My degrees are in biology, chemistry, and genetics. After i got them, i realized i hate fundamental research (timing's everything, right?). By accident more so than by plan, i fell into making chocolate for a living, and for the last dozen years, that's what i've done. I get to use my talent in science (formulations, fluid dynamics, etc), and if you're on the supply side of chocolate mfr (ie industrial supplier to users), there's a huge social component as well - i was the technical services manager for many of those years, which involves teaching others how to use chocolate, technical sales, trade shows, and lots of travel. It was great fun.
WOW - There's a lot of misinformation floating around here! Obviously this is a topic that's near and dear to many of your hearts!
I'm the technical director of a chocolate company. I've been making chocolate for many, many years.
The proposal from the GMA isn't directed just at chocolate, but would include it. It essentially calls for the use of 'all safe and suitable' sweeteners and oils. Chocolate has a standard of identity, which means that the government controls the definition of chocolate. That definition can be changed (white chocolate actually didn't legally exist until a few years go, at which time a white chocolate section was added to the CFR) - however it takes many, many years to do so (white chocolate took over a decade).
This is driven by a number of things, which include, but are not limited to: 1) the desire to be able to legally call sugar free products sugar free chocolate, when formulated to meet the other standards 2) the desire to harmonize global chocolate standards - most of the rest of the world allows the use of up to 5% CBE (cocoa butter equivilants - these are oils that are chemically the same as cocoa butter, but are usually - not always - more economical).
ANY change would be required to be labelled, so no one would pull anything over on you, same as it is today. Mfr's would be able to choose to do this or not, it would not be a requirement, so it's not that all chocolate would change overnight. My take on it is that the GMA has written this petition so broadly as to be ridiculous, hoping that the FDA allows on a portion of what was asked for. It will likely take years before the FDA even acknowledges it 8-)
That said, the descriptions from the Russians about North Korea's bomb place it at 3m in length and weighing about four tons, which is far more than any North Korean missile can mount and more than most of their planes can handle. There is zero chance of North Korea mounting nuclear missile attack in the next few years, and they would have to learn some very powerful miniaturization tricks before they could threaten anyone at a significant range.
but they could certainly sell it to (insert terrorist group here) and load it onto a shipping container to bring into a port...
I've had this happen to me 4x in the last 2 months. I urge you all to write your congress-person and state attorney general (not email, write the letter folks) - here's what i am sending:
Senator Specter,
I am writing to voice my concern over the lack of control many corporations have over my personal information - and just as importantly, the lack of recourse I have as a citizen should those corporations abuse my information. Over the course of the past 60 days, I've received 4 notices that a given corporation - two of which I don't even do business with, nor have I ever - have had my personal information compromised. Two of them were kind enough to provide suggestions as to what steps I should take to monitor this, one of them simply stated that they'd allowed my information to be compromised, and the final one actually sent me an empty envelope. I contacted them based on their return address to make an inquiry, and obtained confirmation that that too had compromised my information.
All this within a two-month period. And these are the ones that have voluntarily divulged that my information has been compromised - I'm assuming there have been other incidents that have not been disclosed.
It's absurdly obvious to me that, at minimum, there needs to be minimum standards of data protection, and recourse for the individual in the event that one suffers personal loss as a result of a corporation not adhering to those minimum standards of protection. In the day of high speed data transmission and very powerful encryption techniques, it's ludicrous that they are transporting these types of sensitive information around on unencrypted computers and on non-secured servers or portable drives.
I do not want to wait until something detrimental occurs to me before I take action. Identify theft has become so common place that it's become background noise, and we as a society have accepted it as a part of life in the modern world - this can not be the solution. Until there are ramifications for corporations that mistreat personal data that results in personal harm, there is no incentive for them to alter their behavior.
I certainly do not have the answer, nor would I presume to tell you what should be done to rectify this. I would, however, ask that you expend some resources to find and implement a solution to the issue. I am quite confident that were the tables turned, and I were to disclose damaging information that affected the fiscal health of those companies, that the repercussions I would face as a result from them would be quite serious.
