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Kevin Mitnick has died

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Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#511

Post by samstave »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #486
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure. It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals…

Note that it really depends on the type of the pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic adenocarcinomas are some of the worst cancers out there (overall 5y survival of 8%), others like pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours have a fairly good prognosis. Famously, Steve Jobs sought alternative medicine solutions to the latter, which was probably misguided.

I come from a long line of clinical/medical folks in my family - and me on the tech side of medicine...

That said the following is me talking out my ass, but I have followed a very few number of pancreatic cases - jobs being one... and there is one anecdotal that I would hope people closer to such cases can chime into ; how much wine did these people drink (jobs was a prolific wine drinker)

Im wondering if sulfates from wine are a major player.

https://www.distractify.com/p/patrick-swayze-alcoholic

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#512

Post by sbilstein »

josh2600 wrote: post #48

Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique. Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice veri…

As a kid I ate this stuff up. In the eighth grade, I defaced my middle school website.

The IT person easily figured out it was me and then tricked me into thinking I would be expelled within days. She pulled me out of class, told me such in the hallway, let me return to class where I held in tears until the end of the day.

Nothing happened and the school year ended a few weeks later. Towards the end of the summer I realized it had been a bluff and I wouldn’t be punished. Took me a few years later to realize how much of a favor that all was! The county school of conduct clearly said cybercrime was punishable by expulsion so she could have absolutely put me in some kind of hell. The fear set me straight hah.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#513

Post by HannibalLecter »

jjkaczor wrote: post #471
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was not aware he was ill. Always sad to hear people that are taken by cancer. It was pancreatic cancer, which is the deadliest cancer. It kills very quickly and as far as I know, it's impossible to cure. It killed my mom: 3 months between diagnosis and death. She didn't want treatment because it couldn't save her; it would only postpone the inevitable and she didn't want to spend the rest of her days in hospitals…

It took my dad last year, diagnosis in April, gone by mid-June. It was so aggressive he chose "medical assistance in death" (MAID), because he didn't want to be in hospitals all-the-time. He had half-completed the process, then had a stroke on June 4th, where he was then admitted to hospital. The stroke cause aphasia, so he couldn't communicate very well (speech was very disjointed, but he could understand everyone)…

[dead]

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#514

Post by major505 »

Man, fuck cancer. He still was young, and his wife is pregnant. I remember as a kid reading about his exploits, and how much that influenced my carrer choice and interest in computers.

Hope he can hack his way into heaven.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#515

Post by CPLX »

rjbwork wrote: post #495
CPLX wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll make more sense when you realize that promoting the competence of American corporations is, in and of itself, an explicit policy goal of the American government.

If they wanted to promote competence then the damages would be applied to the corporation for implementing the vulnerability, not on the attacker for exposing it. This way, corporations are given a shield for being incompetent and can place the blame and damages upon an individual that brings them to light.

“Promoting the competence of” does not require actual competence. Exposing incompetence undermines that promotion.

The government is a lot more concerned with the image, and its effect on trade, over the substance.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#516

Post by motbus3 »

Mitnick was a warrior battling giant corps alone. I believe he did that just because he could only, but it does not take the merit of one guy being able to outweight the whole industry.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#517

Post by loup-vaillant »

j0hnyl wrote: post #508
puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it really depends on the type of the pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic adenocarcinomas are some of the worst cancers out there (overall 5y survival of 8%), others like pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours have a fairly good prognosis. Famously, Steve Jobs sought alternative medicine solutions to the latter, which was probably misguided.

I'm not sure it's the alternative treatments that did him in... it was the AIDS that he kept a secret and was subsequently revealed by wikileaks.

Do you have a credible link? The quick search I did suggests the evidence was unreliable and likely forged.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#518

Post by 2devnull »

samstave wrote: post #511
puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it really depends on the type of the pancreatic cancer. While pancreatic adenocarcinomas are some of the worst cancers out there (overall 5y survival of 8%), others like pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours have a fairly good prognosis. Famously, Steve Jobs sought alternative medicine solutions to the latter, which was probably misguided.

I come from a long line of clinical/medical folks in my family - and me on the tech side of medicine... That said the following is me talking out my ass, but I have followed a very few number of pancreatic cases - jobs being one... and there is one anecdotal that I would hope people closer to such cases can chime into ; how much wine did these people drink (jobs was a prolific wine drinker) Im wondering if sulfates f…

If they were a major player it wouldn’t be so subtle, it would be an industry wide problem. Alcohol causes pancreatic cancer for sure, but sulfites specifically? I’d beed a lot of evidence to believe that.

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#519

Post by [deleted] »

josh2600 wrote: post #48

Mitnick was a hacker hero of mine in my youth. I think I’ve understood his role as jester prior to conviction less as I’ve grown older, but there’s something about the boyhood charm of being so divorced from the potential consequences of one’s actions that is almost unique. Mitnick had so many stories that entranced the people around him. I heard one second hand of Mitnick dealing with a bank who had early voice veri…

[deleted]

Re: Kevin Mitnick has died

#520

Post by loup-vaillant »

rjbwork wrote: post #495
CPLX wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll make more sense when you realize that promoting the competence of American corporations is, in and of itself, an explicit policy goal of the American government.

If they wanted to promote competence then the damages would be applied to the corporation for implementing the vulnerability, not on the attacker for exposing it. This way, corporations are given a shield for being incompetent and can place the blame and damages upon an individual that brings them to light.

Oh, if you want to actually raise competence, sure. But they meant projecting the image of competence.
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