I can see a market for this. Imagine a corporate firewall with the on-the-fly ability to filter out funny cat pictures and video.

Somehow I imagine remembering doing stuff in a body different to your own will render most practical skills unusable when transferred.

If they aren't, how come they're rich?

I suspect you don't. The size is about right for a handbag or a coat pocket, though. Not all people actually use their trouser pockets for anything.

Since I figure this Karmashock fellow probably won't stand down, allow me to express in his or her stead regret for his or her malappropriation of my subject area. Douches come in all flavours, apparently.

Well, yes.

Personally, my objections have more to do with pocket space. How are you supposed to fit that thing in your pocket? Then, again, it might not be aimed toward the type of customer who carries her phone in her pocket.

I'd really rather not, lest I catch something off you.

Money was wasted on it because many parties insisted on waiting until the very last minute to do anything about it.

Wouldn't that make it that much harder to track down the source in the event of an outbreak? If, say, a janitor or janitrix at Acme Carwash and Research Centre is among the first people to succumb to the disease, that would be a fairly obvious clue. If he or she is inoculated, however, and merely acts as a spore carrier and infects a random stranger on the bus, the source will be that much harder to track.

Call for help? Just run, and try not to breathe. Or touch the air.

If this doesn't count as exterminating a civilisation, I'm not sure what would.

Not intended as a jibe at the contributor of this article, of course, but rather a jibe at the world at large. When camera phones became common enough to get thrown away, I remember doing the exact same thing with dumpster-dived mobile phones. (I was a teenager at the time, with a customary deficiency of both moral scruples and better things to do.) Surely, anyone who has ever salvaged or otherwise second-handed any form of storage device already knows that people are notoriously bad at wiping. Now and again this resurfaces in the public eye in the form of a news article or similar. Despite this, it continues to be a problem. Why? Why aren't people learning? Why does this news topic refuse to age?

I. e., no.

Is it, though? The formative years are critical for developing the relevant traits, and you can hardly expect children to figure this out on their own, even though perhaps you—and, for that matter, I—just happened to unlock the programmer storyline during the great Brownian motion that constitutes the formative years of most children. We really ought to make programming a mainstream subject, preferably from as young an age as possible.