I called Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department prosecutor who did such deals with both spies and hackers, including the famous case of Robert Morris, the hacker convicted in 1990 of planting a computer worm, and now a professor at MIT. Rasch was intrigued by the idea, but skeptical that Snowden has much to bargain with.
The three were due to stand trial in October for bombing a Pretoria taxi rank, injurying 13 blacks, and for planting a computer bomb that killed a Durban computer technician.
The ultimate goal is a "virtual plant" -- a computer model that could, say, predict the response of the plant to different environmental conditions.
One of his devices is planted in a computer, to be activated via e-mail.
In one case he was recently hired to investigate, malicious software was planted on a computer equipment reseller's Web site.
Wonder, who had recently recorded Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" using a Computer Music Melodian sampler, paid for his Fairlight by signing a personal check with his thumbprint.
Situated in the village of Arborfield, it is more David Attenborough than Willie Wonka: rows of cocoa plants in a computer-controlled hothouse that feels like a jungle.
While some in the U.S. were accusing WikiLeaks of stealing data through peer-to-peer filesharing networks, another, stranger charge was surfacing in Iceland late last week: that the whistleblowing group somehow planted a "spy computer" in the country's parliament building.
The group has strongly denied recent claims that it used peer-to-peer filesharing networks to steal U.S. government documents, or planted a "spy computer" inside Reykjavik's parliament.
For any innovated plant design, the designed paper plant can be converted into a computer as a digital plant with advanced simulation techniques before being constructed into a real plant.
And if there is one less worker in an automobile plant, there will be one more worker in a computer plant.
