Slashdot Mirror
The True Story of Website Results
Henry V .009 writes: "Salon is running a story on a dot.com called Website Results. Maybe you've heard of them. Viral Spyware makers. My God, these people are sick. Interview question: 'Imagine there's a peasant somewhere halfway across the world. If you could push a button and kill the person without getting caught, would you do it for a million dollars?' 'For them, it was yes, in a heartbeat.'"
If you could push a button and halfway around the world a starving child would get a meal, would you do it? Wait, that's not very intertaining...
In today's business climate, where major corporations can swindle shareholders out of billions of dollars, what's a faraway peasant worth to them?
Yes, corruption is evident, even in geek industries.
The three men ran the company like a cult, according to former employees, with most staffers routinely working 16-hour days without bonuses or overtime. Employees were afraid to openly question management, to blow the whistle or to quit.
.com's invented this kind of behavior. Companies have been abusing employees since before the .com era. 16 hours a day without bonuses or overtime? Boo-hoo, our servicemen do that shit everyday.
Give me a break, people act like
Imagine there's a peasant somewhere halfway across the world. If you could push a button and kill the person without getting caught, would you do it for a million dollars?' 'For them, it was yes, in a heartbeat.
...
Someone has played too much Black&White
So the founders of a company that writes viral spyware, forges search engine hit results, and attempts to earn money by outright lying and deception happen to be violent amoral pieces of tripe with no real place in society?
:)
My, I'm shocked.
Ahhhhhh!!!!!! What the heck! It must just be too early in the morning for most of you. More than half the posts already have said basically, "So what, wouldn't you do it too?" or "What's so wrong with that?" How is it that we find it so easy to place a value on a human life? If asked the question, "What is my life worth to you?", can you really respond to me with a dollar amount?
It's one thing to offer your life for anothers and that's regarded the greatest gift a man can give, but to put a price on someone? Come on people, I know it's just a web forum so I can't reach around the world and smack you up side the head, but have a little class...
Let's not forget the old Twilight Zone ending as well (or is it Outer Limits, or Night Gallery???)
After you push the button, the guy comes to collect the button box.
You: So now what are you going to do with the box.
Man: I'm going to give it to someone else.
You: Who?
Man: Don't worry, it's someone you don't know.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So, then, the people that would push the button are not evil monsters, more like people with a George Jetson complex...
I suppose this depends on your definition of evil
If your definition is limited to the Hollywood Serial Killer Antihero modus operandi, where the person must take visceral pleasure in doing harm to others, then perhaps you would be correct.
However, I think someone who is willing to push a button and kill 1, 100, or 1000000 people because it is convinient or facilitates something they want ($1M, a nicer pair of running shoes, whatever) is profoundly evil whether or not they derive the least bit of pleasure from the actual killing itself.
Indeed, I would go further and say that someone who would push a button "just because it is there" knowing that it would result in a human death is a profoundly evil person, whether or not they get any benefit from pushing the button, and irrespective of whether or not they derive some form a pleasure from doing so.
Indeed, one could argue that anyone who doesn't immediately disable the switch so that it cannot be pressed, even by accident, isn't someone you'd want to spend any time with, much less live next door to.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Actually I remember reading about a test where students were asked to torture someone who they couldn't see, but only here the results. If I remember correctly most of them pushed the button given the right pressure.
an other alike question could be: would you eat meat of you had to kill and butcher the cow yourself..
As it seems, as long as the receiving end is anonymouse and unseen, many people can get themself to do things which they wouldn't consider when they were there in real life.
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
Doesn't TV teach us anything?
No, it's the movies that teach us... don't forget South Park:
"Because the movies teach us what our parents don't have time to say!"
Offtopic PS: Is it just me or have these guys (Parker and Stone) just obliterated the line in tasteful satire? Suicide bombing sentient SeaMonkeys formed by bodily fluids and brine shrimp? This week's "time for a sleepover with all the boys and a priest?" Not that I'm complaining, but the humor is getting harder to laugh at without feeling guilty.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
There is no way i would ever work for people like those three. During the interview process you should know something isn't right when they want you to move into their apartment complex and the fact that they had two apartments used just for weight lifting isn't a good sign either.
