Do you know who that is ? No ?

What about xkcd.com ?

Well, its one of the best webcomics I’ve seen in terms of ideas and geeky jokes that I like. Calvin and Hobbes is, and will ever has been my favourite, but this xkcd webcomic appeals to my technical side.

Now to the topic of discussion, “How do you read in bed ?”

This is what Randall Blagged,

The Pursuit of Laziness

Since I was a kid, I’ve been looking for the perfect way to read in bed. The ideal position would involve no sustained muscle effort, so I could just let my eyes drift shut as I read, without the book falling shut or my hand slipping or anything. One way is to sit up against something and hold the book on your lap, but that’s not great for falling asleep. So I usually end up reading on my side.

The problem is, you have to hold the book to see both pages, and in either case, you’re using some muscles to hold it where it is.

This has worked for most of my life, but it’s still not that ultimate relaxation.

However, I recently got a Kindle. I was intending to use it mainly as a mobile web browser, but I’ve surprised myself by using it to read an awful lot. And, with apologies to all the bibliophiles out there, I find the ergonomics better than a paperback. When snacking and reading, I can lay it flat on a table without the use of a book weight to hold it opened, and when lying in bed, I don’t have to keep moving it to read.

But it’s not perfect. There’s no way to hold it with a finger on the ‘next page’ buttons that doesn’t require a few muscles to hold it upright:

Either I work to hold my hand off the bed, or I awkwardly curl my fingers around it. Either way, it tips over if I relax my arm, even if it’s leaning against a pillow, and I’m startled awake by this:

I started to wonder if I could do even better. I got out of bed one night, went to the closet, and got a steel coat hanger and some pliers. After a few minutes of twisting, I created this:

Read on to find out WHAT IT IS …

First of all, it holds the Kindle upright …

And second, it lets me lie there motionless, and turn the pages with just a tiny twitch of my thumb:

Finally, after decades of reading in bed, I have reached that stage of perfect relaxation.

 What are CBR, CBZ, CBT, RAR, ZIP and TAR files?

Computer files are generally compressed into archive data sets to save space and to organize information better. Common archives are RAR, ZIP and TAR. Comics have a “special” set of extensions to designate them as “comics”. CBR, CBZ and TAR files are comic archive files. A CBR file is the same as an RAR file, CBZ the same as a ZIP file, and CBT the same as a TAR file. The designations allow computers to associate comic reading software with files and allow other non-comic products to use the standard extensions.

The ZIP format takes one or more files and compresses them as one file, with a .zip file extension. The RAR format does the same (and has better compression sometimes).

The TAR format is found primarily on UNIX and Linux operating systems; it can be used on Windows and Mac platforms, although the ZIP format has become the most popular. (Most users are not familiar with .tar files.) The .tar file bundles files together, although without any compression. If a user wishes to compress them, they are advised to use gzip (which turns the compressed file into *.tar.gz ) .

Software programs for making/opening/viewing the contents of these .zip, .rar and .tar files can be found on the Internet.

How do I make my own CBR, CBZ and CBT files?

Place all comic scans into a folder and rename them in page order, eg. 001 002 003 and then archive the files using WinZip, WinRAR or other compression software. Now just rename them with the different extentions. Remember .zip files are .cbz; .rar files are .cbr; and .tar files are .cbt. (Viewers, like CDisplay, can read .all of these file formats, among other extensions, but the de facto standard has become .cbz and .cbr. We recommend you use these two formats.)

You can rename a *.cbz file to a *.cbr file and CDisplay will still view it, although it isn’t recommended. (This might be because WinRAR can read both .zip and .rar files.) Please stick to the original file format/extension name, especially if you’re distributing files via DC++ and/or Bit Torrent.

Also, if you are using WinRAR to rar images into an archive for CDisplay to view, you can just rename the extension from *.rar to *.cbr before you actually start the archiving process.

What’s so good about these digital comic viewing programs?

They’re a great way of viewing image archives, including various options which are optimised for digital comics!

 Reading the comic books !!!!

