How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow

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How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow

Posted by michael on Friday February 28, 2003 @08:04AM from the whuftacular dept.

Richard Koman writes "My interview with EFF's Cory Doctorow just went up on O'Reilly. The interview is largely about his book, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," but naturally veers towards discussing his view of Disney, programmers, and peer to peer. Then there's this: Doctorow: I think that Disney's art and technology kicks ass. But one thing you discover in the technology world, especially in free software, is that being a good programmer and being a good person are not necessarily correlated, or at least being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated."

12 of 133 comments (clear)

No, no, no! by Quasar1999 · 2003-02-28 08:08 · Score: 4, Funny

...or at least being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated

I take offense to that... I have poor hygiene and poor social skills, and it hasn't made me a good programmer!

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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
1. Re:No, no, no! by sir99 · 2003-02-28 08:13 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I take offense to that... I have poor hygiene and poor social skills, and it hasn't made me a good programmer!
  Typical converse error ;-)
  If you figure out what a converse error is, maybe you'll become a better programmer in the process. Then you can work on the social skills and...ah, screw it; programming's good enough!
  
  --
  The ocean parts and the meteors come down
  Laid out in amber, baby.
2. Re:No, no, no! by asparagus · 2003-02-28 08:17 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Well, I'm a bad programmer with good hygiene.
  
  Management, here I come!
  
  -Brett
Theory vs. Reality by Sgs-Cruz · 2003-02-28 08:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

What will be interesting will be to see if he actually does make money off his book. All the fabulous word-of-mouth in the world is no good to him if nobody actually buys it.
He does mention in the article, though, that it's first-time authors that lack reputation: maybe this is an indication that he's doing this for his first book to build reputation and then he will be getting a 'traditional' book contract for future books? Either way I support him. More work in the commons is always a good thing.

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Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
1. Re:Theory vs. Reality by gpinzone · 2003-02-28 08:25 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I happen to have read his book online. The plot is as one-dimensional as they come. However, the cool aspects of the book are use of technology, the society that grew from it, and the excruciating detail about the Magic Kingdom, particularly, the Haunted Mansion.
  
  That said, it's not exactly best-seller material. It's going to be a difficult task to evaluate exactly how much more or less in sales the book will make by offering it online for free. If anyting, it's made the author much more recognizable in the sci-fi community.
Myth by Computer! · 2003-02-28 08:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated

Are people really still saying this about programmers? It's not 1989 any more. We may not be movie stars, but all the coders I know have sex at least semi-regularly, with people they don't have to pay. That indicates some level of grooming and social skills.

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If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
what's up with 'whuffie'? by urbazewski · 2003-02-28 08:13 · Score: 4, Funny

If utility is measured is measured in utiles, shouldn't reputation be measured in reptiles?

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foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
ripped from King of the Hill by Jonny+Ringo · 2003-02-28 08:17 · Score: 4, Funny

Your programing is sub-par, and it took you way to long to complete the program! However, I find you breath minty fresh and unoffensive.
Re:Doctorow's Home Page by GeorgeH · 2003-02-28 08:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Don't forget his weblog, BoingBoing which should be in everyone's rss readers by now (bonus: he puts the full article in his rss feed, unlike some sites).

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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
The book itself... by stang · 2003-02-28 08:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

From the article:

What to make of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom , the first novel by Cory Doctorow, dot-com survivor, inveterate blogger, and now, outreach coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Part organizational-intrigue novel, part post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and part Swiftian satire of the tech mentality, revolutionary impulses, and Disney itself, the book has acquired quite a bit of notice, at least in part for its bold use of the Net.

Having just finished the book, I can tell you what to make of it: A poor ripoff of John Varley's The Phantom of Kansas with karma added. Oh, and whereas Varley managed to pack his ideas into a well-paced short story, this one dragged out for 208 pages as it subjected us to Disney technical minutiae on the way to a disappointing resolution.

At least I found out how the ghost hall works in the Haunted Mansion.

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"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
HUH??? by moosesocks · 2003-02-28 08:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

This is weird.... They talk of Disney as being cutting-edge.

While I know that disney is renowned for it's use of technology at their theme parks, I can't say that I've heard of any of it being cutting-edge. From what I've heard (and seen), Disney is still using 8-track tapes for the audio tracks of many of their (older) rides, as well as the for the control of animatronics, using the age old argument: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Pneumatic tubes are still used for transporting paperwork (and garbage, but that's another story).

Of course, on the newer stuff they build, they're using, they've turned to using CDs, DAT, and of course, computers. But I certainly think their views on outdated technology (from what I have heard in the bast) make a lot of sense.

Do animatronic robots really need to be controlled by 2ghz computers over a secure fiber-optic TCP/IP link? No. Disney still uses their old system which has worked for several decades, and uses the old technology on some of the new stuff they build.

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad.

I suppose this is where a lot of the conflict in the company originates from. They used to be a really great company, but as of late, I've taken to strongly disliking their marketing strategies and overall business model - WE DICTATE YOUR CULTURE, BUY OUR PRODUCTS.

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-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Beautiful quote: by cK-Gunslinger · 2003-02-28 08:52 · Score: 5, Informative

Doctorow: Well, sure, even the recording industry understands it will never get back to the way it was. I don't think it's dead. I think it is fundamentally changed and I think they're slowly coming to grips with that, although not as fast as we would like them to. But the recording industry has a story of, "We do two really important roles. One is to make music available and the other is to compensate artists." But one of the things we know is that 80 percent of all of the music ever released isn't for sale anywhere in the world. And another thing we know is that 97 percent of the artists signed to a recording contract earn less than $600 per year off of it. So Napster doesn't have a better track record at compensating artists, but it sure as shit had a better track record of making music available.