Capital Punishment, Nerds, and Other Things We Only Need in Small Doses
If you have bothered to read a couple of Beef Thoughts, you might notice that his politics tend to skew right. Please, please people let’s not turn this into a Daily Show-esque Bush-bashing fest. We’re not about politics here. I don’t hate liberal people; I hate MTV. I don’t hate Democrats; I just hate horses. That said, it would be fair to categorize the Beefster as a conservative kind of guy.
And with that logic, I really should love guns, churches, straight people, big industry, and the death penalty. Well I do love churches, except churches of Scientology, because let’s not confuse a novel written by a science-fiction author with an actual religion. I do love some straight people, but I can think of a lot of straight people that I am not particularly fond of as well. And I love big industry, as long as they continue to mass-produce those delightful Ruffles potato chips.
But the death penalty is not something I am generally in favor of. This is a bad idea, for a number of reasons. First off, I think a lot of the people that we end up putting to death really deserve much worse. If my daughter or wife were the victim of the BTK killer, I wouldn’t want him to get a big lavish last meal, a book deal, and then be painlessly put to sleep only to not wake up. I would want him to spend the rest of his days completely miserable, isolated, alone, the own weight of what he did eating inside him until he wishes he could just die. Maybe that is a bit vengeful—but I’m not a big fan of serial killers.
Secondly, it is awfully hypocritical. As Ron White says “in my state [Texas], if you kill somebody, we’ll kill you back.” Now, I’m not saying that the murderer doesn’t deserve to die perhaps a bit more than his/her victims. But I’m not sure that’s our job to determine, when it’s time for a person’s life to be over. I’ll leave that to the Big Man upstairs.
Thirdly, I’m sure we have put some people to death wrongly. Now, I’m sure the case can be made that with new DNA testing, more thorough cases involving the death penalty, etc. that we are much more likely to get it right—this is probably true. But I’d rather not be the guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up being killed for something I didn’t do.
So as a rule, I am against the death penalty. But as your English teacher probably told you, there is an exception to every rule, and this rule is no…exception, I guess. I am firmly and squarely in favor of the death penalty for the people we find responsible for creating computer viruses. Mandatory.
I am not technologically savvy, but a lot of people in college (including my roommate, the Gedster) are very into this kind of thing. It makes perfect sense to the average Beef, such as myself, that jerks would be interested in stealing my credit card number from the internet. I don’t condone it, but I can understand why they would do it: there is some gain inherent to stealing credit card numbers. I can understand why some people might want to hack into our government’s secrets, or into certain areas they’re not supposed to be—to gain information, terrorist-style. These people, when caught, should not be put to death. They are thieves, and thieves have been around for as long as there has been stuff to steal. We should weigh their situation, the severity of their theft, the effect it had on the victims, and hand out a penalty commensurate with their crime.
What I’m talking about are the people who, for no reason that Beef can think of, create viruses that shut down entire country’s computer systems. People who sit in their basement and devise ways to cost our economy billions of dollars, fully knowing that they will not see a cent. Why do people do this? It has cost me several papers and probably a letter grade or two along the way, not to mention some change that was not exactly spare.
Well, Geddy, the trusty Beef roommate, is very into computers. Very techno-savvy. And as it was explained to this “outsider” (that’s what we’re called, in computer-lingo), they get satisfaction from seeing the whole internet crippled. It makes them feel good about themselves. With a bottle of Jergen’s and some tissues (as long as they’re quiet enough that their mom doesn’t come downstairs), it makes for a great Friday night, sending out a virus.
These people should not be put in prison. They should not be given much of a trial beyond “did you create this virus?”. Most are too proud to let somebody else get the credit. They should be front of the line, first one up at 7 AM, mandatory death penalty.
“But Beef, that’s awfully harsh. I mean, are they worse than those murderers and rapists we put to death now?” I guess their crime is not as heinous, aesthetically. But I reached this conclusion in a fit of rage at my 3 year old laptop, which really should work fine, but instead is always needing updating, replacing, sending-in, technical support, et. Al. It was pointed out to me that after these young men (they are always guys, let’s not kid ourselves) are caught, they are often given light sentences and are hired by Norton, McAfee, Windows, whomever’s system they managed to crack. They are rewarded for their virus-making.
We need to get this fixed. Asking a computer to work for three or four years at a stretch is not unreasonable. Other people (read: Dave Burgan) have blamed my computer’s failure on my illegal downloading habits. Well, since arriving at The Ohio State University, my hard drive was re-formatted, no P2P program was installed, Windows Firewall and a completely updated version of Norton Anti-Virus were activated immediately, and it still @#$%ing broke.
“Sometimes they just crash and need fixed,” said eMachines. If this were any other industry, consumers would not spend a cent: “Yeah, sorry, there was a bug in our brake program, your car’s just going to crash once in a while. Send it in and we’ll have that ready for you in seven to ten days. And sorry about losing your whole family.” No. Make a computer that works. Just do it. We pour billions of dollars into this industry, and it gets brought to its knees by an 18 year old pimply faced kid in his basement in Germany. Wrong. Get it fixed. I have to go to Washington to lobby for my new law: “The Federal Virus Nerds Genocide Act.”
Ols: There’s nothing wrong with nerds, until they start to get uppity. This law should solve that.
the rest of the thoughts 11.17.05