And luckily, you have that choice, but I am afraid it is you that has missed the point. Microsoft owns that software, not you.
True. But does Microsoft own the hardware used to communicate? It would be an interesting concept to explore if they have the right to commandeer your owned hardware with their leased software.
Formerly I worked as a genetic engineer. There are few things that truely frighten me and cause me to loose sleep - this is one of them. While it's true that historically the infrastructure and knowledge based required to produce and deliver items of this class were incredibly resource intensive, that's no longer the case. In the last decade, the US Gov't undertook a project to determine if production of weaponized bioagents was feasible given off the shelf, readily available resources, and the conclusion was a resounding yes. There's plenty of information available in the general public that deals with electrostatic issues, particle sizes, inhibition of thermal degredation if explosively delivered, spray patterns, effect of inversions, etc.
Please keep in mind that while the terrorists may want to weaponize it sufficiently so as to yield a maximum kill, they fully realize that they don't need to do so. Delivery doesn't need to be explosive or projectile, and some of our most trusted food sources would be the most effective vectors. Imagine the effect it would have if you were afraid to buy groceries at the market? Or drink water from your faucet? Terror doesn't have to have a high kill rate, it only needs to make you alter your normal habits to the point of being disruptive.
I've two advanced degrees - one in chemistry, t'other in genetics. I'm the technical director for one of the largest companies in the world. My wife is a professor.
I say that only to establish that I'd consider myself a fairly educated, scientific person whose social sphere includes other well educated individuals. I'm also a devout Christian. What boggles my mind is that the two sides tend to line up like soliders in the revolutionary war - a clearly divided line of people wearing one color on one side, and people wearing another color on the other side - and insist that their way is the only right way, not acknowledging that perhaps there's some middle ground to be had. Why is it so hard for Christians to accept what we've proven in science? Why is it so hard for non religious scientists to acknowledge that we've not discovered all the answers, and indeed, may never do so? I'm not all that old, but as I age, I'm increasingly realizing that things are rarely one way or the other. Everything in life, science - coexists in a relationship of one sort or another. To out of hand entirely dismiss something because it seems preposterous to you today is incredibly closed minded. And I say that to both sides. Our knowledge doubling rate is so fast these days, a great deal of what we 'knew' unequovically to be truth 10 years ago has changed.
I believe in God.
I believe in science.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
I'm sure I'll get the obligatory 'you're an idiot - how can you believe in something science can not prove' responses. And I'll read them from the middle of the field, sandwiched between both sides who are too busy trying to prove the other side wrong to notice that the space between the two sides can be occupied.
I've been using the magic phrase 'please take me off your call list' for years now. Some people are very polite in return, and thank me and have a good day. I've had other telemarketers sigh and hang up, or even curse and hang up. Just last night I had one argue with me. I asked her to please take me off your call list, and she said she couldn't do that unless I provided her with personal information. I politely informed her that she's federally obligated to comply, and I don' t have to provide any information. I asked for her name, her company, and to be transferred to her supervisor, and she again stated that I'd first have to provide personal info before she could do that. We went through this 3 or 4 times until she finally said 'i'm not going to play games with me," and that she's not obligated to do anything, unless I provide the info she was asking for. She then hung up, and I've no recourse to pursue them. They block their incoming call so I can't ID the origination number.
THIS is what infuriates me. I understand these people are making a living. I am polite to them to a fault. I'm not litigous. However, she's got me at the point where I would pursue litigation with her IF i had a method of finding out who the hell they're with. I will likely pay my phone company the 10 bucks a month or whatever it is to block all incoming telemarketer calls.
I simply don't understand the business model of 'hey, let's bother potential customers while they're eating dinner with their families or on Sunday and piss them off. we're sure to get business that way.". Obviously it's working on some level, as they're still doing it. I, however, don't understand it.
An MSN source is reporting that mp3 is dying, but WMA is gaining.
oh yeah, *that's* an unbiased source...what's next, reports of linux's increase in popularity have been refuted, saying that 98% of linux switchers are returning to windows?
This is one reason why the USA is extremely religious, because organized ignorance is the best way of having docile populations that will not thwart the powerful people who dominate it for their own benefit.
