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Blaster Variant Creator Pleads Guilty
Hello Kitty writes "Robert Parson, the 18-year-old who modified and re-released a version of Blaster last year, is on his way to being made an example of, after pleading guilty Wednesday in a Seattle courtroom. According to AP, he can now look forward to 18-36 months behind bars and -- shades of Kevin Mitnick's phantom damages -- may be expected to pay millions in restitution. And then there's that lifelong 5cr1pt k1dd13 title. of course."
In related news top Microsoft executives are expected to address a grand jury tomorrow morning for betraying the public trust by carelessly releasing software without thorough debugging. Yesterday, Steve Ballmer addressed reporters from Reuters and the Associated Press denouncing the charges. "It's like suing an automaker for selling cars without thorough crash testing and evaluation."
He could have been shot at dawn under trumped up terrorism charges.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
(Hint to foolish wannabe kiddiez: stick to posting 'me toooo!!!!111' on the warez channel du jour. They won't send your sorry ass to prison for that.)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
scum like that ought to pay restitution. don't feel bad!
I don't want to be on this luser's side, but at the same time the punishment should fit the crime. People shouldn't be forced to pay damages that they didn't cause.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Convict: So, what are you in jail for?
Blaster Author: I wrote a computer virus.
Convict: A computer virus killed my family's PC! Now I'll kill you!
A smarter system would have this kid be a digital janitor for a year or so. Disinfect this computer, now disinfect that one. You know, like an intern, and maybe he could get a job out of it when he's done.
More productive than license plates, and more likely to pay society back.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Parson was charged here last August because Microsoft is based in suburban Redmond.
;-)
"We appreciate the fact that the defendant has accepted responsibility for the crime he committed," Microsoft deputy general counsel Nancy Anderson said Wednesday.
He changed Blaster to make it attack the MPAA & RIAA rather then Microsoft.
Microsoft should thank him
My pics.
A Minnesota teenager known online as "teekid" was arrested and placed on electronic monitoring Friday for allegedly unleashing a version of the "Blaster" computer worm that infected thousands of computers.
First for writing the damn thing in the first place
Idiot
Parson apparently took few steps to disguise his identity. As a byproduct of each infection, every victim's computer sent signals back to the "t33kid.com" Web site that Parson had registered in his own name, listing his home address
Second for putting in a direct trace back to himself
Idiot
In court, the high school senior wore a T-shirt that read "Big Daddy" on the front and "Big and Bad" with a grizzly bear on the back. He sported a metal stud under his lip and his hair was dyed blond on top and shaved close around the sides and back
Third for showing no humility in court
... but I think in this case, he *should* be made an example of. Virus writers need to *STOP*. Now.
On the other hand...
The fact that unscrupulous companies will bill in phantom damages just makes it worse. How are these kids supposed to have any role models when the establishment distances themselves from morality for profit? Phantom damages and those who issue them, ought be fined and sent off to jail with just as much enthusiasm as virus writers.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
is on his way to being made an example of
This is not justice. He should get what he deserves, period. Whenever they try to make an example of someone, he or she becomes some marty/icon and the only lesson learnt is: don't get caught doing what you'll do anyway.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Harsh sentence, but I don't have a lot of sympathy. Idiot makes virus, idiot gets caught, idiot gets punished.
Next please.
i can say this: if you don't know enough to keep from getting caught, well, enjoy the penalty. On that note, no, i don't condone doing such a thing, but with the many ways to get online anonymously (no, not some crappy online anonymizer or some such...i mean, the real ways...if you don't know, i'm sure as fuck not going to tell you) you should never be caught....
...unless you are stupid, reuse code, code with the wrong tools (read up), and release from your own fucking email account, etc. The ways to get away with this shit are many, the stupid take-the-easy-way-out folks get caught and the normal user will click away like there's no tomorrow regardless of the source (ask your local IT guy if you don't believe me on that one).
Sorry, no remorse for those that act without knowing enough.
He pled guilty, so he's guilty. good. send him to jail. I've got no problem with that.
But as for the millions, who actually get's the money?
an IT profesionals JOB is to deal with problems, much like blaster caused (and still ocasionally does).
What other costs do these companies incur, as a result of a worm/virus?
Do these companies want money to pay the wages of these tech's?
if the worm did it's job through the use of an OS exploit, why isn't the OS creator picking up part of the bill?
legal fee's I can ken, but the rest doesn't quite make sense to Me...
I'm not the only person who's happy that the asshole that made me waste hours fixing the dozens of idiot-owned unpatched boxes is going to jail?
You can go ahead and blame the user all you want (a popular thing to do in the Slashdot crowd, because of course, us IT people NEVER MAKE MISTAKES), but the user didn't "write" the virus.
The kid knew what he was doing was illegal and wrong. Get over it. He deserves whatever he gets.
Then he'll write a book and become CEO of a startup security company. There's no sense in not profiting from a few months of jailtime.
The judicial system has gotten WAY out of whack. It was bad when Mitnick (Free Kevin!) was tried, but this is just ridiculous. 18 to 36 months for doing nothing significant. Does anyone else think this is lunacy?
got sig?
[google.com] [google.com]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think he just pleaded guilty to being dumb... I hope he didn't tell them about his next script he has modified to start a nuclear war...
All he did was change a little text in the virus. The damage he caused was no worse than if he had simply been infected himself. They just want to make an example of someone. They've spent a lot of money to put someone in jail for much longer than they deserve simply to save face in the public eye. Our legal system is supposed to be just, not popular.
He took a worm and modified it and released it. That's not much different in spirit from what many of us did at his age, playing with tech, poking at it, learning how things work. He just picked something that caused massive headaches to all concerned, so we have little sympathy for the kid. And he seems suitably contrite since his arrest, as well he might since that event probably shook him. But what do we do with such kids? We don't want worms being released, and we want to discourage this behavior. And yes, money is involved when businesses spend time to fix the problems. But asking him to repay "millions" is an order of magnitude wrong. Let's see Kenny Boy Lay repay millions, yes. But this kid?!
Those of us who poked and prodded tech at his age, but did so in a way that didn't cause headaches to everyone, understand a little of his motivation. He was a dope, but a curious dope, and now he's learned a lesson. Will all the other script kiddie types learn from this? No way. What if he is told to pay back "millions"? Nope, they still won't care. We need to rethink how we deal with this sort of headache so that we encourage kids not to mess with worms and stuff, without treating them worse than violent criminals. I don't have the answers, but I can't see how throwing the book at this kid is going to solve much.
In reality, does the possibility of 36 months do anything to deter this behavior, or are we only interested in generating a bitter, and possibly better informed criminal element?
How do you punish someone for engaging in computer crime, and deter those that consider comiting similar crimes?
"He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices that I admire" -- Sir Winston Churchill
Modifying a pre-existing "worm" .... big deal. It only affects a certain operating system -- the holes exploited were very well known, the creator himself did not intrude into anyone's system, the worm did. I say the government should pay 60,000.00+ (the cost of housing an inmate for 3 years) for antivirus/worm software for citizens. Big businesses should be PATCHED already, that's what the IT department is for!!
3+ years served because other people screwed up and didn't keep their systems secure, give me a break.
The worm of course should be sentenced to death with McAfee or the security patch that is made available by the loveable operating system maker.
Maybe a few years of biting the pillow in the pokey will make an appropriate example of him.
When the case is made against Microsoft (or "M$") and how "Windoze" is insecure and should be replaced by Leenucks, the argument is always "the worms and the viruses and malware cost businesses trillions and gazillions of dollars".
But when they nail a dumbass kid who thought he was 1337 and releases a virus (or a variation of one) then it's "phantom damages".
That's great.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Mitnick is a con-man combined with a cracker.
This guy is pure cracker.
dude, "digital janitor" is a clear rip-off of my similar (but funnier) "computer janitor." man, sup wit' dat?
yours faithfully,
rmg
...defend this idiot? He purposely released a variant of a malicious worm. I think it's much more effective to "make an example" out of him, as the poster said, than to let him off with a minimal penalty so other people will think it's cool to try their hand at it too.
Then when you have all the guys on that bus ride to jail, and they're all comparing stories. You got the guy that killed six people, another one who raped several women, then someone who was doing drug dealing. They turn to this lilly kid and ask him what he's in for...he meekly replies, "I umm wrote a computer virus." He realizes his mistake as he sees the smiles on those hardened criminal faces as they have a new cell b****. Then during those nights when this young man cries himself to bed, I wonder if he'll think it was all worth it for a few laughs. Friggin idiot.