Comic books – .cbz and .cbr files – CDisplay

http://www.fundazone.com/2007/09/comic-books-cbz-and-cbr-files-cdisplay/

Download the sequential image viewing utility.  Free!

The Windows Image Viewer ‘CDisplay’ was written to ease the viewing of images in JPEG, PNG and static GIF format.  This was partly down to the existing programs currently available being too general purpose and thus awkward to use when simply wanting to view images sequentially.

It was written using Borland C++ Builder 5.0 and has been tested under Windows 98, NT 4, 2000 and XP Tablet.

It is important to understand that this program has NO file write capabilities; files are left totally untouched.  A small amount of configuration data is written to the registry but apart from that the computer and its data is left untouched.

Features:

Loads JPEG, PNG and static GIF images which are automatically ordered and presented for viewing one at a time or two at a time.

The images may be in a zip, rar, ace or tar archive file – no need to decompress before reading.

Page through the images sequentially and scroll around pages with single key presses.

Automatic page sizing: none; fit to screen, fit to width of screen, fit to width of screen if oversized, display at specific height, or display two pages.  Resizing uses Lanczos interpolation for best picture quality.

Automatic colour balance and yellow reduction if desired.

No bloat caused by non-essential general purpose image processing features.

FREE.

    To Install:

Click on the link below to download setup.zip.  Unzip and run setup.exe.  An installer will start which will install and run the CDisplay Image Viewer.

Download version 1.8 NOW    

http://cdisplay.techknight.com/setup.zip

        Quick Start:

Run CDisplay.  CDisplay uses the entire display for images; there is no menu so right mouse click for a popup.  Choose load files.  Browse to the pages to read.  The whole directory will be pre-selected – just press go to read.  Or select a range of the files using left mouse click, shift left click and/or control left click (ie standard windows multiple selection keys) and press ok. Alternatively, select one ZIP or RAR file and press ok. The first page is displayed.  Use the space bar, page up, page down, home, end and the arrow keys to view the images.

See the ReadMe file or the help (F1 key) for a more detailed description of usage and configuration.

CDisplay forum

TechKnight CDisplay files

 Parent Directory        17-Jun-2003 10:14      -
 CDisplayDebugKit.zip    22-Sep-2003 01:07   232k
 cdisplay-subtitles.zip  30-Jun-2004 05:26   699k
 examplepages.zip        30-Jun-2004 05:32   1.2M
 setup.zip               20-Apr-2004 06:08   1.1M

davidayton

Available here: http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay.html

You can open .cbr files with WinRar (they are just .rar files with the file extension changed)
And .cbz files can be opened even with Windows XP’s default Compressed folder software (rename all .cbz files to .zip files and all .cbr files to .rar files)

Here is a list of free software that can be used to open .cbr files and .cbz files

Windows:

* CDisplay, the Windows Sequential Image Viewer for Windows by David Dayton.
Available here: http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay.html

* pixelComic, a skinnable comic book viewer written in C++.
Available here: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/pixelComic/1058250114/1

* CBViewer
Available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cbviewer

Linux:

* cbrPager: a simple comic pager for Linux (using GTK+)
Available here: http://www.jcoppens.com/soft/cbrpager/index.en.php

* QComicBook (using Qt)
Available here: http://freshmeat.net/projects/qcomicbook/

* Comical, the UNIX, Linux and MacOS X Sequential Image Viewer (using wxWidgets)
Available here: http://www.sketchyorigins.com/comics/forumdisplay.php?f=47

* PyComicsViewer, for Linux and Windows
Available here: http://borco.net/html/PyComicsViewer/

* CBView, written in GTK2-perl
Available here: http://elvine.org/code/cbview/

* Asparagino’s Comic Viewer
Available here: http://home.asparagine.net/software/comicviewer/

Mac OSX:

* FFView
Available here: http://www.feedface.com/projects/ffview.html

* Comic Book Viewer
Available here: http://gumby.misplacedmac.com/

* Jomic (written in Java, so should be cross-platform as well)
Availabe here: http://jomic.sourceforge.net/

These are free software image viewing programs designed specifically for reading digital comic book files, particularly those in .cbr and .cbz formats (and .rar and .zip formats, if they haven’t had their file extensions changed to .cbr and .cbz yet).

