> I hate to be "that guy" but, I don't think this is really what people want their kids reading:
So don't be the that guy. Kids are a lot tougher than what the current helicopter parent trend would have you believe. Would you forbid your kids from reading something like Tintin too? There's no shortage of "glorification" of alcohol there - Captain Haddock's alcoholism is a recurring theme.
Another angle is: do you want your kid's first encounter with the idea of Ukraine or Slovenia to be a disparaging/pejorative stereotype?
Even if it was a real factual representation it might encourage the kid to pick up or repeat unhealthy attitudes. My (european) childhood experience was definitely like that at times, race being the major topic about which slurs were innocently propagated by kids who didn't know any better...
>It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
Did you click on the linked source? It says it was written by Kurt Vonnegut, who is arguing that the value of accurately depicting reality to students is more important than protecting them from whatever imagined risk of reading harsh language there is.
They are, but they're equally valid the other way. Why start with the assumption that Puritan sensibilities are OK and require everything else to prove itself?
Because Vonnegut made an affirmative claim that this doesn't hurt children, and the comment was challenging that claim. I didn't notice anyone making a claim that it definitely does hurt children.
Evidence is hard to untangle from other social factors. It is relatively safe to say that people have in the past not been sheltered from rough language and did just fine in most every culture. Sheltering children started about Victorian times I suppose, later than children got removed from dreary factory work in the generalized Western culture. (And incidentally later all kinds of work.)
So no, the onus of evidence is on people claiming that rough language hurts children in some way. (Note we're not talking about abusive language here.)
It's ok to say "it doesn't appear to" but the onus of evidence is always on someone making a positive claim. It's safe to say that children have historically not been sheltered from many things that are today definitively known to cause harm, so the appeal to the past is not a strong one here.
The question "Why damage children at all by choice?" rests on the implication that these things damage children, and avoiding them avoids damaging children.
Are they? I have a deep seated feeling that this is a troll question: does the author himself really believe that coarse language hurts? Does anyone believe that when they stop and think about it?
Not every statement should require extended proofs. It's probably the case that you can't think of any children being hurt by coarse language, nor of having heard of any reporting of this. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
A lot of parents don't want kids going on the internet and looking at violence or porn, But it will definitely happen. May as well encourage positive things like literature. Also the Harry Potter series is full of themes around heroism, friendship, perseverance, and other qualities you'd wish your children have. I can't wait to reread the series for my kids.
The story doesn't condone nor endorse those things, so I see no problem. I don't see anything wrong with kids knowing there are bad things in this world - they're gonna discover it anyway sooner or later.
is the Road to adulthood a slow freeway on-ramp that you have from 0-18 to get up to 65 MPH, or at 18 age are you dropped in the fast lane with no experience going even close to 65?
Pre-teen is a pretty broad category. A normal twelve-year-old is in Grade 7.
That was the year I read Shōgun, which is basically your run-of-the-mill adult fiction novel. The content was never a concern, despite making the objections raised here look trivial in comparison.
Frankly, I'm not sure there's any age at which mere references to alcohol are age-inappropriate, but if there is, it must be quite young.
I'm not too sure about the PC status of the act of smoking, in isolation, but I would say that presenting yourself to kids as an educating figure who smokes is probably seen as less than PC to some.
Little different since one is an action, the other a state/symptom/result/outcome.
I guess there's an argument to be made against promoting/normalising activities that cause obesity, but I'd say current societal norms are set up to demonise smoking a lot more strongly.
> Written by the creator of ZeroMQ, for those who are unaware.
How is this relevant? Why is it important to be aware of that fact?
Does this mean that the author is specifically well qualified for writing such a book? Does this imply he has deep knowledge about cryptography, or that he is trained to explain things suitable for children?
Maybe it's just me, but to me this sounds as strange as assuming that a good actor is automatically also a good politician.
I'm stymied about parable 99. The nomenclature implies that Mr. Xi knew the basics of encryption. No mention whether the decryption function was provided or previously agreed upon (e.g. "let's agree on GPG").
I think the decryption function or method is the key to answering the question. Am I missing something else?
There are encryption schemes which allow you to choose the key to produce any arbitrary decryption from a given ciphertext. For a trivial example, consider the one-time pad scheme that's simply "plaintext XOR key" and "ciphertext XOR key"; by choosing a key that's equal to "plaintext XOR ciphertext" you can construct a key for any ciphertext from a plaintext or any plaintext from a ciphertext. Mr. Xi uses this to produce the just-released lottery numbers from the ciphertext regardless of the numbers or the ciphertext.
yup! they should have used a commitment scheme instead - for example, SHA256(winning numbers || 512-bit nonce). To reveal, reveal the winning numbers and the nonce and Mr X can check that the hash matches. The nonce is to introduce more entropy so Mr X can't just bruteforce the hash, but since finding any collision is difficult, it doesn't let the alien cheat by trying different nonces (unlike with different keys with encryption schemes).
I understood it to be using a one time pad for encryption. At the start the "alien" would give an arbitrary sequence of numbers like "2, 4, 6", claiming it's an encrypted solution. Suppose the winning lottery numbers turn out to be "5, 5, 5". The alien then retrospectively generates a one time pad such that Initial Sequence + One Time Pad = Correct Sequence, in this case "3, 1, -1".
The scammer gave Mr. X the key, and once the winning lotto numbers were published, the scammer provided the ciphertext. I assumed an encryption scheme that was commutative, like the XOR operator (one-time pad).
Agreed. Try installing Reader extension for your browser, they usually let you set a font, its size, foreground and background colors, margins, etc. to your liking.
"SMUGGLER: Do you like booze?
CITIZEN: Sure I do. And who are you?
SMUGGLER: I'm the person who will sell you some booze.
CITIZEN: What about cigarettes?
SMUGGLERS: Sure thing. Cheap Ukrainian variety for $1 a pack. Also Slovenian Mariboro brand."