To his credit, he filled a void. I wish there were folks like Arrington around and things like the VC-funded "internet week" in NY this week back in 1999 during the first dot-com boom. Something is better than nothing. And he's on the right side of a lot of things -- specifically on intellectual property regulation.
And also to his credit, he's trying and he listens. He's been responding to commenters on his site and there's something to be said about that.
How could he continue with the review? It was obviously going to be a positive one, and just by raising the question of bias, Arrington pissed in the pool. Anything Leo could have said would've been filtered through that lens.
But Laporte does get pretty salty there. And at one point he tells all of them to fuck off, not just Arrington.
I'm a recovering lawyer myself and I left because working with lawyers was worse than anything I had experienced before (which was working mainly with startups and non-profits in NY).
Its fascinating to me. There are a lot of bitter nerds out there who passionately hate T/C, like fanatically so. It seems the slashdot/reddit crowd has repeatedly criticized those guys for being marketers rather than geeks, and they are right in that basic premise but I think the level of animosity is unwarranted. Even if these guys aren't pedigreed nerds, they are fascinated by and love technology and they are an important part of the industry.
Its one of the reasons I like HN -- it has a much more nuanced view of the important role folks like Arrington and the VC community play in the bigger world outside of nerdland.