Harry Potter

I've never been a person who reads a lot of books. But a series of book that I really stuck to and read several times is the books about Harry Potter and his world. It has been published seven books about Harry Potter and also ​​eight movies based on the books. The author is J. K. Rowling.

Brief Summary of the books :

Harry Potter is no ordinary boy, he has just learned that he is a wizard and is going to study at Hogwarts. A school for witches and wizards. What Harry does not know is that he is the boy who survived. Harry survived Lord Voldemort's attempt to kill him. Every book takes place as one school year at Hogwarts. We follow Harry and his friends Hermione and Ron in their amazing adventures.

I have chosen to read the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone . I'll try to find some differences between the book and the movie. I personally think both the book the movie is very good. It will be interesting to see what I can find.

Having both read the book and watched the movie, I came up with this:

The beginning of the book is very long and informative. We find out how Harry's life was before he started at Hogwarts. The film shows this very short and I think they have removed many charming things that happen in the book. For example, when Uncle Veron drive to work and see a cat reading a map.

In the movie, I get the impression that Harry quickly becomes good friends with Hermione. But in the book it feels like Hermione and Harry becomes close friends about the middle of the book after the incident with the troll.

In the book, Neville has a much bigger role. He is mentioned very often in the book and has a bigger part of the story. Which is sad because I think that Neville is a really fun and delightful character.

The sport Quidditch is described in much more detail in the book comparing to the in the movie. In the book you will learn how to play the game and all of the rules. In the movie, it feels like we are just thrown into a match and get to watch some action-packed scenes. There are also more matches in the book than in the movie.

There are a number of details in the movie and book that is different but really does not play a major part of the story. For example, how Hagrid loses his dragon, Norbert. In the film, Hagrid just say that he had to give away Norbert. But in the book, Hagrid gets help from Harry and Ron by sending Norbert to Ron's brother.

Conclusion. The book is more informative than the film and therefore the better.

Are robots going to rule mankind!?

Are robots going to rule mankind!?

The other day I saw a very interesting video on Ted, about how robots do more tasks in society. The video is called "Are droids taking our jobs?" and it is created by Andrew McAfee. McAfee explains that robots are taking over more and more tasks and jobs that people previously done. Smart computers and smart phones are making people's lives easier. But in the same time makes a lot of jobs, done by humans, disappear.  Jobs that now are accomplished by a program or an app instead.

Companies have in recent years become more profitable while they tend not to hire the same number of people comparing to the company’s profit growth. Today's society is based on being as efficient and economical as possible. The tasks currently performed by humans and tasks that also can be replaced by a robot will probably in the near future be done by a robot. People require salary every month and a robot requires no salary at all. The robots will probably investment cost plus maintenances cost, but in the long run be cheaper than a human.

In just ten years, the computer science community have developed brutally.  Just think of the Nokia 3310 which was launched in the early 2000s and compare it with the iPhone 5, which was released in late 2012. What a progress in just twelve years!

McAfee believes that this is just the beginning of an extreme development and it makes me start thinking. I also believe that tomorrow will be to develop faster than when we look historically. Tomorrow's technology will probably be developed to great products and will replace more functions in society.

What if technology develops too fast? What if robots in the future will take over the earth? I can think of several movies where the plot is man against the machine. Movies where people have fight for their freedom against robots. I practically thinking of the movies: Matrix, Terminator and I, Robot.

Matrix is about Neo and his battle against the evil robot-program Agent Smith. Earth's population has been hook up in a big weird machine and dreaming their lives while the robots is taking advantage of people's energy. Only a few people know about this and fight against the robots. Most of the earth's population is thus unconsciously aware of that they are slaves and bereft of their liberty.

Terminator is about how a robot (the Terminator) is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Sarah Connor will in the future have a son who is a very important person in the future of the war between man and machines. Therefore the Terminator will do anything to kill Conner and thus her unborn child.

I, Robot is about how a lot of IT-developed society creates a new kind of robot that is much stronger than the old robots the humans use. The robots' main job is to protect people from being harmed. However the robots reboot themselves and imprison people for their own safety.

All three movies almost have the same storyline, humankind frightening for their own freedom against the machines. The development of technology has gone very fast in recent years and I feel unsure of where development will go. It's not entirely impossible that computers and robots evolve into evil super robots that will try to rule mankind!!

How tomorrow IT community will evolve, I do not know. Hopefully it takes a few years before today’s robots evolve in to evil super robots. So if I were you I would take the opportunity to enjoy the last days of freedom before the robot doomsday arrives.

Have a nice one!

Gustav

Paywalls

Hi!

I recently read an interesting article called "The Year of the paywall." The article is about how newspapers increasingly are going towards Internet-based newspapers. The paper magazine newspaper can contain much more ads than an internet- based paper. And with today's development of an internet-based society has made that the same amount of ads is not going to get into an internet-based paper compared to a traditional paper magazine. Therefore the internet papers are forced to find new ways to finance the paper and its company. Market is tough and big companies like Facebook and Google is driving prices sharply low among Internet advertising companies.  The papers have to create some kind of a paywall that force the consumers to pay to get access to the paper, just as a like a subscription.

Services that I use today where there is a paywall and you have to pay to get access are Netflix and Spotify. When I started using Spotify, I did not have pay anything at all but I had to listen to commercials. However Spotify changed their policy after a while and I needed to pay 99 SEK to use their service, but I didn’t ness to listen to any commercials. So I pretty much could say that I paid 99 SEK per month to avoid the advertising, which I afterwards fund very nice.

I remember for two years ago read an internet article about KBAB in local Karlstad newspaper. Then a half year later when I tried to find a link to the article to show a friend I found out that I couldn’t read the article anymore because I didn’t have a subscription of the paper.

Today's society is evolving and people are eager to pay to avoid advertising. E.g. I personally use some apps installed in my browser to avoid advertising. A firm that provides a service will always try to maximize profits and will create paywalls if it is more profitable.

The market for services without advertising is tough. I remember when Netflix was introduced on the Swedish market. The only comparable competitor on the market was Viaplay, who took 99 SEK per month for their service. But when Netflix introduced and offer their services for 79 SEK per month and Viaplay followed with the price reduction immediately.

I really wonder advertising of tomorrow will look like. My opinion is that people are willing to pay to avoid advertising and that companies are aware of it. The companies design their services so that the consumers avoid ads and in the same time create a paywall to fund the company.