webofevil | (no subject)

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Okay, so the news that the Pentagon plans a cyber-insect army might seem a little unsettling at first, but it should be at least some comfort that cyber-insect armies are prey to the exact same problems as regular ones:

"A similar scheme aimed at manipulating wasps failed when they flew off to feed and mate".

Incidentally, the above picture comes from a stock photo website. You have to applaud their covering every base—or possibly the nervous breakdown of one of their art editors—for the inclusion of a "stock" "photo" of, and I quote, a robotic armoured cyber wasp.

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No man, the photo library I worked at had all sorts of great "conceptual images".

"Conceptual image of a nanobot shooting a buckyball into the SARS virus, inside a Sasquatch, on a background of fractals."

It's not as far fetched as some of those commentators were saying. Boffins have been able to steer fish by remote control - they just had electrodes stimulating the 'interesting smell to port' and 'interesting smell to starboard' parts of the fish's brain. The piscine equivalent of the 'Mmmm...donuts' ganglion in humans.

I agree. The wasp scheme was based on training them with sugary treats, like Pavlov's moths.

The sidebar for this story about previous schemes is great:

"WWII: Attach a bomb to a cat and drop it from a dive-bomber on to Nazi ships. The cat, hating water, will "wrangle" itself on to enemy ship's deck. In tests cats became unconscious in mid-air

WWII: Attach incendiaries to bats. Induce hibernation and drop them from planes. They wake up, fly into factories etc and blow up. Failed to wake from hibernation and fell to death

Vietnam War: Dolphins trained to tear off diving gear of Vietcong divers and drag them to interrogation. Later, syringes placed on dolphin flippers to inject carbon dioxide into divers, who explode. About 40 divers thought to have been killed"

Can you imagine the dolphin's little face when it made a man explode? "I was only trying to give him a kiss like you taught me. Where's my sweetie?"

They forgot Francis Drake's flock of Q-swans.

The WWII plans seem a little over complex. Some top boffin probably realised that you could just drop bombs onto the ships/factories in question.

Man, I want to work for Darpa. There's a whole "head grafting" field to explore.

I assumed you already worked there.

I'm working on a mechanical elephant to "hatch" from the world's largest glitter ball.

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