If there's one reason to keep politics off HN that we should all be able to agree with, it's to keep us from finding out that people we talk to here believe it might be justifiable to kill people to protect a website.

I suspect that most of us believe it might be justifiable to kill people to protect a website.

Do you (or anyone else) oppose having armed guards protecting a data center? Armed guards protecting a data center means that someone might get killed to protect a website.

(You can draw other moral distinctions, and I'm not defending this guy in particular. I'm just pointing out that the specific argument you are making is most likely incorrect.)

Big doors and time-locks are likely to work better. Side-arms to protect computers is just security theater.

The only reason I can think of to have armed guards at a data center is if the people working there are at a real risk of armed attack, not the computers.

edit - also if your site security and uptime is dependent on some people with guns at a datacenter, then you are doing it wrong.

Thank you. Please substitute in your head the argument reasonable people can infer I intended to make for the argument my words accidentally included. :)

>I suspect that most of us believe it might be justifiable to kill people to protect a website.

Right, that would be to tptacek's point.

Instead of "only suspecting"?

"Anything that you wouldn't say to someone face-to-face" + keeping to dinner party topics with people you just met.

Funny you say that, because that's exactly why I come here -- I want to hear people come out and say the things they're thinking of saying but wouldn't because it would violate some social guideline. I was having a conversation with a libertarian the other day (in fact it actually was a dinner party) and I kept getting the feeling that on certain points he /wanted/ to go to logical extremes (as did I) but didn't, because if we had gone there we'd inevitably end up talking about some pretty heavy stuff, including my country's history and how we mistreated many people. But the reality is that it actually is really hard talking about these things face-to-face (it is, at least to me). Online, where most memory is ephemeral as concerns people's identities on large forums, you don't know my race, religion, creed - you're not going to waste mental power trying to word things so that I don't get offended, you'll just come out and say what you mean. That's really what I want. But even I can't do this in real life (or at least, have significant trouble doing it), so I come here... and other places online to talk about those things. Because, if I'm not talking about these things at the dinner table, then where else would I talk about them if not online?

I'd rather that we just get down and dirty, in an honest and direct manner. We often sacrifice progress on many issues by getting set back by social rules. Let's stop doing that.

I was explaining the article's explanation of DPR's rationale. This isn't my viewpoint or the author's.

Your forgot the part about allegedly ordering a guy tortured to get his money back.