Don't side with this guy. Virus writers deserve whatever they get, and usually a lot more. Mitnick's damages were fictional, but damages from viruses are all real. He should probably be liable for a lot more, but he'll never have a hope of ever paying off all of the damage he inflicted.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
"The fact that unscrupulous companies will bill in phantom damages just makes it worse. "
I want all you "Windows TCO is higher because of all the work viruses and trojans put you through, and lost opportunities (money and otherwise)" to read the above. If indeed damages are a "phantom" that basically deflates all your TCO arguments for going with Linux.
Is it really so hard to understand that worms are a *good* thing? For instance, if I had a major server running vulnerable OpenSSL on it, and it got caught by a worm, 10,000 other people would have the same problem, and it'd be easy to remove. Not only that, but everyone would know about it, how to patch it, etc. Now think what would happen if somebody wrote a non-automated tool. They could target my OpenSSL server, steal everyone's credit cards and patch my kernel so i'd never know... *shudder* Give me a worm over an underground exploit any day.
Whatever. I think the court should have made him legally change his name to 5cr1pt k1dd13. Lets see how many viruses he writes (ah.. or steals and re-releases) with THAT.
I can't believe that more people aren't seeing virus writers like this guy and Blaster.b in a more favorable light.
Dinkycrap viruses like Blaster.b are vaccines or learning lessons for humanity and computers in general. It served as a wake-up call to how a buggy untested, security through obscurity, 'no one is a bad person' flowerworld crap software system like MS when coupled to absolutely braindead users and indifferent IT staffers is very vulnerable.
Better to get attacked now when it only saps some productivity, than in the future when someone with designs for evil PWNS the entire damn world, because we coded glib cheery software.
Nature does not suffer fools. The weak and vulnerable are preyed upon and eliminated. The hardy and prepared organisms survive.
Is there any reason it should be any less true with our electronic world?
You think that something etheral as laws are going to stop someone determined to do damage?
before any moderation or replies, let me clarify:
;-)
virus writers are not funny, cool, nor ub3r if they release to the public without first going to the source(s) of the problems (ie shitty programming companies that hire people unable to code out of wet paper bags). The situation becomes sticky when the company ignores you or threatens you (it happens). Well, then go to SANS or CERT, if a red-flag from those two places do not get the attention of afore mentioned shitty programming company, then at least the rest of the community has the knowledge of their shitty product.
Take your pick:
1. code, break, inform and then help the community protect themselves.
2. or be ub3r and "cute", le33t3 (or whatever shit), release into the wild and enjoy your penalty.
What i've not listed there is group 3 - the silent, crafty ones. Not sure what their motive is if they break and never help FIX anything. 'cept sitting at home marveling at how cool they are...which only gets you so far when you are alone
I wonder if any plastic surgeons specialize in anus tightening/restoration.
I suspect this sweet young thing will be in the market for such a service when he gets out of prison.
In court, the high school senior wore a T-shirt that read "Big Daddy" on the front and "Big and Bad" with a grizzly bear on the back.
I bet bubba is dying to meet this guy in the slammer...
...dork. :::snicker:::
He owes a debt and *we* have to start paying for his room 'n board after he loses his job--his means to pay? At least let him work online for an anti-virus or anti-spam company. Don't take away computer access as done with Kevin Mitnick.
This sounds a lot like jailtime to me.
those are not phantom damages to the people who suffered because of it. if someone had to spend time fixing a system or had lowered security because of it, then the damages are real. and if he takes that approach, that there are no "phantom damages" and that it's not his fault, then he will get the book thrown at him because he has no remorse.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
The idea is to make an example out of him not to actually change him. "Corrections Services" don't correct the offender they correct everyone else.
"i can say this: if you don't know enough to keep from getting caught, well, enjoy the penalty."
and
"Sorry, no remorse for those that act without knowing enough."
I'll keep the above in mind next time Slashdot posts about some teenager getting caught downloading copyrighted music.
The kid is getting off light with the damages. People are talking about "IT" departments like everyone is a big company.
Well they aren't. How many home users had to shell out $$$ to have the worm removed from their computer by the local computer shop?
Sign him up on the WinXP sp3 team! Then put a tracker on him and make him live on the MS campus until his sentence is up: restitution and incarceration.
To distract Windows users from that fact that any virus damage was their own fault* future versions of MS Office can have an animation of Clippy buggering the kid in a Microsoft Virtual Pound Me in the Ass Jail.
*through poor system maintenance of an already and inherently insecure system
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle
Dude that was almost 4 years ago. Isn't that excuse starting to wear a little thin down at the unemployment office?
Do you really think that people get dragged away at night and shot like back in the USSR?
Wait what am I asking? Ofcourse you think that. You are a fool and you ought to really get a grip on reality.
Saying that this guy wrote a virus is like me changing the names in The Lord of the Rings and calling myself an author....
While this particular kid may be an idiot and a copy-cat, his perpetuation of the virus (intent and implementation) is nearly as bad as the original writer's efforts. He took a virus and re-wreaked it on the world (or whomever he coould).
I manage a small reasearch lab server and infrastructure. And of course I do tech support for my family. Virus protection, et al, does not always cut it, especially in the first 24-48 hours. That said, we all know security is integral, but people like the original writer and these copycats make the digital envronment dangerous/evil/[choose your favorite adjective], it doesn't start that way fundamentally. (Let's not get in to a discussion of the "nature" of the internet.)
Even with what I consider to be an above-average skill set, an outbreak can waste anywhere up to 30 hours of my time depending how serious and how fast it is. You call my lost time, resources, and users' data "phantom damages"? I most strenuously disagree. Extrapolating these factors to the world's populaton at large and I have no compassion for the guilty, whatsoever. Their terms should be measured tens of years, not months.
MrCool80s
I must admit, restitution seems a bit much, if only because you can't get blood out of a turnip (as they say in the American Midwest). However, a hefty fine should be issued to make a monetary appeal to people not to do these kinds of things. I might also suggest a black mark on his credit report would be in order.
However, he wasn't learning tech. If he wanted to learn tech, there's open source software out there that he could play around with and hopefully produce something the world could use. I know it's a long shot, but playing with open source code is generally much more instructive way of learning tech--by taking apart something that actually works instead of taking apart something that is intended to do damage upon release. I don't know, but when I was a kid, I always played around with things in the hope of finding something useful that I could perhaps one day sell to make the world that much easier for everyone.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
"what most of us did when we were his age" was the functional equivalent of playing with matches what he did was play with matches, burn down the building, and get caught at it. If he only gets 18 months he's getting off lucky
So that's what the "Overrated" moderation option is for. I understand now.
It never ceases to make me wonder when Slashdot tries to support and garner sympathy for jackasses like this guy. I think he got off light.
Yes, Windows is insecure and it made it easy for this script kiddie to do his deeds. But that is totally irrelevant here.
I've also read comments here about how this guy was just "tinkering" and "fooling around with code" like we all supposedly do. Bullshit.
If I use a known-faulty lock on my front door, that does not give you any rights to enter my house or damage my property just to "tinker around" or see if you can do it, no matter how easy it was for you to enter. Likewise, if I build my house out of straw or something else equally flammable, that does not give you the right to set it on fire just because I'm stupid.
The little prick is a criminal, and he deserves to be treated as such. And so does anyone else who writes or intentionally releases viruses or worms. I hope the other criminals have their Vaseline ready.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
They didn't call him a "computer genius" or a "Whiz Kid!"
Best Buy can have you arrested
From your vapid bile and your low(ish) user number, I have to guess that you're one of the oldest MS astroturfers here. In another age you would've whipped - on behalf of the Invisible Silk Co. - the little boy that called the emperor naked, wouldn't you?
Unless you don't think time has any value.
While the Mitnick case was unjust in, that I understand anyway, he "stole" code which he might have gotten if he asked very nicely through a student program, but being hit with exorbitant damages, Blaster and variants costed a lot in bandwidth, productivity losses and cost/time of removal.
How about comparing his "playing around with tech" to somebody "playing around with matches" who purposefully burns down a building? What's the difference? In fact, he probably got off with a lighter sentence for doing more actual damage than a lot of criminals.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Are you beginning to see the flaws in your "logic" yet?
" ...he can now look forward to 18-36 months behind bars and -- shades of Kevin Mitnick's phantom damages -- may be expected to pay millions in restitution."
Great! When do I get my check?
"Derp de derp."
