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Slow-motion biological warfare may be more plausible.

Sooner or later some hostile country is going to figure out how to modify the flu or common cold so it sets the stage for massive (10%+ fatalities) cancer over a 10-20 year time frame, and combine it with a "trigger" so the cancer part only affects people with certain gene markers, such as a particular family, clan, or ethnic group.

Imagine if North Korea figured out a way to make and distribute a cold virus that killed 10% of infected people of European descent within 10-20 years? Or what if, instead of causing fatal cancer in 10% of victims with certain genes, it causes infertility or loss of sexual desire in 50% of that group or (by manipulating egg cells and sperm-generating cells) the future children of that group, resulting in a greatly reduced population a generation or two down the road?

The hard part will be 1) getting it right, 2) making sure it doesn't mutate and kill you or others you hope will survive 3) make sure you don't get caught, and 4) make sure it's not easy enough to copy-and-modify that one of your enemies uses it to create a cold that will kill "you and yours."

I initially read that as

I thought "WTF? Biological+radiological warfare in America AND it's not a state secret? WTF?"

As a potsmoker, all I have to say to you is FUCK OFF AND DIE HORRIBLY, you god damned troll. I hope YOU find some unshielded cobalt, or better yet, plutonium.

Fucking asshole, die motherfucker. This planet will be better off when you're gone.

I bet you'd learn some interesting things about who does drugs once the casualties start to pile up.

Indeed, there have been cops, judges, and prosecuters in the news in Illinois in the last year who were busted for cocaine. There are the mayor of that Canadian city and the ex-mayor of DC. Look at Rush Limbaugh.

I look at "war on drugs" politicians like I look at right wing politicians who constantly decry homosexuality, how many of them have been kicked out of the closet?

I don't know if the GP is an idiot, a troll, or a government shill. He advocates a painful death for drug users? I smoke pot and advocate HIS death. Alcohol, tobacco, and coffee are all addictive drugs. Marijuana is not.

All of society's problems that are attributed to drugs are really problems that stem from the laws against them.

I agree that tech helps those in power, but it also empowers the week.

I hope English is your second language.

Look at the book/music publishing industry etc

I used to think that until I released Nobots. I'll be lucky to make the investment in a copyright registration, ISBN, and bar code back, let alone earn any money from it.

I'm reading a James Patterson novel and have discovered that marketing always trumps talent and hard work, the guy's really not that good a writer. But all his books are best sellers and every time I see a woman with a book, it's one of his.

I am an American citizen, and have been an American citizen for almost four decades, and I am sad to say that the country which I signed up on, back then, was very different from the country which I am looking at, today.

I am an American citizen, and have been an American citizen for over six decades, and I am happy to say that the country which I signed up on, back then, was very different from the country which I am looking at, today.

Back then we had no EPA so pollution was horrible. We had no OSHA so workplaces were deadly. We were at war when I was born, and were going through McArthyism. We had duck and cover excersizes for nuclear war in grade school. We had horrible racism, terrible sexism, and homosexuals were as outlawed here as they are in Russia. We had the draft, but only for men. In fact, a lot of things were only for men.

America only started going downhill with the 21st century and Bush and 9-11, when the sociopaths took over the corporations, which took over the government. THAT'S why we have all the illegal spying on the American citizens by none other than the American government.

As to big brother, one's big brother is seldom someone who narcs on you to your parents, he's the one who beats up bullies for you. Too bad it's the bullies in the corner offices who have the big brother.

Why is Ferrari selling its cars for so much more than Ford? For most uses it's not significantly better

No, but it is significantly more expensive to manufacture. You can't say the same about XP and W8, the development costs are the same for those. The Ferrarri is faster, accelerates faster, brakes better, and handles batter than the Ford. You can't say that about XP and W8, W8 is your Ford with the driver's window made of cardboard, the brake and throttle pedals reversed, and the rear view mirror removed. W8 is inferior to XP from a user's point of view. W7 was a step up from XP, W8 is three steps back.

I was going to buy a new notebook, but they all come with W8 and Chrome. Come on, guys, give me W7 or kubuntu! Or at least let me install kubuntu without voiding the warrantee.

Uh, guys, the GP AC was making fun of the semiliterate summary: a car's computer system that could cause it to suddenly accelerate, turn or kill the breaks

What is it with you guys and homophones? If you write code like you write English, no wonder software is so buggy.

That said, though, don't blame the slashdot editor or submitter -- it was cut and pasted from the fucking article. Remind me that "the security ledger," being run by aliterates who obviously never finished high school, is NOT a good source of information about anything more important than lolcats. That kind of mistake is forgivable in a slashdot comment or summary, but it is certainly unforgivable by a so-called "professional" writer. I would expect a professional to at least have a BA in English, and what kind of institution will give an English degree to someone who doesn't know the difference between brake and break?

What, are they outsourcing writing, editing, and proofreading now? Or are those professions now obsolete, since nobody reads any more?

Kind of embarrassing for Slashdot to post this now, considering the truck has already been found. Apparently the container was opened, but it appears (at least most of) the Cobalt-60 is still intact.

That's your fault, dude. It's been in the firehose since Wednesday, why haven't you voted for or against it? FWIW I voted it up very early yesterday morning, where have you been?

Considering the infrastructure and expense required to ship something like this (special shielded containers, etc), why don't they include a tracking device?

It had GPS, but the unit was shut off according to the TV news.

Wireless mice that take disposable batteries just plain suck... IMHO.

That hasn't been my experience. My mouse takes AA rechargeables, but I've had disposable, non-rechargeables in it and they worked as well as a wired mouse. Disposables lasted almost a month in it.

For the absolute best coverage, Logitech has some models that come with an extra battery pack that you can pop out of the mouse and into a receptacle on the dock so you don't ever "run out" if you forget to charge the mouse.

Mine's a Logitech, and the infrared reciever is also a charger -- you just pit the mouse in it and the batteries (two AAs) charge. It comes in handy because most of my TV remotes use the same size battery, so I keep rechargeables in them and simply swap with the mouse batteries when the remotes stop working.

It wasn't the fact that it was wireless, it was that Microsoft can't code for shit (yeah, I'll be modded down, so what?). I've had a Logitech infrared keyboard-mouse combination for over ten years. It's always been as responsive as wired counterparts I've had.

I would guess that the hardware you had was fine (since MS doesn't own factories and has to farm it all out) but the drivers and other software for it were shit, like everything else they write.

I have a Logitech mouse/keyboard combo I bought in 2001. The mouse still works well, but I had some non-rechargeable batteries in the keyboard leak, so sometimes I have to scrape the battery terminals to get it to work.

But the mouse plugged right along, still going strong after more than a decade.

As to MS mice, sorry, no matter how good folks say they are I've been using Microsoft software products for almost 30 years and they've always been abysmal. Why should I expect their hardware to be any better?

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