To clarify one point - they officially were researching bio/chem warfare against animals. During the cold war, who knows what was being done there; the research during that period is still classified. But I'm only talking about what's there now, which is publically reviewable.
But again, how do you know? And even if they don't now, maybe they did?
Actually, I do know. Fort Terry was built sometime between 1897 and 1901. In 1946, a Foot and Mouth research facility (in response to the devastating Mexican outbreak) was built. Fort Terry was decommissioned in 1948, and reopened as a Top Secret facility for biological and chemical warfare.
So, yes, it was a factually verifiable Army B/C lab.
In 1978 there was an outbreak of Foot and Mouth around the facility. Oops. The resulting press interest and PR tours forced them to move all the classified stuff out of the facility (over the next decade). In 1992, the facility was demilitarized, and press and public tours of all facilities are now available.
Again, I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, but you can't assume that:
a) there isn't
b) there never was
a) This is an open facility, and...
b) I never assumed there wasn't, the island was off limits for about 45 years because they were doing publically acknowledged Bio and Chemical warfare research. That's not really a conspiracy.
They moved it to a different facility, and I'm sure the same research is going on elsewhere. After the military research moved out, the USDA took over the facility and now uses it. It's now officially under Homeland Security, but I don't see any indication that they are doing anything with it yet. The USDA still handles scheduling the use of the facilities and answers the phone.
Weaponized anthrax and USDA anthrax research are very different things. Again, my point was that not every biolab is chock full of biological military weapons.
Yes, it's dangerous, but most human anthrax infections are dermal, and not a big deal. Bit of a rash that clears up with antibiotics. It's the weaponized encysted anthrax dust that gets into your lungs that is the nasty stuff. As a weapon, it's dropped by the ton.
My point was (and has been repeated many times now), the kneejerk "they make biowarfare munitions" posts were wrong.
When did I say anything with regard to the facility or the events that transpired there? I was just ticked about the kneejerk posts made in the first ten minutes after this story was posted. It was a comment on Slashdot, not the story.
Agriculture, not human disease. I just got pissed due to the assumptions being made: that it was human pathogens being studied and stored there for military application, that there were no generators or any backup power plans in place, or that there was a correlation to a zombie factory.
The tone was due to timing. It's a bit later in the morning and I'm much happier now.:)
Livestock is a significantly different thing than biowarfare against humans - which many of the respondants to this article are making the assumption this lab is designed for. Robert Smith's lyrics notwithstanding, there is a massive difference between meat and murder. A massive failure in security at this facility won't result in the loss of human lives, nor is there anything that affects humans in there (well, other than commercial loss and the emotional impact of the death of pets). That's the facts, not that this is some sort of zombie factory or human disease warfare lab - which is the implication or assertion in over half the posts made at the time I made the original post.
--
Evan "Hardly trolling, although a bit undercaffenated and thus strident in tone"
Has NOBODY read the links provided? This is a veterinary research facility run by the USDA (the people who make sure our cows and chickens are healthy). Everybody is talking about "how horrible America keeps biological weapons". The whole facility is toured routinely by research scientists. While there's the possibility of a "secret gub'mint bug lab" elsewhere, it ain't here. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is not a weapon research lab, there *are* backup generators (which didn't work), and it's not a video game.
Yep, I'm not in any way saying that you should buy from this guy. I just have a feeling that he's a (as you put it) "shady/shitty whitebox maker", but he firmly falls on the shitty rather than shady side. He probably believes he's making great deals. He also, like most single employee businesses, probably has trouble delivering, either through procrastination, poor time skills or simply being inept.
--
Evan "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained through simple stupidity"
This guy sells computers and knows nothing about what he's doing. He includes logos, reads the trades and doesn't really understand the business nor the hardware he's selling.
I doubt a scam, honestly. I'm pretty convinced this is a case of a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about spinning everything to the best that he can. A guy who thinks he's good at sales and knows computers.
He probably sells quite a few systems, and the equally ignorant customers are pleased with what they get.