The only reason they were able to do the damage they did was because people were willing to work for them. And don't give me any of that "I had bills to pay" story, it was the late 90's, tech work was easier had then a job at Denny's.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
And you Americans accuse OBL of being a sick fuck? I don't normally think or say things like this, but reading the replies here makes me think that every one of you who replied "who wouldn't?" deserved to be in that fucking tower when OBL's goons trashed it last year. The peasants on the other side of the world getting their revenge on psychopathic bastards like you.
Unfortunately, it's not just the employees and customers of Website Results that suffer. It's the thousands upon thousands of frustrated computer users around the world that have their browsers behave in inexplicable and maddening ways. It ruins the browsing experience for them, drives them away from buying over the web, and lessens the value and inherent public trust of all of our jobs as a result.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Why aren't these people in jail?
First off, that's not human nature, you fucking sick motherfucker.
Do onto others as you'd have them do on to you. And no, I'm an atheist. It's in your best interest to live by this moral code else you too could end up dead due to the actions of a person much like yourself. So yes, it is in your SELF INTEREST to not kill strangers.
Oh, and you scare the shit out of me, and should kill yourself.
--
First off, that's not human nature, you fucking sick motherfucker.
Wrong. Yes it is. SURVIVAL UNDER ANY POSSIBLE MEANS is human nature.
Do you eat meat? Guess what, you indirectly kill animals for food. How is that any different?
It's in your best interest to live by this moral code else you too could end up dead due to the actions of a person much like yourself. So yes, it is in your SELF INTEREST to not kill strangers.
Wrong. It is in my SELF-INTEREST to take care of me and my family. If it came down to my kid's life or some random stranger's life, I'll keep my kid's life. Similar thing: If I had to sacrifice my life to save my kid's life, I would do the same.
If someone broke into your house at midnight, and you didn't know why they were there, what would you do?
What if you say them brandishing a knife? A gun? What if they were in your kid's room?
Under the right circumstances, you will kill. It's not only HUMAN nature, but ANIMAL NATURE to survive AT ALL COSTS.
It is amazing that people will abhor this kind of a test and then do far worse without even thinking about it.
Every time you buy a cheap product that was made by workers who are put in daily peril of death, you trade a dollar for one-in-a-million chance of killing a worker.
For a real eye-opener that goes far beyone fast-food, read Fast Food Nation (isbn: 0395977894). It's not an easy read, but its quite an eye-opener. A lot of reviews are linked here. Now I understand what some of the protests are about. It makes it hard to go shopping without thinking.
If I have to physically murder the person, and have a serious possibility of getting caught: I dunno, depends on how much I need the money, and what I have to do.
If I have to physically murder the person, and most likely won't get caught: Depends on my mood, and what I have to do.
If I just have to hit a button, and have never seen or known the person before, and ave no way of getting caught, Chances are Yes.
This was past your "Probably" clause regarding your family and is the reason I think you are fucked up in the head.
Of course if given the choice between a family member and a stranger you would kill the stranger, by pointing out this obvious fact to make yourself seem like a Philosophical Giant doesn't exactly work and doesn't help brush over the fact that you claim to be willing to kill for money and not survival.
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I suppose this depends on your definition of evil.
From J. Michael Straczynski's notes on the episode Intersections in Real Time:
The interrogator looked like an ordinary person.
Exactly. The banal face of evil. You look at most of the guys who ran Treblinka, or Bergen-Belsen, and they're largely ordinary looking guys, who could be accountants or repair men or car salesmen. They're *us*...and this was designed to remind us of that. The evil, mustache-twirling villain is too easy, and too far from the truth of it.
