Let me make something clear to any would be members of these groups or individuals who think hackers are cool. If you are a hacker expect to go to jail. Don't protest or do anything which isn't worth going to jail for. Most of the hacks these individuals participated in were not the sort of stuff that in hindsight they will believe was worth sacrificing their life for.
These individuals may not be physically dead but they have no future, no career. The rumored snitch Sabu has it the worst because if what they say about him is true he's not going to be accepted in the criminal or police world so he's fucking gone.
LulzSec always seemed like a dumbass group. I'm not a big fan of the whole AntiSec agenda, and I don't think LulzSec can be compared to Anonymous. LulzSec was not defending human rights in any way, while at least with Anonymous you have people who believe in something other than lulz.
"It's about laws and ethics, and people have to determine whether they want to follow the speed limit, follow the law," Thomas Brennan, who is a director of OWASP's parent group, told Reuters. "We have the same skill set as the bad guys, but the only difference is ethics."
The law is about morality. It's ethical to break the law provided you have no possibility of getting caught or paying the consequences. It only becomes unethical when the consequences outweigh the benefits. Morality isn't about the consequences of following a certain law, morality is about what you are conditioned to do based on trends, religion, tradition.
Anyone can be moral. Simply do exactly what society expects you to do and no more. To be ethical however requires you to do what produces the best consequences for yourself AND for society. John Nash proved this already so it's not really up for debate as the math of game theory is out there. Ethics are calculations to produce the best consequences, or to produce equilibrium while morals might produce terrible consequences for society and even for the individual in the long term.
So let me make it simple, being moral allows you to have a life where you never have to worry about going to prison because you'll never break the law. You'll never rebel against authority so there is less of a chance that authority will crack down on you. The consequence is you sacrifice your personal opinions and feelings in order to adapt to the rules of society. You become a robot of society in exchange for being moral.
Most people are moral, few people are ethical, and fewer are both ethical and moral. I try to be ethical and moral. Meaning I wont break the law because I don't want to go to jail, but I don't decide right and wrong based on the law because the law doesn't protect me all the time and I've got to protect myself.
On the topic of how we treat criminals the basis for how we treat criminals is in the inquisition, the church, and the ten commandments. Nothing scientific about our justice system. In a way we aren't much better than the theocratic systems in the middle east. Religious institutions are the moral institutions that control legal institutions whether we like it or not.
I'm not arguing for cult science. I'm not arguing for pseudoscience. I'm not arguing for religion or against religion. I'm arguing that we take science and use science to make religion better. We use science to make justice produce better consequences. We use science to create better laws. Science is how we make stuff work.
But just knowing science wont help you to understand why people do what they do. Science can tell you that its not a good idea to be mean. You can take the angle of studying the neuroscience or you can study historical consequences to determine that being mean at least in most cases isn't in the self interest of a group.
But most groups do things which are against their self interest and against their own rules. Look at governments for instances, they claim to protect the Constitution but they ignore the Constitution claiming they have to do that to defend it. Think of the justice system where police ignore the law or believe its okay to break the law in defense of the law. This kind of behavior is the type of behavior which does not seem to make any sense from the perspective of the outside observer. If we look at it via neuroscience then it's a matter of decision theory and a bunch of other stuff, and I have books on that which I can recommend. Neuroeconomics and the brain.
That being said I do recognize that not all experiment results are of equal worth. I do recognize that psychiatry is a pseudoscience and most of psychology as well. It doesn't change the fact that at this time psychology and some of these experiments are the best we have since we don't have better experiments. If you have better experiments to reveal a different set of conclusions I'm open to it but my current conclusion is that morality is just something made up by the cult science that you mention. That people learn appropriate behavior because the appropriate behavior is reinforced. And that in general if you believe in neuroscience do we even know who is responsible for behavior?
The law says people are personally responsible, neuroscience says their brains are responsible, but psychology could say language or external stimulus is responsible. It doesn't change the fact that our justice system blames the individual. At the end of the day no matter what goes on in peoples brains, the system itself is the mechanism which acts like the skinnerbox reinforcing certain behaviors and when people are nice they are rewarded which reprograms the brain and over time this can even rewrite the brain.
This isn't exactly true. Most people who have jobs didn't qualify for tons of scholarships.
Many people who currently have corporate jobs didn't go to college at all, granted that generation is almost completely retired. The next generation or two could get by with average college performance. However, I don't think that future generations will be this fortunate. My employer probably has hired almost nobody new out of college in the last 5 years (fortune 500). When we have interviewed for temp positions/etc we've been able to be VERY selective.
Talent is overrated. Sabu was talented. You have to be talented, educated, and socially connected. If you aren't all 3 then you were probably just lucky (right applicant at the right time).
I will tend to agree with this. With the huge drops in employment patronage probably matters more than skills in many situations. I'd flag that as another big problem in our economy - in general most managers of established companies are motivated far more by personal interest than shareholder performance, so hiring your cousin's friend makes a lot more sense than hiring somebody who could achieve good results, as long as they aren't such a disaster that it could come back at you.