If you go back to the start of this thread, you'll see that I specifically was speaking of Hep C, which is almost exclusively blood transmitted. I was still thinking that when you said Hepatitis. That aside, getting into nitpicks about individual diseases that could be on there is not helpful. The statement that I disagreed with was (paraphrased) "The germs on the toilet seat are way worse than those on the desk".
That I disagree with. The flu is a major killer, Cholera is not. Yes, I am assuming an America white collar office, which is where the study in question was done. The toilet is sanitized with disinfectants daily and the workspace is not. People eat there, giving a nice rich organtic layer of filth, and they bring in all sorts of bacteria from outside.
Their outside access is logged *and* reviewed, so you know they wernt doing it 'for fun'.
Perhaps a bit more clarity is in order. The DOJ inside the beltway, that is to say, the DOJ in Washington, do not log nor review porn surfing. That is a fact, not a supposition. Various other offices around the country may have different practices. Nor do a handful of other offices in DC where I know the admins.
If you lick a toilet seat, you probably won't get anything, but you might get cholera or hepatitis.
Hep C would be a danger, but I'd say getting it from papers that caused a papercut is much more likely. I haven't seen any numbers, so I am speaking from a guess standpoint. Still, unless there is broken skin, you're safe.
Cholera? Dear ghod - when did you last work in a doctor's office? It's been wiped out in America to the point that there is no vaccine made anymore. Even in a full blown "caught in the final stages" infection, there's less than a 1% mortality rate. It's not far off from influenza in fatality. The last time it came up was the frou-frou in South America about a decade ago.
No sane DOJ employee is going to use his or her official workstation for that kind of recreational browsing. Not worth the risks. So if you get a hit on a porn link from a DOJ address, you can be quite sure it's not a recreational interest!
Wrong. There are loads of people within both local law enforcement and the federal government and DOJ who surf porn. Hell, I personally know for a fact that the beltway also has issues with P2P mp3 sharing, adware, spyware, viruses and all sorts of other typical IT issues.
There's a slight chance that this case may have bene a spot check, but there's so much porn out there, and the kiddie stuff is so easy to find, they are busy building cases on what is already visible and all the leads being turned in to them. It's not worth surfing around looking for the stuff. Why put a hook in the water when the fish are leaping into the boat?
They do surf recreationally, and they also have loads of interns and even their children using their systems. It's not the Borg; these are normal people who work in the office and pull the same crap any other office worker pulls. Why would you think a badge or a federal paycheck would make them above that?
They are sexually mature adults. They pick up partners, or go home to their spouses and have sex lives. They like looking at sexual material, and the internet has it in spades. And you're not going to fired over it unless you're harassing other people or there's someone looking for an excuse to fire you.
generally men beat their cock after/while looking at porn
After you're older than 20-25, you can look at porn without an automatic reaction and just enjoy the pretty pictures. After about 20 or 30 more years, you might need more than porn... or so my inbox tells me. Meanwhile, high school boys often have problems dealing with arousal during math lessions.
The excrement is expelled (around) once a day. You also shower (around) once a day. Usually, that ass is pristine. In addition, the excrement only touches a small portion in the center of the ass, whereas the toilet seat contacts the washed cheek.
You hands, on the... other... (damn)... hand, touch everything from the outside of your car, dirty dishes, doorknobs that everyone else has been handling, touch your mouth, get sneezed into, clean up messes, pick coins up from the ground, and a wide variety of various surfaces that are not clean. Add all the surfaces that are shared (like papers, which are nice fiber bacteria swabs) that swap bacteria back and forth from fellow humans.
Add to that the fact that commercial toilets are generally disinfected once a day. When's the last time you saw a doorknob being disinfected?
What do I see one day? A hit from the DOJ. They were looking for porno
Holy CRAP! There are healthy *human* *beings* in the government? With the same urges and activities as in every other field? Call the news media!
Seriously, working at a courthouse versus a finance company, I saw pretty much the same amount of people surfing porn from work. It's called being human. Not a big deal unless you happen to get called on it. That only happened once when the idiot started showing it to coworkers and HR got involved. Otherwise, anyone sitting on a router or proxy knows that there's a good deal of... err... personal internet use in every office.
