Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009

Posted by timothy on from the top-five-beats-top-10-hands-down dept.

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.'"

6 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Large Haldron Collider by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's an RSS feed use can use to keep tabs on wether or not the LHC has destroyed the earth. Very useful site.

  2. How is the LHC not on here? by Rehnberg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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"

  3. Conficker April 1st by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about the incredibly overrated Conficker / Kido / Downadup worm that was going to cause the end of the Internet on April 1st 2009? Big media blew it out of proportion considering Microsoft had patched the flaw and all major AV vendors had protected against it months before April 1st. The only people really affected by it were the patch-avoiders.

  4. Death-by-IPv4 by lq_x_pl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It gave me a chuckle to see this story immediately above yet another article on the rapidly diminishing number of IPv4 addresses, and the doom awaiting us when they run out.

    --
    An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
  5. Ignores a lot more panics by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This really ignores a lot of panics that are more relevant in both mass-media and tech circles alike. The main one is the LHC. Even non-geeks were talking about it and the end of the world. Another one is Conficker, you know the virus/botnet that was supposed to destroy the world in April 2009 when it.... did nothing. Then everyone got worried that it would strike the next month... and nothing.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  6. Re:Large Haldron Collider by DarthBender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's an RSS feed use can use to keep tabs on wether or not the LHC has destroyed the earth. Very useful site.

    Check the page source for that site. It is quite interesting.