Topic: Stockholm Syndrome (Read 3061 times)

@Horkabork, you sir are a craftsman of analogies. I tip my hat to you out of respect.

Since we're deep in analogy land, why not make a second trip.

I've got three pairs of pants, (bear with me - I hate a cluttered closet), and depending on what I'm doing or where I'm going I choose one of the three.

WinPants - You know, these suckers are comfortable. Well, they better be - I've only spent decades getting them to fit just right. Sure, there's a small hole in the left pocket so I have to be careful not to put anything in there I don't want lost, and there is the annoying tendency for the elements to seep in through the threadbare but wonderfully smooth denim at times. But dammit, they do the job and I don't get arrested for going out nude - so its a win-win scenario. They won't impress the girls, but it will take care of regular errands and going about-the-town during the day.

iPants - Well, I'm a bit invested here. Spent more than I usually do - and god, do they look it. I hear the fabric was woven by some particularly picky designers and I'm paying for their expertise. That's okay with me. Although if I get a tear I have to send it off somewhere special to get it repaired or replaced. But they are my fancy pants used for wowing the ladies as I dash off into wild discos and art showings. Not to say they don't get holes in the pockets like my WinPants, but they do get repaired eventually, whenever I can manage to get to the authorized drycleaner.

x32-Pants-0.01.02-tar.gz - Yeah, the label is a bit long, but the damn fabric seems to have been crafted in a vulcan furnace, a bit of a burnished exterior that fades improbably to near pitch-black. I've poured an entire pitcher of bloody mary mix on the leg once, and it vanished without a trace. Amazing. However, it took me a while to get these on. You have to be certain pants.conf is setup properly, and you don't want one leg in before you realize that the cuff_relax_flag isn't set to "Auto". That really stung. Ladies tend to avoid me in these pants, but that is only because I didn't have the fabric_refresh set to something higher than 24 fps, and my boxers were showing. I fixed that, and they've been pretty dependable ever since. I can go anywhere with these, I just have to keep an eye on the pants announcement board to make sure some clown hasn't figured out how to unravel my seams while I'm walking around town at night. No, that wasn't me, that was some other guy... really.

 

I'm sorry. When I wrote that, I purposely chose my words carefully because I didn't want to make a windows or linux comparison. My poorly-established analogy was not about the OS wars, but that people shouldn't put their trust in the innate security of Macs and let their guards down. They shouldn't trust any OS without doing their own due diligence and keeping up their part of the equation in providing their own maximum security for the OS.

That said, I'm a three OS user so I'm not trying to piss on macs (thereby pissing on myself), just say that the prevalent thought among the ditzier users seems to be, "Oh I don't need to do anything for security. It's a mac! Tee hee!" I want you to imagine that the person saying that was frolicking through a field of tulips with a bunch of kittens trailing behind them. Relatedly, there's hasn't been much of an evolutionary arms race between mac malware and security products.

Windows, on the other hand, is like living in a ghetto neighborhood. Your house has been attemptedly robbed a few times and once someone mugged you on the way home from the 7-11, but you're doing your best to help yourself by putting bars on your windows, getting a dog, packing a gun, garaging your car, and starting a neighborhood watch. There's a crack den across the street, but rather than fix it up, the frustrated landlord just decided to burn it down and reinstall another house (Which seems to be becoming another crack den). Also, you've become a racist purely out of fear and mistrust, and you get all your packages delivered to your Dad's house so that they won't get stolen.

Macs are like living in close-gated communities with security guards, but where users tend to leave their doors unlocked, their windows open, and put notes on the door that they're on vacation and that UPS packages should be left on the back porch. They have alarm systems, but never seem to use them because they're "too complicated." Also, they wear sweater vests and the only dogs they might have are yippy little things with pink bows in their hair, acting more as decorative accessories than agents of security.

Linux, Unix and BSD operating systems are, I don't know, like living on a barge in the middle of the ocean, but where the user always wears camouflage, has built a custom sniper tower and extensive camera and alarm network, put up a high-voltage fence around the perimeter, and has trained sharks to patrol the nearby waters. This is not just one species of shark, but a variety because each has their own specialty. One, for example, is good at throwing knives. Also, the owner has a rottweiler that has been trained to bark commands to the sharks in the event that you might be indisposed during an attack. Otherwise, the house on the barge is identical to the suburban mac one.

