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The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009
destinyland writes "An A.I. researcher lists the Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009 — along with the corresponding reality. There's exploding iPods, the uproar over 'bombing' the moon, and even a flesh-eating robot. But in each case, he supplies some much-needed perspective. 'These incidents are incredibly rare ... the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons... and desecration of the dead is against the laws of war — and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway.'"
Black Holes Won't Destroy the Earth
"Probabaly."
The day before it powered up, my physics teacher had to field a dozen or so inane questions about how it would destroy the Earth, and more than a few kids decided not to do their homework. Then again, the panic could also fall under "Public Science Knowledge FAIL"
Laws were meant to keep people from harming one another. "sexting" harms no one.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The panic is that kids think that pictures given privately to their friends are going to be kept that way... nope. One wrong friend who publishes it and there's no end to it.
This is semi-off-topic, but what you said here reminds me of something that happened on a web forum I used to moderate on. We had a private section for the staff to have discussions in. Once in a while a user would get into it with another user and because of the formation of various cliques sometimes that'd rock the boat for several members of the staff in the private forum. One staff member in particular was a little too abrasive when describing the offending users that weren't in his group of friends. I tried to warn him that he should be careful about what he says. Just because it's 'private' doesn't mean that somebody watching couldn't do a copy/paste. He replied with "I shouldn't have to censor what I say, blah blah blah!" A month or so later he did manage to use the right series of words aimed at the right person at the right time for another member of the staff to see it, get pissed, and send an e-mail to the person he bad-mouthed to see what was being said behind his back. He, of course, shot into orbit. The funny thing is, if he had done this in public view, it probably would have been a short lived series of fireworks. But because he did this in a private forum, this guy got so angry he created a bunch of threads talking about how shitty the site is, then he told his story to people in another forum and for several days they'd come in and start trouble. The staff member in question never did admit to me that I was right.
Anyway, so what does that have to do with the topic at hand? You are absolutely right about the concern of the 'one wrong friend'. I'd be extra concerned when talking about teenagers and their ever-changing groups of friends and enemies. In general there's a lesson to be learned about being careful what you say when it can be copied verbatim for the rest of time. It's kinda sad, though, that the 'sexting' stories about consequences are getting more attention than the stories about people saying the wrong thing on Facebook and getting fired.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I kind of got the impression that "global warming" is political speak dressed up as green speak for "our economony is now almost entirely service based, the bottom has fallen out of the unsustainable credit market, what can we in the west sell to the emerging economic giants now that they have all the large industry... how about green technology?".
Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but then back in the 80's I was saying that "nuclear is bad" was political speak dressed up as green speak for "big oil is good and cheap and currently abundant" and, in hindsight, if we'd built a ton of nuclear reactors back then the world would potentially be in a much better state today (no impending fuel crisis, potentially no big war in the middle east, no extra couple of decades of pumping pollutants directly into the skies, further development of nuclear technology allowing costs to decrease and making it more viable for emerging industrial countries, etc).
The torturing of war prisoners of war in Iraq and the interviews with the involved army personal clearly showed that the US military have no clue about "laws of war". Several convicted US soldiers admitted frankly they never had heard about the convention of Geneva.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.