Everyone has stolen code from everyone, that makes a script kiddie of everyone, if you haven't taken advantage of that your last name is no Gates neither Jobs.
When you have coded your stupid "Hello World" in what ever language you started programming with you have fallen in the Script Kiddie category, so stop using it as an expression to deminish others because you'll be deminishing yourself.
A community devided is a dead community.
We can. Anybody can sue anybody for darn near anything. Many have sued Microsoft for various things, and won.
On the other hand, Microsoft is also allowed to:
1. Defend itself from our lawsuits.
2. Sue us back.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
But as for the millions, who actually get's the money?
What money? You are talking about an 18 year old kid, with no college degree and a federal felony record. You think that this punk will be able to get anything more than a $6.50 per hour job pumping gas? He will be lucky to be able to pay rent.
Good luck collecting millions in restitution...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I completely hear what you guys are saying about the wrongness his actions... but still, it gives me the heeby-jeebies that they're going to send this guy to prison for typing.
I should buy some cement.
I hope you get a kid of your own someday.
Might just change your view on things..
Or maybe you're just trolling. It doesn't matter. Whatever you spout is coming from a place of anger and hate. You can't feel the knot in your stomach as you write it, but now you're made aware of it.
It is one thing to buy a sword and try it out in an empty room. It is a different thing to wield the same sword in a crowded store. Anything that you "play" with can get you jailed or killed. That's why it is a bad idea to play with fire or to run with scissors... or to knowingly distribute viruses of any kind.
...make the kid pay off the US foreign debt. It's slightly more constructive. I can't wait till we gets ourselves an FTA and sue him too.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
"What are you in for, kid?"
"Plagiarism"
This guy is a 'scapegoat', or even a 'whistleblower'. How about the ISP who supplied him with the infective agent ? The software vendor who supplied the infectable code ? I expect they both have waivers which will cover them against the possibility of civil liability, but surely they are both in the same boat as him if it comes to criminal liability.
Uhm actually recent brain research has shown that teenagers are *incapable* of realising that there are consequences to their actions- the connections between the left and right side of the brains required to make that link simply do not develop until they are in their early twenties.
Here's an article that describes it in more detail.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
With everything going on in the world an especially here in the good old USofA, I would expect more of you to be realistic to the fact that the Internet is the last partially free society on the planet. Digest this: The vast majority of posters here justify their ILLEGAL downloading of music because of an evil corporation called the RIAA. They control the content and how we are to listen to it while taking a dump on the hands which feed them, the artists and the consumers. I, like these posters, agree...to hell with the RIAA. Support your favorite artists by seeing a show or buying a tshirt. The 10 cents they get from a CD sale doesn't do a whole lot for them. Now, why is it so many would agree with me here but be blind to the fact that corporations are taking over the Internet for one reason and one reason only, their bottom line. Should the Internet be a place to make your millions? Sure, it COULD be but no one should have to make it easy for you. Risk VS reward, tis is the nature of the beast that we call the Internet. I laugh at these IT guys bitching about how it took them 30 hours to clean up blaster's mess. I respond with 2 words: JOB SECURITY. You people have jobs because the Internet is FREE and your job is to protect those who wish to venture onto it in attempt to increase productivity. Its a beautiful thing; some might compare it to the "wild west." Stop letting corporations and government feed you this bull. This kid toilet papered some houses in the digital world.
Now come on, that's not really a valid reason to send people to jail is it? If it were they'd be full of old grannies that take to long to cross the road.
18 year olds are literally incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions. Literally. The problem is that they look an awful lot like us adults despite the fact that they incapable of thinking as adults. See here for details or do a Google on something like "teenage brain research"; it's pretty recent and the law hasn't even begun to catch up.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
"he is forever be known as a script kiddy" (which begs the question, Why? Modifying a virus isn't a good way to make yourself popular).
Script kiddies aren't popular (at least outside script kiddie circles) - they are usually considered the lowest form of life.
* Virus writer: understands how stuff works, spends a long time putting together viruses (this is not right but he's put some effort into it)
* Cracker: again, like the virus writer, understands how exploits work, spends lots of time writing the exploit (again, not right but some effort has gone into it and in the long run it _does_ uncover bugs in software, which might be a good thing)
* Script kiddie: Can't type properly, inserts numbers in everything because he thinks it looks "cool" (actually it make him look like a 12 year old tosser). Uses someone else's virus/exploit code and either uses it as-is or makes some minor modifications. This guy has done absolutely no work in writing the code he's using and almost certaionly doesn't havea clue how it works.
Virus writers and crackers deserve some respect because they understand stuff and work for it, even if it is wrong. Script kiddies don't deserve respect because they don't understand anything, just rip off someone else's code and then think it's cool to compromise a few thousand/million machines.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It talks about Jeffrey Lee Parson. Also the /. story says he's 18. The USATODAY one says 19, though he would have been 18 at the time he released the worm (guessing based on article, I don't know when his birthday is).
Please check the facts before you submit a Slashdot story.
He was in court to plead guilty. He probably knew he was looking at a stretch. Why does it matter what clothes he was wearing?
I used to get stopped regularly by the police. Normally I was just walking along the pathment minding my own business. I was stopped because of my hooded top most of the time - it's cold and wet in the UK. What a world to live in when people judge you by the clothes you wear.
I've heard geeks here complaining about the stick they get... because they look like geeks? So sad.
For the record I've never been arrested or convicted.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
I do *SO* NOT agree. A virus is a challenge to the system. It tests the system. If there were no virusses written, security would simply NOT exist.
I hate mail virusses and spam just as anyone else, but a true virus that manages to infect and spread contains a 2-fold message: OS and App vendors need to get their act together before selling stuff, and consumers need to be more critical of what they buy before they buy, and then learn how to use it.
Virus writers are part of the underground of the PC world. Just like in the organic world, no world exists without an underground, it's a fundamental part of it, a symbiosis. If you destroy the groundlayer, you weaken and eventually destroy the whole system. People need to think more before putting everything into white and black boxes.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Would you imprison a two year old for, well, anything? Why not? Of course because they are incapable of realising that if they stick a hairpin into a power outlet (ie "investigating their world" aka "trying shit out") they might start a fire that burns down their house.
Similarly teenagers are literally incapable of realising that there are consequences to their actions- the part of the brain required to do so simply does not develop until they are in their early twenties. Simple. Scientific. Fact. They might look like adults but they do not think like adults.
Now, how about this lynch mob turn around and go home.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
A) The idiot didn't even write the virus, the real author will write another just to please you.
B) Catching people who write virusses and sentencing them away does not stop others from writing virusses.
C) Writing a virus that takes advantage of security leaks is like journalism, it gets the word out on a defunct security system. It is GOOD that virusses exist, because companies will sell anything to anyone without true user rights and security issue considerations otherwise. It protects us from blind market driven comformancy, and informs users what the dangers are when they trust their machines and the software on it blindly.
D) Virusses create jobs. Lots of jobs.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
but he didn't did he, he showed no compassion for his victims so why should we show him? He wanted to play with the big boys, cause discomfort to countless people, be the though guy. Well now he can be though in jail. Something tells me he is going to be crying for his mommy.
I don't agree with many things american but the saying "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" I can get behind. This guy was no victim of society. He was not a poor man stealing bread for his family. He was nothing more then a little punk who went around smashing peoples car, a thief stealing every bike around because he is to lazy to walk, a parasite.
Sure he was an idiot but an idiot who deliberatly set out to cause other people harm. What do you suggest we do? Give him a 50 dollar penalty? Slap on the wrist? Then he will be boasting in seconds on the net on how the pigs couldn't touch him and his leet hacking skills brought down the net.
No let him rot for a couple of months. I doubt it will send a message to other script kiddies but there is always the element of revenge. Ghandi may have a thing or two to say about revenge but Ghandi also left a country wich now has been at war for 50 yrs with itself and its neighbour. (tamils and pakistan)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
if redistributing were against the law, we could catch so many more people, and get so many more damages... What about a worm that morphs itself, but very rarely, so that random loosers get blamed? And I do agree with the jail time here.
Not a sentence!
Some people have argued here on Slashdot that he is not really more guilty for slightly modifying the worm and sending it out, than for knowingly sending out the worm unmodified. The second would be much harder to prove, but if you could prove it, I think it should carry a similar punishment to the first.