This was one of the elements that made the episode interesting for me; most SF tends to ignore the darker sides of the common person. They deal with the big bad guys, the evil federations and Darth Vaders and all the other major forces out there, but all too often the real damage is done not by the single Evil Leader, but by the ten million people who *follow* him, the bookkeepers who track the bodies and the trains and the pain by placing the right figures in all the right columns, who make the trains run on time, who run the gulags, who build the new state empires that will be built with slave labor, any or all of whom could say, as many have, "I was just doing my job."
Not so much "following orders," we've heard that before, applied to the military...but just "doing my job." To the interrogator, he was simply doing his job, and doing it to the best of his ability. It is something he does, then he goes home to his wife and kids, and has dinner, and sits out on the porch trying to forget what he does because he thinks he *has* to do it...assuming he thinks about it at all.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
If not, at what price would you? [scenerio of destitution and desparation snipped]
... I admint the temptation is there, even if I would be unlikely to act on it.
Better yet, for a little irony: what if the person at the other end of the button was Jack Valenti, George Bush, Osama bin Laden? Would your views be different then?
First, if someone is sufficiently despearate for food they will do despearate things. Many (though, very notably, not all) will kill for food under such circumstances, even though the act is considered by most to be immoral even under such extreme circumstances.
However, the question assumes a non-descript, clearly innocent by most definitions, peasant who lacks the power to do any harm (and, quite probably, the desire to do any harm).
Changing it to an opportunity to kill someone who is clearly guilty (e.g. Jack Valenti, Osama bin Laden, etc.) modifies the entire premise.
Being willing to kill Osama bin Laden (who has killed thousands of innocents already and will likely kill thousands more) is not the moral equivelent of being willing to kill a nameless, innocent peasant in a far away land for a cash prize (or for the hell of it), at leat not by the ethics I subscribe to and, I dare say, the majority of good-willed people in the world subscribe to.
So, in my particular case, I would kill Osama bin Laden in a heartbeat without monetary compensation. George Bush I wouldn't be willing to kill under any circumstances I can imagine, despite loathing him and having voted for one of his opponents. Jack Valenti is a gray area
But an innocent (or even not-so-innocent, but never having harmed me) peasant in a far away land? Not in a billion years, not for a billion dollars, not even if my children were starving.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have to disagree....
Survival of your self, your family, your genetic lineage, by any means necessary is not human nature, because those traits are very common in the animal world. It is Mammalian Nature of which you speak. The protection of family, an extension of yourself, to survive.
What differentiates us from animals is our human nature. The ability to live with a code of ethics, to die for a cause that is greater than yourself (for your community, for some immaterial gain, for love, for god, faith, etc.).
Acting out of personal interest and greed is just a complicated mammalian process that is the result of our societies determination of what we need to survive (Money, wealth, prestige).
Acting like a true human is hard. Living by any code of conduct, respecting every living being, having compassion and understanding at the most difficult times, that is the human potential. That is what makes us different from animals.
I read the article and added it to my ".com stories to get sick from" and decided that maybe the internet would be a better place if the people out to make money would just pack their bags and go away. I could do just fine surfing around looking at not-for-profit sites that people run as a hobby and maybe pour a hundred bucks or so a month into. And there would always be USENET, IRC, P2P and other ways to hang out.
I think there may be a place for selling goods and services online -- but marketing and advertising is where the devils congregate...And the second a legit business gets into bed with the devil -- they become evil by association and deserve to spend the rest of their misserable existence with toothpicks holding their eyelids open as they watch their stock go to 0.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Read the friggin article, for god's sake. It's interesting, it's about technology and misuse of technology, and it has little to do with that damn button.
Evil is the money of root.
Or more accurately, Morals are always relative. In some situations its moral to kill a man, in some situations its not. There are no moral absolutes. However, there are things that are right in certain situations and wrong in certain situations. For example, if some guy at a mcdonalds starts randomly shooting people, thats wrong. Morals are generally defined by society. My favorite example is "porn" from the victorian era. Its essentially women in leotards. To them it was totally immoral even to show a bare ankle on a woman, but look at today. Societies change, and as they do, so do morals
Interesting, but the "DO NOT PUSH" probably had something to do with it. If it had just been an unlabled black push-button on the wall, your results would almost certainly have been different.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with the ethical question these clowns were asking their employees. There's a huge difference between pushing a random button (labled or not) and pushing a button when you know that pushing it will result in someone's dieing.