This is why young people are going to have to go to college and get their MBA and intend on starting businesses rather than working for others. It's never going to be possible for the 100 million or 200 million college educated Americans to compete academically with billions of people globally who get their degrees cheaper, who have their grades inflated, and who take their academic life more seriously. It's unwinnable to compete in that way.
The way an American worker has to compete is by mastery of the english language. The ability to communicate is an advantage of an American worker. The ability to start a business is still an advantage of an American worker. The ability to be more productive than a foreign worker is still currently an advantage of an American worker. Americans should not compete to the advantage of the competition or even necessarily try to compete fairly, but instead we should compete doing what we do best.
We communicate better because we know our language and culture better than anyone. We are better at starting and running businesses because we live in all the right locations and know all the right people. We generally speaking have the most knowledge or most access to knowledge.
Scholarships to get an entry level private sector job? After a certain point it becomes smarter to try and be the next Bill Gates than to try and compete in the classroom. I'm saying Americans should compete outside the classroom in the marketplace and forget about all that scholarship nonsense.
You are interpreting the result wrong. What it means is if the government says kill and torture a terrorist that people don't mind.
No, I am interpreting the results differently than you. You have learned one interpretation of the results, and you are blind to the fact that there are other interpretations, so much that you are willing to reject the results of other experiments.
This is a serious cognitive flaw you have. Learn about double-blind experiments, learn why the Milgram and Stanford Prison torture experiment needed control groups. Read this as a good introduction to the problems of sociological experiments, and bad science in general. Don't bother me again until you at least try to fix your cognitive biases.
I know there are problems with a flawed experiment. It doesn't change the fact that torture exists in the real world in developed nations and the experiments only try to explain why. Why are prisoners treated so bad? Why do so many in society in polls view torture as okay when used against terrorists? It also helps us to understand why in Nazi Germany did so many Germans go along with Hitler.
This is not a scientifically complete answer, bt neither is just looking at neuroscience and seeing that people aren't psychopathic bastards. The real answer is people are just very weak and accept anything authority figures give or tell them. People are nice because they are trained and conditioned to be nice, when trained or conditioned to be mean then people aren't nice anymore. It doesn't matter if they are a psychopath or a neurotypical, when people are conditioned to behave in a certain way that is what they do and sociology and psychology reveals this.
In particular look at the skinnerbox, operant and classical conditioning (pavlov's dogs), and you'll see some hard science with well conducted studies to back up my opinion that there is no genetically predetermined human personality but that personalities with the exception of traits and talents are programmed in by other humans.
Racism is the result of other humans programming that in. Sexism is the result of other humans programming that in.
We are nice to those we perceive as "our own". As soon as you draw the dividing line between "us" and "them", this morphs into being good to "us", and being nasty to "them". I'd imagine that many KKK members were loving fathers and good friends.
Then explain the experiments that governments conduct on their own troops.In many cases permanently injuring them.
Morality has an inherent evolutionary basis that is wired into our brains as instincts and emotions. Sure you can go to the huge effort to condition someone to act in an unusual manner, but it's not easy to do and often requires constant reinforcement.
Children aren't born with morality. Children are taught morality through reward for being good and punishment for being bad.
Milgram experiment was not just about becoming prison guards. It was being ordered to torture by someone who was presented as having the authority to do so, and to absolve the person being ordered of legal and moral responsibility.
If people were as nice as we think, then why did the experiment go as it did? How do we explain what happened in the 60s with the KKK, and all that nonsense? How do we explain our behavior if we are nice according to neuroscience?
I'm willing to believe the neuroscience shows we want to be nice but for whatever reason we are constantly tricked into being mean.
The Milgram experiment [wikipedia.org] proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment [prisonexp.org] proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
These two experiments are cited a lot, but the science level is poor. They don't prove anything. There are many interpretations of what happened. Neither were a double-blind experiment, and as far as I can tell, there was no control group, or any attempt to account for various factors. This shouldn't be surprising since the field IS sociology, which is notorious for bad experiments. In one attempt at reproduction of the Milgram experiment, the researchers informed the participants of what was happening, and still found the exact same rates. This suggests an interpretation like, the original group believed everything was under control, sort of like you when you kill people in a video game.
Does killing people in a video game make you a violent killer? No, and neither does the Milgram experiment show people are mean.
You are interpreting the result wrong. What it means is if the government says kill and torture a terrorist that people don't mind. People don't mind when convinced that it's morally right and that the person they are doing it to is a bad guy. Why do you think prisoners are treated so bad? Because we are nice people?
The group conditions the individual. In specific the most elite members of the group condition the rest of the group with their morality.
Then the brain learns to react differently to stimuli. The same could be done in reverse and people could be made to like the smell of blood or get high from the sight of pain or turned on by murder. It's all possible due to neuroconditioning.
Morality is fine as long as you do whats in your self interest.
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
If you ever were a kid and you went and punched another kid that kid is probably going to punch you back and harder than you punched them. If you pull a cats tail it's probably going to scratch or bite you. People learn to be nice because usually that is the only way to live a long life. Mean people don't get as much sympathy when something bad happens to them, and people who like violence often don't live very long unless they become professionals.