Worms like this use up time from people's lives. They take over people's computers. That's not cool. His version of the worm was estimated to infect 48,000 computers; if you sentenced him to one minute in jail for each minute he wasted from someone's life, that could work out to a bunch of months. If you multiply the time as a penalty (like "triple damages"), you could get a longer sentence than the one he is facing.
In my opinion, the fact that he denial-of-service attacked Windows Update makes the offense worse. Microsoft users really need to go to Windows Update to get the updates to defend themselves against attacks like the Blaster worm. He made it harder for them to do that, and he did it on purpose.
As technology advances, it gets easier to automate things. It's easier now to send a message to all your friends, but it's easier now to spam strangers too. As automation increases, the ability to cause problems for strangers increases. It may seem disproportionate that he just sat in a chair and did a little bit of editing on a worm, and now he's facing all this jail time and financial penalties. You have to balance the damage his worm variant did, not how long it took him to write it, against the punishment.
Some here on Slashdot have opined that the original Blaster author is the real villain, not this guy. They are both villains, and I don't think this guy should go free just because the original author has not been caught yet.
Who is really to blame for this? People who run unsecured Windows installs, or the original worm writer? Is cyber-punk really getting a fair shake, when authorities have made it clear they are making an example out of him?
What lawyer is going to let their client walk in to a courtroom dressed the way he was, and expect to sway the judge?
Why is Microsoft not held liable for an OS full of exploits?
Why are /.ers so angry at dumb cyber-dork and not angry at the company that makes the OS that makes these worms possible, or people that continue to use Outlook Express - when there are alternatives for both?
Is it a /. thing that everyone who goes to prison should be raped? Is anal rape rehabilitation to /.ers?
It's certain that moral values are learned differently by different people, depending on their genetic make-up and environment.
... WE LOCK 'EM UP !!!!
By the age of 18 however, we have been consistently tutored into the meaning of right and wrong by our elders SPECIFICALLY to make up for the variations in individuals' ability to learn the concept of themselves.
In fact, you don't learn right and wrong spontaneously, it's what society and family teach you.
Your argument seems to say that no one should be held liable for their unwillingness to join society as one of its functional members. Well that's weird because it's when an individual breaches that contract that
It's not like society just left people to their own devices and then will-nilly locked them up for random reasons.
This guy knew perfectly well what he was doing.
Take him down.
...it's no great loss to any one individual, but it still means you stole nearly $3 million.
what he did is roughly equivalent. he's being punished accordingly.
i say ban them from the internet 'till they're 21.
Forgive me, but I hope this kid gets all the malice *pounded* out of him in prison. Bastard.
a reasonable punishment would be a ton of community service. this kid should not go to jail. 18 yrs may legally be a major, but by common sense, is not. This reeks of corporations trying to fudge their lame ass EPS's
And then there's that lifelong 5cr1pt k1dd13 title. of course
No 5cr1pt k1dd135 don't even know how to modify virii. They just download them and send them on somewhere else
How does the Money restitution thing work in the USA anyway? we are always hearing on the media how somebody has been sued / fined 1 /10/ 100 million dollars for a crime. How does this work in reality? I'm guessing the 18 yr old in this case has a Saturday job in the local shop, maybe a job delivering newspapers, that sort of thing, few dollars an hour at most, annual income in the region of 5000 dollars if he's lucky. Do they set up some repayment plan over the next 30 years taking a percentage of his income, or what? or is it purely a nominal figure to impress the court and the media and they write it off as he obviously doesn't have 10 million in his piggy bank / teenage savings account?
Time to burn some Karma!!
<rant>
Why does it matter what clothes he was wearing?
It matters because by dressing smartly he could reduce his sentance. If he's stubborn^H^H^H^H^Hpid enough to dress the way he wants then he's going to have to face the consequences of the way people interpret that look.
What a world to live in when people judge you by the clothes you wear.
I sympathise with the sentiment... actually scratch that, no I don't. Of course people judge other people by the way they look. Are you trying to tell me that you can't get clues from a person's appearance? If I see a skinhead wearing a football strip with many tattoos of their football club and a few scars then I DO NOT stop them to ask directions.
You use your eyes to guide your judgements about life and people. Complaining when other people do the same is at best childish and at worst ignorant.
Who are you going to ask for directions?
This guy or this guy?
Who would you rather date?
Her or her?
Him, him or him?
Sorry. Had to throw that last one in.
If you have a problem with your appearance then A) dress well and B) stay fit. That's all you need to do.
</rant>
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
You seem to think that telling the other kids "He did it, cause trouble, on purpose, and we're just going to let it slide" is a good plan. I don't. I'm one of those guys that played with things - that's how I learned. (That's *still* how I learn.) But there is a lot of diffence between figuring out what you can do with a computer and intentionally causing problems with everyone elses that you can.
I grew up around guns, too. Hunting, target shooting, that sort of thing. But if I took one of those same guns and started shooting at people, just 'cause I could, I should be arrested. This kid did the same thing - took what he had, and used it to screw up other people.
I know how to do a lot of things. I could write something, turn it loose, and end up "owning" a lot of computers, which I could then use to run a DoS attack. Inovative? No, not really. Good for anyone? No, not really. Screw them up? yes, it would. Should I be punished if I did? Yes, I should. Neither shooting people "because you can" nor screwing up their computers "because you can" should be acceptable. If I did this, I should be punished.
Him too. If you can't behave in a responsible manner, then you need to have your behavior controlled. Millions of dollars? He doesn't have it, so it's pointless to talk about it. Punishement? Sure, he deserves it.
I'm such a geek. Normally I don't really give a damn about what people think of what I wear.
(It's decent. I'm not wearing a crotchless S&M outfit to work, or anything. If anyone is fundamentally offended the sight of a clean pair of jeans, they're just stupid. And I have better things to do than worry about stupid people.)
However, in this case we're talking a court of law. You don't want to piss off the judge who might, on a whim, give you a suspended sentence or community service or send you behind bars for a few years.
You _don't_ want to look like an unrepentant "fuck you all" rebel to the judge. You don't want to look like you're damn proud of what you've done. (Which is the impression that such a "Big Daddy" t-shirt would have given even me.)
I'm not even saying he should have worn a suit and tie or anything. But, you know, even if you're gonna wear a t-shirt, make it a plain one.
I mean, geeze, wear that t-shirt to school. Wear it at a party. Wear it even to a job interview if you honestly don't give a damn about the outcome. But a court of law is more serious: unlike a job interview, you can't just try again somewhere else.
Basically all I'm saying is that there's difference between not caring about stupid people, and _being_ the stupid one. Freakin' big difference.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I was in the teens, I also had the idea to make a virus. Mind you, back then it meant file or boot sector virus, not an exploit over TCP/IP. We're talking the 80s.
Coding one was actually a very trivial exercise, and I like to think I did a fairly good assembly job of keeping it under 512 bytes, so it wouldn't be too obvious. It also worked.
But here's the catch: even at that kind of age, I was perfectly able to know it was wrong. That virus was only tested and demonstrated to a couple of friends in a controlled non-networked environment, then destroyed. It also carried no malicious payload anyway.
Teenager or not, I think everyone I knew was perfectly able to distinguish the moral difference betweem a "let's see how this works" exercise, and releasing a plague. Some of them might have thought it would be way cool to cause that harm, but I don't think anyone was incapable of discerning that it was wrong.
And let's forget viruses. We trust teenagers with a lot of other stuff.
E.g., depending on the country, you may be allowed to drive at 16 years old. You are trusted to drive a dangerous ton of metal, and not suddenly go running people over.
E.g., in a lot of countries you can be conscripted at 18 years old. And then given an assault rifle and live ammo, and left alone with it for hours, guarding some corner of the compound. Someone incapable of discerning consequences would start shooting at people to pass the time away. But in practice they don't.
So, well, gimme a break. If teenagers can be trusted with an assault rifle or a car, I do believe that an 18 year old is also very capable of understanding what a virus is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's tragic. Laugh.
Clarify: I did say what the kid did was wrong, and that society needs to do something to discourage this sort of thing from happening. I never said to give the kid a pass.
Say: What's with all these analogies? He's been likened to an arsonist, someone who stabs another person, someone who shoots another person. Folks, those all involve dangerous situations with bodily harm and permanent, material loss. Sorry, but that's not what this kid did. An analogy for what this kid did might be to stand outside a business with a megaphone and create such a racket that no one can get work done until he is shut up. It cost that business time and money, but no building got burned down, no one got stabbed, no one got shot. It's a significant difference.
>> do *SO* NOT agree. A virus is a challenge to the system. It tests the system. If there were no virusses written, security would simply NOT exist.
