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Comment by konad | Hacker News Reader

I used to crash our main competitor's email & login server at 6.01pm when free dial-up calls started at 6pm. They ran on NT and if you opened tcp/ip port 0, the kernel crashed. Happy times.

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Didn't any part of you refuse to do this at a more visceral level? How could you sleep at night knowing you're cheating to get ahead? Does it even matter if you 'win'?

I can understand gaming Google and public opinion, but directly vandalizing someone's property and hindering their business is unconscionable.

I really want to understand the justification for this. And I say this as someone whose moral system is flexible enough to accept bank robbery (but not purse-snatching.)

I don't see how crashing a Windows box is any worse than robbing Goldman Sachs. (In both cases innocent people suffer, but the target is pretty reviled.)

I say this as someone who likes to claim he's chaotic good, but really is pretty much lawful good.

So because the competitor used Windows, konad's actions were justified?

If that is the case, that's a very weak justification.

If a person's morality is flexible enough to permit bank robbery, then a very weak justification is probably adequate.

Robin Hood ethics don't necessarily justify this type of vandalism and unless you're living under a tyranical monarch (or some equivalent), Robin Hood ethics are questionable to begin with.

For all you know, his competitors were trying to do the same thing to him, but his company had better security.

Suddenly the company with superior security is winning; is that bad? Especially considering this company ran email & auth servers.

mahmud, so you can accept that someone steals a lot of money from a lot of people (bank shareholders) by killing or threatening to kill civilians on the way, but mere electronic vandalism is out of bounds? That's some amazing flexibility. Unless by bank robbery you mean "only" electronic fraud?

No, not "acceptance" in the that sense, it's more of an "understanding". I get it when someone does something audacious like that; and I think the glorification of banditry is well entrenched in our culture. Countless Hollywood films, Bonnie and Clyde, the wild west, Robin Hood, etc.

While I consider crashing your competitor's servers like purse snatching; hurting the weak. It's pathetic, passive-aggressive shit that doesn't require neither boldness nor skill. I hate incompetent, gutless crooks in a very "if you're gonna do something, do it big" sort of way.

I can't justify it at all. I wouldn't do it now. Funny how people are sticking up for me. It did say "anything unethical" and unethical it was, criminal in fact. I didn't do it for long, tbh it was more for the lulz.

it was more for lulz... funny thing.. when I google about lulz, first result tells me "The term lulz was coined by Jameth, and is the only good reason to do anything, from trolling to rape."

Wow, I am really offended by that, I think mostly your "happy times" statement. I guess it's because I am assuming that your competitor was a startup and not some big corporation. Were they?

It was happy times. Just like all the other fuck-you-up shit I've done over the years. They were a small startup yes. And we used to see and talk to them at the local business events. Come on, it's not that bad. I could have done it every 15 minutes or owned them, was really just for lulz. Didn't do it for long.

Yeah, maybe I did read a bit too much into it :-)

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