Cory Doctorow On For the Win, Gold Farming, and DRM 179
adaviel passes along a New Scientist interview with Cory Doctorow, who has been touring for his new book For the Win. The SF author and technology activist talks about DRM, gold farming, and much else besides.
Titled misspelt (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Titled misspelt (Score:5, Funny)
MMmmmmm, so we meet the interviewer, Jessica.
I don't know who she is or what she looks like, but I'm already in love with her. I imagine her in a pantsuit, projecting raw power and subtle dominance behind a disarming pair of horn-rimmed glasses. She walks out of her cubicle with a sexy but straightforward strut as she delivers her "goods" to the copy editor.
She is tactile enough to record interviews with her sexy youthful hands, free of protruding veins and tendons, writing pen-on-notepad at blinding speed like a 50's-era law student notating a Spanish lecture.
I invision her wearing a corset at times, hidden under her conservative white-linen blouse, as she carries on secret trysts with the various blue-collar building porters and custodians. She's off-limits to us nerds because nerd-dom is thirsty work for her...and so thirsty work warrants thirsty play, as she fellates an unbathed, illiterate-but-muscular laborer named Pedro in the utility closet.
...
I'm back, guys. After extensive Google searches, I paid 50 bucks for her current address and a background check. Spotless. Radiant. And she lives at 32 Garrison Street Suite# 56 in Boston's beautiful Back Bay. Mmmmm, back bay. I'm texting this as I look over the brick fence into her window. She just came back from a hard day in the office. Man, look at her without that coat, tossing her silky hair back with a single nod as she puts it into a ponytail. I would love to kiss those tired feet of hers, with their perfect red polish and the aroma of a fine Camembert...I bet her panties would also smell mustily divine right now...*Pant, Pant*...nobody smells perfect after that long a day at work...*pant*...(By the way, I'm texting this from my Blackberry). Oh, shit...she's spotted me...hold on...She just picked up her phone and pulled her blinds down.
Oh, crap, the security guard is coming...hold on....
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Missed the boat (Score:2)
And by posting that piece of work anonymously, you just missed out on hundreds of geeks that would have otherwise "friended" you and become your legion of slashdot fans.
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"And by posting that piece of work anonymously, you just missed out on hundreds of geeks that would have otherwise "friended" you and become your legion of slashdot fans."
I think that was the point.
We already know what HIS idea of being "friended" is.
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interesting quote from the subject of the article (Score:5, Informative)
Hint: it's not the artist.
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but after the obscurity, THEN artists get interested in DRM.
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How unselfish of them, thinking of all those obscure authors they've left behind!
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Insightful)
The view changes dramatically when you are "on top". Protecting your IP once it has value becomes important for a lot of people.
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The view changes dramatically when you are "on top". Protecting your IP once it has value becomes important for a lot of people.
But only after they've already profited handsomely from it.
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It hasn't affected Doctorow; he's a best selling author.
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Some people still have souls.
Everyone started with one. Sad but true.
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is art has never payed well except in the last half century or so and then only for a few superstars. Now shysters are trying to sell absolute control over works on the promise artist will somehow get payed more, they won't.
Here's a nice quote from a recent Mick Jagger interview [bbc.co.uk] :
"People only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t."
Same goes for authors. There's a reason "starving author" is such a well known concept.
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Informative)
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't lie, you fucking love it.
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Spelling nazis should be punished by grammatical hangman.
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Interesting)
I could go with the "not my native language" defense but even I should have seen that one :-) Apparently it got past my spell czech (bad Tibor!) because there's an archaic nautical use of the verb spelled that way.
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I admit it's only a few years off from the range you quote Jagger as saying, but I watched "When You're Strange" a few days ago (it was on "American Masters" recently). It said that the Doors' first royalty check was $50,000 each (some of their albums had all songs attributed to "The Doors"). $50K in 1967 was a heck of a lot of money..for their very first check.
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Meanwhile people like Iggy Pop [clashmusic.com] got screwed over in roughly the same period :
"And, by the way, when people say that the group sells or an artists sells an album, this is a misnomer. A company sells them. A company generally owns the master, the company owns the right to manipulate the accounts and will cheat and steal from the artists. The artist gets zilch. The artist also has to fend off divorce settlements, girlfriends, drug dealers, managers, lawyers, agents - a whole panoply of crooks."