I wonder how much it would take to set up two of these things. One labled "push this: feed a child" and another labled "push this: kill a venture capitalist" (or insert your prefered: Lawyer, RIAA Executive, Marketing drone, etc.). There would be a better test of human nature...
Personally, if it was "Push the button, a spammer dies" I'd keep pushing until the button broke.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Your test is flawed. Big red buttons are attached to alarms. Usually big loud alarms. And anyone pushing the button would set off the big loud alarm, and EVERYONE would look to see who pushed the big red button. Most people do not like to attract negative attention to themselves, therefore they do not push big red buttons.
If it were, say, a small white button, somewhere out of the way, which was obviously NOT an alarm button or a doorbell, I would guess that people would stand in line to push it. People will only act in such ways if there are no obvious consequences.
Religion actually condones killing someone far away, particularly if they don't think like you. I would find it more likely that a Christian (I bet this will be labelled flamebait because I mentioned that religion) would be willing to kill someone far away with the push of a button if they were in, say, the Middle East.
Oh, you probably think I'm going overboard; read history. Note the Crusades. And, before you start judging, my last name is German, and I was born in America, so I have no agenda to perceive by saying this.
Another thought: we have already done this "button pushing". Set the way-back machine and zero in on Hiroshima, Japan. I'm not saying it was easy. It's even holy now since it supposedly ended the war as well.
Ooh, I sense a slashdot poll coming on...
"If you could push a button ...
Fighter pilots do it all the time for considerably less reward. Mercenary soldiers get even more involved in it.
The shock value is that these people are so detatched from the action. But they may not really believe that it would happen, either. Especially if they never see the evidence. Besides, asking someone a question isn't putting it to the test. That said, perhaps it's fair warning to their prospective employees, i.e., "We'll shaft you without mercy for a bit of profit."
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
>Wrong. Yes it is. SURVIVAL UNDER ANY POSSIBLE MEANS is human nature.
This survival under any possible means seems to be comflicted by every person that has died in a war. It would seem that most men that died in WW2/American Revolution/Civil War valued freedom and country over personal survival. (I've only named conflicts with americans because their the ones I'm most familuar with).
Part of being an 'adult' is realizing that you are not the center of the universe, and you must sometimes forgo your needs, ie survival in this case, for a greater good.
work for these goons. I am always amazed at people that will blindly work for criminals.
If you are going to take the risk, get some freaking reward. I can't stand people that will faithfully work for some asshole, even when they know they are getting screwed.
If you are going to work for criminals and low-lifes, be a criminal or a lowlife. Don't just do their bidding. Crime does pay, but only if you are a criminal.
Oh, and if you work somewhere where they want you to live in the same apartment complex they live in, don't do it. And if they ask you to drink the Kool Aid, don't do that either.
No, only the greedy went crazy. Reasonably intelligent people who didn't have extra money to lose and were aware of that had the option of staing with much more conservative options, such as bonds, broad-based mutual funds, the so-called blue chips, or even low-paying-but-guaranteed certificates of deposit.
As for "making it big", it wouldn't be considered "big" if it were easy and common. Your "average" American or citizen of any other major industrialized nation has it pretty damn well off, for instance; I'm sure that there are many, many people in the world who would consider even *getting* into the country "making it big". Hell, illegals sometimes enter, work low-paying jobs with employers who wink at it, and then even save enough to send money back home -- amounts which are quite significant in those areas.
Those who want to make it bigger are better off founding a business than playing the lottery. The odds aren't that great (*), but they're a hell of a lot better than the voluntary Math Tax.
