What I call someone, what they call themselves, and their real identity are three different things. Why force them to be the same?

A) if Google/Facebook only grant accounts (or verified account status, as others have suggested) to people who disclose their personal identity... that's the company's choice. It certainly makes me more likely to use their service (for the obvious spam/troll prevention reasons).

B) but there's no reason they need to publish that information for anyone else. They could then let my friend Robert Snee sign up for an account, choose his public name to be "Dread Pirate Snee" and then, most importantly, let me override his name and avatar with one of my own choice... probably Bob Snee with a picture of something other than his newborn baby.

C) And if Rob wants to use a total psueodonym but still accept his friend request/add him to a circle... he'll need to tell me in private "who he is" and prove it to me. Possibly by *choosing* to reveal his google/FB-verified real-identity. If he doesn't, I'm not going to let him into my friends/circles... which is the difference between social network-based sites and open communication tools like email/forums which have global acceptance for historical/practical reasons.

G

Disease and biological study are sort of a circular dependency.

E.coli is one of the best biological test organisms because we've studied it so much. We understand most of its genetics, reproductive behavior, control signals, metabolism, etc... in part because it's fairly simple, but also precisely because it causes disease so it has been studied a lot in the past. It's also not very pathenogenic compared to most organisms... anything out of control is dangerous but it grows slowly and needs a lot from its environment so it's easy to keep in check.

The same holds true for a lot of "model organisms" (species that biologists can mess with without too many moral complications, like E.coli and fruit flies). S.aureus ("Staph") and Y.pestis (the plague) are horrific little bugs if they go unchecked in the wild... but they have a lot to teach us and if we can learn how to stop them we stand to gain a lot. Soo they're among the most studied species out there. Same goes for S.cerevisiea... baker's yeast :).

G

My Birthday!

Yeah, you're missing something. You're missing the fact that "Technology" no longer means "Silicon" or "Ray guns". Technology is becoming less about metals and electrons and more about proteins and chemistry every day. Hell, even your aforementioned Sci-Fi writers have known this for decades; from Niven to Gibson and back to Heinlein, the masters have long known that once we've reached the boundaries of hard tech, soft tech will dominate. If you haven't realised that it's already happening, either catch up or get out of the way.

As such, the social issues of "new technology" ARE what "Nerds and Geeks and Libertarians" should be thinking about... and while Canseco is no genius philospher, he appears to have guts and some degree of vision. His stance is important, if not correct or wise. This article is more about "tommorow's technology today" than any other I've seen on Slashdot in recent memory.

G