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:5, Interesting)
"Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem writers face. In the 21st century, if you are not making art with the intention of it being copied, you are not making contemporary art."
Interesting fact: Cory Doctorow rips his ideas from other people. The original quote was from Tim O'Reilly. If you watch the internet closely, you'll see him copy other people's quotes and ideas all the time without giving them credit. A few months ago, I saw him regurgitate one author's comment that piracy is like masterbation. Of course, Cory never gives them credit - he's too busy wanting people to believe "his great ideas" aren't directly cribbed from other people. No wonder Cory is such a big fan of piracy - that's how he gets famous - by taking other people's ideas and regurgitating them as if they were his own.
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that's how he gets famous - by taking other people's ideas and regurgitating them as if they were his own.
Like everybody else. Writers are not philosophers or physicists. They are not supposed to come up with new ideas, but to express the old ideas in interesting ways.
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:5, Insightful)
Writers are not philosophers or physicists
As a physicist and philospher who is currently developing his writing career, I don't agree with this. It's true that some writers are just what you describe. They aren't artists, they aren't original thinkers. They are what used to be known as "hacks".
Writers, however, are expected to come up with their own ideas, and in the case in point, with their own words--at least some of the time. While it's true that "mediocrity borrows, genius steals", it takes more than theft to make a genius: it takes intelligent transmutation of the stolen material into an original and interesting form. Insofar as a writer does that, they are not a hack, but that is a requirement, not just "expressing old ideas in interesting ways."
And the best writers, of course, express new ideas in interesting ways. Melville wasn't just regurgitating facts about whales (although he was doing that too...)
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So to them it's perfectly fine for someone else to help spread them around. Now if someone dishonestly/negligently claims he/she is the original source when that's not true then it's plagiarism.
Most pirates don't plagiarize when they copy stuff- they don't claim they are the original authors of the work.
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And how often do you casually repeat insightful/witty statements made by other people in conversation without bothering to give a citation? Everyone does it, sometimes without even realizing it.
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Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief
U2, The Fly [songmeanings.net]
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:5, Funny)
I was going to halp propagate your anti-Cory meme, but I've already forgotten who you are, and therefore I find myself ethicially unable to propagate your ideas.
Sorry about that.
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Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's natural for someone who hates DRM as much as Cory Doctorow not to give credit for quotes.
I think it's weird that you can't distinguish between broken tech like DRM and a perfectly legitimate desire for an artist to be recognized and compenstated for their work. The latter is expressed by a variety of intellectual property law, which Doctorow is not absolutely against.
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Yet DRM itself is trying to force "a perfectly legitimate desire for an artist [and publisher] to be recognized and compenstated [sic] for their work".
Do I like DRM? No, I think I agree with you that it's "broken tech". But I also think that the reason behind it is the same "perfectly legitimate desire". As has been stated many times before (ironically I can't cite one), if there weren't thieves, we wouldn't need locks on our doors.
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I'm sure you've heard the quote often attributed to the artist Pablo Picaaso, that "good artists borrow, great artists steal."?
The fact is that any artist is a giant milling machine - in goes ideas and concepts and styles and techniques and disparate things (like banana cereal and dogs peeing against trees) and they all churn and ferment and process and grind and beak down and clump together and then ... ping ... up pops an idea, which because the milling machine is an artist of some description, needs to g
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To provide another perspective:
What you describe as "ripping off" could be better viewed as exposing oneself to ideas that are actually relevant to people by, you know, interacting with them. Discard the bad or irrelevant ideas, keep the good ones and share them with others to make sure they continue to propagate. Combine some in the form of 'mash ups' to create something kind of new. And in addition, possibly process the ideas gathered from such activity such that something completely new and unique com
Re:interesting quote from the subject of the artic (Score:4, Informative)
He credits Tim just fine on his website:
http://craphound.com/overclocked/2007/01/08/about-this-sitefaq/ [craphound.com]
So this time he didn't spell it out, but it's not like he is claiming this idea is "his"
I think he just agrees and feels it is basically a fact in the culture today.
Tim first wrote that idea, that I am aware of, back in 2002 so after 8 years or so, I think it might be fair to say that it has become fact or reality to many of us.
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I also heard him give credit during some radio interview. I'd imagine after giving numerous interviews to promote a book, one would slip up on some details here and there while covering the same ground so many times.
