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The Dangers of Being A Microbiologist
Anonymous Coward writes "Globe and Mail is running a story for all the paranoid conspiracy theorists among us: "Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months.... Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.""
i claim this first post for jesus. he died for all your sins.
First post of Topic as well as my first post! Woohoo!!
A man walks into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
Holla back, Caltech Bitchez.....
Awww, fuck....ONe for HMC, too.....
Maybe this has something to do with that nifty Self-assembling "nano-building" virus from a couple stories ago :)
"Wait, this isn't my drink! AARRGGHH!!"
You forgot CowboyNeal.
Until you add in the part where the Anonymous Coward who submitted the news item was hired by the same biotech company who paid an editor at Globe and Mail to publish a story to scare the living crap out of their microbiologists.
Ahhhh, the simplicity of safe-guarding IP.
A "Pagan" is not a "Satanist". It makes me very angry when I hear those two terms interchanged.
Perhaps some of those deaths seem suspicious, but please: a murder-suicide by an associate of the deceased? I really do not see how the "spooks" could cause something like that.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
The assassin was *deranged*???! Not everybody lives on the East Coast, you guys. "License To Ill" isn't on out here for a while! A spoiler warning would be nice next time!
(apologies to the Beastie Boys)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Scientists' deaths are under the microscope By ALANNA MITCHELL, SIMON COOPER AND CAROLYN ABRAHAM COMPILED BY ALANNA MITCHELL Saturday, May 4, 2002 - Print Edition, Page A1 It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up. Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism. Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond. The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke. Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza. He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge. Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy agency, concluded he died of a stroke. Dr. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, played a huge role in Russian biowarfare and helped to figure out how to modify cruise missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction. The next two deaths came four days apart in December. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged. Dr. Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, who worked at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, Va. Four days later, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died at work in Geelong, Australia, in a laboratory accident. He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen. Other scientists at the animal diseases facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization had just come to fame for discovering a virulent strain of mousepox, which could be modified to affect smallpox. Then in February, the Russian microbiologist Victor Korshunov, 56, an expert in intestinal bacteria of children around the world, was bashed over the head near his home in Moscow. Five days later the British microbiologist Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home near Norwich, England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair. He was an expert in environmental risks and disease. Two weeks later, two prominent microbiologists died in San Francisco. Tanya Holzmayer, 46, a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989, focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by medicine. She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang (Matthew) Huang, 38, who shot her seven times when she opened the door to a pizza delivery. Then he shot himself. The final two deaths came one day after the other in March. David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. He was hit by a car while he was jogging. The following day, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver. So what does any of it mean? "Statistically, what are the chances?" wondered a prominent North American microbiologist reached last night at an international meeting of infectious-disease specialists in Chicago. Janet Shoemaker, director of public and scientific affairs of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., pointed out yesterday that there are about 20,000 academic researchers in microbiology in the U.S. Still, not all of these are of the elevated calibre of those recently deceased. She had a chilling, final thought. When microbiologists die in a lab, there's a way of taking note of the deaths and adding them up. When they die in freakish accidents outside the lab, nobody keeps track. Suspicious deaths The sudden and suspicious deaths of 11 of the world's leading microbiologists. Who they were: 1. Nov. 12, 2001: Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later. 2. Nov. 16, 2001: Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river. 3. Nov. 21, 2001: Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke. 4. Dec. 10, 2001: Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested. 5. Dec. 14, 2001: Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia. 6. Feb. 9, 2002: Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow. 7. Feb. 14, 2002: Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England. 8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002: San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself. 10. March 24, 2002: David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. 11. March 25, 2002: Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.
Can you land on the Buoy? If you can, you get 500 points! Now give me a banana!
Now, however, that it's a story on Slashdot, (along with several other Big Hot Button stories which have made Slashdot headlines over the past couple of days), we'll get to sift through all the Perfectly Logical Explanations.
Let the Paranoia and Head-in-the-Sand-'Rationality' begin!
-Fantastic Lad --The Truth is somewhere in between. .
I bet this is put out by the same people that believe we (the human species) never landed on the moon. That's not to say that this isn't bad, it is. This stuff is not far off, whether or not they were assassinated is not the question...
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, not just chemistry, reality!
Imagine that there had been a missile attack scare in the US. This is roughly like looking through the ranks of recent deaths of computer scientists and implying that anybody who died who was working on Ada compilers, control systems software, robotics, or large-scale software engineering was somehow related to SDI work.
Of course, an X-Files style conspiracy would be so much more interesting, I suppose.
$1 billion spent on a miniature model and a smoke generator. See for yourself. They even managed to compute the wrong period for a satellite "438 miles above the planet". Ok, where did the rest of the money go?
and i cannot wait until you fucking choke on your own stupidity. making a mockery of something that might actually be a conspiracy makes an idiot out of you. so in closing, i really hope your entire family (yourself included of course) dies of a mutated strain of tuberculosis. fucking asshole.
H2G2 was right again!
I sig, therefore I was.
They died from using stupid M$ products. All microbiologists worth their weight in salt should know to use clusters of Linux machines!
Why did he have to shoot her WHILE she was opening the door to get a pizza? Answer: the "pizza boy" was a robot (android). She opens the door, he busts in, and kills her with his "pizza" (which is a spinning weapon--deadly) and makes it look like she got shot. He shoots her body, just to make it realistic. The he shoots the other guy, and gets his fingerprints all over them. Walla! And he eats pizza while looking over his handiwork before taking off.
Scientists' deaths are under the microscope
By ALANNA MITCHELL, SIMON COOPER AND CAROLYN ABRAHAM
COMPILED BY ALANNA MITCHELL
Saturday, May 4, 2002 - Print Edition, Page A1
It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up.
Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism.
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.
The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke.
Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza.
He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge.
Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy agency, concluded he died of a stroke.
Dr. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, played a huge role in Russian biowarfare and helped to figure out how to modify cruise missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction.
The next two deaths came four days apart in December. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged.
Dr. Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, who worked at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, Va.
Four days later, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died at work in Geelong, Australia, in a laboratory accident. He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen. Other scientists at the animal diseases facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization had just come to fame for discovering a virulent strain of mousepox, which could be modified to affect smallpox.
Then in February, the Russian microbiologist Victor Korshunov, 56, an expert in intestinal bacteria of children around the world, was bashed over the head near his home in Moscow. Five days later the British microbiologist Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home near Norwich, England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair. He was an expert in environmental risks and disease.
Two weeks later, two prominent microbiologists died in San Francisco. Tanya Holzmayer, 46, a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989, focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by medicine.
She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang (Matthew) Huang, 38, who shot her seven times when she opened the door to a pizza delivery. Then he shot himself.
The final two deaths came one day after the other in March. David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. He was hit by a car while he was jogging.
The following day, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver.
So what does any of it mean?
"Statistically, what are the chances?" wondered a prominent North American microbiologist reached last night at an international meeting of infectious-disease specialists in Chicago.
Janet Shoemaker, director of public and scientific affairs of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., pointed out yesterday that there are about 20,000 academic researchers in microbiology in the U.S. Still, not all of these are of the elevated calibre of those recently deceased.
She had a chilling, final thought. When microbiologists die in a lab, there's a way of taking note of the deaths and adding them up. When they die in freakish accidents outside the lab, nobody keeps track.
Suspicious deaths
The sudden and suspicious deaths of 11 of the world's leading microbiologists.
Who they were:
1. Nov. 12, 2001:
Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later.
2. Nov. 16, 2001:
Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river.
3. Nov. 21, 2001:
Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke.
4. Dec. 10, 2001:
Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested.
5. Dec. 14, 2001:
Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia.
6. Feb. 9, 2002:
Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow.
7. Feb. 14, 2002:
Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England.
8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002:
San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself.
10. March 24, 2002:
David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England.
11. March 25, 2002:
Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.
Obviously the writer of the article is some right-wing Christian fundamentalist idiot. Everyone knows (except for the religious crazies) that Satanists are not pagans.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
That you are a complete and utter fucktard. Your website sucks too, but I think you already knew that.
I like petting kittens.
"Statistically, what are the chances?" Well, the article answers this question pretty good, but I have something to add. This is like that study you may have heard of that linked ice cream sales in Florida with rape. Does that mean all ice cream vendors are rapists? Obviously, no, since I still like ice cream =). Especially Ben & Jerry's. But I'm getting Offtopic. So what if 11 top-level microbiologists died outside the lab? Don't forget, tons of people die EVERY SINGLE DAY and there are 6x10^9 people on the earth. A lot. Even more have EVER walked this earth. So if you look at the chances, they're relatively high.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
As most visitors to Slashdot should already know, at least one of these scientists is most definitely NOT dead. One year from now, we will discover that it wasn't him that died, but instead his robotic clone. At this time, he will most likely die again, only to be replaced one year later by a different scientist that is actually being controlled by yet another robotic clone of Dr. Wiley.