Are people nice? Yes but people are nice because they learn to be. In many cases people are nice because they have to be. Experiments have shown the exact opposite of this result. The Milgram experiment proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
The article is disinformation. It's looking at neuroscience (what people think and feel) vs what they actually do. People tend to do whatever is easiest, then they do what is smarter, and if being mean is easier and smarter than being nice then people can be mean.
It's funny, in a way. For all the talk about the risk of terrorist hacking, it has yet to occur. Yet, year after year, the DHS has reported dismal scores (read C or worse) for just about every part of the Federal Government. Sure, each year there's another report with more goals to meet. But, failing to make the necessary progress, basically relying upon the kindness of terrorists to not attack, seems to border on criminal negligence. If anything, the FBI should focus more on the actual crimes occurring, not on potential and hypothetical ones that may never materialize.
But, yea, let's talk about the terrorist hackers... I mean, it's better to focus on them and use them as an excuse to crack down on all criminals (and plenty of non-criminals) than to, you know, try to crack down on government to actually do its job which would make a lot of it a non-issue.:/
They do investigate the government. They called it counter intelligence investigation.
Well if you want to understand the behavior of government in the war on terrorism look at the behavior of the church during the crusades. The church hated witches, witches were tortured to death. The church hated heretics and during the inquisition heretics were tortured to death. Replace government with church, and witch/heretic with terrorist.
Now that the government has unlimited power they can conduct an inquisition. The Constitution wont get in the way and neither will international law. And we know people like Sarah Palin and the Christian fundamentalists could welcome a scenario like this. We also know Obama wont be President forever.
Either someone failed reading comprehension or that is the WORST troll I've seen in a while.
War on Terror. War on Poverty. War on Drugs.
I'm glad we won the war on Poverty ("started" in 1960's)... and the war on Drugs? Well, glad we obliterated drugs... how long do you think it'll take to win the war on Terror?
The difference is the government put drug dealers in jail, now the government is killing terrorists and using torture. The methods used today are considered war crimes.
Always get nervous when reading stuff like this - I'm sure they'll use it an excuse to regulate the Internet for everyone, not just so-called terrorists. Remember: freedom isn't free.
Also: war is peace, ignorance is strength, etc.
If it were up to the government they would regulate every aspect of our lives down to our thoughts. The church once did something like this.
Look, I actually have been on counter-terrorism ops back in my Army days.
The problem is the FBI has a tendency to label people who hack music as terrorists, in addition to the Dangerous Killing People terrorists who ARE the real threat.
Giving up your Rights and Freedoms won't make you safer, only less.
That's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is our government operates in such secrecy that we don't actually know which terrorists are real and which terrorists they made up. They have the authority to kill even American citizens, and the authority to torture. How do we know they aren't abusing their authority? How can we be certain the war on terrorism wont someday target ordinary Americans?
Until they put something in place to put a check on this authority we shouldn't think expanding this secret war on terrorism is a good thing. We don't even know whether or not we are winning or whether it's a real war or like the war on drugs.
Yet another reason to give up all of our civil rights, privacy, and freedoms in the name of catching these "terrorists"!!!
Plus, over the past ten years, $500B/year on "black" programs to catch "terrorists".
And all because ten years ago 3000 people died (that's an average of 300/year) and two buildings were taken down: tragic, but a very small one compared to the 30,000 people who die every year in automobile crashes in the US - and we don't see $500B/year being spent on that!
Terrorism is just an excuse to usurp our freedoms and enable the government to take control of us. The threat is just not as big as they make it out to be - certainly not big enough to justify the massive reaction to 9/11 and the loss of all of our freedoms and privacy.
Terrorist is becoming another word for witch, or for savage. It's basically a boogyman strawman. I'm not saying no terrorists exist but there probably aren't very many of them left. It's been over a decade now.
And you will see the sort of problem we have. Witches hacking or casting spells on our computers is something which will require the full resources of the government to deal with. That means we will use torture.
The current US free market approach has some serious problems:
1. Education is WAY too expensive.
I agree with this. Education is going to set me back nearly $100,000 in debt. And there is no guarantee I'll have any job security even with a $100,000 education to the masters level. It's also unfair that people in almost every other country have ever possible advantage from grade inflation to price. Schools in the USA might have the best campuses and labs but they are also the hardest to get good grades in and the most expensive.
I wouldn't recommend that anybody pay (via cash or loans) for a college education, period. If you're good enough at what you're doing to get a nearly-free ride then it probably is a good investment of time. If you don't qualify for tons of scholarships, you'll never get a job in the field anyway.
This isn't exactly true. Most people who have jobs didn't qualify for tons of scholarships. And in order to get a job you need a masters degree usually or certifications. To keep a job you have to constantly seek new certs. Getting the degree out of the way is probably a wise decision because what do you have to lose? If you never get hired you'll be in debt soon enough anyway or you'll be in jail with Sabu.I think education is too expensive but I don't see how young people have any other option as there is no way to distinguish yourself from other hard workers (everyone is a hard worker).
2. Education is VERY time-consuming. The 4-year degree is a one-size-fits-all solution for just about any corporate job. For those who need to change careers in response to the changing market, it is very difficult to take a multi-year jobless hit even if the education is free.