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He may not credit Tim (or the masturbation guy) every single time he utters those words but he has indeed credited him: [craphound.com]
For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism).
But hey, don't let facts get in the way of slagging Cory. Do you realize how long it would take for Cory, or anyone, to talk if they had to cite the origin of every single thought they're expressing?
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But hey, don't let facts get in the way of slagging Cory. Do you realize how long it would take for Cory, or anyone, to talk if they had to cite the origin of every single thought they're expressing?
Off-topic, but using his name twice in a row like that, along the same thought line, shows you either know him personally or are a fanboy of some sort. There's an emotional attachment to a construction like that, and out here on the internet it seems inappropriate.
Not that we disagree. Slagging, would take a long time, all check. Just maybe without the name-dropping.
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Or maybe I just wrote in kind of a hurry, moved things back and forth, and didn't get around to changing one instance of his name to a pronoun since this is just a forum and not a dissertation. Mainly, I was just replying because the comment was +5 and Slashdot doesn't have a "-1, factually incorrect" mod. In other words, duty called. [xkcd.com] :-)
For the record: I loved Little Brother, couldn't even finish Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, thought Makers was pretty good, and thought Overclocked had some good bits b
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Did you even read the quote? It is exactly what your "interesting fact" describes.
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That's almost word for word from Little Brother IIRC. Which, BTW, I thought was an excellent book.
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FUCK Cory Doctorow. Where is the latest story on the new iPhone?
Actually, there's one on Boing Boing.
BoingBoing (Score:3, Informative)
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Belay that order; Cory Doctorow is the John Katz of the Internet 2.0. Avoid at all costs.
Most of the other posts in this thread will agree with me. Lots of "anonymous cowards" who seem to disagree with the regular posters on slashdot who seem to dislike Doctorow's shameless self promotion. Hmm...
how's Junis doing these days? (Score:2)
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Belay that order; Cory Doctorow is the John Katz of the Internet 2.0. Avoid at all costs.
To each their own. I disagree. Doctorow's stuff is worth a read. However, I don't think he's an amazing author. A lot of his stuff leaves me with the impression of being a little under-done; a little raw, in need of a bit more baking to be done. But he writes some cool stuff based on some interesting ideas. And he gives it away free if you're not inclined to buy it.
As for self promotion... well, sure. He's an author. He makes a living writing stuff. You don't sell writing without getting people to
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Gold Farming History (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gold Farming History (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that, but the reason people hate gold farmers isn't about racism. It has 0 to do with race and everything to do with the fact they get their "lot" by stealing from people.
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Umm... because (allegedly, if you believe the reports) that's where the most commercial gold farming is done?
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Is it really racism? First, "Chinese" is kind of entangled in whether it refers to the nation or the "race" (this is thanks as much to their xenophobia, as ours). More importantly, if the majority of gold farmers were from Phooistan, they'd be called "Phooie gold farmers." Doesn't racism need, on some level, an implicit (negative) claim about the race? This is more like an economic (foremost), and cultural resentment.
I guess it's sort of post hoc racism at most.
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No, I think it is racist in the tenor as well as the use.
They're not "Chinese" because they are from China. The term is attached to indicate that they're willing to work for long hours for little pay, that they care little about the damage they do to the world, and that their product cheapens even similar products because it is so very crappy. It mostly exists as a contrast to the home-grown varieties which are implied to be both superior in quality as well as safety.
This is the connotation applied to nea
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It's not a racist term, it's an accurate term. China is one of the few countries with the right mix of technology and a large poor labor force that can actually make gold farming profitable. At least without using bots. Even when your entire inventory is from stealing accounts, you need warm bodies to process (that is, remove everything of value from the characters on) those accounts and then transfer the gold to the buyers.
And the pejorative modifies "gold farmer" not "Chinese".
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It's not a racist term, it's an accurate term.
Whoa now, let's not go down THAT path. Stereotypes get started for a reason. First, there is a question about what an "accurate term" means. There's a difference between: Every/most/some Y is performed by racialGroup_X and every/most/some racialGroup_X performs Y. But the truth of the statement doesn't matter much. At one time, paddy wagons were full of the Irish more often then not. But the defense that there is a statistical trend should not rule out the racist nature of a statement.
But uh... why did
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Dude, I remember gold farming in the Bard's Tale.
Ok, so it was my little brother, and I paid him in candy...
