Decius wrote:

A Science staff writer, Jocelyn Kaiser, said, "Both the authors and Science's editors acknowledge concerns that terrorists could, in theory, use the information to reconstruct the 1918 flu virus." And yet the journal required that the full genome sequence be made available on the GenBank database as a condition for publishing the paper.

Proponents of publishing this data point out that valuable insights have been gained from the virus's recreation. These insights could help scientists across the world detect and defend against future pandemics, including avian flu.

There are other approaches, however, to sharing the scientifically useful information. Specific insights - for example, that a key mutation noted in one gene may in part explain the virus's unusual virulence - could be published without disclosing the complete genetic recipe. The precise genome could potentially be shared with scientists with suitable security assurances.

Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil oppose "full disclosure" of immuno-security vulnerabilities.

These are the same guys who became multi-millionaires by virtue of the exposure of BSD Unix source code and Bob Moog's schematics for the Polymoog. What a gesture of thanks.

Rattle wrote:

First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Bill Joy is still wrong. Now Ray Kurzweil is wrong too.

Creating a virus is non-trivial. This isn't something we need to worry about terrorists doing. The sky is not falling.

Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil are both kooks. They can join the ever growing list of social misfit multi-millionaires who take their intellect far too seriously and are also kooks, like Danny Hillis, Vint Cerf, and most of the MIT media lab leadership.

It seems like the only person who's able to channel their money and thoughts into something that actually might bring about something positive and worthwhile to the worlds populace has been Woz, and he was the guy everyone thought was the kookiest back in the day.

Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil are both kooks. They can join the ever growing list of social misfit multi-millionaires who take their intellect far too seriously and are also kooks, like Danny Hillis, Vint Cerf, and most of the MIT media lab leadership.

It seems like the only person who's able to channel their money and thoughts into something that actually might bring about something positive and worthwhile to the worlds populace has been Woz, and he was the guy everyone thought was the kookiest back in the day.

Woz is a personal hero. For that matter, so is Steve Jobs. Different reasons though..