Did ghost writers author this playwright-dramatist’s books ? England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “The Bard”) belonging to Stratford on Avon.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. He traveled to London sometime between 1585 and 1592 and began a successful career as an actor, writer, and part-owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later known as the King’s Men). He later retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later in 1616. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive and considerable speculation has been poured into this void, including questions concerning his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by others.

A small cohort of contrarian scholars who traffic in conspiracy theories about “who really wrote” the plays of William Shakespeare has been joined by two luminaries of the British stage — Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance — along with 285 other skeptics, who recently signed a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.

The declaration, which is sponsored by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, takes no position on who wrote the masterpieces of English drama if Shakespeare himself did not. It merely cites what it characterizes as the skimpy evidence to support Shakespeare’s authorship, and asserts, not very trippingly on the tongue, that mainstream scholars should allow the issue to be the subject of research and discussion — without smirking.

The skeptics also cite a panoply of literary lights, including Charlie Chaplin and Sigmund Freud, who expressed doubt that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. After that lengthy exegesis, it’s unclear whether the skeptics are gilding the lily or just protesting too much. Regardless, they will have some difficulty persuading the virtually unanimous chorus of literary scholars who have dismissed the so-called “authorship question” as nonsense Anyway, those of you who want to read the Works of Shakespear(???) online, here is MIT’s free online library right here for download http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

This was the Web’s first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The site has offered Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.

Announcement: The restoration of the site following a disk failure has been delayed. The text of the plays is available now. The poetry and other services, including the search engine and forums, will return shortly. (Nov. 13, 2000)

For other Shakespeare resources, visit the Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet Web site.

The original electronic source for this server is the Complete Moby(tm) Shakespeare, which is freely available online. The HTML versions of the plays provided here are placed in the public domain.

The works available are :

Chapter 1

The Dark Lord Ascending

The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow,
moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed
at each other’s chests; then, recognizing each other , they
stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the
same direction.
“News?” asked the taller of the two.
”The best,” replied Severus Snape.
The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the
right by a high, nearly manicured hedge. The men’s long cloaks flapped around
their ankles as they marched.
“Thought I might be late,” said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out
of sight as the branches of overhanging tress broke the moonlight. “It was
a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You should
confident that your reception will be good?”
Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway
that led off the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the
distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s
way. Neither of them broke step; In silence both raised their left arms in a
kind of salute and passed straight through, as though the dark metal weresmoke.
The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men’s footsteps. There was a
rustle somewhere to their right; Yaxley drew his wand again, pointing it over
his companion’s head, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more
than a pure-white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.
“He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks . . . ” Yaxley thrust his wand
back under his cloak with a snort.
A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight
drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. Somewhere
in the dark garden beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled
beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which
swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.
The hallway was large, dimly light, and sumptuously decorated, with a
magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced
portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two
men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for
the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle.
The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate
table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the
walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece
surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment
on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they
were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scenes an apparently unconscious
human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as
if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare,
polished surface of the table below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself
from glancing upward every minute or so.
“Yaxley, Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. “You are
very nearly late.”
The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was diffi-
cult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As theydrew nearer, however, this face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike,
with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He
was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.
“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indication the seat on his immediate right.
“Yaxley—beside Dolohov.”
The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table
followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.
“So?”
“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his
current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.”
The interest around the table sharpened palpably; Some stiffened, others
fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.
“Saturday . . . at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon
Snape’s black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away,
apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of
the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into Voldemort’s face and, after a
moment or two. Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.
“Good. very good. And this information comes—”
“—from the source we discussed,” said Snape.
“My Lord.”
Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and
Snape. All faces turned to him.
“My Lord, I have heard differently,”
Yaxley waited but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, “Dawlish, the
Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before
the boy turns seventeen.”
Snape was smiling,
“My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it.
No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be
the first time; he is known to be susceptible.”
“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,” said Yaxley.