I agree only I believe you need 6 years of education. You need an MBA for a corporate job unless you expect to be janitor or be laid off after a few years and replaced. I suppose you can get a temp job and go from place to place but thats not going to last is it?
3. There is almost no safety net. If you lose your job, then you lose health insurance (bills go from paying 10% of a negotiated rate to paying 100% of 10x the negotiated rate), and you have to beg for a small percentage of your previous salary for a relatively short period of time. If you try a new career path and it doesn't work, then the subsequent safety net is even weaker.
Basically the US model puts all the risk on the individual. That works out well for those who are talented/etc, and poorly for those who are not.
Talent is overrated. Sabu was talented. You have to be talented, educated, and socially connected. If you aren't all 3 then you were probably just lucky (right applicant at the right time).
The European model tends to socialize the risks/benefits.
I agree and that is why Europe will recover faster from the recession (or depression) than the USA. The global economy is in a dire position, I think Greece has it worse than the USA by far but I think some countries in Europe have it better. When the economy is bad in Europe you really have no excuse for not going for a masters or PhD considering how cheap education is.
When the economy is bad in the USA your only option is to go into debt which only makes the economy even worse for the USA in the future. The only choice is how you want to go into debt, you can go into debt by college loans or by business loans but you'll be going into debt and once in then you can only use your profits if you make any to pay off your debts which slows the economy for the next generation.
Actually, the FBI and US law enforcement agents have started picking up good bucks on the side following in the footsteps of congress-critters -- getting paid for 'outside work' by media companies.
They don't make millions trust me. They make between $80,000-150,000. Thats good money but not millions.
this doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to be a pen-tester or something like that
Absolutely, he'd probably make a great pen-tester... if you could trust him not to abuse/exploit the holes he finds during his pen testing, and do something illegal, unethical, or damaging with the information and access he's able to acquire during his pen testing.
Of course, given that he's exhibited a lack of trustworthiness in that exact scenario, the hiring decision would likely be based on how much hassle it would be for the company to keep him on an incredibly short leash, versus hiring a white hat with similar skills who has a record of trustworthiness and reliability to come with those skills.
What makes you think pen-testers are trusted now? The amount of security they have for this sorta thing I don't think Sabu would be capable of any of that. The only reason he was capable of what he was capable of is because no one paid any attention to him or offered him any better option. This is my opinion but lets be realistic, if he were a pen-tester they'd probably watch everything he does online. Trust has nothing to do with it.
I'm not suggesting the previous situation was acceptable - only that there might be a better end-state than the guy being in prison for the rest of his life, or mowing lawns.
Any kind of rehabilitation would obviously need to address whether he is suitable for a return to the workforce. If somehow this could be achieved, then the only way this could happen is if records were stricken (both public and private), and employers were forbidden from inquiring about expunged criminal records. This is already routinely done for juvenile offenses - I'd consider this to be just a natural extension.
My understanding is that other countries manage to achieve much lower recidivism rates compared to the US. Perhaps they're doing something right - hopefully beyond having a placement service for landscapers.
In Europe they provide nearly free college education to their citizens. This guy could have got a proper masters degree with certs. He could have become a proper certified ethical hacker or pen-tester. The problem is the market just isn't hiring Americans because Asians do the same work for cheaper. The result is a lot of people with skills are going to end up like Sabu with nothing to do and no one willing to hire them so they get into trouble.
I don't think the solution is prison, I don't think the solution is telling them they should "find a new career" as that isn't what we say to Michael Vick or Mike Tyson or anyone else who only has one career and who invested their lives in that specialization. The solution is we need to provide a positive path so that the young and talented can weigh the pros and cons and make the right choice.
As of right now there really isn't a positive path for some people. I'm not endorsing any of that which Sabu did, but I think if we don't want more Sabu's we have to provide better options for young people than the choices that currently exist. The choices that currently exist are so bad that it's starting to become cool to be a criminal hacker like Sabu.
Can I complain about the fact that I as a productive member of society am going to end up paying a larger share of taxes because this guy is going to end up consuming more in social services than he contributes in taxes, because nobody will actually employ him to his full potential?
Were you already complaining? Because he was living off of you already, and his "potential" was - by his choice - only being used in destructive/non-productive ways. He wasn't paying taxes, he was simply living off of yours, and feeding kids off of yours. Or were you thinking of a system where you could force him to work in a particular area, and force an employer to trust him despite his obvious contempt for that sort of trust? Would you personally trust him with your equipment, data, and your relationships with your trusted partners and customers, and their sensitive data? Really?
How do you know it was by his own choice? The guy has kids. Why would he have made those choices if there were better choices? You think the Occupy crowd choose to protest? It's more the fact that they can't find a job that allows them to have the time and motivation to protest. Sabu started out as a politically motivated hacker and only later on got corrupted by the power he possessed.
What options did he have before? Did you look at his resume? It's not like people were trying to hire him.
Slashdot Mirror
And there is nothing more to say about it.
Let me make something clear to any would be members of these groups or individuals who think hackers are cool. If you are a hacker expect to go to jail. Don't protest or do anything which isn't worth going to jail for. Most of the hacks these individuals participated in were not the sort of stuff that in hindsight they will believe was worth sacrificing their life for.