My apologies to the family of the victims, but I couldn't help but share my geekish laughter at the idea of "Dr. Wiley" (sic, sort of) mysteriously dying. My only hope is that the doctor, while he was still alive, got a good laugh out of his name and title, too.
First antiseptics... Then antibiotics... Now genetic resequencing... The bacteria, virii, and microbial life forms are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. This is just their way of saying "Pick on someone your own size you digusting, smelly, featherless, bipedal bags of mostly water."
I remember almost a decade ago, there was a rash of mysterious deaths in the UK of top programmers working on top secret military projects. That was also dismissed as a "statistical anomoly" and that working under such high pressures can cause suicidal tendencies.
Yeah, like the one guy who took a lamp cord, bared the two ends, and taped them to his metal fillings in his molars and plugged it in.
A lot of the deaths also occured in a brief span of time, and lots of strange and horrible ways to die.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
well, the fact that everyone is now wondering about these deaths, and is on the lookout for more deaths, might affect the result in several ways
1. microbiologists might start being more careful
2. people might try to kill more microbiologists, since it's the popular thing
3. contrarians (which many murderers are) might decide not to kill microbiologists, it being too passe
4. other effect
So, by all means, let us continue our scientific observations, but keeping in mind that the act of observing may influence the results, and may be dangerous to your health (if you are a microbiologist)
is that they got all finally got a conscience which was set to self destruct in 5 secs
I remember hearing news reports of his disappearance right in the middle of all the anthrax mailings. There were more than a few conspiracy theories around that. Though some of the deaths sound a bit like some KGB assassinations from the cold war days, they would use poisons like ricen to cause what appeared to be heat attacks and strokes, They some Bulgarian dissident like that in London.....
Do I count as a microbiologist if I mailed baby powder to congress? (That's a joke, don't take it seriously) I like the idea of a big time conspiracy. I haven't had a good real life conspiracy since Eric Crouch lasted until the 3rd round. (I'm a football nerd too)
HE would be able to piece this together!
I surely do. Psyonic your website (er, page...) really does suck.
1234567890zxcvbnm, kudos on your use of the word fucktard! Somewhere Profane Motherfucker has an unexplaned sence of happiness.
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
so where is the consipracy theory? a bunch of people died, but the article doesn't provide any theory linking their deaths.
the only redeeming element to this list of characters was the inclusion of a pagan high priestess. cool.
that intro shammed me with its talk of plots.
damn anonymous cowards!
-anonymous coward
Isaac Asimov wrote an excellent short story about
scientists who committed suicide for no good reason, comparing it to bacteria that try to escape their part of the petri dish or something.
That's what I think about when I think about this.
I've never heard this word before, what does it mean? Nervy as in nervous? Nervy as in 'having a lot of nerv', Nervy as in 'like the fictitious NERV organization in Neon Genesis Evangelon'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While the fatal anthrax attacks of last year remain unsolved, the flippant tone of many of the comments on this seems inappropriate to me. It is clear that the anthrax attacks were not carried out by Islamic terrorists, and that the main suspect is still at large and is a US government employee.
See for example this Guardian story.
This in itself is chilling enough, along with the fact that the suspect is apparently being protected. This does not of course prove that these deaths are all part of some conspiracy: it does suggest, however that there are some very disturbing unanswered questions which could be related to this story.
Momma warned me not to become a microbiologist, but I did anyways. She did her fellowship in infectious disease after all.
Yeah, it probably is just a big coincidence, but the FBI *still* hasn't figured out who mailed out all that lovely anthrax last year. And that's a bit disturbing.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
"Statistically, what are the chances?"
The moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds.
Nathan
The article said that "Nguyen Van Set... ...entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen."
Um, isn't nitrogen one of the most inert and least dangerous gases there is, practically a noble gas? Isn't nitrogen used specifically when you DON'T want something bad to happen? Isn't the atmosphere like 70-80% nitrogen?
Can someone explain?
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Right up your monkey ass!!
Mmmmmmm, Monkey ass....
Let's put the dick back in dixie and the cunt back in country...
-Hank Williams III, Pop Country Sucks
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
Really neat!
With the advanced warning that Fantastic Lad's views on these matters come with a heavy bias, since I have become utterly convinced that prevailant forces beyond the understanding of conventional science are at work all over the place all the time, here are my observations. .
Anyway, I've found the whole process of making these observations utterly fascinating, and I know there are some out there who might also be interested. And of course, Caveat Lector should be employed at all times when reading my stuff. While I tend to know WAY more on most of these topics than a bevy of New Age morons, I'm still only on the lower parts of the knowledge mountain myself! For every bit of verification I find, I run across 25 lies and bits of fabricated sensationalist crap.
-Fantastic Lad
Somebody had to bring it up. But if there really is a conspiracy
the 'group of scientists decide to cull te human race and then get whacked by evil forces who want to immunize themselves before releasing the plague'
is a pretty good one.
Now they only need a Olympic to spread this biological disease at.
Tom Clancy, the Nostradamus of our time.
//Humming
I'm too stupid to preview.
I think that if you take a job that is anti-Scriptural you have to be willing to accept the risk of being killed by the moral community. Play with fire and get burned, etc.
I live in San Jose, and I've been laid off about three months. The other day I was watching View to a Kill, and I found myself genuinely hoping that Christopher Walken's character would succeed in blowing up the Silicon Valley.
Christ, I need to find a job.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The Clinton Body Count
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Lima, 8th of April, 2002.
To: Señor
JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
General Manager of Microsoft, Perú
Dear Sir.
First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.
While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyse in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.
It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
Free access to public information by the citizen.
Permanence of public data.
Security of the State and citizens.
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
-the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
-the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
-the law does not specifiy which concrete software to use
-the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
-the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements reguarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyse them in detail:
Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."
This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limites itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.
The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. por Decreto Supremo No. 012-2001-PCM).
The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.
It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.
By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.
To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."
This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive
Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no-one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fullfilment of the basic principles.
Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.
On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitvity is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.
It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgement alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favour a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."
I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.
On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.
In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidising the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.
In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licences; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.
With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.
Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."
Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.
On security:
National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well-known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies reponsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.
What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.
It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.
In respect of the guarantee:
As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licencing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.
On Intellectual Property:
Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietry software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).
You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."
This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (RedHat, SuSE etc Gnu/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, OpenOffice, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).
Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.
If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.
You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truely beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."
This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.
In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well-known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.
ou further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."
I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.
On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately precding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.
You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (i) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (ii) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."
Let us analyze your stament in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favour of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.
The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.
You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."
This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.
On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favour of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.
You continue by observing that: "10. The bill demotivates the creativity of the peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that incentivates the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."
It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.
What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.
You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."
This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licences) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.
You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."
In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.
You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"
We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whehter these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.
The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogoneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.
I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.
Cordially,
DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
Congressman of the Republica of Perú.
*BLUSH*
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
Why is this posted in the "science" catagory on slashdot?
For what it is worth, I am a scientist, yes: IAAS, and I am finaly begining to understand why a lot of people think scientists are weird...
It is because, as someone once said, "The masses is asses!"
Holly crap! every time i look at a story on slashdot these days the first story is "+5 funny"
WTF?
You people make me sick: you take something good, and turn it into crap.
Every time I see a sig, or a post, which mentions something along the lines of "got 50! don't mod me!" I feel even sicker.
David Letterman used to say"It is an exhibition, not a competition"!
Do you get it?
Obviously, no.
This makes me sick.
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Excuse me, don't you mean ""scat pics"?
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
This reminds me of the time Voyager had to form an aliance with the Borg. I mean, I'm all for using viruses as tools, and I appreciate the irony of using one of our species traditional enemy, (forgive the melodrama,) but what stops these viruses from mutating into something other than what there were meant for. I don't even mean something dangerous, nescessarily, just that viruses have a way of changing when you least expect it.
A figure of 20,000 academic microbiologists in the U.S. is stated, but that's perhaps only a count of those who are members of ASM. The actual number of academic microbiologists is likely much more. Plus, "mysterious" deaths in the U.K. and Australia are also described. I don't see anything alarming on the whole. That's not to say some of the deaths aren't suspicious of foul play, but where's the basis for saying it's a conspiracy? The article is clearly inflammatory, in that it never really tests its hypothesis.