“If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,” said Snape. “I assure
you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry
Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry.”
“The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?” said a squat man sitting a short
distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there
along the table.
Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolving
slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought.
“My Lord,” Yaxley went on, “Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will
be used to transfer the boy—”
Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watching
resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.
“Where are they going to hide the boy next?”
“At the home of one of the Order,” said Snape. “The place, according to the
source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together
could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there,
my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which
might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments
to break through the rest.”
“Well, Yaxley?” Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangely
in his red eyes. “Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?”
Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.
“My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have—with difficulty, and after
great effort—succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.”
Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov,
a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.
“It is a start,” said Voldemort. “But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour
must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the
Minister’s life will set me back a long way.”
“Yes—my Lord, that is true—buy you know, as Head of the Department of
Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with theMinister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments.
I will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official
under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together
to bring Scrimgeour down.”
“As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted
the rest,” said Voldemort. “At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry
will be mine before next Saturday. if we cannot touch the boy at his destination,
the it must be done while he travels.”
“We are at an advantage there, my Lord,” said Yaxley, who seemed determined
to receive some portion of approval. “We now have several people
planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or
uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately.”
“He will not do either,” said Snape. “The order is eschewing any form of
transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything
to do with the place.”
“All the better,” said Voldemort. “He will have to move in the open. Easier
to take, by far.”
Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, “ I
shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where
Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives
is due more to my errors than to his triumphs.”
The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of
them, bu his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry
Potter’s continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more
to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above
him.
“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those
wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand
those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry
Potter, and I shall be.”
At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, aterrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked
downward, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.
“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone,
and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, “have I not spoken
to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?”
“Yes, m-my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had
been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied.
Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving
nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.
“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of
his followers, “I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a
wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.”
The faces around his displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced
that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.
“No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see . . . Lucius, I see no reason for
you to have a wand anymore.”
Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the
firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice
was hoarse.
“My Lord?”
“Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.”
“I . . . ”
Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite
as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath
the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put
his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort,
who held it up in from of his red eyes, examining it closely.
“What is it?”
“Elm, my Lord,” whispered Malfoy.
“And the core?”
“Dragon—dragon heartstring.”“Good,” said Voldemort. He drew out his own wand and compared the
lengths. Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second,
it seemed he expected to receive Voldemort’s want in exchange for his own.
The gesture was not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.
“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”
Some of the throng sniggered.
“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I
have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late . . . What is
it about my presence in your home that displeases you, Lucius?”
“Nothing—nothing, my Lord!”
“Such lies, Lucius . . . ”
The soft voice seems to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had stopped
moving. One or two of the wizards barely repressed a shudder as the hissing
grew louder; something heavy could be heard sliding across the floor beneath
the table.
The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair. It rose, seemingly
endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s shoulders; its neck the
thickness of a man’s thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking.
Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers, still
looking at Lucius Malfoy.
“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise
to power, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?”
“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat
from his upper lip. “We did desire it—we do.”
To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from Voldemort
and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at the
inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to
make eye contact.
“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted
with emotion, “it is an honor to have you here, in our family’s house. There can
be no higher pleasure.”She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark hair and
heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor; where Narcissa sat
rigid and impassive, Bellatrix leaned toward Voldemort, for mere words could
not demonstrate her longer for closeness.
“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side
as he considered Bellatrix. “That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you,”
Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.
“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”
“No higher pleasure . . . even compared with the happy event that, I hear,
has taken place in your family this week?”
She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.
“I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.”
“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And your, Lucius and Narcissa.
She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud.”
There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the table. Many
leaned forward to exchange gleeful looks, a few thumped the table with their
fists. The great snake, disliking the disturbance, opened its mouth and hissed
angrily, but the Death Eaters did not hear it, so jubilant where that at Bellatrix
and the Malfoys’ humiliation. Bellatrix’s face, so recently flushed with
happiness, had turned an ugly, blotchy red.
“She is no niece of ours, my Lord,” she cried over the outpouring of mirth.
“We—Narcissa and I—have never set eyes on our sister since she married the
Mudblood. This brat has nothing to do with either of us, nor any beast she
marries.”
“What say you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet,
it carried clearly through the catcalls and jeers. “Will you babysit the cubs?”
The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his father, who was
staring down into his own lap, then caught his mother’s eye. She shook her
head almost imperceptibly, then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite
wall.
“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake. “Enough.”

