What I believe [controversial?]

I'm entirely atheist and I don't believe in human souls or absolute morality. I consider meta-physics to be an oxymoron. I think any religious belief is harmful in the modern world, no matter how nice and harmless it appears on the surface. I reject free will, beyond uncontrollable randomness, and I think of humans as merely a special type of computer. I'm a strong 'believer' in scientific method as a general process for working out the nature of the universe, at least as far as I believe that what I think I'm observing is an appropriate representation of reality.

I hate human beings, physically. Our bodies are terrible devices and should be supplemented with as much medication and technology as possible, until we can move our brains entirely as software onto an intelligently designed and crafted piece of technology.

I'm pro-choice at any stage of pregnancy. I support euthanasia. I support completely unrestricted freedom of speech. I support the right to speak anonymously. I am against censorship of any kind except in special cases of national security, where otherwise people's lives would be threatened, and even then, it must be declassified as soon as possible. I support full legalisation of gambling, prostitution, drugs and other vices, but with government oversight to ensure it's performed responsibility. I am against complete bans on being able to generally acquire guns, knives, lockpicks, chemicals, radioactive materials, needles, etc. and I think that all prescription drugs should be available over the counter, subject to similar oversight as currently illegal drugs. Whether you are a woman, man, gay or straight should not be a direct basis for discrimination. Religion should be entirely seperate from the government and laws. The school curriculum should not be directly influenced by government, religion or commercial entities. Health care should not be controlled by commercial entities.

I don't think the government should give you money or housing if you don't work, even if you have children, unless you're disabled to the point you simply cannot work. Instead, if you can't find work, I think the government should give you money to do voluntary work or fund a company to put you in an apprentiship scheme. In these cases, child care could be provided by the government. If you can't look after your kids even with all this help, you should lose your children as you're a bad parent. Begging should be illegal.

I support some form of direct democracy, and think that technology should be used to facilitate maximum government transparency. I support enhancement of consumer protection laws. I think that we should strive to recycle as much as possible, and use as little energy as possible, where it doesn't impact significantly on our lifestyle. Distributed power generation would be cool, as would vertical farming and self-sufficient communities and housing.

I don't think anyone should thank someone who doesn't deserve it.

Over the last few years, I've taken a lot of flak for my fairly unusual, and sometimes extreme, views. I'm not going to defend my view here, but my views do evolve over time and are subject to change in the future if it is brought to my attention in some way that my 'model' has some problems. If you think I'm evil, it's perfectly okay to tell me so via email or comments, and I'd probably not disagree (but I wouldn't agree either).

Network security counter-attack

Apparently, it's against computer security laws to perform counter-attacks on people who try to attack your network. I think that, not only should it be legal, it should be considered a moral imperative, within certain limitations. We should apply similar laws to counter-attacks that we do to defending one's self in the physical world; use of excessive force like wiping their hard drive is illegal, but a counterattack to merely disable/disinfect the computer is okay.

The fact that we can't do anything to counter-attack botnets only facilitates extreme growth and increase in power and resources available to their operators. If every computer on an ISP was watching out for damaged computers and would immediately attack them to remove their ability to spread the virus, it'd be a lot more difficult for viruses to spread.

Although given botnet authors determination, perhaps we'd end up with the computer equivelant of a superbug ... like iMRSA or something, and be unable to kill it. :)