Cory Doctorow Still Needs a Bitchslap

Popped by Boingboing today, as I do most days, and once again Cory's pissing me off with stupid posts. Let's got through the list, shall we?

- P2P is Killing Piracy: Cory has an article where he tells the story of some poor pirate CD merchants who are going out of business because P2P networks like BitTorrent etc are stealing their customers. Awww, poor babies. These guys used to pirate CDs/DVDs and sell them out of the back of their van every weekend, raking in a tidy profit. Cory actually states: "The music industry likes to lump P2P and hard-goods piracy together, but they're not the same thing at all -- in fact, they're dire enemies." You dumbass motherf***er, to the music/film industry they ARE the same thing: an illegal threat to their businesses. Who cares if there's no honour amongst thieves? The problem is that the thieves exist. I can't believe Cory readily admits that these pirates can have their (inexpensive) businesses crippled and still have the balls to say that the big bad (expensive) entertainment industry is unaffected by P2P networks (that, while capable of fair use, are never used in a fair use manner by anyone I've ever heard of - ever. Downloading the latest Gwen Stefani song is not fair use, you stupid dolt).

- Why ebooks' success has nothing to do with screen quality: I swear, if I hear this argument one more time... In this article, Cory claims that the idea that folks don't like reading off computer screens is b.s. He claims that people do like to read off of computer screens and his proof is (drum roll please): people spend all day reading off screens! He says, "It's like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate..." You...stupid...dumbass...mother... *sigh* How do you explain to a retarded person that they are retarded? I mean, like Brad Pitt says in Se7en: "When a person is insane, as you clearly are, do you know that you're insane? Maybe you're just sitting around, reading Guns and Ammo, masturbating in your own feces, do you just stop and go, 'Wow! It is amazing how fucking crazy I really am!'?" Look, Cory, the reason I read off a screen all day is because I have to read off a screen all day. It's called work, jackass, you should try it sometime. When I can do my work, get sports updates, write in my blog and check my email off something other than a computer screen - guess what? - I'm gonna do it. I read off a computer monitor because I have to. But, given the option between reading a book off a computer screen at my desk or off a piece of paper that I can flip/fold/write on/drop while sitting on a porch/roof/couch/plane/toilet, there's really no contest - the paper wins. Only the most arrogant cybergeek would presume that people are making it all up when they say they prefer paper over LCDs.

- Artists' eyes rove over images: And continuing in the unscientific realm... Cory posts this one about an "experiment" that tracked the eye movement of artists vs. "non-artists" when presented with an image (for example of person in a body of water). The artists, of course, scan the whole picture, taking in the breadth of the image, the nuances, the colours - gee, aren't they great? While the "non-artists" fix their gaze much more steadily on the face of the person in the water - ha! See? Artists are imaginative and see the big picture, while non-artists are obvious and narrow-minded! Proof! ...Uh...Except the "non-artists" used in this most scientific of experiments were all psychologists. Hm...think that might skew the results? Look, I'm the last person who is going to argue that people's brains aren't wired differently and that we see the world each in our own way, but could we try to make this a little more scientific and make fewer broad generalizations about the results? The psychologists fixated on the person's face more than the artists. That says nothing about "non-artists": it says something about psychologists. Gee, who would have thought that psychologists might be tempted to look more at a person's face than the pretty colours around them? Will wonders never cease? You'd almost think these psychologist types have a thing for people... I wouldn't be so peeved if this were an isolated case of poor science (or stupidity on Cory's part) but the fact is that almost every article I read about some study or experiment indicates some obvious flaw in methodology.

Ok, enough looking at this bloody computer screen - time for lunch.