Even more amazing is that such a flimsy article got recognized on /.
Pathetic really.
Posted anonymously, like that will help if they want to whack me too.
The Bush administration was on shaky ground, and they are right wing nuts. They have some grievances with the arab world (which in itself isn't necessarily wrong, I do too). They decide they want to finish on Binladen, which Clinton failed to do.
Motivation: Grudges, prestige of winning a war, etc. Possibly getting legislation passed.
So, they have to be really careful. The CIA uncovers a really flaky Alquaeda plot to destroy some stuff. However, they're unable to succeed on their own. So the FBI looks the other way, certain airport security firms do the same thing, allowing something that could never have happened otherwise.
Meanwhile, goverment black op spooks distribute some weapons grade anthrax to various offices in Florida and Washington. Partly to start hysteria to fuel war support, and partly to give some oomph to Big Brother laws.
Also, microbiologists start dying mysteriously. Some were no doubt the kinds of experts who might have discovered the true origins of the anthrax, others were "celebrity" targets meant to add more panic to the hysteria that was building. Possibly, some were even witnesses to be disposed of. I won't even rule out that one or two might have been reluctant co-conspirators that were no longer useful.
But something changed, and Bush reconsidered the all out war. Probably something we're not aware of. However, the kill orders for the scientists weren't easy to retract, nor was it even necessary to do so. Tha anthrax angle may have been ruled too risky, and it was curtailed. Or maybe it was time to prepare for a new plague? After all, who else could get ahold of smallpox? Certainly, if it had been some whacko mailing the anthrax, (sometimes there really is no conspiracy, after all) wouldn't their have been credible letters taking credit? We never saw such.
And don't ever forget, full of loony shit though they are, who else might have printed such a conspiracy story, had they actually gotten ahold of it, other than a tabloid? I betcha that photographer had some really snazzy photos that are now sitting next to the Ark of the Covenant in the Indy Jones Federal warehouse.
I don't claim that this is the whole puzzle, but I've got the edge pieces put together.
Trolling 101: Building the Perfect Troll Slashdot
...
..."
/usr/share/dict/words on BSDs /usr/share/dict/propernames on BSDs
c /
/ooieiabdcdjsvbkeldfogjhiyeeejkagclmieooion oepdk / several times, remembering to avoid the compression filter trap by using different random characters.
By jason2, Section Stories
Posted on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 00:25:26 PST
A while back, Don Henley created an album called "Building the Perfect Beast." His first solo album, it surprised many, with tracks like Sunset Grill, All She Wants To Do Is Dance, (my favorite) Driving With Your Eyes Closed, and (Jon Katz's favorite) Boys of Summer. I was listening to this album on illegally-ripped MP3s while reading the Slashdot trolls, and started brainstorming what would make the perfect troll. This article serves as a directed introduction to building the perfect troll.
[] [ ]
First, we need to define trolling. This is harder than it sounds, because everyone has their own definition of a troll, or better, their own definition of a "good troll". I am going to use multiple definitions to create a very broad ideal of the term "troll". Any post that meets ONE of the definitions below is considered a troll
a) A message widely regarded as an annoyance
b) A message which insults the editors with no regard to merit
c) A message which flames another user for their view(s)
d) Any message which is designed to enrage the standard slashdot user
For the purposes of this post, a "good troll" is one that spawns many angry responses. There are other sides of trolling, such as crapflooding, which do not generate any responses (usually). These sorts of trolls are out of the scope of this article.
There are 6 dimensions of a good troll: annoyance, arguability, subtlety, topicality, logicality, and permeance. By NO means should a good troll use only one dimension; although some dimensions are inherently contradictory, using as many as possible will result in a good troll.
Annoyance
This is the all-star of the troll spectrum. Racial comments, page widening/lengthing, misinformation, deragatory comments, etc. all are considered an annoyance. But be careful! The common pitfall is the "annoyance" is used to frequently and too loudly. Subtlety is a necessity if you are going to use this with any sort of success (read more about this below). Here are some examples of good and bad annoyances:
Bad: You stupid fucking nigger, I'm going to kick your faggot ass if I ever see you, you shitface cocksucking animal. (This will be modded down immediately, and will probably not be responded to. This message will largely be ignored, thus limiting the troll affect).
Posting factual inaccuracies is great when combined with annoyance; the Slashdots will fall over themselves correcting your every move.
Good: Its posts like these that question the education system of America. If you were paying any attention at school, you would know that the South won the Civil War because of their views no slavery. It was Abraham Lincoln's last stand at Gettysburg that caused Slavery to go away.
Making references to your education as proof that you are right is excellent, especially when, in your troll, you make it obvious that you don't have any.
Bad: I studied this topic in great depth when writing my PhD thesis at MIT. As it turns out, the limiting factor of sorting function with completely randomized data
Good: Oh, I took a class about this at the DeVry Institute. According to the reseptionist [notice intentionally bad spelling], the integral of e^x^2 is e^x, so its got to be right!.
Arguability
Posts such as, "You fucking faggot, I'm going to kill you" has no element of arguability. You want to post a view in an inflammatory way that will incite a great argument. There is a right way, and a wrong way to doing this. Usually, if you are outright cursing at the poster or editor, its the wrong way.
Examples
Bad: You worthless piece of horseshit. Your views are wrong, jackass!
Good: This study [post link to mostly irrelevant and off-topic study] indicates there is a strong correlation between deviance and Linux users.
Drawing illogical conclusions based on incorrect statements is a great way to instate a nerd riot. Example:
Good: When ESR said that Windows is losing clientelle, he used intentionally bad grammar, which is inherent proof that his ideals are flawed.
Permeance
Question: If a troll posts a troll and no one reads it, is it still a troll? Answer: No.
A troll can only have so much longevity. I call this principle permeance. Permeance is judged by the number of people who will see and read a post, and, to a lesser extent, respond to it. Good formatting, grammar, and spelling all contribute to a post's permeance, but the real factor is content.
Most of you spend a lot of time reading at -1, presumably, so you will know that a fair amount of racist and anti-semetic comments are posted. Most Slashdot users will not see these, because they are at -1. klerck's PLP and PWP are ultimately a failure because few see them.
To maximize permeance, you have to: 1) Sound like you now what you are talking about, 2) Sound like you have a stake in your point of view (maening you care about what you think), and 3) Express it without homophobia, any sort of racism and discrimination. You will see that trolls at 1, and even 2, use this principle. You will see that trolls at 0, and -1, do not use this principle. This brings us to:
First Fundamental Theorem of Trolling: Anonymous Cowards, by definition, rarely succeed in posting a good troll...
Second Fundamental Theorem of Trolling: If an AC succeeds in a good troll, it would even be better if it were posted at 1, or 2 by default.
Subtlety
Certain posts SCREAM "This is a troll. Please ignore it." These are not successful trolls.
As a troll, your every urge is to scream, "YOU FUCKING FAGGOT. HOW CAN YOU THINK THE WAY YOU DO" to the Slashbot homos. Resist this at every cost. You need to diplomatically insult them. Its hard, I know, but it will result in success.
GOOD PHRASES
"You should know by now that
"Haven't you learned anything from [event]."
"What a stereotypical view."
"Was this post sarcastic?"
"I can't believe the level of ignorance of that point of view."
Topicality
This is a no-brainer and therefore I'm not going to spend much time discussing it. Why do you think "BSD is Dying" trolls rarely get responses when they are posted under one of Jon Katz's articles/
Logicality
Did I make that word up? Probably. But its principle is still important: use every logical fallacy that you know of when writing trolls. Jump to illogical conclusions. Misquote or misrepresent parent's posts when responding. Make references to studies, linking them to a 404 not found page. You get the idea. This one isn't hard to introduce, but its wildly successful in getting Slashcock responses.
This is a brief introduction to the good trolling. Soon, I will post an article about combining dimensions and look at some good and bad trolls in the past.
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Trolling 101: Building the Perfect Troll | 19 comments (19 topical, 0 editorial, 3 pending) | Post A Comment
A fringe benefit of posting with +1 bonus (none / 0) (#1)
by gazbo on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 14:29:55 PST
(User Info)
Is that idiots who have never had (will never have) the bonus don't understand it, and think you've been modded up.
[ Reply to This ]
Dammit! (none / 0) (#2)
by sdem on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 15:29:36 PST
(User Info)
I got all worked up reading your post, but I realized that I can't go back to my favorite pastime until fucking school is over.
Tell those of Slashdot that I shall return.