I doubt it... the toilet seat probably has a variety of common surface bacteria such as staph plus yeast and maybe a bit of coliform; only the last is likely to make you sick (you get exposed to the first two all the time). Butts are pretty clean; you keep them covered in fabric after you wash them. Hands and mouths on the other... err... hand...
The desk has people respirating over it and sneezing in the area. Everybody is going out, touching various things, tossing out bad stuff from the office fridge and then borrowing a stapler. It's likely got a significantly wider range of bacteria and viruses that can cause infection in a human.
--
Evan "And the worst thing out there are buffets, especially the salad bars"
You mean like the various companies competing at building chess super computers? Or the various companies making nanotech letters or musical insturments? Or are you looking for potentially useful but unlikely expensive research like Zero point energy or the ever present fusion energy or space elevators? You read Slashdot - there several stories *every* *week* about some American corporation doing some silly, pointless research that has a very tenuous "may have potential applications".
Gimmie a break; every country with a leisure economy (i.e., those that can afford it) does this research. America has always had the leisure economy (yes, even now) and has fostered a culture of individualistic quirky projects. America is not lacking in goofy cool projects.
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Evan
Re:Buy Transformers DVD
on
Retro Vision
·
· Score: 1
Heh. I wrote a fairly complete Misfits of Science website - it's still sitting on my hard drive. I really need to nab a domain and toss it up online. Character, episode, actor synopsi, pretty typical fan site. It was a short lived show, so it's pretty easy to run through the whole thing.
I still love the Indiana Jones/Big City interleave opening of one ep. Some really great stuff, pretty uneven but typical of 80s shows.
Caveats: You must specify a class, height and width in the img tag. You really should be doing the latter two anyway, so adding a class="png" isn't all that bad.
Slashdot Mirror
--
Evan
Actually, I do know. Fort Terry was built sometime between 1897 and 1901. In 1946, a Foot and Mouth research facility (in response to the devastating Mexican outbreak) was built. Fort Terry was decommissioned in 1948, and reopened as a Top Secret facility for biological and chemical warfare.
So, yes, it was a factually verifiable Army B/C lab.
In 1978 there was an outbreak of Foot and Mouth around the facility. Oops. The resulting press interest and PR tours forced them to move all the classified stuff out of the facility (over the next decade). In 1992, the facility was demilitarized, and press and public tours of all facilities are now available.
Again, I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, but you can't assume that: a) there isn't b) there never was
a) This is an open facility, and...
b) I never assumed there wasn't, the island was off limits for about 45 years because they were doing publically acknowledged Bio and Chemical warfare research. That's not really a conspiracy.
They moved it to a different facility, and I'm sure the same research is going on elsewhere. After the military research moved out, the USDA took over the facility and now uses it. It's now officially under Homeland Security, but I don't see any indication that they are doing anything with it yet. The USDA still handles scheduling the use of the facilities and answers the phone.
--
Evan
Yes, it's dangerous, but most human anthrax infections are dermal, and not a big deal. Bit of a rash that clears up with antibiotics. It's the weaponized encysted anthrax dust that gets into your lungs that is the nasty stuff. As a weapon, it's dropped by the ton.
My point was (and has been repeated many times now), the kneejerk "they make biowarfare munitions" posts were wrong.
--
Evan
See this link in the story.
--
Evan
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Evan
The tone was due to timing. It's a bit later in the morning and I'm much happier now. :)
--
Evan "Protested *for* the biolab in Davis"
--
Evan "Hardly trolling, although a bit undercaffenated and thus strident in tone"
Signal noise, people... Signal noise.
--
Evan
--
Evan
--
Evan "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained through simple stupidity"
This guy sells computers and knows nothing about what he's doing. He includes logos, reads the trades and doesn't really understand the business nor the hardware he's selling.
I doubt a scam, honestly. I'm pretty convinced this is a case of a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about spinning everything to the best that he can. A guy who thinks he's good at sales and knows computers.
He probably sells quite a few systems, and the equally ignorant customers are pleased with what they get.
--
Evan
That I disagree with. The flu is a major killer, Cholera is not. Yes, I am assuming an America white collar office, which is where the study in question was done. The toilet is sanitized with disinfectants daily and the workspace is not. People eat there, giving a nice rich organtic layer of filth, and they bring in all sorts of bacteria from outside.
