Comment INSLAW? (Score 1) 112
Anyone old enough to remember INSLAW?
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw.html
Isn't this the prequel to 'The Stand'? Folks create nasty super bug for research, then it gets loose. I doubt this would rise to the level of a 'Captain Tripps', but it sounds like it could be nasty.
I'd be more worried about some dumb bastard making a version of smallpox that acts like the GM'd Australian mousepox. 100% lethal in unvaccinated population and around 50% lethal in the vaccinated one.
... I practice for the day a hunter steps on to my property. I want to make sure I'm a good enough shot to scare him off without blowing his brains out....
Hunting aside, shooting an RC aircraft flying low over your property is one thing and may or may not be illegal.
Shooting at folks who've broken into your house is pretty defensible
Shooting at folks (even near folks) who are on you property, can be reasonably expected to be hunters and may or may not realize they're trespassing will probably land you in the poke.
Shooting a handgun at folks with deer rifles is a very serious violation of the prudential law and will certainly get you a dirt nap on or off your property. Even if the guy with the long gun is prosecuted, you'll still be quite dead. Much more effective to simply let them know they've strayed onto private land, the exit is that-a-way.
btw, IANAL.
CSIRO, an Australian research organisation released research relating to mouse pox virus modifications that created a deadly virus precisely because it was hoped that it would lead to better treatments. They also surmised that governments around the world already knew about this but had kept it secret. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001755.html
Really? Re-read the linked futurepundit article and the following abstract. Per the FP article, a US group was hired by the US Gov to re-create the same mousepox virus to investigate defenses; the Aussies did it by accident...
From the abstract:
"Rodent plagues cause a major problem for agriculture in many temperate regions, and immunocontraception offers a new method to control fertility in these and other pest vertebrates. However, it is difficult to find an effective carrier for contraceptives for large numbers of pest animals in the field. In a new study, Jackson et al. manipulated the mousepox virus to boost the immune response in infected mice Mus musculus when testing the basis for controlling their fecundity rates. However, all infected mice (and half of recently immunized mice) died. Despite these unexpected and dramatic results of the engineering of mousepox virus, immunocontraception remains the most promising method for fertility control and management of pest vertebrates."
According to this and every other story I've read, the extreme lethality (100% of un-vaccinated mice!!!, 50% of recently vaccinated) of the engineered mousepox caught them very much by surprise. And this Dutch yahoo is flarking around with amplifying a human flu virus's lethality? Because he can? What sort of security does the lab employ? Any at all? The bad old USSR is had factories tooled to manufacture weaponized bio agents by the ton and worked on smallpox. Smallpox is already pretty bad; how bad when amplified or engineered? How much of that agent still exists?
OK, in the US, eco-nuts regularly break into labs with experimental animals and release them. Has this occurred in the Netherlands?
...Today, ALF has grown far beyond its British roots, becoming a significant international movement with an unknown number of members and supporters worldwide. ALF cells are or have been active in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain..--snip--.
pg 41, Eco-Terrorism - Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements
A heavy concentration of animal rights activity was located in the Scandinavian countries, with Sweden leading with 9.5% of all records in the database. Other countries represented in the database include Finland, Canada, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands.... --snip--,
pg 82, Eco-Terrorism - Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements And then there's that sentiment that humans are a plague on the earth, the population of which ought to be thinned.
"On 5 November, the upmarket Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 aired a discussion about overpopulation between Dr Susan Blackmore (a neuroscientist) and Professor John Gray (of the London School of Economics). Dr Blackmore said the "fundamental problem" facing the planet today is that "there are too many people". Professor Gray agreed. Then Dr Blackmore declared: "For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed." Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/25209/malthusian-snobs-pray-cure-overpopulation#ixzz1f82TXB00"
Think '12 Monkeys' . One true believer is all it takes.
The protesters are actually fairly well organized with planned events, a voting process for making immediate decisions, and a goal of getting Obama to acknowledge the wealth gap and appointing a commission to recommend actions for dealing with it.
I'm curious what you would suggest as a solution to the "wealth gap". Confiscate the property of those who have worked for it and give it to folks who haven't? Pray tell what will happen when, eventually, you run out of folks willing to be robbed?
Facebook posts are copyrighted by the poster, the same as any newspaper article or photograph is, and if they use those copyrighted works in their reports, they are infringing - and good luck trying to make a fair use exemption fly if sued over it.
Uhm, no.
From FB TOS http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf
2 Sharing Your Content and Information
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
3. When you use an application, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To learn more about Platform, read our Privacy Policy and Platform Page.)
4. When you publish content or information using the Public setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).
It'll be big.
And land on a ship from a sub orbital ballistic... Are they also patenting unbounded optimism?
LOL. Which SciFi writer gamed this out, L. Ron? Jeezus, just build simple expendable solid boosters... Didn't they learn anything from the shuttle program?
Where's James Bond when you need him?
Back in the VGA gaming days, games were all single-player.
The original Doom game had multiplayer support over a LAN - coop. Was a bit unstable though...
Regardless of whether you like the law or not, ours is a Constitutional Representative Republic and we ignore the precedent set by FCC's action at our peril and move another step towards an absolute executive (bear in mind, that the president will likely be from the other party before long). The FCC is saying Fuck the constitution, we know best: this IS high crimes...any executive branch official who thinks he can get away with it needs to be trotted in front of Congress, in irons.
Of course to the true Progressive, this is all fine and dandy, since the Constitution is an impediment to their goals anyway; to which they pay lip-service when necessary and ignore when they can.
There are cases of government initiatives working really well though. Take, for example, the anti-currency DRM they have installed in every (?) consumer-grade printing device.
When it *really* matters to them, the government can be highly effective.
Or the dot patterns laid down by color printers as a watermark...
Our typewriters are already registered?
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.