[ Reply to This ]
I have a question (8.00 / 2) (#3)
by King of Beers on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:04:34 PST
(User Info)
I am a Mac user. I am learning about "Lunix", I am hoping to work with Lunix in the future. My question is this. Can I be an effective troll without using Lunix. In other words is Lunix required. Right now I'm homeless, let's not talk about that ok? By the way I am new here and this is my first post. I am posting from Starbucks, the one next to the laundry mat.
[ Reply to This ]
Posting (2.33 / 3) (#4)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:37:10 PST
(User Info)
Tell Jessica to give you the money she owes me from that dryer next to the soap dispenser.
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Lunix (6.50 / 2) (#5)
by RecipeTroll on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:37:46 PST
(User Info)
If your homeless, Lunix is the perfect operating system for you. Many homeless people use lunix because they have no teeth. Do you understand the correlation?
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
hi (6.00 / 2) (#11)
by King of Beers on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 21:27:17 PST
(User Info)
do you know about this OralBSDM program i've also heard of. my understanding is that there are no holes to speak of in this program. i dont understand how an open sauce program like this could have no holes. where do the holes go that otherwise would have been in open sauce?
as you can see i'm pretty confused. your help would be appreciated.
also there is a man at the shelter that looks a lot like richard stallman. should i approach him and if so what questions should i ask. i am a pretty shy guy
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
NO! (7.00 / 1) (#13)
by RecipeTroll on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 21:59:03 PST
(User Info)
For godsakes man, if you are an amateur DO NOT approach a Stallman. Even though his stature may suggest otherwise, he is a hostile creature. You may find youself on the ground being sodomized by a shop vac if you aren't careful. Ask anyone here: A Stallman is not a creature to be messed with.
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Posting (0.00 / 1) (#6)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:41:06 PST
(User Info)
Tell Jessica to give you the money she owes me from that dryer next to the soap dispenser.
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Page lengthening Troll Test (none / 0) (#7)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:44:19 PST
(User Info)
An Interesting Phenomenon Just Noticed...
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Page lengthening Troll Test (0.00 / 1) (#8)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:44:31 PST
(User Info)
An Interesting Phenomenon Just Noticed...
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Page lengthening Troll Test (0.00 / 1) (#9)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 20:44:55 PST
(User Info)
An Interesting Phenomenon Just Noticed...
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
I am often too lazy to be a good Troll (none / 0) (#10)
by Real World Schtuff on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 21:09:18 PST
(User Info)
I just cut and past real information found on the web.
I prefer using MSN specific information.
[ Reply to This ]
TROLLING AND CRAPFLOODING FAQ VERSION 2.1 (7.00 / 1) (#12)
by Anonymous Hero on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 21:42:18 PST
Here is my donation to T(H)GSB. It doesn't cover trolling in much detail, but gives aan appropriate overview for the novice troller and crapflooder.
This FAQ is designed to give tips on trolling on Slashdot, created in celebration of Blackout Week. It is dedicated to all hard-working trolls and crapflooders.
What are some good trolling tips?
Trolling is all about making people think you care, and so winding up those who care for real. Think of it like shooting a deer in front of an anti-hunt protester, or eating a Big Mac in front of a vegan. Here are some ideas for making your troll work:
# To start off, make sure your post gets noticed -- log in, post early (after 50 +1 comments have been posted to an article, forget it), and make sure to use your +1 bonus.
# Ensure your posting history doesn't show a history of dubious posts. Some advise (incorrectly) to stagger your trolls, but this is in fact time wasting and only helps Slashdot in the long run. If you have a doubt, just create a new account, or even post anonymous -- an effective troll, posted early enough, will gain a +1 quickly.
# Learn from the marketing droids -- a mixture of truth and lies leaves the potential client without a clue as to which is which. Geeks smell pure bullshit, because it reminds them of their bedroom smell (see also "karma whoring" below).
# Follow up. Keep a window open on your troll, and reload to see if people bite. Perhaps post an AC reply agreeing or disagreeing with your own post. Reply to later posts referring to your earlier post to back up your point.
# If you get a dreaded (-1, Troll), don't be ashamed to post the well-known, "Mods on Crack!" rant. Explain, rationally, and not as yourself why you agree with the original post, and why it's a fair point.
How do I crapflood?
A crapflood is an (intentionally) content-free post. Here are some suggestions for the source of your crapflood -- remember to take care with repetition, odd characters, or repetition, to get past the lameness filter:
# your local dictionary file, e.g.
# your local real names file, e.g.
# a copy-paste part of a web page (for extra amusement, copy-paste from Slashdot itself)
# a UU-encoded newsgroup file
# some output from a lorem ipsum generator
# examples of your latest spams, particularly those in Korean
# allowing your cat to walk across the keyboard for a few minutes.
How do I widen pages?
A method is known and delivered to us by the beautiful Klerck which currently works in Internet Explorer alone. This will therefore ruin the browsing experience of by far the majority of Slashdot readers. Start with the text:
http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzgab
then repeat
How do I karma whore?
"Karma whoring" is the practice of gaining moderation points for their own sake. It is particularly useful in techniques for defeating the moderation system. Some tips for karma whoring are:
# If the site containing the actual article is not on a fast server (i.e. is not a "big site"), re-post the article with subject, "the article -- in case the site gets slashdotted". Make sure this comes as early as possible in the list of comments, to avoid the dreaded (-1, Redundant).
# If any article pops up on Microsoft, write a stock two paragraphs explaining why Microsoft is immoral, and why the event described cannot happen with Free Software. I shall not supply text, because tests have shown that moderators are not completely stupid, and can identify duplicate posts (this is actually helpful in defeating the moderation system, see below).
# For any article discussing a particular company, state that you worked there, and offer your "inside knowledge". Note that geeks do visit Slashdot, so do not fall into the trap of being too obvious a fraud -- a mistake made by such amateur trolls as PhysicsGenius, who must now suffer a life of instant down-modding.
How do I defeat the moderation system?
The moderation system is far from flawless. Here are some ways to devalue it:
# If you have moderator points, for goodness sake abuse them! How about moderating up a First Post, a crapflood, or best of all, this very FAQ? It would be a crime to allow such an easily abused system to work.
# Copy the text of another person's post, and paste it as a reply to an earlier post. Most people read oldest messages first, so they will consider yours to be the first message, and the later message to be "redundant". This is great for annoying karma whores.
# Vote Troll posts as "underrated", thus increasing their exposure without running the risk of having your moderation rights revoked.
How do I defeat authentication?
Don't. The FBI will arrest you for being a terrorist. Instead, make an authoritative nick like CmdrTaco (editor). The majority of people are easily fooled, and will be likely to take notice of and respond to your post, and even moderate it up. Think of it like Lunix Turvalds walking into the room -- people listen to what he has to say, and don't dare disagree.
How do I defeat the goatse link early warning system?
Simple -- use one of the many foolishly implemented redirector URLs hosted on well-known sites. Here's an innocuous recent example which pretends to link to the highly informative about.com, but in fact links to a site of the popular 90's lesbian band The Spice Girls: Informative link which will get me karma
What are some excellent sites to sneakily link to?
Mostly, you should link to gay porn. If you are reading this FAQ, you already know the URLs, so I don't need to supply them, except to say that it's almost an initiation ceremony in Slashdot trolling to link to goatse.
Administrativa
How do I justify the existence of this FAQ?
Slashdot is full of people who support unlicensed weapons ownership and dissemination of bomb creation documents -- in short, they support freedom, even when that freedom could cause harm. This document should be considered as that very freedom in action. Indeed, to disparage or moderate down this document would be un-American, and the FBI are likely to arrest you for being a terrorist.
How do I add to or change this FAQ?
Simply re-post the FAQ on Slashdot, adding an appropriate question, and incrementing the version number by 1. Before doing so, please try to ensure you have the latest version, and remember to keep this post W3C compliant!
How else can I help with the Troll and Crapflooding Cause?
Moderate this post up, re-post it, put it in your journal, and upload it on your website. Thanks!
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
wish we knew who you were [n/t] (none / 0) (#19)
by Trollaxor (trollaxor@mac.com) on Thu Apr 25th, 2002 at 16:49:43 PST
(User Info) http://trollaxor.com/
-Trollaxor
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
nothin wrong with a little crapflooding (9.00 / 3) (#15)
by TheGreatestAmericanSuperHero on Wed Apr 24th, 2002 at 07:02:02 PST
(User Info) http://www.yourfriendlymediacorner.com
Some snobbish trolls will say all crapflooding is shit. But most of the Slashdot crapfloods: ASCII art, "How to Remove Linux and install Windows XP," insane short stories, are fucking funny! Come on, admit it.