Download the whole book of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in pdf format

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is by far better than all the previous Harry Potter books. Shorter than some of the others, it provides an extremely good read with thrilling content, and ends the series satisfyingly. The book starts very slowly and gradually speeds up with suspense as Harry begins to unravel secrets about Lord Voldemort’s dark magic. You won’t be able to imagine the secrets revealed. I was tempted to walk down to the bookshop and scream the ending out!

My favourite section of the book is where the armies of Voldemort go to war with Dumbledore’s forces. The book builds up to a dramatic finish. Put it this way – a violent showdown is on the cards!

Rosa Davidson, aged 18

The beginning does not disappoint, opening as the past three books have, in a mysterious, location, with no sign of Harry or his friends. What struck me is how dark the writing has become, much more for older readers, far from the light-hearted adventures in the first three books.

JK Rowling’s narrative has become an emotional rollercoaster. One minute you are laughing out loud, the next crying or being terrified at the prospect of an important character dying. And then there’s the ending. Will Harry live or die? The book deals with this pressure incredibly well, taunting the reader with the anticipation, and still managing to tie up all loose ends nicely. A brilliant end by a brilliant author to the most brilliant series of books ever written, in my opinion.

Charlie Kerr, aged 11

This book is very well written and keeps you gripped. It has far more darkness, death and danger than the other books, though that’s not actually a good thing. I preferred the happy magic, like chocolate frogs and clever spells that you got in the earlier books when Harry was enjoying things more and there were more school scenes. This book has more secrets and riddles.

Ron, Hermione and Harry have left Hogwarts to hunt the Horcruxes, magical objects that contain bits of Voldemort’s soul. The plot can be hard to understand. There are fast action scenes which make your heart pump. You can feel Harry’s pain and how he suffers. It will make a great film.

The New York Times, which says it bought the book from a city store on Wednesday- July 18th , is among those to review the seventh and final instalment.

Its chief reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, did not reveal which characters are killed off, despite fevered speculation among fans that Harry himself could be among them – but she does reveal that six characters meet their end.

Ms Kakutani describes the final pages of the book as “a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation” and adds it contains “an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates”.

She adds: “Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.”

An American online retailer mistakenly shipped up to 1,200 copies of the book to customers on Tuesday – breaking the strict embargo of midnight tomorrow and making a mockery of the tight security surrounding the release. It also prompted legal action from the book’s US publisher.

The internet is also awash with copies of pages supposedly scanned from the book and a spokeswoman for its UK publisher, Bloomsbury, even suggested today that reviews already published may be based on fake copies.

In a statement, Rowling said: “I am staggered that some American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children, who wanted to reach Harry’s final destination by themselves, in their own time.

“I am incredibly grateful to all those newspapers, booksellers and others who have chosen not to attempt to spoil Harry’s last adventure for fans.”

Bloomsbury was “extremely dismayed” to learn that some copies of the book have already been sent out.

“The release date and time embargo of 0001 BST on Saturday July 21 is being enforced unflinchingly and without exception by the publishers,” it said.

The books officially go on sale in the United States, Canada and Mexico at midnight on Friday – a separate embargo to the rest of the world.

The furore threatens to overshadow the release of the book, eagerly awaited by fans around the world, some of whom are already queuing,

Those outside Waterstone’s on Piccadilly, in London’s West End, included Laura Halinen, 23, from Finland who was dressed as a wizard and said she had come because this was “the biggest Harry Potter party in Europe and perhaps the world”.

Rowling is hosting an overnight reading and signing with hundreds of fans at the Natural History Museum, while hundreds of bookshops are hosting after-hours parties to which fans are likely to flock.

“The first night outside was horrible – I thought it would be a fun way to get back to nature but it was not at all,” added Amber de Jager, 19, from the Netherlands, who has been queuing outside Waterstone’s since yesterday.