These individuals may not be physically dead but they have no future, no career. The rumored snitch Sabu has it the worst because if what they say about him is true he's not going to be accepted in the criminal or police world so he's fucking gone.
LulzSec always seemed like a dumbass group. I'm not a big fan of the whole AntiSec agenda, and I don't think LulzSec can be compared to Anonymous. LulzSec was not defending human rights in any way, while at least with Anonymous you have people who believe in something other than lulz.
"It's about laws and ethics, and people have to determine whether they want to follow the speed limit, follow the law," Thomas Brennan, who is a director of OWASP's parent group, told Reuters. "We have the same skill set as the bad guys, but the only difference is ethics."
The law is about morality. It's ethical to break the law provided you have no possibility of getting caught or paying the consequences. It only becomes unethical when the consequences outweigh the benefits. Morality isn't about the consequences of following a certain law, morality is about what you are conditioned to do based on trends, religion, tradition.
Anyone can be moral. Simply do exactly what society expects you to do and no more. To be ethical however requires you to do what produces the best consequences for yourself AND for society. John Nash proved this already so it's not really up for debate as the math of game theory is out there. Ethics are calculations to produce the best consequences, or to produce equilibrium while morals might produce terrible consequences for society and even for the individual in the long term.
So let me make it simple, being moral allows you to have a life where you never have to worry about going to prison because you'll never break the law. You'll never rebel against authority so there is less of a chance that authority will crack down on you. The consequence is you sacrifice your personal opinions and feelings in order to adapt to the rules of society. You become a robot of society in exchange for being moral.
Most people are moral, few people are ethical, and fewer are both ethical and moral. I try to be ethical and moral. Meaning I wont break the law because I don't want to go to jail, but I don't decide right and wrong based on the law because the law doesn't protect me all the time and I've got to protect myself.
Reviewed your Cargo Cult Science article.
On the topic of how we treat criminals the basis for how we treat criminals is in the inquisition, the church, and the ten commandments. Nothing scientific about our justice system. In a way we aren't much better than the theocratic systems in the middle east. Religious institutions are the moral institutions that control legal institutions whether we like it or not.
I'm not arguing for cult science. I'm not arguing for pseudoscience. I'm not arguing for religion or against religion. I'm arguing that we take science and use science to make religion better. We use science to make justice produce better consequences. We use science to create better laws. Science is how we make stuff work.
But just knowing science wont help you to understand why people do what they do. Science can tell you that its not a good idea to be mean. You can take the angle of studying the neuroscience or you can study historical consequences to determine that being mean at least in most cases isn't in the self interest of a group.
But most groups do things which are against their self interest and against their own rules. Look at governments for instances, they claim to protect the Constitution but they ignore the Constitution claiming they have to do that to defend it. Think of the justice system where police ignore the law or believe its okay to break the law in defense of the law. This kind of behavior is the type of behavior which does not seem to make any sense from the perspective of the outside observer. If we look at it via neuroscience then it's a matter of decision theory and a bunch of other stuff, and I have books on that which I can recommend. Neuroeconomics and the brain.
That being said I do recognize that not all experiment results are of equal worth. I do recognize that psychiatry is a pseudoscience and most of psychology as well. It doesn't change the fact that at this time psychology and some of these experiments are the best we have since we don't have better experiments. If you have better experiments to reveal a different set of conclusions I'm open to it but my current conclusion is that morality is just something made up by the cult science that you mention. That people learn appropriate behavior because the appropriate behavior is reinforced. And that in general if you believe in neuroscience do we even know who is responsible for behavior?
The law says people are personally responsible, neuroscience says their brains are responsible, but psychology could say language or external stimulus is responsible. It doesn't change the fact that our justice system blames the individual. At the end of the day no matter what goes on in peoples brains, the system itself is the mechanism which acts like the skinnerbox reinforcing certain behaviors and when people are nice they are rewarded which reprograms the brain and over time this can even rewrite the brain.
This isn't exactly true. Most people who have jobs didn't qualify for tons of scholarships.
Many people who currently have corporate jobs didn't go to college at all, granted that generation is almost completely retired. The next generation or two could get by with average college performance. However, I don't think that future generations will be this fortunate. My employer probably has hired almost nobody new out of college in the last 5 years (fortune 500). When we have interviewed for temp positions/etc we've been able to be VERY selective.
Talent is overrated. Sabu was talented. You have to be talented, educated, and socially connected. If you aren't all 3 then you were probably just lucky (right applicant at the right time).
I will tend to agree with this. With the huge drops in employment patronage probably matters more than skills in many situations. I'd flag that as another big problem in our economy - in general most managers of established companies are motivated far more by personal interest than shareholder performance, so hiring your cousin's friend makes a lot more sense than hiring somebody who could achieve good results, as long as they aren't such a disaster that it could come back at you.
This is why young people are going to have to go to college and get their MBA and intend on starting businesses rather than working for others. It's never going to be possible for the 100 million or 200 million college educated Americans to compete academically with billions of people globally who get their degrees cheaper, who have their grades inflated, and who take their academic life more seriously. It's unwinnable to compete in that way.
