Whether we admit it or not, everyone hates change. I’m not talking about small changes like choosing a different restaurant to go eat at, but more so of the big changes, the 10X changes as Andy Grove said in his book Only the Paranoid Survive. Be it in business or in personal life. 10X changes are disruptive. They are difficult to deal with because they take everything we know and throw it out the window. They make you go back to school and learn new lessons. Change can be liberating. Change can force action or it can force inaction due to paralysis brought on by fear. You can be lost in it. Sometimes something as small as re-arranging the furniture at home can trigger change anxiety. Because it’s something that we’ve come to count on. We crave permanence, when there is none, and the only contant is change.

But when we are experiencing a 10X change it is up to us to determine where we stand on that line of feeling lost or liberated. But it’s always a mixture of both, because you’ve lost something you had.

Some decisions and choices that we get presented with are tough ones…. we all know that. But where does one draw the line between protecting yourself and your own sanity or helping someone else? Its always a balancing act. It’s not just walking a tight-rope; it’s more like waking a tight-hair. On one side there are things we know we can do to help ourselves. And then there are things we can do to be helpful to someone else, but they may be contrary to our effort to help ourselves. Like taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. I guess as long as there is still some forward movement for yourself and it’s not net-negative, then I’d rather be helpful.

Moving sucks. Besides the change, the physical act of moving is just pain in the freaking rear! If there is anyone who enjoys the packing, loading, unloading and unpacking cycle, I’d be curious to meet such a person! 🙂 From the time that I had to move a couple of years ao, I adopted the approach of trying to minimize the number of things I have since then it just makes moving a whole lot easier! Actually i should qualify that… minimize the number of heavy and large things! (Can’t do without the gimmicks and gadgets!) As an aside though, however much I may try I still seem to keep accumulating books though… and man are they a pain to move! I love the idea that I could pretty much fit all the things I care about into the back of my car and be off! (I do have a big car though :))

When I described this to someone recently, they equated this to having no roots. I disagree, I equate it to having no strings. To being self-contained and in control without having to rely on movers! 😉 Ahh, who knows, one of these days I may give in a get a recliner!

This morning as I walked through Schenley, the radio was playing some of the usual songs. But as I listened, I couldn’t help wonder how often all of us promise things which we cannot deliver on and on other times just don’t know any better. Specifically I’m talking about the words in the English language which convey an eternal sense of time and perpetualness. Words such as Never and Forever. It seems like we still have not come to terms with our own transience and that the only tautology is that the only contant is change. Now, bear with me here since I’m not criticizing the ability to embelish and emphasize our emotion, desires and whatever we say or do with such words; but I am questioning whether we really mean it or is it purely a literary salad dressing?

I’d like to believe that as far as I can help it, I deliver on my promises. So if I say something in utmost seriousness, jest aside, then chances are that I really mean it and that I will stick to it. I have been called stubborn, persistent, obstinate, pertinacious and compared to those wonderful equine-mutts that spit at you 🙂 – because once I’ve decided something, I stick to it. (And in fact, someone telling me not to do something or that I cannot do something, often pushes me further to the limit of proving them wrong, especially if their statement is based on irrationality. I’m ready to pounce and debunk – like some idiotic pundit (priest) told my mother that my name should begin with an S and so I have a middle name which I despise that begins with an S, or that I should wear white – so I wear black jeans (they’re so much more practical too), or that I shouldn’t play with sharp objects – so I started collecting knives…)

But when it comes to keeping ones word, it isn’t always easy. Because sometimes something you promise under one set of circumstances may not hold under another set of circumstances. Even there we need to be rational right? Or is rationality a cop-out for flaking out on one’s word? Can you really love someone forever? What is forever? How long is forever? Is forever as long as you decide to make it? Is it like the life-long warranty which expires as soon as your car dies?