“Fortunately, we reserved some hotel rooms nearby and I will take a shower and rest during the day.”

The Potter books have sold 325 million copies internationally and are translated into 64 languages. Rowling, who wrote the first one as a single mother receiving state benefits, has made an estimated £500 million from the works since the first one appeared in 1997.

But representatives of J. K. Rowling and her publisher were struggling to get the genie back in the bottle yesterday after every page of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallowswas apparently leaked on the internet three days ahead of the official publication date.

Representatives of Rowling confirmed that some genuine material had been released online but declined to say whether the complete book was available.

One possible source of the leak is the 1,200 customers who were mistakenly sent copies of the book on Tuesday by an American distribution company. Scholastic, the book’s American publisher, announced last night that it was taking legal action against Levy Home Entertainment, a Chicago based distributor, and DeepDiscount. com, an online retailer, for allegedly breaching their sales agreements. It estimates that the early copies represent 0.01 per cent of its initial print run of 12 million.

The version available online appears to be the 759-page American edition. A photographer, who is unseen except for a hand holding the book open, has copied each page into a file which can be read like an electronic book. It contains 36 chapters and an epilogue purporting to explain the characters’ ultimate fate.

The document was available yesterday from file-sharing websites including the Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that habitually allows users to make copies of copyrighted material.

Neil Blair, Rowling’s lawyer at the Christopher Little Literary Agency, said that some apparently genuine pages had been posted on the internet. “There is a whole mix of stuff up there,” he said. “If we are alerted to anything that looks like it could be genuine, then we take action. There have been some photos of things up there that do appear to definitely come from the cover or the inside chapter title pages.”

Some file-sharing websites have removed the book after receiving legal warnings, but the Pirate Bay, which has a history of defying legal threats from aggrieved organisations such as Microsoft and Dreamworks, continued to distribute the file last night. It has been downloaded by more than 1,000 people.

If the text is genuine, it is the first time a complete version of the book has been made available online prior to publication. Previous leaks have consisted of selected pages and chapters.

Websites devoted to Harry Potter have appealed to fans not to reveal any leaks that would spoil the plot and are having to remove comments left by visitors who ignore the request.

Rowling has warned readers to expect at least two deaths, but the version online is a bloodbath, according to people who have read it.

The author has declined to comment, but previously asked that readers respected the embargo. “I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are going,” she wrote on her website.

She described those who ruin others’ enjoyment as “sad individuals”.

Bloomsbury said that it hoped fans would be able to ignore temptation over the next two days.

Harry Potter 0day

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* Harry Potter 0day
*
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Dear my brothers,
Voldemort killed Hermione. Yes, that’s true. And we knew that 2 days ago.
This is the end of the not yet published (someone could call that 0day) book
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .
At the end of the story Hagrid was killed by Snape in the attempt of ambush Hermione and Ron.
Ron and Hermione flees in privet drive but Voldermort, surprising them, engaged a magical duel with Ron and Hermione.
Voldemort attacked trough the imperius curse and Hermione, to protect the life of Ron fight hardly for more than 6 pages and then finally die.
(boring, very boring… it’s always the same story!)
Then, to make a long story short, Harry came up, killed all the bad guys and Hogwarts against became a good place to stay and have fun.
Ah, i missed one important information about Draco Malfoy, he started to create Horcrux (for fun and profit!).
The end.
************************************************************
Yes, we did it.
We did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth Ratzinger.
He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs of our earth to Neo Paganism faith.
So we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.
The attack strategy was the easiest one.
The usual milw0rm downloaded exploit delivered by email/click-on-the-link/open-browser/click-on-this-animated-icon/back-connect to some employee of Bloomsbury Publishing, the company that’s behind the Harry crap.
It’s amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book.
Curiosity killed the cat.
Who kill curiosity?
To protect you and your families
God bless you
Gabriel
Free spot – Fight terrorism: http://www.challenging-islam.org/articles/warraq-debate-muslims.htm
=

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Received on Jun 18 2007