The values expressed by this post are so backward I don't know where to begin.
Virus writers waste resources that could be put to other uses.
Virus writers cause business interruptions.
Virus writers contribute to the flood of spam.
These are real, large costs. And they aren't even countered by "increased security". There's no such thing as absolute security. There's only "enough security". Virus raise the bar for everyone and all they are doing is fighting the viruses. It dosn't serve to block other security problems -- like confidential information beiung passed in plaintext.
Reexamine the costs and benefits of virus writers. This kid brought real costs onto other people. That it was relatively easy to do dosen't exculpate him.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
If he didn't cause the damage then who did? It was a virus that he had created, albeit one based on someone else's code, so who else is responsible for it?
Pretending that he's not responsible for the damage his virus caused because it wasn't solely his own work is narrow-sighted. Suppose someone were to take a fairly harmless human virus, say chickenpox, and tweak it to turn it into a pandemic-level threat that kills anyone infected: would you argue that that person isn't responsible?
Both cases involve taking a virus from the wild and engineering it to cause more destruction. Both should be treated accordingly.
This kid knew the potential consequences of his actions. He isn't someone else's patsy, he's a smart individual who just didn't care about the damage he could cause. It's his crime, it should be his time.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No not backwards, just another view than the one everyone else has.
And yes, the costs are large, devastatingly large, and real, and yes perfect security does not exist. Very annoying, and I hate *that* as much as you do. But if everything is so damn sensitive to breaches, why the hell are we trusting our corporations and institutions with that 'technology' in the first place? It is our job to make sure our kids are safe, our car is locked, our money is in a bank, and our borders are protected. Likewise, it is our job to make sure our digital data is safe, if not, reality is bound to make a wake-up call one way or the other.
Virusses do not solve anything, but they raise red flags. They are the watchdogs of our digital civilisation. Of course that doesn't mean that we don't have to try to minimize the breaches wherever possible, in fact, that's the whole point. However, punishing people for spreading virusses is a reaction that is easy, brings brief relief to the community, and seems just because we invented a law for it. But does it solve anything? Of course not. Why kid ourselves any longer, lapping up the milk each time the can spills over?
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I think that virus writers should help pay for my cable modem and monthly service charges. Since they see fit to degrade the speed at which I can get internet content. Wouldn't you like a faster internet void of viruses?
Its high time people start to wake up and get rid of the attitude that virus writers/hackers aren't really harming anybody. Or that they don't make companies lose money. Whether you want to admit it or not, virus writing/hacking is bad and costs $$ for companys and even for you or I.
You actually had to:
1) Physiaclly hurt someone.
2) Steal something from someone (time didn't count)
3) Pose a real-life hazard to the public.
in order to get that much jail time.
Funny how times change.
Professionals are personally accountable all the way up the chain!
I was administering big iron back in 1976. I administrate Unix servers now. When I read statements such as yours I can only think, "He's not talking about me, surely!" because I do believe that both the company that produces exploitable software and the exploiter should be held equally accountable. If that means that the board and technical staff of Microsoft responsible for the hole through which Blaster penetrated must go to jail, then so be it.
Amen. Personal responsibility for the fall of Western Civilization and all that. Maybe their successors will be a little more careful.
Is Robert Parson. His Name Is Robert Parson. His Name Is Robert Parson. His Name Is Robert Parson. .....
Seriously, as a fat guy I never imagined kids could be that fat. I mean, I had a tiny paunch at 18 but not a lipidic halo erupting from my face. I keep thinking that there are lots of other slightly-fat middle aged people now, when this kid is my age will his enormity be the new standard for regular fatness? Kevin Mitnick's fatness level was just right, but this kid takes the cake. And some donuts.
You may be laughing, but this kid is the geek ambassador. Someone a lot thinner and better-looking needs to commit a higher-profile cybercrime, and soon. Why oh why was Adrian Lamo not a bigger story? Where's Jonny Lee Miller when you need him?! </gay>
Interesting article. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but definitely thought provoking. But if you think it through to its logical conclusion, what you are saying is that teen agers, even up to 18 years old, should not be held accountable for their actions, and that we, as society, should restrict/protect them. So Parsons' legal gardians should be going to jail?
They are, in some cases, the same people.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
We use technology in our business becuase it makes the employees more productive. We do Internet commerce because it reduces the cost of getting product in front of purchasers and it makes the purchase easier for both. Software is a multiplier good which increases
But, becuiase there are miscreants who wish to coopt the system to their own ends, we have to waste some of that productivity gain in fighting off the miscreants. And it's an ever accelerating battle.
Secturity is not an end goal. It is a process. You can buy as much security as you can afford and still not be 100% protected from miscreants. Money spent of fighting spam and viruses is, by and large, wasted money.
I just can't see how you can defend virus writers. It's vandalism pure and simple.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
His name was Robert Parson. His name was Robert Parson!
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
I have no sympathy for Robert Parsons. In my mind people who write viruses and release them are terrorists and should be treated accordingly. Hey, don't do the crime. I think he got off too lightly.
An eye for an eye?
I see it as absolutely pointless to revenge criminals -- it's an absurd thought that you can deserve to have harm done upon you because you harmed someone else. The only valid reasons for "punishment" there can be is to protect someone else and/or to rehabilitate.
I believe "Society" (you and I) should show everyone compassion, including criminals, and we'll be better off for it.
Dude, Tamils is Sri Lanka, and Pakistan wasn't Gandhi's fault, you can blame Mohammed Ali Jinnah for that one.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
QUOTE
We appreciate the fact that the defendant has accepted responsibility for the crime he committed," Microsoft deputy general counsel Nancy Anderson said Wednesday.
UNQUOTE
I believe that Microsoft has to bare some of the
responsibilty for this too. It was their bad
software that made it possible.
What a fat bitch. His rolls will ripple and jiggle with each thrust of bubba's cock. He's gonna get in touch with his feminine side real quick. By the time he's released, he'll be able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, and his sphincter will be big enough to hide a VW bug.
What you're doing here is just being contrarian. Its always been agreed by philosophers that revenge was as potentially valid a reason for punishment as rehabilitation or protection. The reason for picking one over the other two (and of course, you needn't only pick one) is always going to be your larger overarching ethos.
You simply assume that revenge is an invalid reason, without providing any argument thereof. Worse, you call it 'absurd' to believe in vengeance, almost definately creating an ad hominem argument since you [again] haven't provided an argument.
You want a valid reason for vengeance? One is that it can be preventative, i.e. a deterrant. Obviously it cannot be in one-hundred-percent of the cases, but thats why most justice systems are hybrids [of two or three of the purposes for punishment]. Want another reason? Vengeance is capitalist: it suggests that there is a value to all things, i.e. goods and services including people and property, and that you are responsible for making retribution to the value you take from someone: if you take their hand, you deserve to pay the price you unfairly exacted from them. No one suggests that it makes everything 'even' or 'square', but rather helps appease the pain of loss for your victim[s]. Want still another? In some cases [such as literally plucking an eye out, removing a hand, or killing the criminal], the vengeance may accomplish one or both of the other goals [protection or rehabilitation] by preventing the criminal from even being capable of recommitting the crime.
Here's the thing: I'm not advocating vengeance as a purpose in justice, but rather suggesting that it is no where near as cut and dry as you want to believe.
"Stumble before you crawl"
i cant see giving him 3 years of jail time for this. how much time has ken lay served? or jeff skillling.
is Robert Parson.
(chorous) His name is Robert Parson.
Looks like another member of Project Mayhem has died.
And you're misinterpreting the meaning of the research you're referring to. (I've studied some of it before; that article is rather misleading.) Yes, an 18-year-old kid does not think in exactly the same way as an adult. That does not mean that he can't think about consequences, and it certainly does not mean that he bears no responsibility for his actions.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Ethos, true. Doesn't it make sense though to maximize the benefit to society, if we're going to spend all this time/money/effort to punish people. Revenge maximizes the benefit to no one, whereas rehabilitation reduces the chances that this person will do it again. Revenge merely perpetuates the cycle of violence, on all levels, personal and society. In fact, you're living in a society (I'm assuming USA which I prolly shouldn't) dealing with the consequences of revenge punishment. These are prisons filled to the brim with nonviolent offenders and the almost inevitable return to crime of those who emerge.
Since he didn't do major personal damage to people, I'm all for giving him a slap on the wrist ... by each of the people who had to clean up his unwanted crap on his computer.