Assuming that an entire group of people who believe in a higher power are ignorant is perhaps the most profound form of ignorance itself. Or arrogance. Were you to do that against any other people group, you'd be labelled as racist.
Understanding someone's motive to mass murder thousands of innocents doesn't make them any less crazy. Their acts define them as crazy, not their motivations. Understanding their motives, while perhaps helpful in reducing or eliminating future acts, does nothing to change the fact that they've earned their title of crazy by past acts.
There were crazies long before preemptive wars and UN, and there will be crazies long after those things have passed.
In fact, some people have no motivation other than the act itself. Wouldn't such irrational behaviour be the defination of crazy?
I could weaponize anthrax for $25,000. The US gov't did a study a few years ago indicating that for less than the price of a new car and using off the shelf equipment, one could manufacture enough bio agent to do very significant damage, in a space the size of one's bedroom.
The question isn't will it be cheap enough for everyone to have the ability to do it. It's will it be cheap enough for the crazies to do it, as well as what are the implications of doing it (by crazies or by well thought out researchers).
You better believe that if the crazies could inflict this type of damage for $5000 they'd do it in a heartbeat.
an option upon install to simply *not* install the spyware in the first place. If they're telling you it's there, but requiring that you install it as part of the process, one should be able to circumvent the 'easily removeable' portion of it alltogether, and simply elect not to install it in the first place.
and by 'how little the company curtalis the content' you of course weren't referring to the fella who got himself fired by posting a picture of a loading dock, right?
Russian coldwar policy was, indeed, to follow nuclear strikes with biological ones. The exact mix of the cocktail, as you've pointed out to the original poster, he may not have had exact. There are very few individuals who, in fact, know the exact composition. Any agent used doesn't need to be a particulary effective one, as it's not being used as a standalone - you're targeting folks who've already had huge radiation doses and aren't immunologically at their peak, to say the least. Q, dengue, typhoid, yellow fever, hell even pneumonia are all that's required to give the finishing blow. Recombinant work on such things as smallpox are what scare the hell out of me, and i'm a geneticist, familiar with western and eastern practices. Russia's (then, and in many cases now) recombinant technology is amazing. And scary.
Written by a guy who's familiar with vector, lab 12, obelinsk, etc. It's easy to attack partially incorrect info as an AC, but that doesn't mean the jist of the post isn't correct.
Aren't biological systems essentially nano-constructs, comprised of very small 'builders' (enzymes) that do one thing and one thing only. Since there are so many builders that only do that one thing, memory all of a sudden doesn't become a huge requirement, rather the ability to turn them off/on at a given moment to direct the construction.
Given this, it seems obvious that nanoconstruction at some level is possible. That doesn't necessarily mean we can throw a bunch of elements together and direct them to build a skyscraper, complete with office equipment and name plates on the doors. But it certainly does seem feasible to draw the analogy to biological systems that directed construction is possible.
Used to be a molecular biologist/geneticist. Made all sorts of critters in the lab. What you are seeing as news today has been done in private industry and government for literally decades, only went unpublished. I tell you this scares the hell out of me. So much that I no longer am in that line of work, and now make chocolate for a living. Everything that was done in my trait and technology lab was for commercial agricultural purposes, but the methods used are clearly open to dual use, and the safety protocols in place in private industry (or lack thereof) are similiarly frightening. All the private facilities I was a part of didn't have their own dedicated waste water handling facilities or air scrubbers. Think of that for a moment. All waste water goes to the same public treatment facilties as does the material that flows from your house. Air vents and handling systems vent to ambient external conditions from laboratories. Material is autoclaved, however, some material is placed in sinks as a holding area prior to autoclaving. Of course none of the materials we worked on were weaponized , but the effects of releasing some of these materials into open uncontrolled environments are simply unknown. And if private industry was doing this 20 years ago for commercial purposes, think what obelinsk, lab 12, dietrick, and biopreparat have done (i'd certainly hope their environmental systems were more evolved than private industry...)
