Size of Google reader index just incrase by 100 % after this post :)

I don't know why, but I just hate this story, and don't get why someone wrote it...

Google fan fiction? Have we come this far? For crying out loud. I thought the Apple fanbois were too much, now this.

This smacks of a really crappy submission attempt to literotica.

Why didn't his card open the building 49 door?

I believe this could all come true if not already in progress.

I also "fictionalized" Google once in a game :)
http://blogoscoped.com/googleadventure/

This story is licensed on a non-commercial license but it's used here for commercial purposes (there are ads next to it, as well as in the feed).

I'm really wondering who will read ALL the story. Personnaly, I can't, sorry.

> This story is licensed on a non-commercial license but
> it's used here for commercial purposes (there are ads
> next to it, as well as in the feed).

Mf, I actually talked this through with either Lawrence Lessig or the Creative Commons mailing list, I forgot which (probably the latter as I can't find the mail and I regularly delete mailing list content, as opposed to personal mails). In a nutshell, it's not about the mere existence of ads, but about what focus the commercial aspect has when presenting a story. For instance, if I put up a PayPal prompt and ask you to transfer $10 to my account in order to see the Cory Doctorow story, it would clearly be an infringing commercial use. Ads to the side on the other hand may be OK, and more specifically, in the thread where I inquired about this were deemed to be OK (use case given were ads in the style of this blog, or ads on Authorama.com, another site of mine where I specifically use a full book of Lessig). And indeed if it would be any different, it would be a real problem and render CC nearly useless, because the reality is that most licenses are non-commercial, and most blogs carry some form of ads, hence bloggers – argually among the top groups who take & give Creative Commons content – wouldn't be able to use most CC stuff. So, in a nutshell no, I don't think I'm infringing on the license, and when others republish my posts (as I also post with a non-commercial license) with ads to the side similar to here, I won't think they infringe either.

>> I'm really wondering who will read ALL the story.

I read it all but with a few breaks. (I don't really like reading long pieces of text on screen.)

Absolutely fantastic read. Yes, I read the whole thing. Maybe it's that I live in a similar world as the author, or that I've had the opportunity to collaborate with people from both ends of the ad serving and profiling spectrum.

I read it (for obvious reasons) and liked it except for the "ads were the loophole to the gov't" angle. I liked the idea of the loophole, but I think there might be a cooler, more realistic/ meaningful way to have gotten that bit across than ads (e.g. statistical samples, though even better than that :)).

On first reading, I assumed that the "chocolate labs" were a place that chocolates were made :-)

I thought "ads as the loophole for the government" worked well. It reminded me of how the government used to need search warrants to tap phone calls, but they were free to raid the billing details (including details of the numbers called) without a warrant.

All in all, a creepy story.

I liked it. Well, I also read the whole thing.

I read the whole thing and I am interested in incorporating it in a Dystopian Literature Seminar I do every other year.

Orwell meets The Matrix.

When I visited Jamaica, the immigration officer quizzed me in detail about the stamps in my passport. I'm sure if he'd had access to the data Google holds about me, he'd have quizzed me about that too.

When I visited the US once, entering from Canada by bus at night, the police dude who interviewed me asked me "are you nervous? do you have reason to be nervous?" when I didn't instantly reply about what I was going to do/ when I intended to return. A friend's friend was asked if he wanted to import any drugs or weapons and he replied, "I won't need to bring those you got them already in the US..." or something, but I don't think they found that too funny :)
I bet when I'd be questioned these days and answer "I'm a foreign blogger criticizing a US corporation on a daily basis" I'll hear handcuffs snapping seconds later ;)

Looking at the story in today's Washington Post online ("Traveller Surveillance Eyed"), I don't think Cory's story is too far off-base.

Need to lay in a stock of tin-foil-hat supplies before they get m...

Traduction en Français (Creative Commons) de la nouvelle de Cory Doctorow disponible ici :

http://cfeditions.com/scroogled/

Move over Jennifer Government :)

The responses of the slowly boiling frogs to this story are predictable: they don't want to know (a) they are in a big kettle full of water, (b) someone is heating to the water to boiling, and (c) they are too dumb to care what boiling means, anyway. If history is any judge of repetition or rhymes this is the predictable attitude of anyone comfortable with a totalitarian political system – and they are in the majority. Which is what the American Founding Fathers with all their quotable wisdom about liberty and vigilance and checks and balances and separation of church and state were all about. Orwell published 1984 and Animal Farm with great difficulty – I'm old enough to remember how the parlour pinks turned their noses up at his name. It doesn't matter that "Scroogled" is not as well written as Orwell; it is a timely and, I'm afraid – given the remarks by illiterates and stupids to this story – an all-too prescient look at the future.

Started reading this on my Mac and noticed the CPU usage went up to 30% (dual core duo), started up activity monitor and saw that Camino was using the cpu. WTF? Death of two pop unders later and I'm back down to 3-4%.

What sort of webpage causes a CPU to use 30%. The world is really going to the dogs.

Put me off the story completely.

Matty, which URL are you talking about?

If it's this blog, it must be a nasty Flash ad by Google AdSense. If so pls let me know the URL of the advertiser if possible (below the post).

[spoiler warning]

Why did Maya kill herself?

Russian translation of Scroogled: http://www.jetstyle.ru/scroogled/

Русский перевод "Scroogled" — «Выгуглен»: http://www.jetstyle.ru/scroogled/