[adql]

> One of the best ways to get rid of cockroaches in your kitchen is to scatter bread-crumbs under the stove, right? Wrong! That's a dumb idea. One of the best ways to discourage hacking on the Internet is to give the hackers stock options, buy the books they write about their exploits, take classes on "extreme hacking kung fu" and pay them tens of thousands of dollars to do "penetration tests" against your systems, right? Wrong! "Hacking is Cool" is a really dumb idea.

That's like, entirely unrelated. Black hats are motivated by monetary gains, not scout badges. The proliferation of internet made "for fun" hackers minority and irrelevant factor (or benefit, as they might actually report a bug instead of sow mayhem) when it comes to security.

[BulgarianIdiot]

Yeah the cockroach analogy is kinda bad. A more apt analogy would be that you can either let rodents help themselves to your food supplies on their own terms, or you can set up traps with a little bit of cheese on them.

The traps with little bit of cheese on them here being offering hackers a viable low-stress way to earn income and the respect of society for doing ethical work, which they'll prefer over the high-risk, despite higher-gain, illegal activity they'd contemplate and perpetrate otherwise.

Similar mechanics in many ecosystems. Carrot and stick work best together.

[namaria]

I think current practices would be better described in ecosystem terms as: "If a mammal is eating your food, you can adopt a bigger one to prey on them so you share a little bit of food on your own terms instead of compromising the whole community's supply".