Forwarded from: rferrellat_private > But she also has posted her viruses on her homepage -- meaning > anyone else could release them. > > "That's not my problem," she says. "When people make guns, can you > blame them when somebody else kills [somebody] with them? I only > write them; I don't release them." Ah yes, the time-honored V-2 rocket philosophy: "I just zend ze rockets up; who cares vere zey come down?" The real meat and potatoes of this story, ladies and gentlemen, is that this is just another amoral, completely self-absorbed teenager who believes that only her code matters. The Internet and the rest of the world are there solely for the purpose of providing her with a place to parade her sociopathic ego. I'm torn between anger at her parents for having nurtured such a dysfunctional personality, empathy for her hapless victims, and sadness for the pathetic creature she is quickly becoming. Intelligence without ethics is what produced nuclear weapons, and a host of other technologies which by any objective definition must be termed insane. The problem with teenagers who think they're smarter than anyone else (and I know; I was one of them) is that eventually someone smarter comes along and kicks your butt. That experience is traumatic for anyone, but for someone like this, whose world view essentially centers around her own perceived superiority, it can be utterly devastating. You know why they call it a 'virus?' Because it is a self-replicating pathogen: an organism which invades and destoys other organisms as part of its life cycle. People who create pathogens are not smart, nor are they contributing anything to society. They're simply giving themselves a psychological boost at the expense of others. Another word for this sort of behavior is terrorism, but at least most terrorists think they're acting on behalf of a cause, no matter how perverse it may seem to the rest of us. So, if I bury an antipersonnel mine in her garden and she's "stupid" enough to step on it and be maimed or killed, that's her problem, right? I mean, I just plant them, I don't tell people to step on them. Get a life of your own, little geek, and stop using other people for your own vicarious gratification. There's already too much of that in this world. RGF Robert G. Ferrell rferrellat_private - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 26 2002 - 04:30:48 PDT