Authors' Mistakes #29 - P.Warren & M.Streeter

I recently completed reading cyber alert, by Peter Warren & Michael Streeter.  Not uninteresting and, in general, easy to read.  But several mistakes crept in.

#	Page	Description
1	5	"How can she allowed".  A "be" between "she" and "allowed" is missing.
2	27	"would come under attack from sustained attack from determined criminals".  One "attack" and one "from" would be enough.  The two words "attack from" between "under" and "sustained" should go.
3	28	"a person who no real proven desire".  A "had" between "who" and "no" is missing.
4	31	"take the view that - as I did - that Parliament".  It is in a quote, but it would surprise me if the first "that" was in the original text.
5	43	"the attack on the twin towers of 9 September 2001".  If the Americans did what the rest of the world does and write the day before the month, such confusions would never take place.  They could also go metric and forget gallons, inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces and pounds, but that's another story.  Then, perhaps, when they get going, they could also switch from Fahrenheit to Centigrade.  After all, Star Trek was metric!
6	57	"The work carried out at such sites as Symantec in Hampshire is just a part of the massive security effort aimed at keeping computers and the internet from being attacked by criminal and terrorists".  It sounds good, but it is impossible to prevent attacks.  All you can do is prevent the attacks from having damaging or catastrophic results.
7	61	"in spite of the avowal of government units [...] that part of their remit".  There should be an "it is" between "that" and "part".
8	95	"Such is the speed with which criminals role out new technology".  Replace "role" with "roll".
9	125	"the source's impeccable credentials [...] least raise at the very least some intriguing questions".  Replace "least raise at the very least" with "at the very least raise".
10	146	"not to reply on operating systems that worked on just once basic code".  Two mistakes in one sentence: replace "reply" with "rely" and "once" with "one".
11	152	"The Philippines did not that at the time have".  Remove "that".
12	225	"trend is beginning to merge".  With what?  Replace "merge" with "emerge".

OK.  I concede that none of the mistakes I detected are conceptual.  It is already something.  But they are still annoying, though.  For the record, I do read books in which I don't detect any mistake at all!

For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’ Mistakes” articles:
Lee Child: Die Trying
Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy
Akiva Goldsman: Lost in Space
Vince Flynn: Extreme Measures
Máire Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies
Michael Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro
Lee Child: The Visitor
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)
Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance
007 Tomorrow Never Dies
Vince Flynn: American Assassin
Brian Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos
John Stack: Master of Rome
Dean Crawford: Apocalypse
Daniel Silva: The Fallen Angel
Tom Clancy: Locked On
Peter David: After Earth
Douglas Preston: Impact
Brian Christian: The Most Human Human
Donna Leon: Fatal Remedies
Sidney Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams
David Baldacci: Zero Day
Sidney Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy
CSI Miami
Christopher L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War
CSI Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)
Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani
Peter James

Authors' Mistakes #28 - Peter James

The blurb on the back cover of Peter James's Perfect People defines it the perfect thriller.  But I found out, as I almost always do, that a reasonably interesting story was marred by editing errors.  Not too many, but enough to annoy me (but then, I am very easily annoyed...)