Also, fuck it because it's my analogy, there's a harpoon gun because you never know when the whales are going to turn on us. They've been plotting for a while now, but it has been taking some time (Whales are very slow conversationalists). There is also a close-knit community of other barge-livers who share details of their paranoia, such as how you are a complete utter moron if you don't have a 7 year food supply, no less than 3 reverse osmosis water filters, and not just several crates of ammo stored with dessicants, but your own ammo press and materials. There's a subforum specifically for maintaining weapons in a saltwater environment. People have written extensive tutorials on how to train and feed their perimeter sharks. If you tell the community "Pfft. My barge isn't very safe. Barges suck. I can't seem to figure out how to grow a lawn, and this never was a problem in my windows house!" Then you'll get 15 different replies that insult you and your old ghetto windows house, but also giving detailed instructions on how to grow a barge lawn. One guy even posts pictures of an extensive hydroponic vegetable-growing operation and then everyone oohs and ahhs about how cool it is for the rest of the thread.

Okay. Where was I?

People aren't doing their own due diligence in checking out the security of these other exchanges. I don't mean by probing them, necessarily, but by asking the right questions. They are black holes. At least Camp BX did a security audit and seems to be open to community assistance. Mt. Gox, prior to the attack, had spent something like 2000 BTC in security bounties. But they've done a lousy job at communicating this and what else they might have done.

I don't know how anyone can make an assumption about the security of their money at any exchange without more information.

Oh I will! That will be 10 BTC thanks!

I am not sure how applicable the "Apple Stockholm Syndrome" is to Bitcoins, but boy is the term applicable in its own right. 10 +

most of the time, those captors have strong reasons why they do this ... e.g. big wealthy person did a lot of harm and some victims try to get money from him, etc.

maybe that's a possible explanation?

apart from that, MT has carefully anti-goxed each line of code because he has starred at each one at least for 10 seconds.

Wake up troll, I see you falling into the classic troll syndrome - assuming people care about the troll-topic you post about. Get back to making YouTube comments, we don't need your simple-simon idiocy here.

OS X is based on a BSD kernel these days, which is provably more secure than the windows NT family of kernels and has been targeted with various attacks for literally decades.

I hate people who used the overused "Wake up" phrase. Wake up people, wake up America, wake up this and that... Just be honest and say "Look here, dumb-ass!"

I'm getting sick of new threads about Mt. Gox, especially when there is no new conversation to be had. There should just be a subforum for each exchange.

Also, it's one thing to not trust Mt. Gox fully (which nobody should do, as good practice), it's another thing to make the terrible assumption that other exchanges are any safer, just because they haven't been hacked yet. That's like the ever-pervasive claim that Macs are really secure computers, when much of the security they have only comes from them being lesser targets.

People love to be slaves! 

for people with lots of coins/cash in mt gox it takes awhile to get out, in some instances maybe months

5 star thread.

How about the Apple Stockholm Syndrome?  Buy overpriced computer.  brag about it.  love it.  bend over and take it when you have to take it to the "geniuses'' and have them charge 50% of the value to fix something that shouldn't be broken.  Or in my case, continue using the iphone while knowing that superior phones are available..

This.

There is absolutely no evidence of malicious intent or dishonesty on the part of mtgox - you can criticise their security for the obvious fact it was compromised, but it's hardly right to criticise their honour.

Someone needs to hack and clean out tradehill or they will never shut up...

It is difficult enough running your own business.  Running a bitcoin exchange is even more difficult, because in addition to the normal crap a startup has deal with, you are taking a personal (not just financial) risk.

It's something I would never be capable of.  Exchanges provide a vital service to the bitcoin community in the bootstrapping phase. Every exchange operator (not just mtgox) is a hero in my eyes.  

I am thankful for mtgox, despite their mistakes and screw ups.  I have no reason to believe that their intentions are dishonest.   That's why I will keep supporting them (and other exchanges).

Gox me baby one more time!

Rob... it leaves you GOX'd

TH-7071M501337

Hey, I live in Stockholm, where does that leave me? 

GOX me baby

Or the bonus you'll send for signing up to B7