The way an American worker has to compete is by mastery of the english language. The ability to communicate is an advantage of an American worker. The ability to start a business is still an advantage of an American worker. The ability to be more productive than a foreign worker is still currently an advantage of an American worker. Americans should not compete to the advantage of the competition or even necessarily try to compete fairly, but instead we should compete doing what we do best.
We communicate better because we know our language and culture better than anyone.
We are better at starting and running businesses because we live in all the right locations and know all the right people.
We generally speaking have the most knowledge or most access to knowledge.
Scholarships to get an entry level private sector job? After a certain point it becomes smarter to try and be the next Bill Gates than to try and compete in the classroom. I'm saying Americans should compete outside the classroom in the marketplace and forget about all that scholarship nonsense.
You are interpreting the result wrong. What it means is if the government says kill and torture a terrorist that people don't mind.
No, I am interpreting the results differently than you. You have learned one interpretation of the results, and you are blind to the fact that there are other interpretations, so much that you are willing to reject the results of other experiments.
This is a serious cognitive flaw you have. Learn about double-blind experiments, learn why the Milgram and Stanford Prison torture experiment needed control groups. Read this as a good introduction to the problems of sociological experiments, and bad science in general. Don't bother me again until you at least try to fix your cognitive biases.
I know there are problems with a flawed experiment. It doesn't change the fact that torture exists in the real world in developed nations and the experiments only try to explain why. Why are prisoners treated so bad? Why do so many in society in polls view torture as okay when used against terrorists? It also helps us to understand why in Nazi Germany did so many Germans go along with Hitler.
This is not a scientifically complete answer, bt neither is just looking at neuroscience and seeing that people aren't psychopathic bastards. The real answer is people are just very weak and accept anything authority figures give or tell them. People are nice because they are trained and conditioned to be nice, when trained or conditioned to be mean then people aren't nice anymore. It doesn't matter if they are a psychopath or a neurotypical, when people are conditioned to behave in a certain way that is what they do and sociology and psychology reveals this.
In particular look at the skinnerbox, operant and classical conditioning (pavlov's dogs), and you'll see some hard science with well conducted studies to back up my opinion that there is no genetically predetermined human personality but that personalities with the exception of traits and talents are programmed in by other humans.
Racism is the result of other humans programming that in. Sexism is the result of other humans programming that in.
We are nice to those we perceive as "our own". As soon as you draw the dividing line between "us" and "them", this morphs into being good to "us", and being nasty to "them". I'd imagine that many KKK members were loving fathers and good friends.
Then explain the experiments that governments conduct on their own troops.In many cases permanently injuring them.
Morality has an inherent evolutionary basis that is wired into our brains as instincts and emotions. Sure you can go to the huge effort to condition someone to act in an unusual manner, but it's not easy to do and often requires constant reinforcement.
Children aren't born with morality. Children are taught morality through reward for being good and punishment for being bad.
Milgram experiment was not just about becoming prison guards. It was being ordered to torture by someone who was presented as having the authority to do so, and to absolve the person being ordered of legal and moral responsibility.
If people were as nice as we think, then why did the experiment go as it did? How do we explain what happened in the 60s with the KKK, and all that nonsense? How do we explain our behavior if we are nice according to neuroscience?
I'm willing to believe the neuroscience shows we want to be nice but for whatever reason we are constantly tricked into being mean.
The Milgram experiment [wikipedia.org] proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment [prisonexp.org] proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
These two experiments are cited a lot, but the science level is poor. They don't prove anything. There are many interpretations of what happened. Neither were a double-blind experiment, and as far as I can tell, there was no control group, or any attempt to account for various factors. This shouldn't be surprising since the field IS sociology, which is notorious for bad experiments. In one attempt at reproduction of the Milgram experiment, the researchers informed the participants of what was happening, and still found the exact same rates. This suggests an interpretation like, the original group believed everything was under control, sort of like you when you kill people in a video game.
Does killing people in a video game make you a violent killer? No, and neither does the Milgram experiment show people are mean.
You are interpreting the result wrong. What it means is if the government says kill and torture a terrorist that people don't mind.
People don't mind when convinced that it's morally right and that the person they are doing it to is a bad guy. Why do you think prisoners are treated so bad? Because we are nice people?
The group conditions the individual. In specific the most elite members of the group condition the rest of the group with their morality.
Then the brain learns to react differently to stimuli. The same could be done in reverse and people could be made to like the smell of blood or get high from the sight of pain or turned on by murder. It's all possible due to neuroconditioning.
Morality is fine as long as you do whats in your self interest.
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
I hope I am clear enough.
Only people aren't nice when they are prison guards. Suddenly they become mean torturers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
It's smarter to be nice thats why.
If you ever were a kid and you went and punched another kid that kid is probably going to punch you back and harder than you punched them. If you pull a cats tail it's probably going to scratch or bite you. People learn to be nice because usually that is the only way to live a long life. Mean people don't get as much sympathy when something bad happens to them, and people who like violence often don't live very long unless they become professionals.
