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Also note that the ACLU in fact DOES and HAS stood up for the 2nd Amendment, which is also alluded to in their position paper.

So while they believe it to be a group or societal right rather than an individual one, they also oppose efforts to create gun owners registry. And they have worked with the NRA to prevent such a registry from being created. And they've fought cases where police have used the presence of a gun to wrongly establish probable cause in violation of the 4th Amendment.

So there. You're slightly less stupid now.

(example case: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04...)

The fact that China is increasingly hostile to the internal use of Western tech (promoting their own OS, banning Apple products, etc) could also be a factor

Um, what?

Research into procrastination has noted that people have much less concern about their future selves than their present selves and are willing to sell their future selves down the river for the sake of present ease. But when the present marches into the future, and we are confronted with the work that our past selves refused to do, we pay the price in unmet deadlines, all-nighters and general torment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...

The result becomes one of people providing estimates that allow them to screw off in the present and postpone the agony of late nights, weekends and looming deadlines for taking it easy today. This seems to always happen in our organization. A current project has had the hardware in place and ready for the teams to load their software on and configure the system for 6 months, but they waited until 3 weeks before the project is due to start and now they are changing the project design to make it easier on themselves in the present as well. Estimates = wasted time. Just do it.

Private debt drives the economy. And yet economists have convinced themselves and us that we can safely ignore the role of banks debt and money. This situation is absolutely insane.

You appear to have convinced yourself you can completely ignore those "economists" and figure out what they think via telepathy.

Personal opinon: on economics, you're better off reading Krugman than slashdot.

Has this ever worked before? Has anyone ever shown that it's possible for children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic? And have they published their results in peer-reviewed journals?

I thought that most of the research found that computers weren't too useful in teaching basic reading, writing and arithmetic, even when students had assistance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10... Inflating the Software Report Card By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL October 8, 2011 (United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”)

Excellent question.

What is the major problem that limits children from learning from apps now? Most children in the US are glued to the iPad and I'm sure people have tried to create learning apps.

Is it lacking in apps and games, or lacking in content? Or, is it lacking in algorithms or just a charismatic personality for the students to learn from?

Also, how are app/content developers going to test their stuff against children in the developing world or children in general? Are there schools or organizations in place where the app can be tested? In a lot of ways, it would require children psychology for the apps to be engaging to learn, and without testing it in kids and in the third world environment, it would be very effective.

Did OLTP have the impact it was designed to have? I think OLTP kicked off the market for netbooks or whatever they were called back then - cheap small computers with cheap CPU and OSes.

Perhaps this will create an avalance of educational websites and apps. There are sites like Coursra, Udemy etc that do education market that have good content and platform.

Has this ever worked before? Has anyone ever shown that it's possible for children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic? And have they published their results in peer-reviewed journals?

I thought that most of the research found that computers weren't too useful in teaching basic reading, writing and arithmetic, even when students had assistance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...
Inflating the Software Report Card
By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL
October 8, 2011
(United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”)

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
--Thomas Edison

Has this ever worked before? Has anyone ever shown that it's possible for children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic? And have they published their results in peer-reviewed journals?

I thought that most of the research found that computers weren't too useful in teaching basic reading, writing and arithmetic, even when students had assistance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...
Inflating the Software Report Card
By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL
October 8, 2011
(United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”)

New York Times had an article about it a few years ago: Farewell, With Love and Instructions ,By LIZETTE ALVAREZ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10... One thing that would be nice is take some pictures from family vacations or school events and tell some funny or heatwarming stories about it. the focus should be split between the photos and your reactions to them. your laugh, smile, twinkle in the eye. Sorry to hear and bless you and your family

You like the internet as it is now?
Then you like net neutrality.
It's that simple.

Granted, the GOP tried, and failed, to capture the term with their deceitful House Bill a couple weeks ago, but most folks saw right through it.

And as for the big scary ACA:
http://mediamatters.org/resear...
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-ma...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

After the book "1984" was recalled and erased from my ebook reader without my authorization, I took that as a clear warning that ebook readers are not ready or safe for prime time.

I'll be reading on paper until I get root by default. I won't vote with my wallet for things to keep heading in this direction.

Er, hello? Oil is cheap right now because there's a price war going on... The Saudis voted to keep OPEC overproducing for the time being, probably at the prodding of the US Sec of State to hurt Russia in retaliation for the Ukraine thing. Russia's economy is very dependent on oil right now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...