#	Page	Description
1	2	"The deck drops away beneath him, then moment later is rising, pressing up on his feet like an elevator floor, heaving his stomach up against his rib cage".  It seems that neither James nor the book's editors have any notion of Physics.  And they have never taken a fast elevator either.  When an elevator quickly accelerates upwards or quickly stops its descent, its floor needs to exercise an increased upward pressure on the sole of your feet, which, in turn, transfer that pressure to the rest of your body.  When your pelvis pushes upwards against your internal organs in order to make it go faster upwards or slower downwards, you actually feel as if your stomach were pushed down!  It is when you quickly stop an upward movement or quickly start a downward movement that your stomach, so to speak, hits your throat.  But in that case, your feet, rather than being pushed up, might actually come off the floor.
2	16/17	The first page of a document is marked "Page 1 of 16", but after showing it to Naomi, Dr Dettore states that the document contains "another sixteen pages".  Well, are they 16 or 17?
3	140	"Just as silently as they had surfaced and struck, the Disciple of the Third Millenium seem to have faded back into ether".  Grammar mistake: "seemed" should replace "seem".
4	242	John reads and sends emails from his computer and plays chess with Gus in Brisbane, but, according to James, "he didn't leave the computer online either here or at the office".  James must know that computers can communicate with the rest of the world only when they are online.  He probably meant to say that John switched off the computer or disconnected it from the network when he wasn't there.  But it is an example of very sloppy writing.
5	263	"John, she was accusing you and I of being responsible".  Please!  Is this how we are supposed to talk nowadays?  Do we also say "she will kill I" and "she saw I?"
6	283	Phoebe was writing a Word document on her computer.  Her mother, to stop her, "walked over to the wall and yanked the plug out".  Yeah.  The problem is that Phoebe's computer was a laptop.  Laptops have batteries, don't they?
7	290	"Was this her way telling them".  The "of" between "way" and "telling" is missing.  Or do people speak like that?
8	415	While in Rome, "He walked over to the window.  It was a huge, heavy old sash, double-glazed".  Well, I lived in Rome for longer than 30 years and then visited it several times, staying in several hotels.  I can testify that sash windows, new or old, do not exist in Rome.  Actually, I never saw one in Italy.  Perhaps some Americans or British living there import them to feel at home, but I doubt it.  And in Rome I never saw a double-glazed window either.
9	416	"You have a reservation on Alitalia flight 1050 to Dubai".  But Alitalia flies (and has always flown) to Abu Dhabi, not Dubai.
10	426	"...into another elevator.  John's stomach dropped [this is right].  Then, moments later, the floor pressed up against his feet".  Again the feet pressed up?  James and the editor seem convinced than this is what happens when an upward elevator stops...

To top it off, the prose was not fluid at all.  It was quirky and dry.  It was not a pleasure to read it.

For your reference, here are the links to all past “Authors’ Mistakes” articles:
Lee Child: Die Trying
Colin Forbes: Double Jeopardy
Akiva Goldsman: Lost in Space
Vince Flynn: Extreme Measures
Máire Messenger Davies & Nick Mosdell: Practical Research Methods for Media and Cultural Studies
Michael Crichton & Richard Preston: Micro
Lee Child: The Visitor
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak
Graham Tattersall: Geekspeak (addendum)
Donna Leon: A Noble Radiance
007 Tomorrow Never Dies
Vince Flynn: American Assassin
Brian Green: The Fabric of the Cosmos
John Stack: Master of Rome
Dean Crawford: Apocalypse
Daniel Silva: The Fallen Angel
Tom Clancy: Locked On
Peter David: After Earth
Douglas Preston: Impact
Brian Christian: The Most Human Human
Donna Leon: Fatal Remedies
Sidney Sheldon: Tell Me Your Dreams
David Baldacci: Zero Day
Sidney Sheldon: The Doomsday Conspiracy
CSI Miami
Christopher L. Bennett: Make Hub, Not War
CSI Miami #2 (Robert Hornak)
Jack Greene & Alessandro Massignani

Blind Cut

Earlier this evening, I saw on ABC News an interview with a boy who has problems in identifying the value of banknotes.  His mother has just presented to the federal government a petition with more than 50,000 signatures to do something about it.  With so many people who have problems with eye sight, it makes a lot of sense that money bills should be easily recognisable by touch.

Canada has adopted bills that have bumps, but the concern is that, with prolonged use, the bumps might flatten out and become useless.

I have a solution that would be easy to implement and wouldn't even require to print new bills.  Here it is:

That is, cut a corner from the $10, two corners from the $20, three corners from the $50, and all four corners from the $100.  The $5 bills can remain as they are:


Nobody would confuse the bills anymore, and the current bills could be cut by the Reserve Bank precisely to spec.  The alternative of leaving the $100 unchanged and cut more corners as the value of the bill decreases wouldn't be as good because:

• The smallest bills probably are the most widely used, while few people handle the $100 bills.  Therefore, it makes sense to apply the most severe "mutilation" to the least used denomination.
• "More cuts, more value" is easier to remember.

Unfortunately,  the system could still be abused, and somebody might cut a corner of a small denomination and give it to a non-seeing person to get away with a smaller payment than due.  But this wouldn't be worse than what is happening now...