Re:Gold Farming History (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that all the early gold selling (AC, EQ) was individuals selling stuff on ebay, and not some sort of organized business.
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I remember it in Ultima Online, scripting was pretty easy back than.
Although not logging into your account for almost a year and coming back to realize everything you had built up was expired and decayed(disappeared). That was the last time I invested so much time into a game and realized the outcome, but than I found out you could dupe items through the black hole bug and made millions on my comeback.
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"When did gold farming start? First reports were in Central America and Mexico in about 2003." I remember gold farming in Asheron's Call in early 2000. Here's a link to a blurb about Sony's problems with EverQuest in April 2000. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017_3-239052.html [cnet.com]
That's OK. Now that you've found it, I'm sure Doctorow will remember it too ;)
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I realize that the mod system will handle you, but I can't even parse what the hell you're trying to communicate. I'm perplexed. You darn well know the topic if you're posting on slashdot, and you've got this clearly-emotional mess of a post that you put up in order to communicate SOMETHING... Just can't tell what.
Is there such a thing as drunken slashdot posting?
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Is there such a thing as drunken slashdot posting?
Yes.
EXCELLENT interview! (Score:3, Insightful)
I've recently become a big Cory Doctorow fan, reading several of his sci-fi books in electronic format. (I'm reading through "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom" right now on my iPad.)
This interview just further impressed me with him... Great, insightful comments on both DRM and on "piracy" vs. "publicity"!
I'll admit that as much as I like science-fiction, I'm not exactly an "avid reader" - so maybe some of Doctorow's work is just a "re-hash" of ideas already used before. But I found lots of very interesting and unique (at least to me) concepts in his writing. I particularly like his premise in "Down and Out..." that the world has solved its energy problems, which led to sort of a new "enlightenment" era of rapid advances in technology - with one of them being the ability to "reboot" a dead person from recent backups of the knowledge in their head that were taken at regular intervals. People measure their age in how many lifetimes + years old they are. Of course, this leads to massive overpopulation, but the masses accept it because they're confident that problem can also be resolved somehow. And in the meantime, many people opt to "deadhead" for X number of hundred years - voluntarily putting themselves in a suspended state, when they feel they've done everything they really want to do and see everything they want to see. This just seems a few steps beyond the material you typically find in science fiction in the movies or on TV, not to mention in other books I've read so far!
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And in the meantime, many people opt to "deadhead" for X number of hundred years - voluntarily putting themselves in a suspended state, when they feel they've done everything they really want to do and see everything they want to see. This just seems a few steps beyond the material you typically find in science fiction in the movies or on TV, not to mention in other books I've read so far!
Iain Banks did this in his Culture books, back in the early 1990s. :)
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So did Hotblack Desiato. He spent a year dead for tax reasons.
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Iain Banks did this in his Culture books, back in the early 1990s. :)
And again in the late 2650's. ;)
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Oh, and it's Iain M. Banks when he's writing Sci-Fi
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John Varley did it in the 1970s
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And Heinlein in the '50's (Door Into Summer).
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Indeed it is a rehash, it didn't seem all that original when John Boorman & Sean Connery did a version in movie form (the surreally bad Zardoz) in the '70s. Doctorow's take is admittedly much better--Zardoz set a really low bar. I liked the "adhocracy" concept, and the name was inspired. But overall, a short-story of an idea stretched out to book length, without a stunning plot, memorable characters or inventive energy. YMMV.
Cory Doctorow is IMHO at best a mediocre science fiction writer. But he ha
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I've been an avid reader for fifty years, most of the fiction I've read has been science fiction, and I've never seen anything like "Down and Out". I read a copy I picked up at the library, then bought a copy at the bookstore for my shelf; I never read a good book only once.
Record companies are insane; they could have encouraged file sharing and advertised the benefits of tangible products like CDs, but greed got in their way. Now the young folks ask "why do I want a shelf full of books/CDs/etc."
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I must be in a bad mood, but why name-drop the iPad?
Having actually READ the novel (Score:5, Informative)
A few points of import. The goldfarmers in the novel never steal accounts. They just play the game, and build up large banks of gold to sell. While all WoW players know that a significant part of the banks that the goldsellers sell were acquired through account-theft, these are not the people that FTW is about.
I don't think you can call playing the game 18 hours a day a crime. The fact that they subsequently sell the gold - well that's only a crime in the concept of breaking a EULA... which is not something I have EVER heard a /. poster speaking AGAINST.