Yes, this hurts US oil production too, which is probably why the Saudis agreed to do this. The US has been producing more of its own shale oil through fracking, which is relatively expensive. This will probably make some of the smaller players go bankrupt, so their assets can be seized and utilized by the larger oil companies at fire sale rates.

US demand for oil has also dropped (by about as much as US domestic production increased), we like to think due to more efficient use of renewables and electric vehicles, but probably mostly due to the recession. The US appears to be recovering from the recession, and certainly these cheap oil prices has gas guzzler sales bouncing back. So it's likely gas prices will bounce back in a big way once OPEC goes back to "normal" market-adjusted production capacity in a few months.

In any case, there are several good reasons for OPEC to delay competition by temporarily cutting prices, but the prices are certainly artificially low now and can easily be bumped back artificially high once we're a bit more distracted from developing our energy independency.

how about.. along with ordering this from them.. order known faces+dna pairs and see if it's any good.

I know, I know... it's still unfashionable to RTFA. But I did it anyway, so you won't have to:
They did exactly that in a related article linked from there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02...

At least a dozen people immediately responded that they could not guess because the images felt too generic. Among the 50 or so people who did venture guesses, none identified the man as Mr. Markoff, who is 65.

When it came to the computerâ(TM)s DNA portrait of Ms. Spangler, 31, staffers had more luck. About 10 people correctly identified her.
Although there was no close second, participants put forth the names of nearly 10 other women. About half of them were of European ancestry, half of Asian ancestry

So no, it not 'any good'... other than a very generic facial build, skin color, hair color, and male/female. The article doesn't mention eye color, and the samples given aren't clear enough to know if they get that out - but as far as I know, that should be one of the easier things to get right.

It's a glimpse of inevitable things to come, though.

True to some extent, but imagination and innovation can create resources where there were none before. Trees grow wood mostly just from CO2 in the air and water. Germany has plenty of those. Many new materials are essentially plastic or carbon fiber. Germany could have invented all that with chemistry instead of going to war. That it did not is a failure of the German imagination back then.

Right now, the state-of-the-art in Germany for a new home is not to even need a furnace:
"No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12...
"DARMSTADT, Germany â" From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace. "

Other things I've written about that, including another "Downfall" parody where Hitler rails against abundance and open source and productive imaginative engineers: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backu...

Granite can be melted into building material and also separated into a variety of elements. Seawater has just about every element in it and Germany has access to the sea. It may be more profitable to get something like aluminum from a specific ore abundant in it, but with the right technology and enough energy (like from fusion power), you can get pretty much any element anywhere on the planet. Ignoring what is possibly now or soon with nanotechnology, here are the basic chemical paths proposed around 1980 for use in turning lunar ore (basically granite) into a variety of materials:
"Flowsheet and process equations for the HF acid-leach process"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/...

So, Germany could (in theory) have done that all instead of launching two world wars for "lebensraum" and access to foreign materials -- if it had invested more in the chemistry of production than the chemistry of destruction.

Germany does have some limited iron production, BTW; but not much. However, Germany probably also has a lot more as-yet-undiscovered ores and such in mountains and underground (like perhaps a mile or two down). They are just harder to find or get to than ones that are obvious from the surface. But if Germany had made more of an effort, including creation of better technologies for prospecting for ores, maybe it would have found various ores at home? Also, while I'm not a big fan of seabed mining for environmental reasons, that is another possibility, and in any case, they show the possibility of finding new resources by looking deep within the earth:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07...
"Mr. Dettweiler has now turned from recovering lost treasures to prospecting for natural ones that litter the seabed: craggy deposits rich in gold and silver, copper and cobalt, lead and zinc. A new understanding of marine geology has led to the discovery of hundreds of these unexpected ore bodies, known as massive sulfides because of their sulfurous nature."

Also, I've read that one reason Germany did so much for so long militarily in WWII (as imports were cut off) was that it put in place an intensive recycling program. Ignoring the holocaust and forced labor parts of it, it showed what was possible (discussed I think in the book "Other Homes and Garbage". As you imply, right now the automotive industry has become a net producer of metal from car recycling. But, even granted the industry needed some meta

True to some extent, but imagination and innovation can create resources where there were none before. Trees grow wood mostly just from CO2 in the air and water. Germany has plenty of those. Many new materials are essentially plastic or carbon fiber. Germany could have invented all that with chemistry instead of going to war. That it did not is a failure of the German imagination back then.

Right now, the state-of-the-art in Germany for a new home is not to even need a furnace:
"No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12...
"DARMSTADT, Germany â" From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace. "

Other things I've written about that, including another "Downfall" parody where Hitler rails against abundance and open source and productive imaginative engineers: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backu...

