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The Economics of Executing Virus Writers
applemasker writes "Slate.com has an article titled Feed The Worms Who Write Worms to the Worms which argues based on economic theory (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that it is a 'better investment' to execute the creators of worms, virus and trojan authors, than murderers. Anyone who has tried to resurrect a network or computer after a nasty infection may agree. Although the author does not seriously argue for capital punishment for the script kiddies, it does raise some interesting issues about how much 'value' society puts on certain types of harm and the author's view of a government's role in protecting us from it."
Actually, I've found that very few "geeks" want freedom, because freedom also brings with it responsibility. I've found that what many geeks really want is really lack of responsibility. Look at the various "geek issues"... it's all about doing whatever they want with no responsibility or cost. Downloading music for free. Downloading software for free. Creating viruses (it's Microsoft's fault, don't you know).
It's all short-sighted selfishness.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Without capital punishment, we'd have no Easter.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If you know what "hacker" means, why did you use it in that context?
A hacker is "someone who operates a complex system (esp involving a computer) in a manner inconsistent with its designer's intent".
Someone who overclocks a CPU is hacking, just like is someone who sniffs FTP passwords on the net. The authors of viruses and worms are a form of hacker.
Some people, most famously ESR, have attempted to spread an artificial definition of "hacker" as "an extremely competent computer programmer". But they're wrong, both historically popular word-usage is against them.