<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Oct 17, 2005, at 6:06 PM, Brian Atkins wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The situation is very comparable to software antivirus.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In an ideal world, Kurzweil wants sophisticated defensive anti-biowarfare/bioterror tech, and little to no government interference. The problem is, we aren't there yet with the technology.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Hence the two pronged "figure out best way to slow the info getting into the wrong hands, while at the same time developing better defensive tech".</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Isn't this essentially the same as what goes on in software vulnerabilities today? Aside from "black hat" research, all other software security researchers generally keep their research unpublished until the vulnerabilities have been figured out and patched.</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>Keeping them unpublished on closed source increases the amount of damage before there is a "fix" and makes it difficult to verify the fix. The closed source also makes proactive efforts unlikely. So software is a poor example.</DIV><DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD">- samantha</FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000DD"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>