Furthermore, the world in the book is a bit different, it's set a few years in the future - and the games are no longer MEANT to be a closed economy there. There are official channels of gold trade, where real stockbrokers invest in game gold much as they would invest in any other currency. The goldfarmers in the book use black-markets though because they are excluded from these official channels of trade (which is in fact the game-companies' largest source of income).
I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say - this is not a a novel about thieves who live of other people's hard work. It's a novel about hard workers being exploited and demanding a better life. It uses the MMORPG world as a millieu but it's really a book about economics and a scathing attack on the world of sweatshop workers - in all it's forms.
It includes solid chapters on economic fundamentals, inflation (and how the kind of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe came to be) how it works, and how often it doesn't.
In short, it's a very, very good book. As SIFI I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, it writes about technology that's every day life NOW. There are some minor practical changes to the games concept in the time of the book but nothing that all gamers aren't expecting now. It's not science fiction, it's a much more a kind of social activism fiction, which happens to use a technological mileu.
Mind you, I didn't consider Little-Brother to be science fiction either, 99% of the technologies in THAT novel are things that you can download right this second. What it was, was an excellent novel that happens to also teach the fundamentals of crypto, privacy and security systems.
So in short, I really LIKE Doctorow's niche, he uses his fields of expertise, to set novels with a much wider social message - that's to me what good writing is all about.
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As SIFI I wouldn't call it groundbreaking
Don't you mean "SYFY"?
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SF thanks.
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Personally, I've always prefered scifi myself, but seriously - we all knew what I meant :P and I didn't even use my OWN favorite term.
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>SF means science-fiction.
>sci-fi is a pejorative term. It is used for stories that only use science-fiction as a decor.
>As I can see from article, "For the win" is science-fiction, not sci-fi.
Who the hell decided that? You DO realize this is a VERY recent development, well I've been reading (and writing) Science Fiction for close on 3 decades now... and I've ALWAYS prefered "sci-fi" for no other reason than this: it's MUCH nicer to SAY. It's pronounceable, a word. SF sounds like you got a lisp and
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The real irony is this.
Forgetting the pejorative claim - you description of what sci-fi SHOULD be used for... is EXACTLY what I described FTW as BEING.
I said specifically it's NOT science fiction, there is nothing fictional about the science there - no technology or ideas that aren't already reality right now.
The book isn't ABOUT science, it's not even using science to create a setting per se... it's a book about economics, quite a socialist one at that. About sweatshops, investors and unions.
Maybe 3 paragr
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It includes solid chapters on economic fundamentals, inflation (and how the kind of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe came to be) how it works, and how often it doesn't.
I find this frankly implausible. I've never seen any description of economic fundamentals in a fictional context that I'd consider "solid". Novelists are unfortunately, like economists, good at spinning plausible bullshit, but you shouldn't mistake "plausible" for "solid".
If you want an adequate introduction to some reasonably solid economic thinking for laypeople, try Joseph Heath's "Filthy Lucre: economics for people who hate capitalism." It's not without flaws, but it generally gives a clear analysis
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Well now, I've read it, you haven't.
The man did his research, and Doctorow has a good writing style for it. He entirely breaks from the fictional flow for about one in three chapters, and gives a very solid, and accurate description of core parts of economic theory, gradually building up as they will all ultimately impact on the plot. It almost reminds me of the Science-of-Discworld books, where even chapters are story, odd chapters are non-fiction genuine science... well lectures.
Here it's not quite so muc
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Having actually read the book as well, I agree with most of what you say. I considered it a very entertaining book, and the story about setting up an international union of virtual workers was very inspiring and moving.
The one thing that really bothered me about the book was that it was unrealistic about how virtual economies work. Doctorow said that investors would buy in-game gold, and wait for it to appreciate, then sell it for a profit. This is contrary to the way every
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A few points of import. The goldfarmers in the novel never steal accounts. They just play the game, and build up large banks of gold to sell. While all WoW players know that a significant part of the banks that the goldsellers sell were acquired through account-theft, these are not the people that FTW is about.
I don't think you can call playing the game 18 hours a day a crime. The fact that they subsequently sell the gold - well that's only a crime in the concept of breaking a EULA... which is not something I have EVER heard a /. poster speaking AGAINST.
