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How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow 133

Posted by michael 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."
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How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow More

How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow

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  • No, no, no! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:08PM (#5408751) Journal
    ...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!

  • Good hygiene (Score:2, Funny)

    by dgrgich ( 179442 )
    At least everyone I work with smells the same as me. That way I don't stick out.

  • Theory vs. Reality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sgs-Cruz ( 526085 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:10PM (#5408779) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Theory vs. Reality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:25PM (#5408924) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • 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.

        Well, it's certainly made him more recognizable here. Slashdot advertises his book at least once a month -- pretty generous, especially since almost all the reader response falls between lukewarm and completely negative.

      • I bought the book, and read it last week. It's a good story, but the ending is a letdown if a little bit suprising.

        Most of the effort is in dreaming up the world of the near-future and the implants and wuffie.

        I was more disappointed with the book before someone asked me what it was about. It turns out that you have to nearly recite the entire plot just to give a summary because of all the new ideas and setting.

        Without explaining dead-heading, whuffie, the bitchun society, and the adhocs in disney, the rest of the story doesn't make any sense at all.

        so, maybe the actual plot isn't as important as the environment that the story takes place in.

        anyway -- it's a good quick read that will probably become a fixture in the scifi book world similar to Neuromancer or Burning Chrome.

        some people really don't think Gibson is a good writer either
    • All the fabulous word-of-mouth in the world is no good to him if nobody actually buys it.

      Unless you believe that people get utility out of being famous as well as from being wealthy --- in which case he had already succeeded.

      What criteria should we use in deciding whether or not it's "no good to him"? Economists use the concept of "revealed preference," that you should judge what people value by their actions, by how many resources they are willing to devote to achieving a goal or acquiring a good. There are two possible explanations for his behavior:

      1. His goal is maxmizing the amount of money he makes, whether from this novel or his future writing, and the efforts he's put into distributing it for free are a tactic that may or may not achieve this goal.

      2. His goal is to maximize his name recognition and/or the number of people who actually read his book.

      Revealed preference + Occam's razor = 2.

    • 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.

      Untrue. There are more ways for him to make money off the book than selling books. His day job is at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, an internet lobby group. Ascending to netdemigodhood is job security/promotion potential (possibly somewhere other than the EFF).

      Besides, if it becomes the talked about book of the epoch, people will have to buy it so they can display it on their bookshelf without reading it.

  • Myth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Computer! ( 412422 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:10PM (#5408784) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Not a myth (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:33PM (#5408990) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, I hate to say this, but just because many programmers have sex, doesn't mean that you have to go far to find some that are stinky and/or socially unpleasant.

      Bear in mind that "not correllated" means that there is no link between one and the other. If he said that being a programmer and having good hygeine were negatively correllated, then that could be a myth, since it indicates a link.

      Mind you, compared to other professions where you sit at a desk, there probably is a weak negative correllation between programming and bathing habits. Unless I've just been really lucky in my jobs. Who knows, maybe it's just the games industry.

      =Brian
    • Just enter a Wizards of the Coast or any other "geek" hangout...then take a whiff. If you don't pass-out, you too smell bad...if you do, you know you're good.

    • Free Sex? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by docbrown42 ( 535974 )
      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.

      Free sex? Remember, you get what you pay for.

    • You ALWAYS pay for sex. It just may not be with money...
    • and make them hang out with you and your programmer friends for a while. Maybe they will start picking up your good habits and get laid occassionally.
    • Generally, people who have "amazing" talents are quite inadequate socially. This is true of authors, musicians, reasearch scientists, etc... The reason for this is that they needed an incredible amount of time and dedication to hone those amazing skills. A two-three hour daily grooming ritual does not fit in. I assume that if this jackass met Leonardo DaVinci he'd be complaining about his smellyness.

      The flip side is that you can pretty much relegate people who obsess over hygene to the untalented, washed masses. Seriously, read his book if you don't believe me.

      Most of the symphony musicians I have met have the same goofy love of puns, say things that are socially inappropriate, and bathe on concert days. Leo Kottke has a personality like stucco. But hey, if they'd been popular, they would have had something better to do than practice 3-4 hours a day.

      Next week on /., Ann Coulter says, "Who would have thought that being a good programmer and being able to run a mile in under 4 minutes were so mutually exclusive??" "I mean, the guy could write Emacs and can't shoot a 3 pointer..."

      The very definition of a writer is someone who spends way too much time on the computer and still can't learn to program in Basic.

      Hammy
  • Of course, anyone that spends enough time in front of a computer (i.e. not showering, not shaving, eating things that create a large amount of flagulence (sp)) to be a "good" programmer is not usually a socialite. But then, since the majority of society suffer from "Pretty People" syndrome, it is not surprising.

  • BUT! (Score:3, Funny)

    by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:12PM (#5408802) Homepage
    Hey, I'm a good programmer, and I have ... hmmm... well at least I'm a good programmer!