Now crapflooding can be bad, and when it's bad, it's duller than the biggest loser slashbot droning on about his TI-82. But trolling isn't some magical art any higher than crapflooding. It can pay off by causing trouble more than a crapflood can, but it's usually not funny in itself (the replies are the good stuff).
Anyway, hold your head high, crapflooder, and don't let the elitist trolls tell you that you suck. They're just trying to drive a wedge into the Great Troll/Crapflooder Alliance.
Once and future host geek of the machiney.
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Trolls vs. Crapfloods (8.75 / 4) (#16)
by RecipeTroll on Wed Apr 24th, 2002 at 15:44:49 PST
(User Info)
Trolls and crapfloods both have their merits. I liken crapflooding to carpet bombing -- you dump alot of shit out and hope a few hit their target...Trolls are more calculated; while damaging, they do less to weaken the overall infastructure. It's a combination of both that make slashdot the monkey circus that it is.
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Filthypenis (6.75 / 4) (#14)
by Anonymous Hero on Tue Apr 23rd, 2002 at 23:46:02 PST
It's filthy!
[ Reply to This ]
drink my cum (2.00 / 1) (#17)
by Sexual Asspussy on Thu Apr 25th, 2002 at 13:46:59 PST
(User Info)
i can only interpret this article as a personal attack.
[ Reply to This ]
not true (none / 0) (#18)
by jason2 on Thu Apr 25th, 2002 at 16:30:31 PST
(User Info)
i've had nothing but the upmost respect for you, Sexual. I am not familar with your work by any means, but your name DEMANDS it. Jason
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
I live in Toronto, and I get the Globe and Mail in paper form, so I've had all day to think about the following question: who would want these microbiologists dead?
IIRC, these scientists are the type of people that could develop biological weapons -- or develop the cure to biological weapons.
I assume that the majority of the world is against biological weapons, and, possibly, some group of people, who think that they are "doing good", are systematically killing the people that are most likely to develop them.
At the other end of the consipracy spectrum, terrorists with biological weapons would definitely not want cures found to their biological weapons, otherwise, their weapons cease to pose a powerful threat. Also, any country that develops biological weapons would be against other countries developing a cure or creating biological weapons, themselves.
So, there's some food for thought. Maybe, this is all a very statistically unlikely coincidence, or, just maybe, someone is doing a very good job of systematically killing the worlds leading microbiologists. I've heard people today accusing Iraq of planning it.
Peter
is here
The author is an academic and lawyer who had a hand in drafting US anti-biowarfare laws - he knows the history, the players, and the reasons related to US biowar activities, the Gulf War Syndrome, strangely convenient anthrax attacks on the US Congress, and well-founded suspicions about what's going on here. It's authoritative and frightening.
The airline lost my luggage... it contained 4 pairs of boxers. Previously my rate limiting step for laundry was towels. I have 10 towels, therefore I can go 10 days without doing laundry, but this loss of 4 pairs of shorts created a new rate limit... 8 days wort of shorts! Since American doesn't seem to be finding my luggage back any time soon, I had to buy underpants. Now I'm afraid of the gnomes... Phase 1, Steal the Underpants. Phase 2, ?. Phase 3, Profit!
Unfortunately they also have my VAIO...
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage...
I give up. Is this MTV's latest The Real World cast? Where's the loveable, misunderstood homosexual?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Too bad the lone gunmen are dead. They'd have been able to get to the bottom of this....or maybe they already did...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Check any research field over the last 5 months. In any field that's about the same size as microbiology, it wouldn't seem unreasonable for that many people to die.
So they could probably have written this article about the mysterious deaths of cabbage farmers in the midwest, I suppose. It'd be about as relevant...
- "I'll probably get modded down for this."
Oh my god! The server has suddenly gone down! I can't read the page that slashdot has linked to! It must the the conspiracy at work....
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Dear Slashdot.org members,
5 6
There is a sinister, wretched cancer growing upon the very fabric of
American culture. It is eating away at our morals, our health, our
safety, and most of all, our spirituality. It operates behind
carefully constructed veils such as "freedom of speech" and "moral
relativism." I'm, of course, talking about none other than the liberal
agenda. The nay-sayers. The blame-America-firsters. The political
dissidents.
Before I go on, I would like to make it clear that it was not too long
ago that I was very optimistic with, what I saw, as perhaps a new
direction our country was taking. This optimism emerged shortly after
the 9-11 tragedy, when I looked down the street and saw Henry Parker,
the neighborhood's most outspoken liberal, putting a flag outside his
door. In my optimism, I reasoned that a tragedy of this magnitude
should wake up even the most radical liberal permanently! In reality,
of course, his flag is long gone and he, as well as millions of his
other fellow leftists, has reverted back to their un-American
activities.
During times of peace, perhaps the activities of these iconoclastic
"citizens" can be tolerated. But when our children live with the
threatening knife of terrorism poised at their throat, our tolerance
must be waived. Ann Coulter put this much more eloquently than I, when
she recently stated that "We need to execute people like John Walker
in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize
that THEY can be killed too,"
How true this is. Up high upon their ivory towers, liberals have
indeed lost touch with reality. It would seem that they cannot see
this knife being wielded by the murderous villains in countries all
around the globe. They have become ungrateful for the things that the
greatest nation on earth has given them, and their similarities to the
heathens that the LORD spoke of in Sodom and Gomorrah, is becoming
shockingly more similar by the minute. Of course, I'm certainly not
proposing that we indiscriminately rain fire and brimstone upon them,
but certainly we can give them a nudge, push or blatant smack up side
the head, to wake them up.
Perhaps this all seems ambiguous at this point, I apologize for that,
but it is necessary to spell out a problem unemotionally, so that we
can create proposals based in pure logic.
Upon investigation, I realized how we barely dodged a bigger bullet on
9-11. It is true that the majority of the liberals of this country
were temporarily whipped into the mentality of a sane individual and
yes, they stayed out of our way long enough so that we could
accomplish our most pressing concern. However, there was a minority of
dissenters who did not feel that the death of some three thousand
people was worth letting go of their perverted ideology.
Where do these people hide, you ask? Behind closed doors? In damp,
dim-lit basements? No, my friends, the fact of the matter is that
these enemies of the people did not even hide at all. They live on
college campuses and many of them even stood on street corners and
pedestrian malls holding up signs that boasted their dementia.
Although it is widely known that the campuses of U.S. universities
have long been the breeding grounds of anti-Americanism, communism,
homosexuality, illicit drug activity and other acts of fornication
that I cannot even describe. This time, however, they have simply gone
too far. These pro-anarchy pacifists have declared war upon American
morality, and I think it's time we finally fought back.
That is why I propose abolishing the status quo of ALL U.S.
universities, public and private (with perhaps the exception of Bob
Jones University). All upper-level administrators should be fired as
well as all the beatnik socialists that they call "professors". In its
place, I propose, the military take over all responsibilities that we,
so foolishly, currently place in the hands of known dissidents. I
would imagine that many changes would be made to the current
curriculum of most universities. Art and Music, for example, would
take on a much more limited (and supervised) role. I'd imagine (or at
least hope) that Philosophy would be eliminated entirely, as it is a
field that is well known for converting good, God-fearing Americans
into heretic dissidents. I'd also imagine that Public Safety officers
at the campuses would take on a much broader role, to not only uphold
the physical safety of the campus, but also it's ideological safety
with the introduction of sweeping un-American activities regulations.
While the results would not be instantaneous as we would have to wait
a generation for the remaining liberals to die off, but eventually one
day we can truthfully and honestly say "United We Stand".
David E. Rosch
Rosch Family Website:
http://www.geocities.com/wallsofjericho
I'm not knocking the article you linked to, but http://www.etherzone.com/2002/lang051002.shtml is another story on the site. Just so you know what sorta crap they'll pass off as an article.
the quality of comment posts is declining. Are you doing anything about it?
We have a moderation system.
One of the unfortunate side-effects of the increasing popularity of
Slashdot is that the number of trolls, flame-warriors and all-around lamers
increases as well, and it only takes a relatively small number of them
to make a lot of noise. Keeping this noise to a minimum is one of the primary
goals of the moderation system (which is explained in detail elsewhere
in this FAQ).
Since this system is essentially an experiment in trying to solve the
problems inherent in mass communication, one would expect its success to
be variable, and indeed, this is the case. Some days it works great, and
some days it doesn't.