Each of us has a limited life. These dorks steal that time. Now if we had a machine that could age him a few hours for the time he stole from each person, would he still be alive?
Ditto for the spammers and spyware writers.
It is much worse in America. This is a country that is obsessed with appearances, uniforms.....group identity.
A few years back, a wealthy Hispanic friend was given a used Porsche for his birthday. Whenever he used the car, he dressed in slacks, oxford shirt, and tie. His normal look was skater-geek, and wearing that typically resulted in him being pulled over and grilled on suspicion of car theft. Dressing well lessened, but did not halt, such police attention. He received more than the usual share of tickets on top of it.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
But, becuiase there are miscreants who wish to coopt the system to their own ends, we have to waste some of that productivity gain in fighting off the miscreants. And it's an ever accelerating battle.
Secturity is not an end goal. It is a process. You can buy as much security as you can afford and still not be 100% protected from miscreants. Money spent of fighting spam and viruses is, by and large, wasted money.
I just can't see how you can defend virus writers. It's vandalism pure and simple.
That's all very well and very true, but at the end of the day, your systems, secured or not, are going to get attacked by malicious persons. Instead of simply waiting for the court, police, justice dept, brother in law or the local mob to spend their energy into the bottomless pit of chasing the bad guy (tm), which as a matter of fact is also payed by your corporation, your emplyees, the coffee-lady and her dog, why not invest in making it less possible to get attacked in the first place? Your corporation should be able to trust the 'guaranteed safety' when using a solution, and that trust should be earned by the one delivering the software/hardware. On a construction yard, you don't use a crane that is not sufficiently safe for the workers to work with, and you don't want that crane tipping over on the construction you're completing.
If I declare it illegal for cats to walk onto my lawn and poo between the plants, does that prevent cats from messing on it? No. Do i need to kill the cat to solve that problem? No. Do I need to keep the cat in my cellar? Maybe, if you're cold blooded. Can I prevent that the cat returns by using special anti-cat sticks between the plants? Yes.
[Mental note: The cat will go somewhere else instead..]
One small thing: I'm not defending virus writers. I'm saying virusses are good because they sound the alarm when it comes to security. They keep people on their toes, and they raise the level of awareness about digital security. I think that's good, not because I want everybody paranoid, but because I'm fond of my personal privacy, and I think most other people are too, and I'd like us all to enjoy that as much and as long as possible.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Does it bother anyone that he may have to pay damages that can't be clearly calculated, but rather are guessed at? Most business don't cost employee's time in project proposals, since those costs are considered 'soft'. Yet, when it comes to court damages, suddenly those costs are 'hard'.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Yeah, but good luck getting those millions of pennies cashed in
No ! Not that, anything but that !
Surely this would be considered a cruel and unusual punishment by any standard.
Dean G.
While I am in agreement with you that the Blaster variant creator should have to do the time, there are several problems with your argument:
1) We live in a democracy here in the US, with an independent judiciary. The basic purposes of an independent judiciary dates back to Locke and Voltaire, writers fresh in the minds of the Constitution's Framers. The purpose in point is that revenge is an unacceptable goal in punishment - this is why the victim does not dictate penalties. The purpose of incarceration is to a) protect society and b) force the perpetrator to think about his/her actions.
2) India is not at war with the Tamils. Sri Lanka, an independent island nation, is at war with Sri Lankan Tamil rebels. Indian Tamils, from the province of Tamil-Nadu, are not at war with the Indian government.
3) India has never sought revenge against Pakistan (they have never crossed the border), and that is probably the reason the two nations have not gone to nuclear war.
An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
He wasted his talent and I use that term loosely on rewriting virii. I think a better solution is keep him out of the overcrowded system, and put his ass to work pouring over hours of logs doing forensic analysis for companies. Otherwise keep his ass of a computer for the rest of his life.
As for phantom damages, they don't expect these people to pay that, take Mitnick for example what was it 80 to 800 million? At $300 a month it would take him roughly 222 thousand years to pay back.
If I were Mitnick I'd say FUCK YOU bill me.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
The t-shirt thing w/ big daddy was what he wore on the day he was arraigned - several months ago. As in it's what he was wearing the day they picked him up, so you can't fault him for wearing that to court (although you're welcome to fault him for just wearing it out in public).
Yesterday he was in an ill-fitting suit, having watched it on the news here in seattle, and had 'normal' hair. Still looked like a tool but certainly was showing respect to the court.
to email me: take my
Robert Morris, Jr. sold his company (Viaweb) to Yahoo! for $50 Million and is a professor at MIT. Also, first worm writer, and first person to be indicted under the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act of 1986.
Mitnick has his name on old t-shirts and faded bumper stickers.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
He took a worm and modified it and released it. That's not much different in spirit from what many of us did at his age, playing with tech, poking at it, learning how things work.
Except for the whole "released it" part.
Some of us may have built potato cannons when we were young, too, and there's certainly a legitimate educational experience to be found there. But if we used those cannons to smash the windows out of automobiles, that wouldn't be educational, it would be destructive and meritless.
There's a line where curious tinkering becomes malicious activity, and the kid crossed it.
Really, it should not be a question of revenge, but one of punishment. Crimes are, mostly, crimes for a reason. Criminals should be punished in accordance with their crime. The idea of cruel or unusual punishment should ALWAYS be taken in context with the crime.
:)
Jails should not have free luxuries like TV.
Prisoners should HAVE to work for their keep.
Does anyone have any proof that anyone has ever been rehabilitated? Really?
Enough buttons pushed yet?
Seriously though, most people who say they are sorry are only sorry they've been caught. As soon as you look away they will go one doing whatever they want. For many people no amount of punishment will change them, for many punishment makes them (try to be) more careful. Some people turn to crime because they don't think there is any other way, these are the ones that can be helped, given another way. The rest are just psychopaths, too bad we have no place to exile them to.
Nothing to say here... move along
I see from your response that this comment isn't a decent troll which was my first thought.
If the accused wanted to "play" with the worm, he could have just seen what it did on his own network. But by releasing it in the wild, he was knowingly putting something out there to cause others grief. The arson analogies are a bit much but the potato gun one is a good one. Most of us did spend a lot of time with Lego and 500 in 1 kits but we didn't put them to destructive use, nor would (most of us) ever consider it.
I have a few rootkits I have salvaged from compromised Linux systems and they are interesting to analyze but I sure as hell am not going to use it on someone else's machine.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
hopefully did prison terms.
i went to high scool with the guy and he's not even a decent programmer, but just some wannabe geek who wrote a check his tush couldn't cash. he really shouldn't be getting a lot of jail time.
(IANAL.)
Who gets sued when damages come as a result of security flaws in open source software (and yes, such flaws do exist)?
The author of the software, of course. For most open source software, this would effectively prevent a lawsuit, since most open source developers don't have deep enough pockets to make it worth the trouble. For the stuff written by e.g. IBM, though, you bet they'd have to be careful. (Note that the proposal is really to allow consumers to sue over gross negligence, not just the existence of a security flaw.)
In reality of course, most software comes with disclaimers saying the company is not liable for such damages, so this whole issue is moot.
In reality, the legal status of such disclaimers tends to be highly questionable. I can put a disclaimer on my Happy Fun Ball (TM) saying I'm not responsible if it explodes and kills your kid: trust me that this isn't lawsuit-proofing. There are many kinds of liability that cannot be disclaimed. The principal reason for such disclaimers is to discourage licensees from suing, not to protect the licensor from judgement.
I feel sorry for the guy. Yes he's not very mature...
But many of the people I know working for Sony, Microsoft, Ernst & Young, banks, BASF, etc cracked games in the old days. They learnt their skills that way and now they program much better than those that only went through university. You learn by playing, and computers were our playground.
Now the playground is full of people carving it up "my patent", "my copyright", "my IT infrastructure", wanting to own it and not allowing those that made it to continue exploring it.
What you're doing here is just being contrarian. Its always been agreed by philosophers that revenge was as potentially valid a reason for punishment as rehabilitation or protection.
Just out of curiousity. Which philophers argue that revenge is a valid reason for punishment? I would argue against those philosophers as I will argue now against you.
You simply assume that revenge is an invalid reason, without providing any argument thereof. Worse, you call it 'absurd' to believe in vengeance, almost definately creating an ad hominem argument since you [again] haven't provided an argument.
Dismissing an argument by simply labeling it ad hominem then name-calling the arguer as being "simply contrarian" is an ad hominem argument itself, and far worse, it is ad personum.