Slashdot Mirror
My degrees are in biology, chemistry, and genetics. After i got them, i realized i hate fundamental research (timing's everything, right?). By accident more so than by plan, i fell into making chocolate for a living, and for the last dozen years, that's what i've done. I get to use my talent in science (formulations, fluid dynamics, etc), and if you're on the supply side of chocolate mfr (ie industrial supplier to users), there's a huge social component as well - i was the technical services manager for many of those years, which involves teaching others how to use chocolate, technical sales, trade shows, and lots of travel. It was great fun.
WOW - There's a lot of misinformation floating around here! Obviously this is a topic that's near and dear to many of your hearts!
I'm the technical director of a chocolate company. I've been making chocolate for many, many years.
The proposal from the GMA isn't directed just at chocolate, but would include it. It essentially calls for the use of 'all safe and suitable' sweeteners and oils. Chocolate has a standard of identity, which means that the government controls the definition of chocolate. That definition can be changed (white chocolate actually didn't legally exist until a few years go, at which time a white chocolate section was added to the CFR) - however it takes many, many years to do so (white chocolate took over a decade).
This is driven by a number of things, which include, but are not limited to:
1) the desire to be able to legally call sugar free products sugar free chocolate, when formulated to meet the other standards
2) the desire to harmonize global chocolate standards - most of the rest of the world allows the use of up to 5% CBE (cocoa butter equivilants - these are oils that are chemically the same as cocoa butter, but are usually - not always - more economical).
ANY change would be required to be labelled, so no one would pull anything over on you, same as it is today. Mfr's would be able to choose to do this or not, it would not be a requirement, so it's not that all chocolate would change overnight. My take on it is that the GMA has written this petition so broadly as to be ridiculous, hoping that the FDA allows on a portion of what was asked for. It will likely take years before the FDA even acknowledges it 8-)
but they could certainly sell it to (insert terrorist group here) and load it onto a shipping container to bring into a port...
I've had this happen to me 4x in the last 2 months. I urge you all to write your congress-person and state attorney general (not email, write the letter folks) - here's what i am sending:
Senator Specter,
I am writing to voice my concern over the lack of control many corporations have over my personal information - and just as importantly, the lack of recourse I have as a citizen should those corporations abuse my information. Over the course of the past 60 days, I've received 4 notices that a given corporation - two of which I don't even do business with, nor have I ever - have had my personal information compromised. Two of them were kind enough to provide suggestions as to what steps I should take to monitor this, one of them simply stated that they'd allowed my information to be compromised, and the final one actually sent me an empty envelope. I contacted them based on their return address to make an inquiry, and obtained confirmation that that too had compromised my information.
All this within a two-month period. And these are the ones that have voluntarily divulged that my information has been compromised - I'm assuming there have been other incidents that have not been disclosed.
It's absurdly obvious to me that, at minimum, there needs to be minimum standards of data protection, and recourse for the individual in the event that one suffers personal loss as a result of a corporation not adhering to those minimum standards of protection. In the day of high speed data transmission and very powerful encryption techniques, it's ludicrous that they are transporting these types of sensitive information around on unencrypted computers and on non-secured servers or portable drives.
I do not want to wait until something detrimental occurs to me before I take action. Identify theft has become so common place that it's become background noise, and we as a society have accepted it as a part of life in the modern world - this can not be the solution. Until there are ramifications for corporations that mistreat personal data that results in personal harm, there is no incentive for them to alter their behavior.
I certainly do not have the answer, nor would I presume to tell you what should be done to rectify this. I would, however, ask that you expend some resources to find and implement a solution to the issue. I am quite confident that were the tables turned, and I were to disclose damaging information that affected the fiscal health of those companies, that the repercussions I would face as a result from them would be quite serious.
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
True. But does Microsoft own the hardware used to communicate? It would be an interesting concept to explore if they have the right to commandeer your owned hardware with their leased software.