--
Evan
Whups. I meant to say "review". I am quite sure they log it. But there is no routine review of said logs for porn surfers.
--
Evan
Perhaps a bit more clarity is in order. The DOJ inside the beltway, that is to say, the DOJ in Washington, do not log nor review porn surfing. That is a fact, not a supposition. Various other offices around the country may have different practices. Nor do a handful of other offices in DC where I know the admins.
--
Evan
Hep C would be a danger, but I'd say getting it from papers that caused a papercut is much more likely. I haven't seen any numbers, so I am speaking from a guess standpoint. Still, unless there is broken skin, you're safe.
Cholera? Dear ghod - when did you last work in a doctor's office? It's been wiped out in America to the point that there is no vaccine made anymore. Even in a full blown "caught in the final stages" infection, there's less than a 1% mortality rate. It's not far off from influenza in fatality. The last time it came up was the frou-frou in South America about a decade ago.
--
Evan
Wrong. There are loads of people within both local law enforcement and the federal government and DOJ who surf porn. Hell, I personally know for a fact that the beltway also has issues with P2P mp3 sharing, adware, spyware, viruses and all sorts of other typical IT issues.
There's a slight chance that this case may have bene a spot check, but there's so much porn out there, and the kiddie stuff is so easy to find, they are busy building cases on what is already visible and all the leads being turned in to them. It's not worth surfing around looking for the stuff. Why put a hook in the water when the fish are leaping into the boat?
They do surf recreationally, and they also have loads of interns and even their children using their systems. It's not the Borg; these are normal people who work in the office and pull the same crap any other office worker pulls. Why would you think a badge or a federal paycheck would make them above that?
They are sexually mature adults. They pick up partners, or go home to their spouses and have sex lives. They like looking at sexual material, and the internet has it in spades. And you're not going to fired over it unless you're harassing other people or there's someone looking for an excuse to fire you.
--
Evan
After you're older than 20-25, you can look at porn without an automatic reaction and just enjoy the pretty pictures. After about 20 or 30 more years, you might need more than porn... or so my inbox tells me. Meanwhile, high school boys often have problems dealing with arousal during math lessions.
--
Evan
After hearing about your coworker's issues, maybe I'll just wave. :)
--
Evan
You hands, on the... other... (damn)... hand, touch everything from the outside of your car, dirty dishes, doorknobs that everyone else has been handling, touch your mouth, get sneezed into, clean up messes, pick coins up from the ground, and a wide variety of various surfaces that are not clean. Add all the surfaces that are shared (like papers, which are nice fiber bacteria swabs) that swap bacteria back and forth from fellow humans.
Add to that the fact that commercial toilets are generally disinfected once a day. When's the last time you saw a doorknob being disinfected?
--
Evan
Holy CRAP! There are healthy *human* *beings* in the government? With the same urges and activities as in every other field? Call the news media!
Seriously, working at a courthouse versus a finance company, I saw pretty much the same amount of people surfing porn from work. It's called being human. Not a big deal unless you happen to get called on it. That only happened once when the idiot started showing it to coworkers and HR got involved. Otherwise, anyone sitting on a router or proxy knows that there's a good deal of... err... personal internet use in every office.
--
Evan
The desk has people respirating over it and sneezing in the area. Everybody is going out, touching various things, tossing out bad stuff from the office fridge and then borrowing a stapler. It's likely got a significantly wider range of bacteria and viruses that can cause infection in a human.
--
Evan "And the worst thing out there are buffets, especially the salad bars"
Gimmie a break; every country with a leisure economy (i.e., those that can afford it) does this research. America has always had the leisure economy (yes, even now) and has fostered a culture of individualistic quirky projects. America is not lacking in goofy cool projects.
--
Evan
I still love the Indiana Jones/Big City interleave opening of one ep. Some really great stuff, pretty uneven but typical of 80s shows.
--
Evan
Caveats: You must specify a class, height and width in the img tag. You really should be doing the latter two anyway, so adding a class="png" isn't all that bad.
--
Evan
Just use cabextract. It's bundled with most distros. Pretty common linux tool.
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Evan