There is a huge difference between creating something that will blow up your lab if you make a mistake and something that will live and grow outside of your control if you make a mistake. Also, with most Chemistry sets you can't get enough materials to do really dangerous stuff. Most of the bad chemicals are all under strict control or oversight. But the tools to make dangerous biologics don't have the same controls over them right now.

Having worked as a research assistant in a mol bio lab, this scares the hell out of me. I don't want people creating the next super bug in their garage. Responsible research labs follow protocols about dealing with the bio-hazardous waste they generate. What happens when your neighbor releases his new organism by accident? And do we really need 'home brew' for this? If you want to study this stuff, go to school for it!

Assuming it takes 100 years to build everything we need to make this flight, by the time you get there it will be 178,570 years after the group that took 1000 years to build the matter/antimatter ship finished their project.

They use this to PUSH particles around, not PULL them.

I think it would be more accurate to say we need to protect ourselves from the Internet vs. we should protect the Internet.

By Lance Spitzner. Too bad most /.ers won't see this post. http://www.honeytech.com/blog/rebuttal/

The Running Man!

I don't remember if it was Valentine's Day but there was this geeky guy on Slashdot who proposed marriage ON SLASHDOT! Wonder how that turned out for him.

Add another device to your overladen 3G network!

Relative to the 1970's and 80's the prices now are a real bargain. I recall Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 being something like $50 at first.

First, it is way too easy to hide information from the PCI assessors. BTW, they are NOT auditors, they are assessors, there is a big difference. But it is too easy to hide stuff because to really dig into a complex system for every last detail is already cost prohibitive.

Which brings me to my second point. If liability gets pushed to the assessors (or SOX auditors which are real auditors) then the cost of being assessed/audited are going to skyrocket because they will just pass the cost of liability right back to the company that hired them. The companies being assessed/audited are being held at 'legal gunpoint' to comply and pay whatever cost. Then, the cost of being assessed will be passed on to the consumers or the company will go out of business.

If you believe the Christians, then the most recent bottleneck was 8 humans after the flood.