The fact that revenge is absurd is easy to establish. And obvious to anyone with any sense or intelligence beyond the preschool level. No. It is "you" who are simply being contrarian. You are arguing a position that you could not possibly believe in.
Furthermore, you are using argumentum ad vericundiam by deferring to the authority of the 'philosophers'. Philosophers you do not even bother to identify. Philosophers which obviously do not exist, unless they are as contrarian and senseless as you. Your reliance on the authority of these so called philosophers isn't going to fool anyone.
You want a valid reason for vengeance? One is that it can be preventative, i.e. a deterrant. Obviously it cannot be in one-hundred-percent of the cases, but thats why most justice systems are hybrids [of two or three of the purposes for punishment].
But "deterrence" is already one of the stated purposes for punishment. Therefore courts are free to apply whatever remedy will accomplish deterrence. This may include causing reasonable harm to the convict, that can be justified by the benefit of the deterrence.
Because the court is already free to achieve as much deterrance as it deems to be justified, the kind of revenge you must be advocating, is the kind of revenge that actually does not provide deterrence.
Want another reason? Vengeance is capitalist: it suggests that there is a value to all things, i.e. goods and services including people and property, and that you are responsible for making retribution to the value you take from someone: if you take their hand, you deserve to pay the price you unfairly exacted from them.
Clearly you must agree therefore that revenge has no place in a socially just society, as capitalism has absolutely nothing to do with justice.
But even though you agree that revenge is not appropriate in a just society, your argument does not favour revenge in a capitalist society.
The victim gets nothing of any worth of the revenge. No capital. Furthermore, your premise that a principle of capitalism is 'making retribution to the value you take from someone' is utter nonsense. The principle of capitalism is making MORE than the value you take from someone, or in the alternative paying less. Buy low... sell high. No capitalist would invest money in an enterprise, if their only hope was to get exactly the same amount of money in return. They could just hang on to their money and make the same return.
No. It is CRIME which is capitalist. And it is CRIME that you are advocating when you advocate revenge.
No one suggests that it makes everything 'even' or 'square', but rather helps appease the pain of loss for your victim[s].
only if your victims are sadists or cruel.
However, when you are on the topic of appeasing the urges of the cruel and the sadistic: couldn't giving the victims a 'free pass' to commit murder and mayhem also appease such urges? Why is it better to inflict unjustified harm on the criminal, rather than on the innocent? That is.. if appeasement (rather than actual justice) is your only argument in favour of revenge.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
We got our man sergeant!! Move along folks.. Nothing to see here.
"Just out of curiousity. Which philophers argue that revenge is a valid reason for punishment? I would argue against those philosophers as I will argue now against you."
Offhand, I can name a few. Plato, Draco, Hamurabi and others. The pragmatists (incl. many utilitarians) such as Mill also discussed such a possibility [as vengeance being appropriate], and accepted if there could be a demonstrated increase in utility due to the vengeance. If the vengeance accomplishes deterrance, as I suggested, then it would be acceptable.
"Dismissing an argument by simply labeling it ad hominem then name-calling the arguer as being "simply contrarian" is an ad hominem argument itself, and far worse, it is ad personum."
You're completely wrong, and clearly don't understand the words you're using for several reasons: first, the phrase 'ad hominem' is an argumentative term and one of the most dangerous logical fallacies. It refers to when you attack the person without addressing the argument, which is meaningless since an argument stands on its own merits, not that of the person giving it. Second, 'ad personum' is not a phrase with similar meaning: ad personum means "on a personal basis" and refers to the method by which you determine whether someone violated a rule. Try looking up things you don't understand before using them in arguments. Third, when I called the poster "contrarian" I was not suggesting that was a flaw in the argument, but rather commenting on the apparent motivations of the person. My disagreement with their stance was based solely on my logical points.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your points, since I don't feel any of them are anything but repetition of your claim that revenge is automatically bad. I will however mention that you again misuse a few terms: "prima facae" means "on first glance" or "without analysis", and refers to problems with a hypothesis (or claim) that are apparent without any discussion. In other words, they're points that can be made immediately, without argumentation, from the initial claim. In the way you use it, following two argumentative steps, its innapropriate. Further, you misuse the terms "cruel" and "sadistic": the former is an adjective/adverb which primarily refers to people/behaviors which are defined by a purely malicious character, while the latter is an adjective/adverb referring to people/behaviors which are defined by the character of enjoying the unrighteous suffering of others. You misuse them in the following way: a victim inflicting revenge is being neither cruel (since the revenge is not malicious, but rather extracting fair payment and punishment) nor sadistic (since, again, there is no malicious or unrighteous behavior).
"Stumble before you crawl"
Viruses are like graffiti. There are people who admire some graffiti for its artistic merit. But when I sit on a subway train and I'm faced with someone's tag, my day is not improved.
Virus are vandalism. It's wrong to write and release them. The people who do so should be punished.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
We'll see how "Big & Bad" he feels after he's been ass-reamed numerous times in jail by someone who actually is.
Like you said if you have a problem with your appearance? What about me as a young black man except for the glasses no geekness to him. Yet if I wear the same football jersey any other fan would with some baggy jeans (not too baggy and not sagging) and im walking into work to check my schedule and a few elderly women my clutch there purse just a bit more or change there mind about leaving the cat door unlocked as I walk by. I am nowhere being entirely menacing or anything and get along with everyone that knows me but what sombody thinks they see often lead to fale judgements. Like an Iranian friend of mine, nobody seems to be able to tell the diff between sombody of iranian and afghani descent and he gets some stairs and is given a hard time every so often. But as you say I should stop my complaining because my ignorance of the social norm is clouding my judgement.
I believe the amount and methods of payback are mostly up to the judge. Two common methods are to seize property (attachment) and to take a percentage out of a paycheck (wage garnishment).
The court is generally careful to work out a payment scheme that doesn't ruin the guilty party, but sometimes restitution is too strict and sometimes it is not enough. I don't think they expect this guy to be able to pay millions, so "full" restitution would almost certainly be some money here and there that doesn't at the end add up to the full amount but is enough to negatively affect his lifestyle.
He's pleading guilty, which means he almost certainly can't appeal and get another trial and judgement (although I think there might be the slim possibility if he argued his legal counsel was ineffective). I don't know if there are circumstances in which the court could later forgive him part of his restitution/fine, or how likely that is to occur. He can't escape the restitution/fine by filing bankruptcy in the future.
Viruses are like graffiti. There are people who admire some graffiti for its artistic merit. But when I sit on a subway train and I'm faced with someone's tag, my day is not improved.
Virus are vandalism. It's wrong to write and release them. The people who do so should be punished.
Ok, every man his own beliefs, brother.
Peace.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
you need to grow up, no surprise that you write the drivel you do.
You're completely wrong, and clearly don't understand the words you're using for several reasons: first, the phrase 'ad hominem' is an argumentative term and one of the most dangerous logical fallacies. It refers to when you attack the person without addressing the argument, which is meaningless since an argument stands on its own merits, not that of the person giving it. Second, 'ad personum' is not a phrase with similar meaning: ad personum means "on a personal basis" and refers to the method by which you determine whether someone violated a rule. Try looking up things you don't understand before using them in arguments. Third, when I called the poster "contrarian" I was not suggesting that was a flaw in the argument, but rather commenting on the apparent motivations of the person. My disagreement with their stance was based solely on my logical points.
...and refers to problems with a hypothesis (or
Have you ever heard of the story of the trolls who were planning to eat the hobbits. They argued about how to do it for so long that the sun came up, and the trolls were reified. I am trying to find your argument but it seems to be lost in all the words.
'ad personum' is not a phrase with similar meaning: [as ad hominem]
I didn't say it was. You are generalizing my argument beyond its original scope.
An argument can suffer from both fallacies. And yours did.
Third, when I called the poster "contrarian" I was not suggesting that was a flaw in the argument, but rather commenting on the apparent motivations of the person.
So now you are arguing that in fact, what you were doing was making an irrelevant personal remark rather than actually attacking the argument? What logical fallacy is more "dangerous"?
Moreover he did give an argument in support of his contention. compassion.
Try looking up things you don't understand before using them in arguments.
Before I rely on any of your points in any future argument I will certainly "try" looking them up. However, I don't suspect I'll find them. They make no sense.
I'm not going to bother with the rest of your points, since I don't feel any of them are anything but repetition of your claim that revenge is automatically bad.
I claimed no such thing. You are incredible.
