Month: June 2010

Hiring Hackers

I found another good post by Bruce Schneier. This one deals with hiring people with previous criminal histories. More or less Mr. Schneier brings up the fact stating your won’t hire people with a previous criminal history is short sighted and rather ignorant:

The answer, of course, is “it depends.” It depends on the specifics of the crime. It depends on the ethics involved. It depends on the recidivism rate of the type of criminal. It depends a whole lot on the individual.

Then he goes further into the idea of hiring convicted malicious hackers:

Admittedly, there’s a difference between thinking like an attacker and acting like a criminal, and between researching vulnerabilities in fielded systems and exploiting those vulnerabilities for personal gain. But there is a huge variability in computer crime convictions, and — at least in the early days — many hacking convictions were unjust and unfair. And there’s also a difference between someone’s behavior as a teenager and his behavior later in life. Additionally, there might very well be a difference between someone’s behavior before and after a hacking conviction. It all depends on the person.

This is ultimately the key when hiring anybody. Having a criminal history shouldn’t be an instant disqualifies for a job. It all depends on such variables as what the crime was, when the crime was done, what has changed about the person since they committed the crime, etc. Many people with previous criminal backgrounds have very useful skills. It makes sense to hire a person who was convicted of bank robbery to review your bank’s security. The person obviously understands bank security and how to bypass it. Of course it still depends on his character and whether or not he’ll try to rob your bank later. Still he’ll have the hands on experience which is more valuable than theory and book knowledge.

There is also another paragraph that I found very interesting due to previous posts I’ve made about felons on the right to keep and bear arms:

Last winter, a Minneapolis attorney who works to get felons a fair shake after they served their time told of a sign he saw: “Snow shovelers wanted. Felons need not apply.” It’s not good for society if felons who have served their time can’t even get jobs shoveling snow.

The ostracization of people with felonies is out of hand in this country. Somebody who served their time shouldn’t have a problem getting a job again. As I’ve mentioned before if a criminal is still considered a danger to society that person shouldn’t be free to roam the streets. Likewise whether you hire a felon should be based on what the felony was. As I’ve mentioned before just because somebody has a felony doesn’t mean they were a violent criminal.

So having a blanket statement saying you will not hire people with criminal histories puts you and your company at a disadvantage. Sure you will run a slightly smaller risk of having a potential offender in your company but you’ll also not be able to hire some of the best people out there.

Bloggers the Modern Pamphleteer

There has been a lot of talk about how we have to come up with a plan to save “journalism” in this country. I use the word “journalism” in the most loose of forms since anybody who reads most non-major media associated news sites (which includes blogs) know we really don’t have journalism in this country anymore. Most “news” produced by places like the New York Times is just regurgitated information they received from the Associated Press. They usually also add in more bias while they’re at it.

Steve Jobs recently spoke at D: All Things Digital where he said he doesn’t want to use us descend into a world of bloggers implying that blogs aren’t a legitimate source of news. The fact of the matter is blogs are a relevant source of news. How many stories do you read on this site alone that are never covered in any detail in major news media sources? Does the Star Tribune ever fairly cover upcoming Minnesota gun legislation? Nope. If you relied on them all you know about the “gun show loophole” is that it allows criminals to buy any gun at a gun show without a background check. Thankfully due to us gun bloggers you know that’s not true and that the “loophole” isn’t a loophole at all.

I was talking with somebody else about this subject and we came up with a rather interesting notion. Today’s bloggers are akin to Pamphleers in the days gone by. Back in the day news was spread often by people handing out pamphlets that they printed off. These pamphlets contained whatever information the printer wanted to portray to the public. You were free to take of leave them as you wanted. Of course it was up to you to determine the legitimacy of the information as it is with blogs, newspapers, and television news sources (the latter two seem to lie more from what I’ve found).

The bottom line is the concept of “accreditation and trusted” news sources hasn’t always been around. I don’t know exactly when it happened by at some point in our history we stopped doing our own research and just assumed whatever the major news outlets told us was fact. This is not how it’s always been.

So yes bloggers are legitimate news sources. We are not parasites preying off of the major media outlets. Many local stories originate from blogs. But as with popular news sources you have to determine what information is legitimate and what information is now.

With Friends Like Them Who Needs Enemies

A while ago I mentioned a Sea Shepard dip shit who illegally boarded a vessel was arrested and would be standing trail in Japan. So what are his fellow crusaders saying? They are most likely cheering their martyr whom is being wrongly persecuted for their rightful crusade against those who would dare defy the will of Sea Sheppard, right? Nope.

The organization Sea Sheppard has Severed ties with Mr. Bethune because he carried a weapon on the super expensive Ady Gil which was stupidly parked in front of a much larger vessel and ultimately destroyed. The weapon? A bow and arrows.

Either way it’s funny to see how loyal these organizations truly aren’t.

Diplomacy Only Works When You Have Guns to Back You Up

I stumbled upon an excellent post on Borepatch titled Why Britain needs America around to shoot bad guys. More or less it talks about how Europe loves to think of themselves as far more civilized than the United States because they solve their problems through diplomacy and negotiations. Of course this only works for them because they can point to us and say if the other negotiating party doesn’t comply Europe can send their friend (the United States) to beat them up.

Self Replicating MakerBot

This is awesome. The ultimate goal to projects like MakerBot is to creating a 3D print that can print more of itself. Well that goal is now one stop closer thanks to a man going by the handle Webca. He managed to create an entire frame for a MakerBot using a MakerBot. He also posted the instructions online so others can replicate his work.

Do as I Say Not as I Do

That was Obama’s message to a group of graduating Michigan high school students:

President Barack Obama is telling high school graduates in Michigan not to make excuses, and to take responsibility for failures as well as successes.

It’s OK I’m sure if this gets taken out of context Obama can just find a way to blame it on Bush.

Civil Disobedience

Is awesome! Somebody in Tennessee received a $90.00 speeding ticket and was none too happy about it. Being a savvy Internet type he also saw that the issuing police department’s domain name was about to expire so he purchased it and put up his own website detesting the victim-less crimes of traffic violations.

Good on you sir.

A hat tip goes to Uncle this post.