Microbiologists "mysteriously dead" after developing "weapons-grade biological plagues".
Woohoo! We Canucks'll crack Washington's BS yet!
m ic robio.html
On Nov. 24 a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed on its landing approach. Of the 33 persons on board, 24 were killed, including the head of the hematology department at Israel's Ichilov Hospital, as well as directors of the Tel Aviv Public Health Department and Hebrew University School of Medicine.
on Oct. 4, a commercial jetliner traveling from Israel to Novosibirsk, Siberia was shot down over the Black Sea by an "errant" Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing all on board. The missile was over 100 miles off-course. Despite early news stories reporting it as a charter, the flight, Air Sibir 1812, was a regularly scheduled flight.the plane is believed by many in Israel to have had as many as five passengers who were microbiologists. Both Israel and Novosibirsk are homes for cutting-edge microbiological research. Novosibirsk is known as the scientific capital of Siberia, and home to over 50 research facilities and 13 full universities for a population of only 2.5 million people.
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_
Now, I'm not sure this is anything more sinister than Washington doesn't want a cure or cheap treatment for AIDS found... read between the lines of the 1974 NSSM200 report and match it up with the extensions of drug patents and other well-known actions contrary to Washington's hand-wringing about this epidemic.
http://www.africa2000.com/SNDX/nssm200all.html
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0937307041
> I remember almost a decade ago, there was a rash of mysterious deaths in the UK of top programmers working on top secret military projects.
To be precise, a total of 20 programers linked to Marconi Defense Systems or the Ministry of Defense died suspiciously between 1985-1987.
The first mainstream magazine to break this story was the April 30th 1987 edition of Computer News (UK), but unfortunately the article does not seem to be available online.
However, it gets a mention in the Risks Digest, as well as plenty of conspiracy sites such as this one.
Um, okay...
First, if you're running a conspiracy to off microbiologists, why those eleven? There's no pattern as to nationality, research subject, etc.
Second, unless you know how many microbiologists there are (20,000 academic in the U.S. is the only number given, which is clearly inadequate), how can you even show this is an unusual rate of "unusual" deaths? Only until you establish that there's a statistcally unusual number of deaths is there any grounds for any speculation at all.
There were 103,632 other deaths in this timeframe - how do they fit into the conspiracy? I mean the grandma, the backalley bum, and the construction worker must have had something to do with it...
Now, you see, conspiracy theories about those deaths have what the one posted here does not: logic. They were all Britons involved in defense software, and the rate of deaths by apparent suicide was twice the national norm according to THE INDEPENDENT.
It could still have been a statistical blip; things do occasionally happen to clump, and a doubled rate in a specific subsample isn't all that unusual. But a prima facie case for somebody bumping off British programmers exists.
I think you're *all* religious fundamentalist nuts.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Say, there are about 100 different communities like microbiology, linux adepts or literary critics, with each 100 experts. The chance of 1 expert dying in half a year is may be 2% (there usually somewhat aged). 10 experts dying in half a year from a community of 100 is then about 1 in 1000 (ie 0.02^10/(0.98^90) times a number of possible distributions), so something like this should happen about every 5 year within one of the hundred communities.
So let me get this straight. You believe in astrology and channeling, while simultaneously and pre-emptively denying the validity of unnamed charlatans whenever and whereever you deem them undefendable.
Let's examine these too beliefs. One belief is that practically any personality trait or significant event actually has something to do with the arrangement of stars and planets in the night sky. Or, in some cases, what they happened to be on the day you were born. Does this mean that it might be preferable for pregnant women to medically delay birth, for a more favorable astrological "sign" ? If they have a C-section, does it count. If an embryo is frozen for 3 years, and then implanted in a womb, does this affect things at all, or is it truly the birth date?
What, you retards never actually tested any of this? Your 10,000 year old voodoo beliefs? What, are you afraid that if there were such tests, things might show it to be unsupportable superstition? And if you aren't afraid that is the case, what prevents you from doing this?
See, this is what science is about. Figuring out what is going on. If atrology were in any way valid, not only would it strengthen your arguments that it is, but science would allow you to refine just what you know.
Statistics, lies though they are, don't even come close to supporting anything that atrology ever claims. Made up bullshit by the trolls here on slashdot, is statistically indistinguishable from this garbage.
Channeling? Hmm, dunno. I won't rule it out, but the truth is, this one would be much more defendable by you, on its own. It's certainly not repeatable though, let alone reliable. But this once, you get a "Get out of jail free card". I won't attack this one just yet.
As for me being "programmed" to not believe stupid new age garbage, I thank you, I don't often recieve compliments on slashdot. For those of you that don't speak the fruity dialect of nutcasian, that translates to "having common sense".
You see, it's not out of malice or distrust that the natural inclination is to not believe something until proven true. It's simply that there are any number (read: infinite) of possibilities, all contradicting. And it would be IMPOSSIBLE to give all the benefit of the doubt simultaneously. So therefor, you figure out the things you know for sure, while setting aside all the crazy stuff, until you get around to test this.
Why? Because it's the only way to function as a human being, otherwise you'd starve to death worrying that if you ate at the wrong time, the gods would punish you (which they might, if all theories are equally plausible until tested, they might very well kill you for such a transgression, and by the time you find out, it's too late).
And if you don't agree, all you have to do, is prove it to me with repeatable results. That's the cool thing about science, my belief doesn't matter if it's true.
For some reason, the original isn't accessible anymore... perhaps it has something to do with the content. If anyone knows people at google, maybe now would be a good time to change jobs - who knows whom does lunatic murderers will go after now!
dead scientists
Dumbassed media, can't even get the terminology right...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Reading stuff like this, although it is not placed in context (as others mention here), is startling. It does make me frightened in any case. A good starting point for the spread of biological and chemical weapons in the world, and perhaps more importantly who supports whom, is the federation of American Scientists website.
I'm a South African and was shocked to read about the support given by almost all Western Governments to the Dr.Mengele of the Apartheid Government, Dr.Wouter Basson, a.k.a. Dr.Death, in that regime's attempts to create bio weapons which would only affect black people. (Although why they had this strange idea that blacks are some other species I don't know). In any case, although probably many people don't remember it, in the mid 80's an East German microbiologist claimed that the actual origions of the HIV virus(various newspaper archives) were in fact in a USArmy bioweapons lab in either Virginia or Maryland (Ft.Derrick? I don't remember the name). He was laughed off at the time. I also, in terms of normal common sense found it somewhat implausiable. But the problem is, who do you believe, and who do you trust?
I was somewhat amazed at the many coincidents (reminiscent of a good episode of the X-Files) in the Anthrax attacks in the US last year. Why Florida? Why the isolated cases of lonely old women? Why liberal or popular politicians? How did the FBI get to the conclusion so rapidly that it was not linked to the 9/11 higjackers and that it was "probably of domestic origion"? Why has nothing ever come out of the investigation?
I don't really like conspiracy theories, as they tend to cloud real events, but who do you believe? And what do you believe? Did anyone in any so-called country ever give their politicians an explicit right to muck around with stuff as dangerous as this?
This reminds somehow of the movie _Twelve_Monkeys_
Shit its started already.
Egads! That perl is daft! If you insist on using that array for your message, at least use the proper tools to reassemble it:
If you assumed a flat probability of death for each age for a large population, say only 1% per year for everybody from newborns to the elderly, you'd expect 1000 deaths per 100000 people. With an average life expectancy of 70 yrs (M) - 77 yrs (F) in health-economy-advantaged nations, you can expect a death rate of 1.4% as a decent guess. Higher death rates may apply. And if you realize that morbidity is higher for neonates and the elderly and lower for the teenaged to middle-aged, then the presence of a death rate of 132 per 100-thousand per year for 20-70-to-more years older is in fact NOTHING at all. It is not even a statistical anomaly. It is not anywhere close to being significant.
I haven't bothered looking at the data for actual death rates and your MMV (morbidity may vary).
But it is always smart to read numerical data in reports carefully and skeptically. The math does not support any conspiracy in this case. Of course, it does not rule it out. But that's what conspiracy theories are all about.
"If you tolerate this, your children will be next"
I counted up 58 direct deaths and 304? 306? people who happened to be nearby
http://www.devvy.com/deadmenlies.html
Your post makes me wonder about something. Perhaps someone on that list did have something to do with the anthrax attack. Four or five of those deaths could be potential suicides, and a stroke could be stress-related. Suppose it was a US researcher that made the anthrax, but that he was intending to make people wake up to the threat rather than kill anyone. It is certainly possible that such a person could suffer a severe fit of guilty conscience.