Granite can be melted into building material and also separated into a variety of elements. Seawater has just about every element in it and Germany has access to the sea. It may be more profitable to get something like aluminum from a specific ore abundant in it, but with the right technology and enough energy (like from fusion power), you can get pretty much any element anywhere on the planet. Ignoring what is possibly now or soon with nanotechnology, here are the basic chemical paths proposed around 1980 for use in turning lunar ore (basically granite) into a variety of materials:
"Flowsheet and process equations for the HF acid-leach process"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/...

So, Germany could (in theory) have done that all instead of launching two world wars for "lebensraum" and access to foreign materials -- if it had invested more in the chemistry of production than the chemistry of destruction.

Germany does have some limited iron production, BTW; but not much. However, Germany probably also has a lot more as-yet-undiscovered ores and such in mountains and underground (like perhaps a mile or two down). They are just harder to find or get to than ones that are obvious from the surface. But if Germany had made more of an effort, including creation of better technologies for prospecting for ores, maybe it would have found various ores at home? Also, while I'm not a big fan of seabed mining for environmental reasons, that is another possibility, and in any case, they show the possibility of finding new resources by looking deep within the earth:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07...
"Mr. Dettweiler has now turned from recovering lost treasures to prospecting for natural ones that litter the seabed: craggy deposits rich in gold and silver, copper and cobalt, lead and zinc. A new understanding of marine geology has led to the discovery of hundreds of these unexpected ore bodies, known as massive sulfides because of their sulfurous nature."

Also, I've read that one reason Germany did so much for so long militarily in WWII (as imports were cut off) was that it put in place an intensive recycling program. Ignoring the holocaust and forced labor parts of it, it showed what was possible (discussed I think in the book "Other Homes and Garbage". As you imply, right now the automotive industry has become a net producer of metal from car recycling. But, even granted the industry needed some meta

I did a very brief bit of research on this... As it turns out, we haven't actually deployed any landmines after 1991, apparently except for *one* single munition used in Afghanistan. I can't help but wonder what the hell one single landmine would be used for.

We also don't currently have any deployed minefields anywhere in the world. So, it's certainly not a case of "continual use". While we haven't signed the Ottowa Treaty banning the use of landmines, the US is the single largest donor in helping to decontaminate regions and providing assistance for victim's medical care, to the tune of 2.3 billion dollars since 1993.

The US does currently have a stockpile of them, but is no longer manufacturing, exporting, or importing them. The military is prohibited from deploying any mines that lack a self-deactivation mechanism. Our landmine stockpiles will likely be phased out with the development of viable alternatives... probably killer robots.

For what it's worth, I hope we can eventually get rid of the damned things as well.

I'm pretty sure all those "whites only" and "Irish need not apply" signs were hung by businesses.

For better or worse such thoughtcrimes are currently illegal — we certainly aren't as free as we like to think of ourselves.

But most of other discrimination remains perfectly legal — especially based on increased risk of a disease. Ever heard of "quarantine"? Of unvaccinated children barred from schools?..

So, if kids, who are — in somebody's opinion — higher-risk, may be left without education — or forcibly vaccinated against their parents' will — why can't a carrier of actual debilitating disease of some kind be asked for a higher mortgage downpayment (or some other risk-mitigating measure)?

Perhaps you failed to notice that my source was the Huffington Post. It is they who are saying that ISIS troops are using chemical weapons which they obtained from Saddam's stockpiles. While I will agree that Huffington Post is a bunch of wingnuts, they are are not noted for thinking that Bush was right about anything.

Yes, the source which stated, "chemical munitions remaining after the U.S. invasion, which the Times notes, originate not from the period when President George W. Bush claimed Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction, but from earlier."
Said Times article stating, "The United States had gone to war declaring it must destroy an active weapons of mass destruction program. Instead, American troops gradually found and ultimately suffered from the remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West." http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Although the rising levels of acidity and CO2 in oceans is benefiting CO2->O2 and acidity absorbing bacteria and algae, so we might want to block out the sun over land in specific places. The Sahara, or Australian outback seem like good ideas (CHEAP arable land! WOO!) Australia has the advantage of being close to the worlds population center, so an extra breadbasket would be fantastic.

