charles de Lint, Katherine Paterson, Madeleine L'Engle, Lloyd Alexander, Ursula Le Guin

A lot of the more recently written books my kids read now are formulaic crap, but at least they're reading books.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is a solid choice. It gets dark, but so does Harry Potter, so fair game. I would say late grade school for the first book, adolescent for books 2 and 3.

Tamora Pierce has written a number of kid appropriate fantasy books with solid writing and strong female characters. I have seen countless grade school girls get hooked on her work. Some of her books just start to get into more mature relationship themes, but it's enough to embarrass your kid a bit, not scar them.

As a child I enjoyed C.S. Lewis, but was personally affronted when I got to the last Narnia book and discovered that good story had been compromised for christian allegory. Lewis won't make your child a bible thumped any more than Pullman will make them an atheist. Just make sure you know what your kid is reading, and find opportunities to discus the material with them critically!

Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series is another excellent option. I believe when I read it in grade school I found the pacing too slow, so I skipped ahead a lot and inferred a number of plot points. Nonetheless, I'm certain I enjoyed it the first time, it influenced my view of fantasy literature, and I have returned to reread the series multiple times since.

The Hobbit is a great kids book.

Alison Croggon's Pellinor series is less well known, but perfect for pre/early teens that love fantasy.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede feature a princess who runs away from home to work for a dragon. Solid writing, strong female characters, Pratchett-esque subversion of fantasy tropes. Fun and appropriate for grade school kids.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

That's off the top of my head. Of these books I consider Pullman, Le Guin, and Tolkien to be literature (worth an adult's time), while the others are just fun and well written.

C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit

None others really come to mind, although I'm sure that they must exist.

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