  • guy from eff (Score:2, Interesting)

    by threedays ( 16600 )
    Is he the guy that was on that tlc show about hackers, standing on the golden gate bridge, reciting the hackers manifesto, and generally acting like a complete jackass? Singlehandedly made me stop donating to the eff.

  • what's up with 'whuffie'? (Score:5, Funny)

    by urbazewski ( 554143 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:13PM (#5408811) Homepage Journal
    If utility is measured is measured in utiles, shouldn't reputation be measured in reptiles?

  • I heard that RMS smells, never changes his clothes and throws used condoms behind the couch? Can anyone confirm?
    • If he smells (assumedly bad) and never changes his clothes, how likely is it there would be any used condoms?
    • You shouldn't insult RMS like that. It's Free Software, not Open Source.
    • I used to work at the FSF, and I can promise that RMS showered regularly -- I know because I would often see him going off to the showers wearing nothing but a towel (pause to shudder). Anyway, I never noticed that he smelled bad (and it's not my nose because I certainly met many people there who did reek!).

      [I've heard the used condom story too; it was supposedly the cleaning people that complained about it...]
  • "I code AND I bathe." It's a slogan for the new millenium!

    It amazes me just how many coders or software professionals do not understand the power regular showers and GOOD DEODERANT. I mean if you want people to talk to you, you shouldn't reek like a bridge troll - no matter how well you code.

    • Maybe I don't want people to talk to me. PHB types spend much less time in your cube if it smells like a barrel of rotting fruit.

      Ever think of that?
    • It amazes me just how many coders or software professionals do not understand the power regular showers and GOOD DEODERANT."

      It amazes me just how many posters do not understand the power of the Web and a good dictionary [webster.com].

      I mean if you want people to talk to you, you shouldn't reek like a bridge troll - no matter how well you code.

      I mean, if you want people to talk to you, you shouldn't come off as a cave troll - no matter how well you code. ;-)

      Soko
      • HAH! No kidding. You got me. I'd love to have a spell checker for posting in a browser to /. or any of the web pages.

        When I worked at Macromedia, we worked with two people who failed to understand the concept of "you really really stink - get out of my cube".

        Scary

  • UGH (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NDPTAL85 ( 260093 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:17PM (#5408851)
    How long will it take for people to realize that just putting stuff on the net for the world to download will not bring riches? Hell just doing that will incur serious bandwidth charges that....gasp.... you won't be able to pay!

    • Re:UGH (Score:3, Insightful)

      by reptilicus ( 605251 )
      Well, I bought the book, despite it being available for free. But that's not the real point here. It was a book with a small print run by a first-time author. He's gotten way, way more press for putting it up for free than he would have otherwise. There was never a publicity budget for this tiny book, but tons of people know all about it now. He's got a new book, coming out from a larger publisher this fall. I assume this one won't come out for free, and will probably reap the benefits of the attentioned garnered by Down & Out.

  • ripped from King of the Hill (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jonny Ringo ( 444580 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:17PM (#5408855)
    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.

  • 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."

    These matter to a programmer not! When in coding arts skilled you are, is all that matters.

  • Not "ad hominem" AGAIN? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:22PM (#5408893) Homepage
    Oh ... find that Fatal Flaw! There has to be one.

    Programmers and other artisans frequently get absorbed in their craft. This is good for their output and all those who receive it. They naturally attach lesser importance to impressing people with their conversational or sartorial skills. I resent gregarious people expecting everyone to share their high value on impressing others.

    Hygiene only becomes a problem when it causes skin or GI infections. Odor is a matter of taste. I've found female smokers to be the most easily offended. The Pot is calling the Kettle black ...

    • Jiminy Jesus Christ. Speak for yourself. I get plenty absorbed in my craft. If I'm in public, however, I don't stink.

      Hygiene becomes a problem if it's causing you to not get laid. That is, afaik, way way before illness. As interested as I am in programming... sex comes first.
      • Why do you assume that I stink? Zinc oxide ointment is a remarkably effective deodorant. Merely defending someone does not imply like behaviour.

        I also seriously doubt that sex truly comes first for you. If it did, you would probably know nothing about programming, and instead be a doctor or bartender. Or is that your craft?

        • Med school would take away from my sex time. I'm not willing to delay gratification that long.

          Being a geek works very well for a certain class of (attractive) girls. Good point though: I should bartend on weekends.

          And nevermind. Sounded like you'd spent a lot of thought defending yourself about other people's comments about your smell. Aparently I was wrong.
    • And we get back to the problem in the first place: Programmers think they are God because they can create virtually anything, using logic. This ability is then used in ways to support ALL actions of the God-like creature. I smell bad? That's the way I like it. You don't understand what BIOS is? You are an infidel.

      Seriously, if you need to think so hard as to not bother with social behavioural skills, then you must not be a very good programmer. A good programmer doesn't need to devote 100% of their brain to the task - they can multitask.

  • Hey! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:28PM (#5408945)
    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 may not have good hygiene or social skills, but... what was the third thing again?