Are people nice? Yes but people are nice because they learn to be. In many cases people are nice because they have to be. Experiments have shown the exact opposite of this result. The Milgram experiment proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
The article is disinformation. It's looking at neuroscience (what people think and feel) vs what they actually do. People tend to do whatever is easiest, then they do what is smarter, and if being mean is easier and smarter than being nice then people can be mean.
It's funny, in a way. For all the talk about the risk of terrorist hacking, it has yet to occur. Yet, year after year, the DHS has reported dismal scores (read C or worse) for just about every part of the Federal Government. Sure, each year there's another report with more goals to meet. But, failing to make the necessary progress, basically relying upon the kindness of terrorists to not attack, seems to border on criminal negligence. If anything, the FBI should focus more on the actual crimes occurring, not on potential and hypothetical ones that may never materialize.
But, yea, let's talk about the terrorist hackers... I mean, it's better to focus on them and use them as an excuse to crack down on all criminals (and plenty of non-criminals) than to, you know, try to crack down on government to actually do its job which would make a lot of it a non-issue. :/
They do investigate the government. They called it counter intelligence investigation.
Well if you want to understand the behavior of government in the war on terrorism look at the behavior of the church during the crusades. The church hated witches, witches were tortured to death. The church hated heretics and during the inquisition heretics were tortured to death. Replace government with church, and witch/heretic with terrorist.
Now that the government has unlimited power they can conduct an inquisition. The Constitution wont get in the way and neither will international law. And we know people like Sarah Palin and the Christian fundamentalists could welcome a scenario like this. We also know Obama wont be President forever.
Either someone failed reading comprehension or that is the WORST troll I've seen in a while.
War on Terror.
War on Poverty.
War on Drugs.
I'm glad we won the war on Poverty ("started" in 1960's)... and the war on Drugs? Well, glad we obliterated drugs... how long do you think it'll take to win the war on Terror?
The difference is the government put drug dealers in jail, now the government is killing terrorists and using torture. The methods used today are considered war crimes.
Always get nervous when reading stuff like this - I'm sure they'll use it an excuse to regulate the Internet for everyone, not just so-called terrorists. Remember: freedom isn't free.
Also: war is peace, ignorance is strength, etc.
If it were up to the government they would regulate every aspect of our lives down to our thoughts. The church once did something like this.
Look, I actually have been on counter-terrorism ops back in my Army days.
The problem is the FBI has a tendency to label people who hack music as terrorists, in addition to the Dangerous Killing People terrorists who ARE the real threat.
Giving up your Rights and Freedoms won't make you safer, only less.
That's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is our government operates in such secrecy that we don't actually know which terrorists are real and which terrorists they made up. They have the authority to kill even American citizens, and the authority to torture. How do we know they aren't abusing their authority? How can we be certain the war on terrorism wont someday target ordinary Americans?
Until they put something in place to put a check on this authority we shouldn't think expanding this secret war on terrorism is a good thing. We don't even know whether or not we are winning or whether it's a real war or like the war on drugs.
Yet another reason to give up all of our civil rights, privacy, and freedoms in the name of catching these "terrorists"!!!
Plus, over the past ten years, $500B/year on "black" programs to catch "terrorists".
And all because ten years ago 3000 people died (that's an average of 300/year) and two buildings were taken down: tragic, but a very small one compared to the 30,000 people who die every year in automobile crashes in the US - and we don't see $500B/year being spent on that!
Terrorism is just an excuse to usurp our freedoms and enable the government to take control of us. The threat is just not as big as they make it out to be - certainly not big enough to justify the massive reaction to 9/11 and the loss of all of our freedoms and privacy.
Terrorist is becoming another word for witch, or for savage. It's basically a boogyman strawman. I'm not saying no terrorists exist but there probably aren't very many of them left. It's been over a decade now.
And you will see the sort of problem we have. Witches hacking or casting spells on our computers is something which will require the full resources of the government to deal with. That means we will use torture.
The current US free market approach has some serious problems:
1. Education is WAY too expensive.
I agree with this. Education is going to set me back nearly $100,000 in debt. And there is no guarantee I'll have any job security even with a $100,000 education to the masters level. It's also unfair that people in almost every other country have ever possible advantage from grade inflation to price. Schools in the USA might have the best campuses and labs but they are also the hardest to get good grades in and the most expensive.
I wouldn't recommend that anybody pay (via cash or loans) for a college education, period. If you're good enough at what you're doing to get a nearly-free ride then it probably is a good investment of time. If you don't qualify for tons of scholarships, you'll never get a job in the field anyway.
This isn't exactly true. Most people who have jobs didn't qualify for tons of scholarships. And in order to get a job you need a masters degree usually or certifications. To keep a job you have to constantly seek new certs. Getting the degree out of the way is probably a wise decision because what do you have to lose? If you never get hired you'll be in debt soon enough anyway or you'll be in jail with Sabu.I think education is too expensive but I don't see how young people have any other option as there is no way to distinguish yourself from other hard workers (everyone is a hard worker).
2. Education is VERY time-consuming. The 4-year degree is a one-size-fits-all solution for just about any corporate job. For those who need to change careers in response to the changing market, it is very difficult to take a multi-year jobless hit even if the education is free.