I hated gold farmers before their industry started turning to compromising accounts. I don't mind if someone wants to dedicate an inordinate amount of their time to playing the game and amassing in-game wealth; that's playing the game. But buying that wealth with currency outside the game is crossing the line. I like the EULA on this point. Buying gold is cheating. I don't condone cheating. And gold farmers are feeding a market for it.
Incidentally, Blizzard began to do a good job at shutting down gold
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You're allowed your opinion of them - heck I don't like them because right now, their a net harm on the games playability for everybody else.
The reality though - is that quite a lot of them really are in a state of - if I do this my kids eat tonight, if I don't they don't and working for a salary, it's their bosses who make the money.
You wanna hate those bosses, hey I'm right there with you - I despise sweatshop labor of ALL kinds.. but simple reality is, what really feeds the market is gold BUYERS.
Now them
Content creator admits to being a copyist (Score:2)
Cory is a writer. He publishes under a CC type license. He manages to make money.
He also admits that, like all of use, he pretty much has to copy stuff to work. If it is as small as copy and pasting URL's or bigger still like printing articles and pictures off the web. Research requires copying.
It's the last few questions so 99% of you won't have read it.
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Is monkey COBOL for money?
Or a Freudian slip?
Re:What a tool (Score:4, Funny)
No, no. The monkey is his girlfriend. Sure, she's a bit hairy but at least he's getting some.
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Whereas Mr Anonymous Coward has been here from the beginning.
boingboing hijacked? [citation needed] (Score:5, Informative)
Boing Boing became a Web site in 1995 and later relaunched as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. All four Boing Boing contributors are, or have been, contributing writers for Wired magazine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing [wikipedia.org]
Self-promotion, on the internet? say it ain't so!
Cory, Xeni, Dave and Marc ARE boingboing. Cory's also a writer who stands behind his opinions on copyright, licensing the electronic versions of his books via Creative Commons, with free downloads in non DRM formats.
disclaimer: I also happen to like his writing. I Loved "Little Brother", and liked Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, Content, Makers, and am halfway through FTW
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Re:Indeed, he is a tool. (Score:5, Funny)
Cory Doctorow is the biggest, most shameless self-promoter on the internet. He's also kind of a tool. He's already hijacked one website to promote his writing. Its called 'boingboing', perhaps you've heard of it?
Wait! I thought Nicholas Negroponte was the most shameless self-promoter on the internet! I demand a face-off!
Face Off (Score:2)
Sorry. Hollywood wants you to pay for it [imdb.com].
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Who, exactly, is Doctorow a tool of? Independent free thinkers?
In addition, given that he gives away his work in addition to publishing it, how exactly do you consider him a "shameless self-promoter"?
Sounds like some jealousy is at work here, mister AC Troll.
SB
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You're mising the point -- AC Troll is the tool, not Doctorow. AC is probably a record company executive or one of their lawyers.
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Gaining insight to the minds of idiots is often illuminating. Thank you for contributing to my insight.
You don't cite any of his work, any of the reasons why you think he does what you say he does, you just go on and on with baseless insults, and then a totally irrelevant comparison. Your comment is worth exactly as much as my reply to it is.
I could almost feel sorry for you, but I have many more important things to feel bad about.
Go live in your little world, child. It'll bi
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That's... hell, I can't even figure out what you are trying to say. My signature was out of place? Where else is it supposed to go?
You might want to work on your reading comprehension - in no part of my post did I actually call the AC an idiot ;-) A child, yes... as literary critiques go, that one was devoid of any real content.
Come on now. Cory Doctorow "parroting what the community wants to hear"?
What community? The SF "community" (like SF writers and readers are part of some vast
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Sometimes a "a really terrible, sensationalist slant" is nothing but the truth. The New York Times has a really terrible, sensationalist slant on all of their BP Gulf oil disaster stories.
You were downmodded because your post is inflammatory and untrue. Doctorow didn't get on the New York Times best selling list because he gained notoriety writing about how stupid and bad for consumers DRM is, he got there because he's a damned good writer. Good writing does NOT read like a PhD thesis; the worst thing a wri
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Lots of anonymous cowards white knighting BoingBoing this morning I see! No personal vendetta, no trolling. Look around at the (registered!) netizens here and you'll see my opinion is shared by many. I'd be happy to list examples if someone with a name wishes to ask for them. You don't have to dig very hard to find them.