Alternatively, someone might have found out what the person responsible for anthrax had done and killed him or her. I wouldn't even put it past the US government to do such a thing if they felt the guy would spill national security secrets or they would have to divulge too much classified info to pin the crime on him.
On the other hand there might just be some anthrax crazed vigilante who is whacking high profile microbiologists.
Some of the deaths are almost certainly just coincidental, and maybe they all are, but I do hope that the FBI is at least taking a serious look at whether there is some connection.
I thought the biggest threat to a microbiologist was doing something stupid like mouth pipetting, or cross contamination. Although the wild world of Microbiology in water filtration doesnt see the wild side... Hell it's actually damned boring.... Oh look the same microbes I found yesterday... and the day before.... and the day before that.. Oh wait that one is different.... Gram stain... Yup Gram Positive... and it's oh wait... same thing....
The most exciting part of your day is handling the live sample bottles of E-coli.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I remember hearing on the radio a week or two ago about the findings of the inquiry into the death of Set Van Nguyen - the Australian microbiologist who died in an airlock filled with nitrogen.
I did a search on Google and found a multitude of sites that go a bit further than this article and actually put forth a few theories. Some of these people sound like nutters but it's a bit interesting. Here are a couple of them.
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm236911.html
http://www.rense.com/general18/returb.htm
make a short video about the 'facts' of the case
and you too can own the distribution rights to this newsy event before someone else makes a movie about this with Pierce Brosnan or Wesley Snipes
Fuck the MPAA!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Yeah, who would do that? It's almost like the "agents" of whatever "agency" that killed them was wanting to make it obvious these people were killed.
Yet the police mysteriously overlook everything.
The truth is, you can't trust anyone. Especially when money is involved. It's the one thing that can get you anything.
Remember that.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Benito Que - murdered, beating
Robert M. Schwartz - murder, stabbing
Victor Korshunov - murder, beating
Ian Langford - murder, "partially naked/wedged under chair"
Tanya Holzmayer - murder, shot by Huang
Guyang Huang - suicide, gunshot
Don C. Wiley - ???, "fell off bridge"
Vladimir Pasechnik - natural causes, stroke
Nguyen Van Set - accident , laboratory
David Wynn- accident, automobile
Steven Mostow - accident, airplane
7 deaths were murders, or seem very suspicious
3 deaths were accidents
1 death was due to natural causes
http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/111riske.html
I suppose the next question would be is how large a sample group needs to be to make a significant comparison against the statistics of society as a whole?
German Schizo-junkie cracker Karl Koch was probably eliminated in relation to these events. He supposedly cracked WIMEX in the mid to late 80's gaining access via defense contractors insufficiently secured systems.
/Dr. Tinfoil
Only dead fish swim downstream......
Of course the morals and ethics they tend to get into tend to be justifications of their jobs. And as Sept 11 showed, it is sometimes difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a man bent on trying to kill or destroy you.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Does anyone else have a vague (or better, clear) recollection of a similar reporting of odd deaths, by automobile accident and suicide (alleged), in the UK in the 1980's. As I recall, vaguely, in Britain in the eighties, a slew of scientists working for GE UK were found, in a reasonably suspicious span of time, to have died in automobile accidents, suicides, or 'suicide by automobile accident,' etc. etc. I believe allegations were made they were working on some top secret or most secret electronics for Her Majesty, under the auspicies of GE UK. I do recall a couple of the suicide victim's surviving families were VERY dubious about these being suicides. If you recall this, or better yet, if you have any online SOURCE materials for this, please email me as well as posting them? Thank you.
Where are Joseph Malik and Saul Goodman when you need them?
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
... That pretty much sums it up ...
So, as I have a doctorate in microbiology, I now have a legitimate excuse for indulging in paranoid fantasies?
But seriously, the conspiracy angle has a bit of flaw -- while the former Biopreparat (Soviet biological warware program) scientist Valdimir Pasechnik is dead, Kanatjan Alibekov (or Ken Alibek as he likes to call himself these days) who was nearly at the top of the Biopreparat hierarchy, is still very much alive -- wouldn't he be the obvious target of any conspiracy? Or, wait, he would be, but that would be too obvious. Anyway, gotta go, someone's knocking on my door (which is a bit odd, as none of my friends get up this early on weekends...)
"David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England."
Who ran this guy over? I also didnt know you could die of exposure to nitrogen.
According to the article, the doctor died in a plane crash on March 25.
= 2002 ), no fatal accidents were on March 25. There was a fatal accident on March 24 near Denver, but the pilot was an Airline Transport Pilot flying a corporate aircraft from a company (not the biotech company.) ( http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/articl e/0,1299,DRMN_15_1048706,00.html )
According to the NTSB ( http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/AccList.asp?month=3&year
Here are links to news stories on six of the deaths.
Dr Benito Que was beaten to death on Nov 12 by 4 unknown men Miami Herald. He was a cell biologist working on infection diseases at the University of Miami's School of medicine, and was killed as he left work.
Dr Don Wiley drowned under mysterious circumstances on Nov 16.
CNN.
Only a week after Dr Que, Dr Wiley disappeared after a dinner party. Criminal intent has been noted by the Memphis police. Dr Wiley was the foremost infectious disease research at Harvard.
Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik was found dead on November 23 Nytimes.
Dr pasechnik was a soviet defector from the Russian biological warfare who was an expert in Anthrax.
Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death on Dec 10. msnbc.
Dr Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing, 'cultists' are blamed.
Set Van Nguyen died in an airlock on Dec 14. Chemical incidents report center. He was in the field of animal diseases (anthrax) and died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Steven Mostow died in a mysterious plane crash on March 25.Colorado 9news
One of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts from the Colorado Health Sciences Center. Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality. I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence!
news report on plane crash
http://www.bk2k.com/bushbodycount/bodies.html Both lists are a hodgepodge of coincidences, incredible stretches, and faulty conclusions. Notice many of the names appear on both lists...
It was the NSA...
When the terrorism bill still wasn't getting
the attention they desired... they blew
up the world trade center.
Nice how they can count on knee-jerk
reactions. The public is so pathetically
akin to sheep.
Or the other way around, 11 dead in five months would correspond to a community of about 3000 experts, which seems to be a probable size.
As you can see, it is all well within the normal death rate. Nothing strange here, just some math-handicapped newspeople making up a story out of nothing.
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
Why don't they try the same "analysis" on some other vocations like plumbers, sanitary engineers, p0rn stars, etc.
Lets see what other conspiracies exist.
I think the deaths have to do with a corporation that has a twenty-year-old pile of PCB transformers rotting in the middle of the Boston harbour, and has surreptitiously genetically engineered a bacteria that converts PCBs to salt water.
Either that, or I've been reading too much Neal Stephenson again.
- undoware.ca
What the hell sense does that make? As a scuba diver, I know that humans can (and do) regularly take large pressures of nitrogen... so what does that mean?
We were always that microbiologists wash their hands before going to the bathroom.
Stories like this make me glad I selected something microbe-free for a career.
.
My father is a blogger.
This new generaiton of Spooks and Operatives dropped the ball again - people are finding out. The just need to keep it simple - a drowing here, a maiming there - and nobody notices. Just like it should be. By now-a-days, these whipper snappers have to get clever - swords, nudity, pagens and these new-fangeled aero-planes. Lets get back to business, and just do our jobs, and leave the 'flair' for the Operatives in San Francisco.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
More on the pizza delivery hit can be found in the Mercury News article. This looks like a case of a brilliant scientist spiraling out of control after being fired. (They worked together. She was involved with his firing. He shoot her.) Such a thing is, sadly, not unknown in Silicon Valley.
Of course, just keep telling yourself it's only a novel... ;-)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Man, there's not even as much documentation on this as there is on Arkansas Sudden Death Syndrome. And here's another site on the same subject.
An as long as I'm posting, here's a nice statistical roundup of the Clinton Administration in gener.
If you're going to spout absurd conspiracy theories, it's nice to have at least some documentation for some of your claims...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Jeez folks....it was meant as a comparison...I don't beleive any of the Clinton list, or the Bush list, or for that matter half of what they say on Connections....we could probably link global warming to MS or the decrease in the penguins at the South Pole to Linux users for that matter.
Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality.I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
If you're a pilot, then you're probably also aware that light twins (which this was) are often referred to as "doctor killers", because they're typically owned/flown by doctor/pilots who only fly them occasionally, thus don't have the reflexes to deal with an emergency like this.
Light twin on final (low and slow) losing an engine -- leading to asymmetric thrust and consequent yaw/roll moments? And in a snow flurry?
