Either one is fine with me. Some of the (geek|nerd)s at Florida were very particular.

The Simpsons has better "nerd" content -- "Homer Goes to College" comes to mind.

cbd.

The right to free expression does not include the unconditional right to express how, where, and when one sees fit. This has been tested many, many times in court. No matter how profound one's expression is, or what form it is, there is no right for the publication of that expression to be forced on others.

Just because a text is involved, doesn't mean there's a "free speech" issue at hand. The person in question is a script kiddie -- no more, no less. He's neither admirable nor revolutionary.

cbd.

I'm not sure what the term 'script kiddie' implies, but I see this fellow as little more than an anarchist political writer. True, his "writing" consists of codes rather than good English prose, but we can't hold that against him.

I think we've found an interesting writing site, but other people have wrote or said things that seemed to "infect" human minds and caused much more damage. Consider how irritating the word "like" is when overused by our younger generations: "It was like, you know, like blah blah, and it was like, Yeah, right, like whatever.."

In its own way, this ridiculous verbiage is like vocal SPAM, filling up our auditory inboxes with useless junk.

On another note,
If we hold this guy at fault for creating a computer virus, then we must also condemn any scientist who intentionally creates biological pathogens for the purpose of causing havoc (the bio-terrorist, I would think). I guess the first such scientist we should arrest is God, or the goddess, or gods, or whoever or whatever we choose to believe is running the show.

think more carefully about your analogy. scientists often create, sometimes unintentionally, viruses which are a threat to humanity. but creating one and releasing one maliciously are two different things entirely.

A script kiddie is someone who downloads rootkits or other exploitative scripts and points them at random sites on the Net, defacing web pages if a root vulnerability is exploitable, and moves on. Parsons didn't write the code in question, but copied it from elsewhere. But strictly speaking, his lack of originality is beside the point.

I don't see that your argument about "like" is relevant here. The issue is not spam or auditory inboxes or some mixed metaphor of virus and infection. The issue is confusing distribution of a text, which cannot be protected expression, with the expression itself, which can and should be protected. There are instances where the line between those two is blurry, but in this case it seems pretty clear.

What Parsons does with a text is his own business, until he makes it others' business without their consent, and to their detriment. And that's precisely what he did.

cbd.

I can agree that his conduct was malicious. I doubt he did what he did for any other reason than simple delight at causing trouble and anguish to other people.

I don't consider this conduct admirable in the least!

What I do respect, though, is that these viruses do have a positive side effect. They teach us things that we probably wouldn't know otherwise; namely, the holes in our software and how they can be viciously exploited.

My concern is simply that if human beings are ever going to create artificial life or intelligence, it is going to be in the form of self-replicating and auto-mutating software; that is, a computer virus. If we look at computer viruses as primitive forms of life, then we can see how someone like this fellow is a modern age Prometheus; bringing the "fire" of the gods to the pitiful, writhing virus (as viruses ourselves, we prefer the term to 'humanity' to describe what we do).

I ask you to consider that we are to the biosphere what "computer viruses" are to the digital. We ruthlessly exploit every weakness of the ecosystem in the name of our "code," namely, DNA.

OK, perhaps more agreement:

There's no need for the worm to be released for it to have a positive effect. Many security companies find problems with software, publish alerts and demonstrate the problem, etc. without causing a lot of trouble for a lot of folks. But sometimes it takes the presence of exploitable code (and/or its publication, albeit not as a wandering worm) to prompt a company to correct their deficient software. Adobe and Microsoft have been very slow about bugs or poor design in their software.

But to get back to disagreement... :) For me, the problem with thinking computer viruses in terms of biosphere is that many of these worms or viruses work in the reverse manner of biological evolution. Instead of the worm or virus finding the weakness, and exposing it to humans, it's usually humans (or human-composed and managed security auditing code) who find the deficiency, and subsequently design code to exploit it.

(For the record, I suspect Pearson is more naive and immature than malicious.)

cbd.