Forwarded from: Jason Scott <jason@private> Since I've been working on a bunch of research about how hackers have changed in perception in journalism over the years (watch out!) I heard about this article and thought that it'd make a good book-end: and here in 2005, we are calling for the Death Penalty for hackers. But we're not. This article is just a big useless op-ed riff off of an already-existent article, itself a sort of summarization of a book the author has also written. To wit: Tierney just remixes the work of Steven Landsburg, who he at least credits in this article. I would immediately shitcan the contents of the NY Times article and go back to the source: http://slate.msn.com/id/2101297 This article, "Feed the Worms Who Write Worms to the Worms", cold-calculates the cost of hackers, the cost of murderers, the cost of their relative damage, the fact we execute murderers, and therefore draws the conclusion we should really execute hackers, if we look at things like the cost-benefit related to hacker damage. it should be noted that Landsburg has a book out for sale called "Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values, and the Meaning of Life". Slate reviewed his book in this 1997 article: http://archive.salon.com/books/sneaks/1997/12/23review.html And that review contains the helpful line: "Economists writing for general audiences are largely a gentlemanly, helpful lot, channeling ego into explaining ideas and concepts. Landsburg is the great exception, a breast-beating showoff as exhibitionistic and domineering as a bad actor. I read him with horror and exasperation. He's the Gary Oldman of popular-economics writers." That is to say, Landsburg writes sensationalistic articles using economics as a jumping-off point to say outrageous things. End of story. On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, InfoSec News wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/opinion/12tierney.html > > By JOHN TIERNEY > tierney@private > July 12, 2005 > > Last year a German teenager named Sven Jaschan released the Sasser > worm, one of the costliest acts of sabotage in the history of the > Internet. It crippled computers around the world, closing businesses, > halting trains and grounding airplanes. > > [...] _________________________________________ Attend the Black Hat Briefings and Training, Las Vegas July 23-28 - 2,000+ international security experts, 10 tracks, no vendor pitches. www.blackhat.com
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