I agree only I believe you need 6 years of education. You need an MBA for a corporate job unless you expect to be janitor or be laid off after a few years and replaced. I suppose you can get a temp job and go from place to place but thats not going to last is it?
3. There is almost no safety net. If you lose your job, then you lose health insurance (bills go from paying 10% of a negotiated rate to paying 100% of 10x the negotiated rate), and you have to beg for a small percentage of your previous salary for a relatively short period of time. If you try a new career path and it doesn't work, then the subsequent safety net is even weaker.
Basically the US model puts all the risk on the individual. That works out well for those who are talented/etc, and poorly for those who are not.
Talent is overrated. Sabu was talented. You have to be talented, educated, and socially connected. If you aren't all 3 then you were probably just lucky (right applicant at the right time).
The European model tends to socialize the risks/benefits.
I agree and that is why Europe will recover faster from the recession (or depression) than the USA. The global economy is in a dire position, I think Greece has it worse than the USA by far but I think some countries in Europe have it better. When the economy is bad in Europe you really have no excuse for not going for a masters or PhD considering how cheap education is.
When the economy is bad in the USA your only option is to go into debt which only makes the economy even worse for the USA in the future. The only choice is how you want to go into debt, you can go into debt by college loans or by business loans but you'll be going into debt and once in then you can only use your profits if you make any to pay off your debts which slows the economy for the next generation.
"But everybody is a criminal. Everybody has committed a felony"
If believing that that sooths your concience then good for you.
"And if you think you haven't them look at the list of thousands of federal crimes and check back."
Why do you yanks assume everyone lives in the USA?
If you don't live in the USA then this is something you ought not have an opinion on.
Actually, the FBI and US law enforcement agents have started picking up good bucks on the side following in the footsteps of congress-critters -- getting paid for 'outside work' by media companies.
They don't make millions trust me. They make between $80,000-150,000. Thats good money but not millions.
Absolutely, he'd probably make a great pen-tester... if you could trust him not to abuse/exploit the holes he finds during his pen testing, and do something illegal, unethical, or damaging with the information and access he's able to acquire during his pen testing.
Of course, given that he's exhibited a lack of trustworthiness in that exact scenario, the hiring decision would likely be based on how much hassle it would be for the company to keep him on an incredibly short leash, versus hiring a white hat with similar skills who has a record of trustworthiness and reliability to come with those skills.
What makes you think pen-testers are trusted now? The amount of security they have for this sorta thing I don't think Sabu would be capable of any of that. The only reason he was capable of what he was capable of is because no one paid any attention to him or offered him any better option. This is my opinion but lets be realistic, if he were a pen-tester they'd probably watch everything he does online. Trust has nothing to do with it.
I'm not suggesting the previous situation was acceptable - only that there might be a better end-state than the guy being in prison for the rest of his life, or mowing lawns.
Any kind of rehabilitation would obviously need to address whether he is suitable for a return to the workforce. If somehow this could be achieved, then the only way this could happen is if records were stricken (both public and private), and employers were forbidden from inquiring about expunged criminal records. This is already routinely done for juvenile offenses - I'd consider this to be just a natural extension.
My understanding is that other countries manage to achieve much lower recidivism rates compared to the US. Perhaps they're doing something right - hopefully beyond having a placement service for landscapers.
In Europe they provide nearly free college education to their citizens. This guy could have got a proper masters degree with certs. He could have become a proper certified ethical hacker or pen-tester. The problem is the market just isn't hiring Americans because Asians do the same work for cheaper. The result is a lot of people with skills are going to end up like Sabu with nothing to do and no one willing to hire them so they get into trouble.
I don't think the solution is prison, I don't think the solution is telling them they should "find a new career" as that isn't what we say to Michael Vick or Mike Tyson or anyone else who only has one career and who invested their lives in that specialization. The solution is we need to provide a positive path so that the young and talented can weigh the pros and cons and make the right choice.
As of right now there really isn't a positive path for some people. I'm not endorsing any of that which Sabu did, but I think if we don't want more Sabu's we have to provide better options for young people than the choices that currently exist. The choices that currently exist are so bad that it's starting to become cool to be a criminal hacker like Sabu.
Can I complain about the fact that I as a productive member of society am going to end up paying a larger share of taxes because this guy is going to end up consuming more in social services than he contributes in taxes, because nobody will actually employ him to his full potential?
Were you already complaining? Because he was living off of you already, and his "potential" was - by his choice - only being used in destructive/non-productive ways. He wasn't paying taxes, he was simply living off of yours, and feeding kids off of yours. Or were you thinking of a system where you could force him to work in a particular area, and force an employer to trust him despite his obvious contempt for that sort of trust? Would you personally trust him with your equipment, data, and your relationships with your trusted partners and customers, and their sensitive data? Really?
How do you know it was by his own choice? The guy has kids. Why would he have made those choices if there were better choices? You think the Occupy crowd choose to protest? It's more the fact that they can't find a job that allows them to have the time and motivation to protest. Sabu started out as a politically motivated hacker and only later on got corrupted by the power he possessed.
What options did he have before? Did you look at his resume? It's not like people were trying to hire him.