Of course the world's energy problems (mirrored solar, is gooood), food problems (recycling, and composting, more arable land... we really did urbanize the best farm land), and transportation problems will be improved as we like each other more and urbanize more densely and closer together (what is with the pressure differentials in condominiums, why is no one ever blasting rock music on their balcony [guess I'm young], and the dry air from the air vent!). Two of these seem to be happening a bit. It's hard to imagine a world where all three have happened so much that we want to scale them back, and I suppose that makes them good things.

...is bad for you.

And brownies may lead to weight gain --but then again, pot alone does a good enough job by itself.

Or creating instability is a good way of chasing off competing 'foreign' investment. One thing for sure is that it is very good for some industries, This is Obama's/Clinton's legacy. I would say, *Mission Accomplished!*

Maybe they can't sell the stuff because no one knows who actually owns it. What chance do they have without even a proper land registry? I heard about this in a comment on The Economist, and couldn't believe it, but then found more details here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

At this point, there's no possibility at all that Greece would be able to borrow more money from the EU to run a primary budget deficits in the future.

We'll see them try within the next 24 hours.

Wow, you're really not understanding the current situation at all.

A good place to start would be the concept of a primary surplus. That's the situation Greece is in now.

With all the information that has come out about fraudulent studies on the so called global warming

I assume you're talking about this.

and the 1800 scientist who signed a partition saying that it was a fraud

That "petition" was a hoax.

Though that estimate might be a little high...

"Just before leaving public office in 2001, Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million."

But then again, it could be right on the money:

"Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in."

Warning about global warming is a good business to be in it seems...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05... Sony, it is suggested, might be better off just selling insurance. Or just making movies and music. But not electronics. A new report from the investment banking firm Jefferies delivered a harsh assessment of Sony’s electronics business. “Electronics is its Achilles’ heel and, in our view, it is worth zero,” wrote Atul Goyal, consumer technology analyst for Jefferies, in the report, released this week. ... Its financial arm accounts for 63 percent of Sony’s total operating profit last year. Life insurance has been its biggest moneymaker over the last decade, earning the company 933 billion yen ($9.07 billion) in operating profit in the 10 years that ended in March. Sony’s film and music divisions, which produced hits like the Spider-Man movies and “Zero Dark Thirty” and recorded musicians like the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the electronic music duo Daft Punk, have contributed $7 billion to the company’s bottom line over the last decade. In that time, Sony’s electronics division has lost a cumulative $8.5 billion. Hardly Sony’s crown jewels, experts say.

You're right. Everyone knows Sony makes most of it's money selling insurance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

Exciting. Impunity in NY City.

A123 has had a number of problems, from their bankruptcy in 2012, their massive layoffs and executive bonuses, to later being purchased by a Chinese company and selling off their assets

Also, non-compete agreements are not valid in California. Even out-of-state NCAs are invalidated if the employee is to work at a CA company, (Exceptions if the employee is a stakeholder/partner/owner, which doesn't apply here).

That arbitrarily seizes cash left and right because it is deposited in "structured deposits"

What are you, some sort of kook? That never happens!

Well..... not entirely fabrications. And I believe it was more a case of bad information than deliberate lies, but if you hate Bush, than nothing else will suffice to say.
While there was no active WMD program after all, there *had* been one, as we all knew, and the NY Times recently expounded on just how much of those chemical bits were lying all over Iraq; although ironically, they were safer in the hands of Saddam Hussein than ISIS.

Oh yeah, I was going through my files and found this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...
Inflating the Software Report Card
By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL
Published: October 8, 2011
United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”

Even if they had gotten the generators, you can't just rewire things on the spur of the moment like that, especially not when a significant section of the country has also been wiped out. Of course if they had proper hardened vents like are required in the US, there wouldn't have been any explosions. Still would have been a technical loss of containment due to the necessity of venting, and probably still a meltdown, but the destruction of the outer containment and cooling systems by the explosions was the real disaster.

Storage turns out not to be a big deal for an 80% renewable powered grid. http://www.engineering.com/Ele...

France does have big problems with summer heat shutting down reactors though. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05...

Nuclear power seems to add brittleness to the system. They get shut down when it is too hot in the summer. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com... They extend blackouts by being too big to fail gracefully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... And, they don't allow consumers access to the lowest cost power by failing to shut down when not needed. http://will.illinois.edu/nfs/R... They seem to add more problems than they solve.

As a former smoker, while some of what you say may be true, your post seems to be just about as equally dangerous and misinformed. There are basically no long term studies that demonstrate the safety of e-cigarettes and there have been several recent reports highlighting the danger of them. For example, here, here and here. Two wrongs by the FDA (e.g., fully endorsing vaping) wouldn't make a right.

whyt not? He's on a salary, he gets PAID to sit on the roadside, you don't. The only person it's costing is YOU.

