The Whore of Mensa
woodyallenitalia.tripod.com
woodyallenitalia.tripod.com
Edit/Elaboration: This is pirated content. I don't think pirated content should be spread on a site like HN. It's very similar to blog-jacking, only now the original content is a book. If you want to read it, you can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Without-Feathers-Woody-Allen/dp/034533...
The percentage of us who both a) buy books, and b) enjoy reading books on a computer screen, is so vanishingly small that it is unlikely to cause any financial damage to Mr Allen. In any case, Woody Allen is already filthy rich (deservedly), so I doubt he gives a toss.
From a moral standpoint, I think the fact that the story was written in 1975, 34 years ago, makes it really a borderline case whether Woody Allen should still have exclusivity over the story he published and profited from for 30+ years.
Even going by the 2x14 years principle, he's out. Imho, the world would be a better place if there was a deadline of about 30 years on the exclusivity of reprinting rights.
In any case, I don't think HN should be a place to swap pirated stories (or movies, music, etc.). Especially not so when they are as terrible and uninteresting as this one.
The Law governing the area you reside in is not magically imbued with moral authority. It is simply a set of rules, some of them enforced, some not, that are backed up by the threat of violence.
When the law contradicts a society's overwhelming sense of morality, conflict occurs and either the law changes or (worse) police begin to refuse to apply the law, further undermining the clear authority of the law.
If Woody did want to release his older essays online, I'm sure he'd want them as nicely-formatted as they were in his original book, not vomited up on a shitty Tripod page. Formatting certainly chances our attitudes toward what we read. Furthermore, in a case like Without Feathers each separated story loses something of its context, which is a shame and makes it a less fulfilling read.
In high school, I used it as a Humorous Interp piece for my debate class and ended up winning state.
Even with his flops (I couldn't stand Whatever Works) Woody Allen is one of the few artists who's made an incredibly vast series of excellent works and managed to effectively move between different genres without sacrificing his own vision. Can't say that about many people, and it's certainly something I aim for myself.
That was so I intellectually stimulating my mind almost exploded!
Adding because of the (-)ve votes. What I meant is the play of words is quite close to what I hacker would do with his code. At least I think so.
Except, they aren't. Writers may be clever people and smart, entertaining, and so on, but there are plenty of them that aren't really hackers by any definition that isn't so broad as to be completely meaningless.
By this definition, for writers, a hacker is someone who fiddles with their writing - as in this morning, I removed a comma from my novel. This afternoon I put it back in.
I don't claim it's the definition of hacking, but I think there's some merit in its perspective.
Isn't putting stuff off to the very last moment the hall mark of the true hacker ?
That's not defending this story, though. Just expressing a little love for Woody.
I don't like the word hacker myself. I think it's an unnecessary descriptor that raises more irritating arguments than it's worth. In that regards it's similar to calling somebody an "artist", though in the latter case there's slightly more weight behind the word.
If we're going to use the word "hacker", though, then having a play that features the cast calling up Woody Allen and asking him what to do next is a hack in that it subverts the format of the play.
But I copy things into http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/ to read. That is “the bomb.”
But Tofu is much nicer for reading long prose than the Readability bookmarklet. Try it some time.
Someone really needs to make a web version out of that! Shouldn't take too long, and I bet many users don't want to download and install an extra piece of software for that.