(*) Marx-bait: Go ask the manufacturing unions why they don't use their considerable treasuries for opening up worker-owned collective factories if you don't believe that starting and running a successful business is non-trivial, or that investors incur significant risk. Drive, intelligence, marketing savvy and competence do not guarantee success -- they can only weight the odds.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
What about people who drive 15 MPH over the speed limit and believe in statistics? You know that over the course of a lifetime doing that, you're statistically going to be killing some fractional person, say it's 0.1 persons. That means between you and 10 other people driving like you for a lifetime, you've killed some innocent person.
If the cause and effect is more blurred, such as in this case, is that still evil? I'm talking about people who should know better, who are intelligent enough to know that they're not killing numbers, the 0.000001 person they kill by driving fast TODAY is a real person, today just may or may not be their day for it to kill 1.0 people.
IOW, is it evil to kill in easily avoidable ways, simply out of negligence, to gain some small personal gain (getting to lunch 3 minutes sooner)?
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
-- Stephen Hawking
No further commentary. Make the connections to the article, resp the interview question about that button yourself.
+++ath0
SURVIVAL UNDER ANY POSSIBLE MEANS is human nature.
No, it is animal nature. Human nature is that which is unique to humans, that which is beyond other animals: the ability to reason.
It is in my SELF-INTEREST to take care of me and my family. If it came down to my kid's life or some random stranger's life, I'll keep my kid's life.
Each of your actions is an expression how you think humanity should behave (NOTE: If you disagree with this, then you are somehow exempting yourself from the rules that apply to everyone else).
"In fact, in creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be."~ Jean Paul Sartre ~
Your arguments indicate that you believe it is perfectly fine for families to kill each other if it is in their own self-interest. Thus, you are advocating a return to pre-civilized society. Your judgements about what is threatening are completely subjective and your willingness to sacrifice others to benefit yourself is frightening. What if you managed to create humanity in the image of your beliefs? Modern civilization would collapse and humanity would revert back to small hunterer-gatherer societies each looking after their own. The mark of civilization and morality is that we have developed alternatives to violence. Recourse to violence is only justified when violence is brought against you first.
Your beliefs lead to a conundrum: what if the person you were to kill with that button found out and decided to kill you before he could be killed? Who is in the right? You who are trying to save your family, or the stranger who is trying to save his life? Don't you see the huge problem with this moral relativism? The only possible resolution to this problem is that the initiator of violence is always wrong.
The point the original poster was trying to make is that you would not appreciate it if you or your kid was killed because someone pushed a button. If you don't want it to happen to you, then don't do it yourself.
Similar thing: If I had to sacrifice my life to save my kid's life, I would do the same.
Not even close to a similar thing. Your life is your own; you have no say over someone else's life.
If someone broke into your house at midnight, and you didn't know why they were there, what would you do?
The difference here is that the people who broke into your home initiated violence which forces you to defend yourself.
The moral judgement in all circumstances is "the initiator of violence is always in the wrong." Your willingness to kill by pressing a button when not in immediate danger yourself is thus immoral. Killing a stranger who has nothing to do with your plight to feed your family is also wrong. There is no, repeat NO, moral justification for initiating violence.
Under the right circumstances, you will kill.
Under the moral circumstances, yes.
It's not only HUMAN nature, but ANIMAL NATURE to survive AT ALL COSTS.
It is animal nature to survive at all costs; it is human nature to weigh the consequences of our actions and override our instincts if the costs are too high. I think you should re-examine your view of humanity.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Its like those 'too good to believe' get rich quick schemes that con greedy prats to blow wads big time.
IE, its natural justice & serves the bastards right.
These people complaining about Website Results are like the greedy pensioner who gets on telly complaining about being ripped off his life savings on some silly over-the-top get-rich-quick scheme. Or like those who lost out over Enron or Worldcom that now want socialist regulations to protect their share trades.
AFAIC people who buy shares deserve to get burnt every so often, IE good onya Worldcom & AA.