  • Whuffie instead of Karma (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:28PM (#5408950) Homepage Journal
    Now that I think about it, "Whuffie" more accurately describes what's called "Karma" here on Slashdot. Perhaps a change is in order?
  • I'd like to take this opportunity to state that I am an excellent programmer with excellent hygene and social skills. Resume at link below.

  • The book itself... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stang ( 90261 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:31PM (#5408976)

    From the article:

    What to make of
    Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom [craphound.com] , 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 [geocities.com] The Phantom of Kansas [amazon.com] 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.

  • Problem with the utopian model in the book. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:41PM (#5409053) Homepage Journal
    In the world of the 'Bitchun' Society,' what's scarce is esteem, called Whuffie. For content, we should already be living in the world of the Bitchun Society--any digital file can be copied endlessly without degradation. Only it can't, because we have accepted the notion of intellectual property and adopted laws that punish people for the wholesale copying of stuff. Doctorow's Net move is an opening to the Bitchun' world, and it poses plenty of questions. Why will anyone buy the book if they can get it online for free?

    Considering that Whuffie is essentially used as cash in his universe, we'd have to set up an automatic micropayment system the deducts from our bank account whenever we like something. f course, this will never work because if we disliked something, the transaction would go the other way. Furthermore, he never discusses why no one ever tried to hack their Whuffie higher.

  • HUH??? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:46PM (#5409087) Homepage
    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.
    • It was cutting edge back in the day. Animatronic robots are old hat 50 years later. Everything now-a-days simply MUST involve a video screen to be entertaining. What's lost is that ability to overcome design obstacles using simple ideas.

      Did you know that Space Mountain really isn't very fast? The designers used the lighting and wind effects to trick your brain into thinking you're going fast. All rollercoaster designers do in modern times is to just make them bigger and twistier thanks to computer aided design software. Feh.

      If you want to see what a real genius is, do a Google search on Mike Jittlov. Keep in mind all of his effects were BEFORE computer generated effects were possible.
    • Buy Old Yeller, coming out on DVD the first of April.
      AFTER THAT, IT WILL NEVER BE SOLD AGAIN.

      BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

      - Walt Disney's head in a jar
      in Michael Eisner's sock drawer, Orlando, FL

  • Codito, Ergo Scummy (Score:3, Funny)

    by BeetMonster ( 635139 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:48PM (#5409096)
    I code, therefore I stink.
  • 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

    Well, thank you captain Obvious!

  • Beautiful quote: (Score:5, Informative)

    by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Friday February 28, 2003 @04:52PM (#5409132) Journal

    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.
  • remember you can't smell yourself.
    • "remember you can't smell yourself"
      "remember I can't smell myself"
      "myself, I must remember I can't smell"
      "personally, I know that I do not smell"
      "I don't smell."
      ...
      "My odor is like the perfume of a spring flower, I am a fun person to be with, and the pleasure of my company is sought after by many."

      That was fun. Now it's your turn. We'll start with a classic: "It's a crock of shit, and it stinks."

  • Since when did programmers start becoming good at social interractions ? Why do you need to interract in the first place ? There is email, IM, IRC and other ways to communicate. All you need to be a good programmer is bitter coffee and hard rock music. As far as good person thing goes, programmers are always good people, you just have to get accustomed to their way of goodness :-) And no, being a good person is not same as being good at interracting socially...
  • Maybe I'm just guessing here, but your choice of terms is misleading.

    If you say that personal hygene and being a high quality programmer are have no correlation, it doesn't mean that most programmers don't bathe.

    In fact, it's a statistic term that means there is no relationship between the two variables. Or, that it's just as likely to find a well dressed clean good programmer as a slob good programmer.

    Maybe you were trying to imply there is an inverse correlation between the two?
    • Or, that it's just as likely to find a well dressed clean good programmer as a slob good programmer.
      Surely you mean "it's just as likely to find a well-dressed clean good programmer as a well-dressed clean non-'good programmer'"..
  • >> being a good programmer and being a good person are not necessarily correlated

    Most of my favorite artists, musicians, and writers were/are pretty $#itty human beings. It's discouraging to the point where I've stopped reading biographies about anyone who's work I admire. There are no heroes in the modern age.
    • "There are no heroes in the modern age"

      Do you mean:
      There are no entertanment heroes in the modern age?

      there are many heroes. I mean real heroes, not people who happened to die at the wrong time.

      The question is, are you a hero? Would you take the risk to pull a women out of a burning car?
      Would you stop a man from beating a child?(I mean beating, not spanking)

      Like I said there are many heroes, but we could always use one more.
    • The French have a saying about this.

      They say 'reading the artists work is like eating Goose Pate' - meeting the artist is like meeting a Goose.'

      Only, they say it in French.

  • Low Freakish Quotient (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bondolo ( 14225 )
    And there is of course the assumption that if you aren't a freak then you obviously have no credibility. It's amazing to watch people cultivate their excentricity in a futile attempt to translate it into coolness. Posers are part of every culture, even the mass media mono-culture, and they are uniformly boring.

    I wish people could just be OK with who they actually are.

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