Formerly I worked as a genetic engineer. There are few things that truely frighten me and cause me to loose sleep - this is one of them. While it's true that historically the infrastructure and knowledge based required to produce and deliver items of this class were incredibly resource intensive, that's no longer the case. In the last decade, the US Gov't undertook a project to determine if production of weaponized bioagents was feasible given off the shelf, readily available resources, and the conclusion was a resounding yes. There's plenty of information available in the general public that deals with electrostatic issues, particle sizes, inhibition of thermal degredation if explosively delivered, spray patterns, effect of inversions, etc.
Please keep in mind that while the terrorists may want to weaponize it sufficiently so as to yield a maximum kill, they fully realize that they don't need to do so. Delivery doesn't need to be explosive or projectile, and some of our most trusted food sources would be the most effective vectors. Imagine the effect it would have if you were afraid to buy groceries at the market? Or drink water from your faucet? Terror doesn't have to have a high kill rate, it only needs to make you alter your normal habits to the point of being disruptive.
I've two advanced degrees - one in chemistry, t'other in genetics. I'm the technical director for one of the largest companies in the world. My wife is a professor.
I say that only to establish that I'd consider myself a fairly educated, scientific person whose social sphere includes other well educated individuals. I'm also a devout Christian. What boggles my mind is that the two sides tend to line up like soliders in the revolutionary war - a clearly divided line of people wearing one color on one side, and people wearing another color on the other side - and insist that their way is the only right way, not acknowledging that perhaps there's some middle ground to be had. Why is it so hard for Christians to accept what we've proven in science? Why is it so hard for non religious scientists to acknowledge that we've not discovered all the answers, and indeed, may never do so? I'm not all that old, but as I age, I'm increasingly realizing that things are rarely one way or the other. Everything in life, science - coexists in a relationship of one sort or another. To out of hand entirely dismiss something because it seems preposterous to you today is incredibly closed minded. And I say that to both sides. Our knowledge doubling rate is so fast these days, a great deal of what we 'knew' unequovically to be truth 10 years ago has changed.
I believe in God.
I believe in science.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
I'm sure I'll get the obligatory 'you're an idiot - how can you believe in something science can not prove' responses. And I'll read them from the middle of the field, sandwiched between both sides who are too busy trying to prove the other side wrong to notice that the space between the two sides can be occupied.
I've been using the magic phrase 'please take me off your call list' for years now. Some people are very polite in return, and thank me and have a good day. I've had other telemarketers sigh and hang up, or even curse and hang up. Just last night I had one argue with me. I asked her to please take me off your call list, and she said she couldn't do that unless I provided her with personal information. I politely informed her that she's federally obligated to comply, and I don' t have to provide any information. I asked for her name, her company, and to be transferred to her supervisor, and she again stated that I'd first have to provide personal info before she could do that. We went through this 3 or 4 times until she finally said 'i'm not going to play games with me," and that she's not obligated to do anything, unless I provide the info she was asking for. She then hung up, and I've no recourse to pursue them. They block their incoming call so I can't ID the origination number.
THIS is what infuriates me. I understand these people are making a living. I am polite to them to a fault. I'm not litigous. However, she's got me at the point where I would pursue litigation with her IF i had a method of finding out who the hell they're with. I will likely pay my phone company the 10 bucks a month or whatever it is to block all incoming telemarketer calls.
I simply don't understand the business model of 'hey, let's bother potential customers while they're eating dinner with their families or on Sunday and piss them off. we're sure to get business that way.". Obviously it's working on some level, as they're still doing it. I, however, don't understand it.
Actually,world sugar's only a few cents more than domestic sugar now. There's still a discrepancy, however.
Which Nintendo employee is a Suicidegirls.com fan?
An MSN source is reporting that mp3 is dying, but WMA is gaining.
oh yeah, *that's* an unbiased source...what's next, reports of linux's increase in popularity have been refuted, saying that 98% of linux switchers are returning to windows?
Assuming that an entire group of people who believe in a higher power are ignorant is perhaps the most profound form of ignorance itself. Or arrogance. Were you to do that against any other people group, you'd be labelled as racist.
Put them in a room which has an air intake vent adjacent to a dutch field of tulips. Return in 4 years. Viola!
Easy workaround? Don't buy it.