I actually matriculated on economics & one of the few things I remember is that only when a prospectus is 1st floated is buying shares a true capital investment. Otherwise buying shares (that already existed) is just an exchange of ownership & adds nothing to the productive output of an economy. Just as stamp collectors buying/trading stamps at philatelic meets adds nothing to productive output of those stamps.
All increasing share prices mostly indicate is increasing demand, caused by increasing share prices, IE basically a pyramid scam, which is exactly what the dot-com boom was.
A genuine invester doesn't give a fuck what the value of a share is, as long as the company is doing well & paying dividends, because the value of shares is irrelivent unless you are selling them.
I've got shares in Telstra & I haven't checked their value in years. I know that as Telstra has a virtuall monopoly of most sectors of telecommunications in Oz, they'l always be profitable & pay dividends. So I have no intention of selling them, so why should I care what they're worth. Our family also owns Royal Dutch shares purchased for 500 guineas back in the 1920's, fuck knows what they are worth today. Royal Dutch became the senior partner in a merger with Shell Oil arround the same time. Now if Shell or Telstra went bust due to bad accounting, etc, I wouldn't like it but I wouldn't complain about it, I'm already ahead anyway.
Really at the end of the day, as far as the community is concerned the only thing that matters is the productive output of the company relative to its consumption - Profit is the shareholder concern, productive output is the community concern. Now in the rational world output - consumption = profit, but in our mixed semi-capitalist economies (basically the best there is but not perfect & definitly not rational) that isn't always so. Whether expences are amortized over one year or many years is irrelivent as far as the productive output of the company is concerned, so it makes no difference to the greater community. Even if the company goes bust & the assets are lquidated & taken over by others, the assets will still be 'doing their stuff' so to speak, just for someone else, well that is unless the company decides to burn their assets in a big bombfire. So as far as the community is concerned, companies going bust is mostly irrelivent.
Sure the shareholders get a bum rap but that was their gamble, & every dollar they lose will be made up by some bugger buying up the assets at firesale prices, etc. My responce is 'Who cares?' Again it's another case of natural justice for shares to crash every so often. If people don't want to risk investing on shares that crash they shouldn't buy shares.
Now when it comes to employee entitlements (paid long service leave, acrrued annual leave, etc) & employee superannuation funds (pension plans), if voters arn't willing to vote in a govt that is prepared to start a govt run insurance scheme to cover employee entitlements 'n super (like many European countries have) from corporate collapses, then the public gets what they deserve.
Mindyou, due to tax reasons, there are profitable companies, like MS, that don't pay dividends & just re-invest profits back into the company, knowing that shareholders are better off tax wise on capital gain not dividend income. This is the attitude that fueled the dot-com boom - 'if we don't need to pay dividends, then why make a profit, all we have to do is pump the media with press releases on increasing virtual market share to increase the demand for our shares, because that what shareholders want, not dividends.'
Socialist regulations are JUST not need to protect capitalists - people will always being greedy enough to risk their dollars - look at the billions traded on the (by Western standards) virtually unregulated Hang Seng (well not so unregulated now, but you know what I mean, past tense up to about 1990). If they don't like it there's alway honest hard toil. See what I'm mean. I'd imagine that if thousands of day traders stopped & went back to productive honest toil it would add to the productive output of the country.
Well that's enough ranting, the basic jist is that there's more important things to protect with regulations than corporates & philatelic collectors/cum share traders.
So good-onya, the Website Results triumpherate, hopefully they'l spend some of their ill-gotten gains on soil-regeneration & reforestation, there's hoping.
For shame!
Perhaps you would rather have your dollars taxed by George W. Bush, so he can go "finish the job" in Iraq, where his father's policies have already contributed to the deaths of half a million children. That's just what the middle-eastern tinderbox needs.
When I read posts like the parent comment, I sometimes wish for additional nuclear proliferation. If the more of the third world got the bomb, perhaps they would all the sudden be our close personal friends like Pakistan is all of the sudden. Those nukes have sent more US aid to Pakistan than all the charity commercials on television.