Comment Shortsighted Author (Score 0, Troll) 341
"Were I to follow all .. of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book." Oh no! When you put it that way, it would be awful to have wasted all that time putting the book together! I mean if we're going to weigh the possibility of making hydrogen bomb construction easier, thus endangering the lives of millions/billions of people in the future, versus some author having spent time putting together a book and then having it be a big waste of time, we have to side with the author. I mean seriously, how self-centered do you have to be as an person to make that argument?
To answer the other questions here -- Assuming the information is already available elsewhere doesn't mean anything because: (1) It's possible that the author is exaggerating (for his own 'I want to publish' reasons) how available that information is, and (2) it saves villains the work of finding and putting that information together on their own - information they might've overlooked.
But, I suspect Slashdot is going to stick with the old "let's make all information available" arguments, proving why they don't and shouldn't actually work in geopolitics. I remember a lot of those crappy arguments flying around when some scientists were talking about publishing the genetic sequences of highly-virulent and deadly strains of flu. Keep working on your quixotic quest to make a deadlier 21st century, Slashdot.
To answer the other questions here -- Assuming the information is already available elsewhere doesn't mean anything because: (1) It's possible that the author is exaggerating (for his own 'I want to publish' reasons) how available that information is, and (2) it saves villains the work of finding and putting that information together on their own - information they might've overlooked.
But, I suspect Slashdot is going to stick with the old "let's make all information available" arguments, proving why they don't and shouldn't actually work in geopolitics. I remember a lot of those crappy arguments flying around when some scientists were talking about publishing the genetic sequences of highly-virulent and deadly strains of flu. Keep working on your quixotic quest to make a deadlier 21st century, Slashdot.