Perhaps because the Supreme Court think the search would be unreasonable and while the officer may not have to pay personally, the local police force aren't going to be very happy after paying out for a few constitutional violations.

I doubt the Supreme Court would think that, having given your phone to an officer for them to check your ID, you have somehow consented to them collecting GB of other personal information from it.

Now you could probably hand over the information voluntarily if the terms and conditions associated with their app requested it, but if they do that I don't expect there to be much take up of the app in the first place.

They already do: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02...

"Windows - the most insecure OS in the world."

Microsoft makes more money if Windows has vulnerabilities. See this article, for example: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster .

It's silly to say that it made more sense in the 60's and 70's than today, because nothing about the economics have changed, only the behavior of mortgage holders.

Even so, whether one is a better decision depends on the interest rates, the length of the mortgage, realtor fees, and what the market is doing. This calculator lets you figure it all out, and is actually a pretty impressive applet in terms of presenting information and allowing you to quickly get a grasp of all the variables in the problem: http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

The big thing that changes the equation the most IMO is going with a 15-year mortgage. Especially considering that rates are generally 1% lower on the shorter mortgage, it makes a dramatic difference in how your equity builds. For instance, on my home I could've taken a 30-year at 4.75% and paid $1100 a month, with maybe $100 of that going to principal. Instead, I'm paying $1400 a month on a 15-year @ 3.75% interest rate, with $700 going to principal every month. Think of it this way: would you pay $300 a month to get $600 more in equity every month?

Of course, the scenario changes as you get farther along in the mortgage, but conventional wisdom I've seen says that short mortgages are only for people who are intending to pay off a house and retire in it. Seems to me that short mortgages are best for anybody who doesn't like being a slave to the bank.

Today, if you deposit cash into your bank account in portions under $10000, the IRS may decide, you are doing it with the intent to avoid having to report the deposit to them and seize all your money — no judge, no jury. The current nominee for Attorney General is particularly infamous for expanding this practice (and for distancing herself from it to win the nomination).

How soon before the FBI and lesser police start treating use of wired telephones — to eavesdrop on which the police still need these pesky Judiciary's approval — with similar suspicion? Following IRS' example, they might then start prosecuting people simply for making non-cellular calls with the intent to avoid eavesdropping.

Just to put this silliness into perspective, the current distance and duration records for a model aircraft are held by The Spirit of Butts' Farm, built by legendary modeller Maynard Hill. The model took 38 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds to fly the 1,881.6 mi (3,028.1 km) from Cape Spear, near St. John's, Newfoundland, to Mannin Beach, near Clifden, Ireland.

This was their fifth attempt to complete the trip. The longer trip across the Pacific, against the wind one way (the proposal is a round trip!), would seem to be far outside the meager budget of the Kickstarter guys.

agree with him or not, he has a nobel prize in macro economics and you don't. across the board austerity is the worst possible thing you can do to get out of a recession.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...

The problem with Greece is not about a recession it's about too much debt. Who cares about the Nobel prize, they gave the Nobel "Peace" price to a president who was at war.

agree with him or not, he has a nobel prize in macro economics and you don't. across the board austerity is the worst possible thing you can do to get out of a recession.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

Human hair to make fake soy sauce? Who was crazy enough to think of this in the first place?

They can't do that. The electronics side has only lost money for years (at least $8.5 billion lost over 10 years). I'm not sure if that includes the Playstation brand.

Film and music has brought in about $7 billion in earnings.

And the life insurance arm (that's right, Sony Life) brought in over $9.07 billion in that time. Life insurance represented 63% of their operating profit last year (2012 or 2013, I'm not sure).

So they need to shed electronics completely, it has proven, over a reasonable time period, to be a consistent way to lose money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

Yeah, because an industry with one of the highest equipment-related death/injury rates for its workers and habitually and flagrantly skirting protections designed to protect the public from harm is one that should be allowed to regulate itself. GREAT IDEA!

I saw this day coming after I worked there for a period. Treating their employees poorly was part of their business plan. I am surprised that it took so long though. Kornfield isn't around to see this, but he must have seen it on the horizon as well.

Have you been under a rock for the last eight years? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08...

driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,

You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).

acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops

You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?

'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.

Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?

You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.

The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.

only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).

You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor

Even less surprising, considering that they're a registered corporation; with a big business in merchandising.

And most corporations use VPNs, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11...