By this thinking, wouldn't threatening to plant a bomb would be a superpower?

"How can you even say that."

It's been my observation over years of dealing with them.

  Most people who use computers aren't the Slashdot crowd. They "kinda, sorta" know enough to be able to check their email, surf the web, or play some games.

Usually when they have a failure from malware, they've been infected (perhaps with other things as well) for some time. If they can even find the original system restore disk, they're way ahead of the game.

They get Cousin Jimmy (or one of their kids), cause he's good with computers, to clean up or reinstall their computer. Usually leaving many of the same holes that got them zapped in the first place.

Or, they get some computer store to deal with it. They just gripe about losing some stuff, but it was a game they liked and can no longer find, or an email from momma before she died, etc. not something life and death. They may start copying some things to a thumb drive, if you're lucky.

So many times I've asked "When was your last backup?" and get a vacant stare even from people with PhDs at the university I work at. Let alone the everyday person on the street who has a computer at home.

As computer files become more valuable to ordinary people (rather than just IT geeks and businesses), backup plans become more important.

Most general users don't do this, but as the data becomes more damaging if it's lost, encrypted or maliciously destroyed, they may need some sort of solution.

Even a pretty sophisticated ransom-ware would have a hard time if you take an occasional backup and check it by restoring/reading the file on another machine.

I have this sneaking suspicion that the real damage that could be done to Sony is if the group that broke in got into the internal financial data rather than what gets reported.

Word has long been that the accounting practices of Hollywood and the music industry make Enron look pretty tame. And Sony is into both.

Imagine how many lawyers/accountants would be going over any financial records that get released. There are lots of actors and musicians that have felt they got shafted with what they were paid versus what they were actually owed.

"550,000 million dollar Kepler space telescope"

I think you're about 3 orders of magnitude too high.

So... The two of you are in agreement that we're completely fucked unless we follow your path.

However, you seem to disagree strongly about what that path is, save that yours is the "right" one.

Here are two cricket bats. Beat on each other until one of you is unconscious or you reach a consensus.

The rest of us will continue blundering our way to the future while you have it out. Hopefully, by then the answer won't matter anyway.

If it fails as badly as the rabbit infestation, you've given the pols another wonderful issue to send out direct mailings about!

Not to mention, a whole slew of disaster movies that will make Night of the Lepus look positively tame.

"why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?"

If it fails, not much.

But if it works, and global warming is controlled, it would undercut the best fundraising, societal engineering and lobbying arguments many organizations have.

Example: It'd remove a massive issue for the Democrats and Republicans to argue about and scare voters with.

Repeat that with both environmental and conservative organizations losing that issue, and you have a worse crisis for them than just the prospect of getting cooked by rising temperatures. ;)

"What are ya programmin' for, Timmy my boy?"

"Helps with my hallucinations. I get to see the world in its real black and white!"

(We're all coders on this bus.)

"hillbilly echo-chamber constantly circle-jerking while chanting "fuck you, got mine"."

Oh, really?

What type of echo-chamber do you circle-jerk in, and what mindless mantra do you chant?

They will very soon have a comprehensive database of the very best automated troll entry coding skillsets that GNAA and other such groups can muster.

Or didn't they get the memo that Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf won man of the year over a decade ago?

You mean, like is combined with arsenic (a deadly poison) to use for all sorts of evil things like LEDs and high speed transistors for things like cell phones?

And you can combine it with that nitrogen stuff that is part of so many explosives. And use it for (wait for it) even brighter LEDs!

Wow. That's some real exotic stuff there. Certainly wouldn't want any of that in the world.

Yeah, this is the sort of BS I'd expect out of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. It's sad they've figured out that submitting everything to Slashdot is a way to shovel their message.

Nasty. Swans are already mean as all get out and now you want to genetically engineer them with African bee dna, so they behave like killer bees.

Black swan: Cygnus atratus
Africanized honey bee: Apis mellifera adansonii

Africanized Black Swan: Cygnus atratus adansonii (variety: Winged Death).

Attacks in flocks of thousands and chases you for miles. Almost as bad as sharks with lasers, but can fly and travel on land. Doctor Evil would be proud.

"bootstrapping a solar system civilization with no additional money"

FTFY.