It intrigues me that how these eternal words bind us in promises that we may not be able to deliver on or bind us into situations and actions which we may not want to deliver on at somepoint in the future? They say people are supposed to be married forever. Now isn’t that interesting. The culture in the western world certainly doesn’t seems to exemplify the “forever-ness” of marriage by any means. Now even though that is often positioned as a negative, I still feel that the ability and independence to free yourself of a unpleasant situation is much better than using that f-word “forever” to keep yourself in bondage to an environment or situation which simply isn’t conducive to your happiness over time.

We all know that things change. Shit happens. So then why use words which will put us in a predicament which will either imprison us in the cage of our own honor – to live up to our commitments or cause us to break out of that cage and in the process break our promise?

Comments?

Is there any possibility of a hackers code of ethics?

I must have jinxed myself by saying lots more long drives in the previous blog entry. As it turns out, I may just have to head back to DC in order to rebuild a few servers. Why? Because some person who seems to lack the good sense of applying their intelligence for the right purposes decided to hack my servers.

Recently, David Coursey, the Executive Editor of ZDNet’s Anchordesk, wrote a column entitled: The only fitting punishment for virus writers? Death!. Today, I think I know exactly where David was coming from when he wrote that! I spent all morning trying to track down an intruder whose antics had successfully crippled one of my crtitical servers. Still going actually, just waiting for some installation files to get transferred over to the datacenter before I return to conducting my autopsy of the hack-attack to assess the level of damage. So far, the resonating piece of advice I’ve received from CERT and all the people who I’ve spoken to is, wipe the machine and start over. I agree that that’s the best thing to do, and that’s what I’l probably have to do… but what a freaking waste of time and effort just because some idiot feel like they have the right to come mess with other people’s systems!

Now, I’ll admit that I’ve done my share of hacking for fun. I was never a serious hacker, but I knew enough to be dangerous. But all the hacking I did was never done with any malicious intentions and was generally limited to learning new tricks without causing any damage to anyone. The hacker mentality is one of someone who needs a challenge. I most cases, there isn’t really any real work or value that the hacker intends to derive from compromising your systems, but instead, it’s just a thrill, a rush… that I am smarter than the other person because I broke into their machine! From that point of view, I would actually consider hackers to be lower on the scale of “the scum of the earth” than someone who commits burglaries, steals or mugs people. At least in those cases they get something out of it!!

Even in hacking there can be some level or ethics and morals can there not? You want a challenge? You want to prove how smart you are? Then do it in a fucking constructive way. If you can’t find a constructive way and you still really want to hack, then go ahead, hack away, but do it so you can alert the person who’s system you’ve hacked to let them know that there is a hole in their system they need to plug!! Trust me a lot more people will recognize and appreciate what you do when you do it in such a way that it helps them than harms them! If your reason for hacking is because you want a kick out it, it’s a bigger kick to help someone and have them thank you then to screw up something they’ve spent time and effort working on!

What most hackers do these days is akin to the street-vandals who go around defacing other people’s property. How would you feel like if someone came in and spray painted your car huh?? That’s what you’re doing everyday that you go treading on other people’s work and effort as you go ssh’ing, rlogin’ing, telnett’ing and su’ing from machine to machine. So develop some request for things which do not belong to you! If you want computing power, then get it the right way! Check out projects like United Devices and SETI@Home. Build your own network. Learn how to channel your intelligence in a way that you can actually get something more back from it than just the hollow thrill of patting your own back!

Well, enough ranting on Hackers, Script Kiddies and Virus writers. I left a message for the hacker who broke into my system by modifying /etc/motd. It reads:

Dear Mr. hacker:

Why the heck are you screwing with our systems?

We’d really appreciate it if you would leave them alone

and restore all the files that you messed with.

How’s that for a straightforward request? 🙂

If you need to contact us, email <address suppressed>

regards,

-m

Let’s see if he or she has the good sense to either just go away, have the courage and the decency to actually respond to it openly and explain himself or herself or if this is just another person content to be part of the scum of the Internet…