Understanding someone's motive to mass murder thousands of innocents doesn't make them any less crazy. Their acts define them as crazy, not their motivations. Understanding their motives, while perhaps helpful in reducing or eliminating future acts, does nothing to change the fact that they've earned their title of crazy by past acts.
There were crazies long before preemptive wars and UN, and there will be crazies long after those things have passed.
In fact, some people have no motivation other than the act itself. Wouldn't such irrational behaviour be the defination of crazy?
I could weaponize anthrax for $25,000. The US gov't did a study a few years ago indicating that for less than the price of a new car and using off the shelf equipment, one could manufacture enough bio agent to do very significant damage, in a space the size of one's bedroom.
The question isn't will it be cheap enough for everyone to have the ability to do it. It's will it be cheap enough for the crazies to do it, as well as what are the implications of doing it (by crazies or by well thought out researchers).
You better believe that if the crazies could inflict this type of damage for $5000 they'd do it in a heartbeat.
Is that a P4 in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
an option upon install to simply *not* install the spyware in the first place. If they're telling you it's there, but requiring that you install it as part of the process, one should be able to circumvent the 'easily removeable' portion of it alltogether, and simply elect not to install it in the first place.
and by 'how little the company curtalis the content' you of course weren't referring to the fella who got himself fired by posting a picture of a loading dock, right?
The power here is obvious.
I'm surprised none of you caught it yet.
A weapon that flys through windows clearly is meant to counter the blue screen of death...
Isn't there some sort of truth in advertising that could be claimed here? I mean really, MS claiming to be safe from virii?
Butter the bottom! That way when it falls it's 1/2 rotation..oh nevermind.
Russian coldwar policy was, indeed, to follow nuclear strikes with biological ones. The exact mix of the cocktail, as you've pointed out to the original poster, he may not have had exact. There are very few individuals who, in fact, know the exact composition. Any agent used doesn't need to be a particulary effective one, as it's not being used as a standalone - you're targeting folks who've already had huge radiation doses and aren't immunologically at their peak, to say the least. Q, dengue, typhoid, yellow fever, hell even pneumonia are all that's required to give the finishing blow. Recombinant work on such things as smallpox are what scare the hell out of me, and i'm a geneticist, familiar with western and eastern practices. Russia's (then, and in many cases now) recombinant technology is amazing. And scary.
Written by a guy who's familiar with vector, lab 12, obelinsk, etc. It's easy to attack partially incorrect info as an AC, but that doesn't mean the jist of the post isn't correct.
Vbi znietsa alibekov?
Aren't biological systems essentially nano-constructs, comprised of very small 'builders' (enzymes) that do one thing and one thing only. Since there are so many builders that only do that one thing, memory all of a sudden doesn't become a huge requirement, rather the ability to turn them off/on at a given moment to direct the construction.
Given this, it seems obvious that nanoconstruction at some level is possible. That doesn't necessarily mean we can throw a bunch of elements together and direct them to build a skyscraper, complete with office equipment and name plates on the doors. But it certainly does seem feasible to draw the analogy to biological systems that directed construction is possible.
Used to be a molecular biologist/geneticist. Made all sorts of critters in the lab. What you are seeing as news today has been done in private industry and government for literally decades, only went unpublished. I tell you this scares the hell out of me. So much that I no longer am in that line of work, and now make chocolate for a living. Everything that was done in my trait and technology lab was for commercial agricultural purposes, but the methods used are clearly open to dual use, and the safety protocols in place in private industry (or lack thereof) are similiarly frightening. All the private facilities I was a part of didn't have their own dedicated waste water handling facilities or air scrubbers. Think of that for a moment. All waste water goes to the same public treatment facilties as does the material that flows from your house. Air vents and handling systems vent to ambient external conditions from laboratories. Material is autoclaved, however, some material is placed in sinks as a holding area prior to autoclaving. Of course none of the materials we worked on were weaponized , but the effects of releasing some of these materials into open uncontrolled environments are simply unknown. And if private industry was doing this 20 years ago for commercial purposes, think what obelinsk, lab 12, dietrick, and biopreparat have done (i'd certainly hope their environmental systems were more evolved than private industry...)