This is a common complaint among blackhats: they see whitehats as being in the game for the money and taking advantage of the unenlightened as much as they [the blackhats] themselves do.
I don't really know what to make of it.
Whitehats are only taking advantage of the unenlightened as much as a mechanic is taking advantage of someone who doesn't know anything about cars - they provide experience and expertise and offer a service for a high price - at least, a higher price than if the client knew how to fix it themselves.
How do I know that my jeweler isn't gouging me on my fiancee's 2 caret diamond ring? Because I know that there's a fixed quantity of available diamonds, and almost everyone would buy them at a given price. And if I need to verify that, I can go to the jeweler down the street. Everyone would buy security consulting at a given price, but that quantity is even more limited than 2 caret diamonds.
Why is my house worth a third less than what it was 3 years ago? Because there's at least a third fewer potential buyers than there was when I bought it. I wasn't "price gouged" or fooled in either instance.
Whitehats specialize in security and it frees up our time to specialize and produce excess value for others. It's not a conspiracy. If Steve Jobs and LeBron James aren't tricking people into giving them money, neither are whitehats. It's the free market and, believe it or not, it produces wealth.
Meanwhile...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition_of_di...
Your jeweler is always gouging you when you buy diamonds.
Preying on the weak for profit
They both kind of have a sociopath sound to them
A society driven by preying on the weak for profit is far more distressing.
I don't think it's as visible to us as it used to be, but I think it's still very much there.
The person who is weak in this case is a customer. This customer is lacking in skills related to computer security. The person who is preying on the weak is someone who invested time into learning about the skills that the customer does not know. Let's say this customer was a farmer. He is using the money he too got from preying on the weak non-farmers to purchase protection.
In the case of preying on the weak for fun we also have some things being hidden behind the words. For example, fun in this case means stealing identities, trying to ruin relationships, and sending dildos to innocents.
It's cool though for the author because by having things written in these terms its easy for people to talk past each other. They don't realize the context in which he has placed the words in the article. When other people see the terms its easy to think that maybe "preying on the weak for profit" is referring to blackhats instead of capitalism.
Another thing worth pointing out is that the person who is volunteering to give away the information for free is actually someone who also put in a lot of time to learn all the things that the customer didn't know. So when he says "I could teach it to him quickly" he is really saying "I will provide the same service in exchange for you're weekend." The thing is that when these two "companies" compete only the one charging money is going to stay afloat. So the dildo sending altruist who wants fun to be the basis of society goes back to sending dildos while the guy who charged the money actually does the job.
In economics, the invisible hand, also known as invisible hand of the market, is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. This is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments... For Smith, the invisible hand was created by the conjunction of the forces of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand, which he noted as being capable of allocating resources in society.
Do car mechanics pray on weak for profit because not everyone learned how to fix their car? They trust mechanics because they devoted many years of their life at becoming good at what they do. Does that make them sociopaths? logic fail.
You could also say that white hat hackers provide a service of security for the benefit of those that spend their time creating other things.
Mayhap that time has arrived.
It enables people who would rather be disconnected to disconnect themselves, and gives sociopaths the ability to do far more.
The internet doesn't create people without empathy, it reveals that deep down, a lot of humanity didn't have it to begin with. The way society is starting to structure itself, though, lets that shine through more clearly.
A lot? I doubt LulzSec is more than five people. For every pathological script-kiddie there are ten Free Software hackers. The Internet has revealed new ways for people to be destructive, but it has also revealed more ways that they can be constructive.
Compare:
I doubt society was ever much more virtuous than it is today, but we do hear about the problems more. There is the orthogonal and much more serious issue that many more people today feel unfulfilled in their lives than they did before, but I can't even begin to address that -- read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace if that interests or concerns you.
a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.