Nothing surprising about crashing under those conditions.
-- Alastair
Or for those of you with short attention spans, there was a lot of evidence/speculation that these cases were assasinations by MI5/6 with a less than credible attempt to implicate the KGB
My guess is that they realised that no matter how skilled you are as a computer professional, and even if your work is essential to the nation's security, in the UK you are still treated like piss, and killed themselves using the only implement available to C programers -the poison tipped umbrella.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
On the website that you just sent a link to, the crash was on March 24 -- not March 25. And, the NTSB investigates all plane crashes -- if it's not on their web site, it didn't happen or nobody ever found it. Somebody obviously would have found this plane crash -- otherwise, it wouldn't have been in the newspaper article. So, what are you implying in your post? There could not have been an "absense of evidence (sic)" in this crash, because somebody must have found it for it to be reported.
The Truth is somewhere in between. . .
The truth is rarely in between. But perhaps you're confusing the truth with the LCD. However, I do think that using an uppercase letter for the "Truth" is cute.
Scythe
Damn. What a death. "He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen." Those unreactive gases sure are dangerous.
Surely those who write articles on such topics could do a little research. The author most likely saw that he died in a nitrogen environment and concluded that he died from the nitrogen. Silly writers. Nitrogen isn't a deadly gas! It comprises a huge portion of our atmosphere. It's the lack of oxygen that killed him. Next they're going to run a story about the deadly effect of H20 in our tapwater.
Those who calculate the "unlikihood" of a particular event "raw" miss a big point.
Sure, the raw chance of an anomolous event of this sort might be low.
But this would only be a decisive statistic IF you had reasonable hypothesis that predicted the event beforehand and you were scanning for these particular events.
What's really happening is conspiracy theorists are scanning all death clusters and all event really looking for anomolous events.
But in a universe of many, many statistics, anomolous are likely to occur, indeed also most certain. It could be planes exploding one week, dentists winning lotteries the next and so-forth. But strange things are certain to happen IN THE COURSE OF NORMAL EVENTS.
So really what needs to be asked "is this an event that is SO, SO anomolous that it would be stand out above **normally unusual events**. And the answer seems like no. If this event has a %0.2 chance of happening, that makes it quite within the realm if conspiracists are scanning tens of thousands of possible.
I had a lab with lots of fun stuff to play with. I recall organisms responsible for tetanus, gohnorrea (you try to spell that one from memory), and botulism. I think there is a good chance of death with 20,000 microbiologists. I don't know that much about statistics, but if you say 4.2 per 5 months is average, I wouldn't think that 5 per 5 is all that unusual. Of course I'd be able to say better if you had the standard deviation in your explanation.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
...were probability (in high school and University) and atmospheric photochemistry. And people often find themselves in a poisonous fog in both cases.
In brief, you are confusing statistical results after the fact with results before the fact. Lets use the "betting fallacy" on which Los Vegas continues to enrich itself: If I flip a coin twice, both times getting heads, the probability of that after two coin tosses is 1/2 x 1/2 or 1/4. But the chances of getting another head as a result remains 1/2, even though that outcome occurs only 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 or 1/8 of the time that I make three flips, because the outcome of the first two flips has already occurred.
If the result only occurs 0.02% of the time, then it will almost always occur so long as I select 50,000 events (0.02% = 1/50,000). Here, the statistical cluster involved microbiologists. If it had involved firefighters, would we have thought arsonists were getting rid of the opposition?
Statistically unlikely events occur all the time. Being able to pick and choose among them after the fact doesn't in themselves give them any significance.
Let's act like true Slashdotters: "Gee, I had no idea that Micro$oft was getting into biotech!"
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Doesn't this movie come out on May 31?? That story is The Sum of All Fears right. j/k.
died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
IIRC, you don't feel the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream, rather you notice the buildup of carbon dioxide. Breathing pure nitrogen doesn't cause CO2 buildup, but it will kill you before you realize anything is amiss.
This story has been on www.whatreallyhappened.com for months. They've been wondering why nobody's picked it up yet. Now I guess someone has.
You don't have to believe all these conspiracy theories; I don't believe them all, but I admit that at least some of the info on that site looks possible, even probable. My friends look at this stuff and flatly refuse to even consider the possibility that their black-and-white worldview may be wrong, asking me "which side are you on, anyway?".
It's not about sides; it's about right and wrong. It's about the truth.
After that last comment, I think I should sign this Fox Mulder, but that's too lame, even for me.
Signed,
J. Doggett
(just kidding)
Michael M.
(not kidding.)
This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Actually, no, he shouldn't. In most people (though there are some medical conditions under which this is not true), the sensation of suffocation is not caused by lack of oxygen, but by buildup of carbon dioxide.
Since breathing an inert gas allows the exchange of CO2 into the atmosphere, the only symptoms suffered are those of oxygen deprivation -- which impairs judgement and leads to giddiness like being drunk -- not a sensation of being suffocated. Due to the impaired judgement, people suffering from the symptoms generally don't recognize that they are suffering the symptoms, making inert-gas asphyxiation an especially easy way to die.
(Note: specifically because there is no sensation of pain or suffocation, inert-gas asphyxiation has been proposed as a humane method of execution.)
(Note: specifically because there is no sensation of pain or suffocation, inert-gas asphyxiation has been proposed as a humane method of execution.)
The mere idea of having execution become seen as humane frightens me. Someone once speculated that the problem with "stun weapons" is that because they did no (well, rare... well, pretty rare, anyway) lasting harm, police and authorities would use them with greater impunity. Hey, why not shock a demonstrator or two? No permanent damage, and it's humane!
Of course, you probably didn't mean to imply that execution is humane, just that inert gas asphyxiation is a better way to go than a bullet or the chair, and that's gotta be true. Still... I think it's better not to attach the words. Execution may be necessary sometimes... but let's never fool ourselves about what it is.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The time heresy was feared more was during the EARLY EARLY days of the Catholic Church, long before the Schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, before the Reformation, and before Henry VIII wanted a divorce. We're talking first millenium AD here.
Perhaps you have read the Nicene Creed? Parts of it were written specifically to preach against things like Gnosticism, Arianism, etc. etc.
Er, yes. The idea being, if you're going to execute somebody anyway, asphyxiation with an inert gas isn't quite as brutal as electrocution, cyanide gas, lethal injection, a firing squad, hanging, or beheading, the methods usually employed in the world today.
Similarly, when fighting a war, accept surrenders, treat POWs like fellow human beings, don't use poison gas, don't deliberately target civilians, etc. War is brutal enough as is.
...is that Evan Chan better be watching his back...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The idea being, if you're going to execute somebody anyway, asphyxiation with an inert gas isn't quite as brutal as electrocution, cyanide gas, lethal injection, a firing squad, hanging, or beheading, the methods usually employed in the world today.
"Less brutal." That seems accurate.
OK, the raving semantic consequentialist in me is placated. : )
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Most people on here seem to think this story is a big Xfiles joke.
Go read up on each death.
Looking at it from a Forensic research point, there's something a little off on each death.
F I S H Y F I S H Y
The Lone Gunmen are *dead*???!! Jeez, just spoil it for everybody!
Breakfast served all day!
Cool post, I totally concur with the points you made. Very Interesting.....
This is not the first time there there has been a suspicious cluster of violent deaths of scientists reported in the British press. Last time, it was programmers. See Comp.Risks, RISKS DIGEST 6.67 : and Who's killing Star Wars Scientists?
For those interested in a book which follows a plot with a striking similarity to the Marconi incidents, try The Chain of Chance
by Stanislaw Lem.It is a shame that noone will ever read this because I posted so late.
Actually, I'd be inclined to say eight. There are 11 untimely deaths, but only 8 are truely mysterious.
The guy who got offed by his daughters and her satanist friends is reasonably well explained, and "normal" in that -- If you're going to get offed, chances are it's going to be by family or 'friends'. You even have living, breathing conspirators who, if they were part of a larger comspiracy, would probably be happy to talk about it. The only thing really unusual about it is the satanist connection.
Similarly, the Pizza delivery murder-suicide is similarly well explained and fits the family/friend statistical norm. In this case, however, everybody who was directly involved is dead. Unless someone can point to some evidence that the suicide was 'forced', I'm going to chaulk this one up to a love triangle, or something and mark it 'untimely but explained'.
3 untimely death in a short time period is probably not that far off for a group of this size. As for the other 8 deaths, I'm betting that they take this group far outside the statistical norm.
Any epidemiologists out there?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It's in here