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dac41ef
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Somewhere, in a distant land he barely knew the name of, people had stopped buying washing machines, and so his city had died.
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Cory Doctorow |
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4e13a43
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The number of games went up or down according to the brutal, elegant logic of the economics of fun: a certain amount of difficulty plus a certain amount of your friends plus a certain amount of interesting strangers plus a certain amount of reward plus a certain amount of opportunity equaled fun
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gaming-theory
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Cory Doctorow |
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5d18b8a
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It was like finding Attila the Hun at a yoga class. Like finding Darth Vader playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Like finding Megatron volunteering at a children's hospital. Like finding Nightmare Moon having a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.
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mlp
referencing-pop-culture
starwars
transformers
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Cory Doctorow |
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fde3737
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Complaining about the universe's unfairness is never part of a successful strategy.
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Amanda Palmer Neil Gaiman Cory Doctorow |
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818bb36
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This sounds like you're saying that national security is more important than the Constitution.
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Cory Doctorow |
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bfc7ea6
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What you've got to understand, son," says the doctor, "is it's all the fault of the alien space bats." --
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paranoia
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Cory Doctorow |
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d15b407
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The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining," he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. "The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?"
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Cory Doctorow |
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4cd81bb
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That's why you never hear politicians talking about 'citizens,' it's all 'taxpayers,' as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay. Like the state was a business and citizenship was a loyalty program that rewarded you for your custom with roads and health care. Zottas cooked the process so they get all the money and own the political process, pay as much or as little tax as they want. Sure, they pay most ..
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Cory Doctorow |
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930e96e
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So close the book and go. The world is full of security systems. Hack one of them.
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Cory Doctorow |
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d0faff2
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What's the point of a houseful of books you've already read?
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reading
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Cory Doctorow |
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7e9e668
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s security expert Bruce Schneier has said, "Making bits harder to copy is like making water that's less wet."
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Cory Doctorow |
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000fbff
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Once upon a time, my government turned my city into a police state, kidnapped me, and tortured me. When I got free, I decided that the problem wasn't the system, but who was running it. Bad guys had gotten into places of high office. We needed good apples. I worked my butt off to get people to vote for good apples. We had elections. We installed the kind of apples everyone agreed would be the kind of apples we could be proud of. They said g..
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freedom
change
good-apples
police-state
dignity
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Cory Doctorow |
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eff7791
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I mean, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you? Didn't we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?
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Cory Doctorow |
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e1555b1
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What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!
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humour
funny
humor
umbrellas
lightning
computers
terrorism
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Cory Doctorow |
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16086c3
|
Internet Explorer, Microsoft's crashware turd that no one under the age of forty used voluntarily.
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Cory Doctorow |
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2e4379b
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It's good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want to stay human. The rides are human. We each mediate them through our own experience. We're physically inside of them, and they talk to us through our senses. What Debra's people are building--it's hive-mind [stuff:]. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's not an experience, it's brainwashing!
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Cory Doctorow |
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14934f3
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Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit.
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evolution
economics
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Cory Doctorow |
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6a2a535
|
And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty. [...] And if any worker, anywhere, can communicate with any other worker, anywhere, for free, instantaneously, without the boss's permission, then, brother, look out, because the Coase cost of demanding..
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labour-movement
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Cory Doctorow |
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df135bf
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If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don't hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around. If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech - not censorship - then you have a dog in the fight. If you believe in..
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Cory Doctorow |
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1894358
|
We were dancing, lost in the godbeat and the thrash and the screaming--TAKE IT BACK! TAKE IT BACK!
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Cory Doctorow |
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80d318e
|
The important thing about security systems isn't how they work, it's how they fail.
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Cory Doctorow |
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69326e8
|
I understand the world can be cruel place and there are people out there counting on naive kids like you to take advantage of. Don't just think because it's video games people can't get hurt.
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video-games
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Cory Doctorow |
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cf82291
|
The law didn't care if you were actually doing anything bad; they were willing to put you under the microscope just for being statistically abnormal.
