My take-away: append moral statements with "unless you could get an ipad."
Jonathan's Card shut down
41–50 of 106 posts
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#42I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. Sam had the option of taking the gift card and selling the card and keeping the iPad. He exposed the vulnerability. If he hadnt you would have paid in for the card, but someone would have abused the system, and not disclosed it. Here is a though experiment. There is a widely used piece of software which has a vulnerability. There are bad guys who are going to abuse it. A g…
> I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. His surname, in Italian, means "hate" or "hatred".
No, it means "from the family Odio".
Snopes explains this sort of thing better than I can: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#43Sucks it didn't work.. I know Sam decided to send all the money to some charity or something like that, but the fact is, if he really wanted to do something useful he could have done it himself, but not basing his 'ebay-experiment' on that project. But again,that would require being creative.
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#44While Sam's post was admittedly a bit snarky, and his actions did seem a bit 'scummy.' But Sam simply contributed to the experiment. Surely others were going to take advantage of the system. While his actions may run counter to the 'spirit of the experiment,' it's fair game and part of the experiment. Stark didn't enforce any sort of rules for a reason. People who participated in the experiment can continue to pay it…
The lesson I learned: if you're going to try doing something nice, don't make the mistake of calling it an "experiment" - apparently that's just an invitation for people to spoil it and call their actions "fair game".
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. His surname, in Italian, means "hate" or "hatred".
No, it means "from the family Odio". Snopes explains this sort of thing better than I can: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
The word "odio" in Italian means "hate" or "hatred".
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#46I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. Sam had the option of taking the gift card and selling the card and keeping the iPad. He exposed the vulnerability. If he hadnt you would have paid in for the card, but someone would have abused the system, and not disclosed it. Here is a though experiment. There is a widely used piece of software which has a vulnerability. There are bad guys who are going to abuse it. A g…
I am surprised that you are surprised. What you say is correct, but so what.
People can still hate him, for exposing this vulnerability. People can still hate him for turning this into something mean, rather than something altruistic. People can hate him for showing that some of us will abuse this.
I am not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. Even if this was not true, people can hate Sam for totally non logical reasons.
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#47This is similar to our tax dollars. Pay in, and others use them as fast as possible. No matter how much money was put on Jonathan's card, people were there to take it.
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#48I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. Sam had the option of taking the gift card and selling the card and keeping the iPad. He exposed the vulnerability. If he hadnt you would have paid in for the card, but someone would have abused the system, and not disclosed it. Here is a though experiment. There is a widely used piece of software which has a vulnerability. There are bad guys who are going to abuse it. A g…
Stealing a ton of money and then selling it on eBay is still wrong. If you rob a bank, does giving the money to charity make it right? If you shoplift a computer, does giving it to a poor family make it right? No, you still stole something you didn't own.
I dont agree with that. If I stole a loaf of bread to feed my family, that is a very different ethical proposition to stealing a loaf of bread to feed some ducks.
If I rob a bank and give the money to a family who desperately needs it, I am a very different person from the person who steals it to purchase a ferrari.
Legally , there may be no difference. Ethically and morally there is a huge difference in my opinion.
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#49While Sam's post was admittedly a bit snarky, and his actions did seem a bit 'scummy.' But Sam simply contributed to the experiment. Surely others were going to take advantage of the system. While his actions may run counter to the 'spirit of the experiment,' it's fair game and part of the experiment. Stark didn't enforce any sort of rules for a reason. People who participated in the experiment can continue to pay it…
Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive. The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive. And in fact, it largely can , as the growing popularity of Jonathan's Card showed. That there are people who will abuse the system does not excuse the people who abuse the sys…
>Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy //
Well it's like a guy coming up to a bowl of free candy in a place where everyone already has their pockets stuffed with candy, then going to some other place where people haven't got any candy and giving the candy to them.
Oh and the kicker, the guy who took all the free candy made sure, it seems, that the candy bowl was stocked up already and didn't take any more candy than was put in by his friend.
... and then there was uproar, because dammit, giving that free candy to people without any candy was not part of the intention of the sign "free candy", the people fervently agreed that free candy should only be for those who have lots of candy already.
Then people posted abusive messages because they hated being pointed out to that giving free candy to people with lots of candy was probably not really as generous as all that ... or something.
Re: Jonathan's Card shut down
#50Thing is, it was an experiment from the very beginning. Experiments don't have good and bad guys, only observations and results. And the observation isn't a new one: "systems" like that work nicely until the first few exploits.
I don't buy your logic. If I, as a researcher, leave a car in a bad neighborhood overnight to see what happens, the guy who smashes the window to steal the radio is still a bad guy whether or not that's relevant to my results. Science doesn't concern itself with morality, but that doesn't mean it exists in a moral vacuum.
>as a researcher, leave a car in a bad neighborhood overnight //
I think you have to label the car "free car" leaving all the doors unlocked and with the keys in the ignition.
Then when someone sells the car and gives the money to charity everyone organises a lynch mob it seems because apparently selling the car wasn't part of the experiment you expected it to be driven.
Of course experiments are best when they have unexpected outcomes and it would be unexpected in a "bad neighbourhood" for someone to act altruistically in this way with a free car.