With the latest Harry Potter book out and all the online fuss about it - somebody got a copy and leaked it online - I thought that now would be a good time to point out that the Harry Potter universe is nothing but a metaphor for Unix hacking.

Sure it is! Consider:

Magic is nothing but [...]

“Uh, huh. OK. Mmmm-Hmm. I’m going to stop you right here - did you put the disk in the tray? The tray. No, Ma’am, there’s no cup-holder on it, that’s where the CDs go. Uh huh, you’re welcome!”
“Hello, Tech Support, How May I Help You?
You say… no keys? There are no keys on your [...]

Once upon a time before there was an Internet (yes, there was too a time! Ask your grandparents.), a cartoonist named Al Jaffee had a feature in Mad magazine called “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”. Too bad old Al wasn’t in his prime during the current Internet age, because when computers came along, they redefined [...]