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Cory Doctorow |
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030d6ab
|
The best way to be superhuman is to do things that you love with other people who love them, too. The only way to do that is to admit you're doing it because you love it and if you do more than everyone, you're still only doing that because that's what you choose.
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Cory Doctorow |
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4bbe1ad
|
Start at the beginning," he said. "Move one step in the direction of your goal. Remember that you can change direction to maneuver around obstacles. You don't need a plan, you need a vector."
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Cory Doctorow |
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4b7fb65
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There were dumplings on the train, sold by grim men and women with deep lines cut into their faces by years and worry and hunger and misery. This was the provinces, the outer territories, the mysterious China that had sent millions of girls and boys to Canton to earn their fortunes in the Pearl River Delta. Matthew knew all their strange accents, he spoke their strange Mandarin language, but he was Cantonese, and these were not his people. ..
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funny
humor
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Cory Doctorow |
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74e433c
|
There's something else," he said. "What?" "I wasn't going to mention it, but I want you to understand why I have to do this." "Jesus, Jolu, what?" "I hate to say it, but you're white. I'm not. White people get caught with cocaine and do a little rehab time. Brown people get caught with crack and go to prison for twenty years. White people see cops on the street and feel safer. Brown people see cops on the street and wonder if they're about ..
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Cory Doctorow |
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0dc1c76
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Making other people feel like assholes was a terrible way to get them to stop acting like assholes.
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Cory Doctorow |
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7be2524
|
A number is random if the simplest way to express it is by writing it down.
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Cory Doctorow |
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7b77051
|
Making stuff: The folks at Instructables have put up some killer HOWTOs for building the technology in this book. It's easy and incredibly fun. There's nothing so rewarding in this world as making stuff, especially stuff that makes you more free.
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Cory Doctorow |
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e9f67d4
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I had spoken to the universe, and the universe hadn't given a damn.
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Cory Doctorow |
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9de90bb
|
People actually like supporting the artists whose work they like. It makes them feel happy. You don't have to force them. And if you force them, they don't feel as good.
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Cory Doctorow |
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ba748dc
|
Everything good in the world comes from the efforts of people who came before us.
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Cory Doctorow |
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3bd2d44
|
Every time I go past a cinema and see a queue out the door, I think, look at those fools, every penny they spend is turned into profits that are used to pass laws imprisoning their own children. Can't they see?
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movie-industri
piracy
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Cory Doctorow |
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b5d5a52
|
I think that I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was because I was smarter than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things in short words for mouthbreathers who just didn't get it.
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Cory Doctorow |
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7617d40
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Utopia is impossible; everyone who isn't a utopian is a shmuck.
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Cory Doctorow |
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13c9daa
|
If there's a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor's house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It's game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you'd be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she's not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she'll point her gun at you and tell you to get off ..
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Cory Doctorow |
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ddd331b
|
It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.
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Cory Doctorow |
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4a3de63
|
In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank records, or toll pass records, or public transit records, or phone call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty mill..
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Cory Doctorow |
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9902454
|
Any outfit that can't figure out clean toilets and decent theming on its own can't benefit from my advice.
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Cory Doctorow |
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f078f1c
|
But what if all the workers we went to said the same thing? What if, everywhere he [the boss] went, there were workers saying, 'We are worth so much,' and 'We will not be treated this way,' and 'You cannot take away our jobs unless there is a just reason for doing so'? What if all workers, everywhere, demanded this treatment?
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Cory Doctorow |
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f92b776
|
Giant letters march across the dome of the sky: HOME NOT FOUND. Huw, who knows Comic Sans when she sees it, winces in mild disgust.
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Cory Doctorow |
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ddf525b
|
Stories become great by hacking your brain. Nothing that happens in fiction matters. The people in fiction are fictional so their triumphs and tragedies have literally no consequence. The death of the yogurt you doomed to a fiery death in your gut acid this morning is finitely more tragic than the "deaths" of Romeo and Juliet. The yogurt was alive and then it died. Romeo and Juliet never lived in the first place."
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fiction
storieses
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Cory Doctorow |
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9f709b0
|
Otto von Bismarck quipped, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
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Cory Doctorow |