Thanks, MJR.

Thomas Ptacek | June 29th, 2005 | Filed Under: Uncategorized

Like many of my generation, I am plagued by The Marcus Ranum Conundrum, which causes me to define myself in opposition to someone who usually comes off as so smart and levelheaded that my conflicting feelings actually inspire self-doubt. Thankfully, MJR can be counted on to occasionally say something crazy enough to throw our differing perspectives into relief:

Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the hackers. Let’s not forget that they’re the ones doing this to us. They’re the ones who are annoying an entire planet. They’re the ones who are costing us billions of dollars a year to secure our systems against them. They’re the ones who place their desire for fun ahead of everyone on earth’s desire for peace and [the] right to privacy.

Mind you, the true nastiness of this statement can only be appreciated in context, where MJR makes it clear that teenage joyriders occupy a moral strata lower than that of spyware purveyors and negligent vendors, who endanger the public for personal commercial gain. Because, I mean, it’s not as if the side benefit of the hacker rennaissance of the 1990s was the most drastic improvement in network and software security in world history or anything, or that the sweeping improvements they motivated came at a near negligable cost, especially compared to the potential cost had we found out about these problems the hard way.

If you don’t know what the hard way means, you weren’t paying enough attention to Winn Schwartau. Not that I blame you.