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0ef1276
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Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.
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hackers
determination
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Cory Doctorow |
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0a27be6
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If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.
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people
cynical
nietzsche
negative
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Cory Doctorow |
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ec99b35
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He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.
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Cory Doctorow |
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aa0cf81
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All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.
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Cory Doctorow |
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103320d
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I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.
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Cory Doctorow |
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e0421c3
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It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.
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Cory Doctorow |
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341beae
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It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we're free. Once we're not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You're young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who can lead us to victory! Take it back!
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rebellion
terrorism
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Cory Doctorow |
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89d91b0
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Skipping school isn't a crime. It's an infraction. They're totally different.
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Cory Doctorow |
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d74b6d9
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Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing (live-action role playing) an incredibly boring RPG (role-playing game) called "professionalism" that requires them to alter their vocabulary, posture, eating habits, facial expressions--every detail all the way down to what they allow themselves to find funny."
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rpg
larping
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Cory Doctorow |
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98c0dc4
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If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.
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Cory Doctorow |
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73ae489
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He had them as spellbound as a room full of Ewoks listening to C-3PO.
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humour
spellbinding
robots
star-wars
scifi
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Cory Doctorow |
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3ba1567
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The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.
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Cory Doctorow |
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bb0d68f
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The future's a weirder place than we thought it would be when we were little kids.
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Cory Doctorow |
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cefa5aa
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Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.
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Cory Doctorow |
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8c82620
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The first casualty of any battle is the plan of attack.
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Cory Doctorow |
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a5c12a7
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The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper.
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Cory Doctorow |
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fcd8b0f
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Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you're really having a deep relationship with it.
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technology
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Cory Doctorow |
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b6d1e24
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Take it from someone who's read the Wikipedia entry: this is how the Ottoman Empire was won: madden horsemen fueled by lethal jet-black coffee-mud.
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Cory Doctorow |
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dbb5cfe
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I don't know anything about press conferences." "Oh, just Google it. I'm sure someone's written an article on holding a successful one. I mean, if the President can manage it, I'm sure you can. He looks like he can barely tie his shoes without help."
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Cory Doctorow |
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42c446d
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Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
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happiness
destructive
new
government
power
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Cory Doctorow |
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ef54b02
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the Kindle is a "roach motel" device: its license terms and DRM ensure that books can check in, but they can't check out."
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kindle
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Cory Doctorow |
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566cfb6
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We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose *again*. And *again*. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing.
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revolution-movements
occupy-wall-street
labour-movement
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Cory Doctorow |
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6a7c5ef
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I hate that," I said. "It's like there's no human beings in the chain of responsibility, just things-that-happen. It's the ultimate cop-out. The system did it. The company did it. The government did it. What about the person who pulls the trigger?"
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Cory Doctorow |
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1c600c9
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I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds. It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.
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Cory Doctorow |
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7a4100e
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The difference between reading a story and studying a story is the difference between living the story and killing the story and looking at its guts.
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reading
studying
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Cory Doctorow |
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83a028e
|
The fact is, almost everything you do is collaborative. Somewhere out there, someone else had a hand it it.
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Cory Doctorow |
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f21730c
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Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.
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Cory Doctorow |
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825fd6a
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This life is real too. We're communicating aren't we?
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Cory Doctorow |
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169fc9b
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Your problem is, you're trying to understand it. You need to just do it.
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Cory Doctorow |
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fdea04c
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We don't care about what you did yesterday--we care about what you're going to do tomorrow.
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the-future
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Cory Doctorow |
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93d8b9a
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If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine -- any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door -- using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.
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programming
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Cory Doctorow |
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ba9dadd
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I read my copy of On the Road and dug the scenery whizzing past. On the Road is a semi-autobiographical novel about Jack Kerouac, a druggy, hard-drinking writer who goes hitchhiking around America, working crummy jobs, howling through the streets at night, meeting people and parting ways. Hipsters, sad-faced hobos, con-men, muggers, scumbags and angels. There's not really a plot -- Kerouac supposedly wrote it in three weeks on a long roll o..
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Cory Doctorow |
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81f7602
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There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them.
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Cory Doctorow |
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c3c9f49
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I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height--teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.
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Cory Doctorow |
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16007ac
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I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink. I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'..
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secrets
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Cory Doctorow |
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d1872bc
|
The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.
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history
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Cory Doctorow |
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6bf5be1
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You know, there comes a point where you're not giving advice anymore. There comes a point where you're just moralizing, demonstrating your hypothetical superiority when it comes to doing the right thing. That's not very fucking helpful, you know. I'm holding my shit together right now, and rather than telling me that it's not enough, you could try to help me with the stuff I'm capable of.
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help
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Cory Doctorow |
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aa6f919
|
When in problem, or in doubt, run in cirles, scream and shout
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Cory Doctorow |
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100288a
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The companies are multinational--why should labor still stick to borders?
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Cory Doctorow |
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44be63b
|
For hundreds of years, the human race has dreamt of a world where knowledge could be shared universally, where every human being on the planet could have access to our storehouse of knowledge. Because knowledge is power, and shared knowledge is a superpower. Now, after centuries, we have it within our grasp to realize one of our most beautiful dreams.
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Cory Doctorow |
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6e5a33f
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I want to just DO SOMETHING instead of ask someone else to start a process to investigate the possibility of someday possibly maybe doing something.
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Cory Doctorow |
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d72109a
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my problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity
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property
piracy
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Cory Doctorow |
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d939181
|
Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what it would cost at market rates to go around to every house in every town in every country and pay for the right to block traffic and dig up roads and erect poles and string wires and pierce every home with cabling. The regulatory fiat that allows these companies to get their networks up and running is worth hundreds of billions, if not trillion..
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common-carrier
telcos
|
Cory Doctorow |
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d7dbdab
|
The fact was, there wasn't room on earth for a couple million gold-farmers to turn into high-paid video-game executives. The fact was, if you had to slice the pie into enough pieces to give one to everyone, you'd end up slicing them so thin you could see through them. "When 30,000 people share an apple, no one benefits -- especially not the apple." It was a quote one of his economics profs had kept written in the corner of his white-board, ..
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Cory Doctorow |