I will however mention that you again misuse a few terms:
No I don't.
"prima facae" means "on first glance" or "without analysis",
That is how I used it.
claim) that are apparent without any discussion. In other words, they're points that can be made immediately, without argumentation, from the initial claim.
You seem to be arguing that Prima facae means, "at no glance" or "without logic". It doesn't.
It simply is a threshold of proof which precludes any analysis which would require a weighing of evidence.
Your literal translation although fine, still leaves your explanation wrong.
To say that "The act of revenge is moral in a general case" is prima facae wrong because "on first glance" and without a "weighing" of any facts pertinant to a specific case, and accepting all the arguments, which are not self contradictory or irrelevant or logically false, one will conclude the act is wrong.
Prima Facae does not mean universally true. Just because I say revenge is prima facae wrong, it does not mean that I am claiming that in particular cases after a full analysis, on a second (or third or 10th) glance, revenge can not ultimately be proven to be good.
I believe revenge will not be proven to be good, however I argue that the onus is not on me to prove this.
In the way you use it, following two argumentative steps, its innapropriate.
Without weighing any of the specific considerations, one can prove revenge is prima facae wrong. If that can be done (and it was), the onus would be on the proponent to argue for it. Not the other way aroun
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
What a contrarian is I don't know, but all the google hits seem to have something to do with investment and capital. Perhaps revenge could be argued against on contrarian grounds, but since I have made no real arguments -- only claims -- I don't see why you say that.
You're absolutely right, I give no arguments against revenge. I can't see that calling the idea absurd really consitutes an ad hominem argument since I have not said anything about the person making the orginal claim. Let me instead turn to my reasons for opposing revenge.
Definition. By revenge I mean an action which harms the reciever, and the reciever deserves to be harmed. Perhaps my definition of revenge does not fit all the actions which someone might say is revenge, but for purposes of this discussion, I need a word to describe the action of harming because harm is deserved.
What I should actually do is claim that revenge cannot exist, since I believe that harm cannot be deserved. Unfortunately for me, this belief is unprovable unless all possible arguments to the contrary can be anticipated and falsified. An example will shine some light on why I hold this belief.
If someone takes your bike you may rightfully take it back. Not because the taker deserves to be harmed (by having the bike taken away), but because you have a right to your bike (here making the assumption that there is some sort of property right and that in this case it is not displaced by a more fundamental right). As far as I can see, taking the bike from the taker only makes sense if it restores the bike to you. There are of course limits to this (e.g. if the taker faces great harm (death, starvation or similar) when you take the bike back then you must not do so). Taking revenge on the taker after the bike has been restored to you only makes sense (by my definition) if further harm is deserved. The burden of proof should lie on (s)he who claims that harm is deserved in this or any other case.
I have not claimed that harming criminals can never be morally right, but rather that revenge -- doing harm because harm is deserved -- is impossible because harm cannot be deserved. Your reasons for vengeance (which I must read as punishment so as not to equate it with revenge) may or may not give support for punishment, but they do not show that harm can be deserved (and of course I couldn't ask that they do since it I did not define exactly what I mean by revenge in my original posting).
Although not of any moral relevance, I see "eye for eye" as savage and somewhat childish. If the desire to retaliate and getting some satisfaction (peace of mind) from it is a natural part of a human psyche, I really do think that it should be supressed to the fullest extent possible. More morally relevant: assuming a moral of rights, it cannot be just to violate a criminals right to life and liberty to satisfy the victims right to peace of mind, because if such a right exits I am almost certain it is of a lower standing that the right to life and liberty. On utilitarian grounds I don't doubt that such treatment could be right (or even a duty) if there are enough people who derive satisfaction from seeing the criminal punished. The debate is endless (well not really) and it is not the question I am really concerned about.
In any eveny, it is true that the question at hand is not "cut and dry", and I thank you for pointing this out.
I'll assume you meant, "deterrent" and, furthermore, I'll assume you've never done anything despite "deterrents".
Actually, it's an old argument and one that has been clearly shown to be relatively valueless. It's commonly known as "the carrot or the stick." For a clear example of the uselessness of the stick method, simply imagine two schools, one uses carrots, the other sticks. Which would you send your child to?
By the way, in my personal experience and humble opinion, vengeance and violence are only used by those who are simply too incompetent to adopt a more mature and responsible methodology.
On this note, to me it seems commonsensical that responsibility for crimes by juveniles should be visited upon the juvenile and their guardians. No?
Words to men, as air to birds.
I am nowhere being entirely menacing or anything and get along with everyone that knows me but what som[e]body thinks they see often lead to fal[s]e judgements.
The judgment on your appearance is not going to be consistent across races, cultures and age. For every granny that locks her cat door there's a young kid who thinks you're cool. Who are you trying to impress? The grannies, the ladies, the guys or the kids? Your social group or, in the case of the MORON who got locked up, the judge sentancing you.
But as you say I should stop my complaining because my ignorance of the social norm is clouding my judgement.
Stop complaining because it's not something you can fix by whining about it. Dress smartly, don't look like a fricking thief and ignore the assholes who judge on skin colour.
Sorry but as a white guy whose lived on an island where 99% of the population is black/indian I get prejudice based on my skin colour too. I don't whine so get on with your life. If you pay attention to racists you give them credence.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
No, I wasn't trolling, I was quite serious. The problem with being thoughtful and introspective at a time when the crowd wants blood is you get picked apart as being "too soft." I said the kid did wrong and it needs to be stopped. All I meant is that the approach the feds have been taking isn't working to discourage this sort of behavior, and we as a society need to find a better deterrent, whatever that may be.
What about the people who coded the popups when I browsed to the website to read that article? Shouldn't they be prosecuted too?
kid gets out of jail, known felon, what kind of job can he get? Say he gets fined for millions, (the maximum fine is 1/2 million, plus the "damages", [and who gets it? The victims? ha.] ), any job he gets, he forks it all over, except survival money, I suppose. He can NEVER get out from the debt. What's he going to do, go to a fancy law school so he can MAKE MONEY FAST and get out of debt? (As if felons are accepted to law school.) No, it's hopeless. Only thing to do is say fuck it all. Underground criminal for life. The kid has got no way to go straight even if he wants to. Sounds like a life sentence to me.
"Are you now arguing that this only applies if you didn't know that your decision was a poor one ?"
Well now it wouldn't really be foreseeable otherwise, now would it?
"I'd say that all my examples were foreseeable consequences of your own decisions."
But in case you missed it, I had more criteria than it just being a foreseeable consequence of your own decision.
"Take a route through a bad part of town and it is foreseeable that you might be mugged."
Only if you have physic powers.
"It seems to me that this would equate not charging the perperator."
Well thats because you are an idiot. I am talking about metaethical issues here, not legal ones. Need any help understanding the difference?
"I'm assuming that you meant to say "unless the junkie gets sick or dies"."
Actually I did say that.
"Murder ? The junkie knew the dangers, and chose to accept them. No one forced him to take the heroin. "Murder" implies the dealer ended the junkies life purposefully; no such thing has happened."
Not according to the definition of murder. But fine, manslaughter if you want to nitpick. Still illegal.
"Think of it this way: if you play russian roulette by yourself with one pull of trigger per night, is whoever sells you ammunition (knowing of your habbit) a murderer when you lose ?"
Thats so dumb it doesn't deserve another thought.
"And if I work in a hamburger joint, and a really fat man comes in and orders a hamburger and french fries, am I a murderer to sell them to him ?"
Is a halfway relevant analogy coming soon?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
cool, cheers. So actually the teenager ends up getting a fine of 500 dollars or so? something big enough to make him go "ouch" and have to sit at home and watch tv with his mum and dad for a year while his friends are out on the town, but not sending in the local officials to vacuum clean his room for anything worth more than a dollar? Is the 10 million fine then nominally put in place as a precedent (UK law works on precedence as I understand) so if a company/ rich adult with more like this kind of money commits the same offense, the prosecution can request a fine of this amount because there is a precedent for doing so?
Couple of things, though off topic:
It's Gandhi, not Ghandi.
India is not at war with Tamils. Tamils are the people in the state of Tamil Nadu which is a part of India.
Some Tamils emigrated to Sri Lanka a few centuries ago even before India became a republic. These people (Tamils in Sri Lanka) are Sri Lankan citizens and not Indians.
Some of these Sri Lankan Tamils (a militant group called the Tamil Tigers, aka LTTE) are at war with the Sri Lankan government.
Better brush up your history and geography.