Forwarded from: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>
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@nytimes.com
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.
[...]
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