Firefox Crop Circles Prove Intelligent Alien Life

This past weekend, the OSU Linux Users Group descended on a field in Oregon to create a 45,000+ square foot crop circle of Firefox. The photos and write-up are worth checking out.

Comments

The Aliens use open source?

[FortKnox]

Maybe that's how Jeff Goldblum uploaded the virus to the mothership...

Re:The Aliens use open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as how Jeff Goldblum used an old Apple powerbook, I think it's a safe assumption aliens used the Appletalk protocol. No wonder the aliens were defeated so easily...

Re:Bonus geek points for not using GPS

[Tweekster]

maybe the crop was already in bad shape to begin with...not much to salvage etc. OR he is letting that field lay fallow (or grow a different crop but not harvest it) so he doesnt care if it is messed up a bit.

Nice to see...

[Alioth]

Nice to see at least someone wearing a kilt.

Also, as for the naysayers, I suspect the farmer gave permission because:
- that many people milling around the farm would have been noticed
- taking off a light plane AND a Robinson R22 helo off the farm would certainly get noticed by the farmer.

The crops are valueless.

[Colin Smith]

"Though I'm not quite sure why the farmers would give permission for parts of their crop to be destroyed (even if he/she's an OSS advocate)."

Because of the subsidies the crops have been overproduced into worthlessness. In the case of corn it fetches something around $2 per bushel on the open market, but $3 per bushel to grow the stuff. You the taxpayer, well, essentially burn money to keep farmers buzzing around on their big tonka toys feeling productive.

Oh and in the process, devastating the economies and agricultural markets of third world countries causing widespread famine and poverty.

Re:The crops are valueless.

[vidarh]

You miss the point. By exporting heavily subsidized food the industrialised countries are not only depriving third world countries of farming revenue from export, but as a result also upsetting their trade balance and making it hard for third world farmers to compete even in their own markets. One of the results is that a lot of third world farming have changed from focusing on foodcrops to crops that are higher income because the industrialised countries aren't subsidising them or aren't growing them, such as coffee, tobacco etc.

A significant effect of this is that many third world countries are far more vulnerable to things like drought than they used to be, as their own foodcrops are small to start with, and droughts now for many countries both devastate their revenues - affecting their ability to pay for food imports - and reduce the yields of their already too small food crops. Whereas with mainly food crops, drought would mean reduced exports and revenue, but still leave them with significant food reserves.

There are certainly examples of mismanagement too, such as Zimbabwe, but corruption is rarely a major factor in affecting the levels of food production.

Re:The crops are valueless.

[gkhan1]

Actually it does. Large scale agriculture, the kind that turns the 3rd world to the 1st world is 100% reliant on trade. If they cannot sell it, they cannot grow very much of it. Ergo, make no money and they cannot develop to the point where they can survive a drought. Ergo, they starve. By so heavily subsidizing 1st world agriculture (like the US and the EU does), they are indeed devastating many economies that could become quite fruitful. And for what? Making sure that 2% of the population will vote for them? This is not a "Well, it's not like we are making the situation worse" scenario, this is a "My neighbours house is on fire, but I don't want to spend a little money for water from my hose" kind of a situation.

Re:The crops are valueless.

[flink]

Of course, since no one is forcing said country to buy corn from overseas at the expense of their own people you can just as easily place the blame there.

Depending on whether the country in question has gone through "debt restructuring" via the IMF, then yes, someone may be forcing them to buy imported produce. Or they might be forced to cease offering subsidies to their own farmers and export their own produce.

Re:The crops are valueless.

[hcob$]

By exporting heavily subsidized food the industrialised countries are not only depriving third world countries of farming revenue from export, but as a result also upsetting their trade balance and making it hard for third world farmers to compete even in their own markets.

Sure, let's kill off the main source of income for a large portion of the midwest and south... Nothing like a nice boost to inflation, jobless/welfare claims, foreclosures, and everyone's grocery bill to make you feel all nice and cozy in your insane and impossible world.

You want to see a stressful job? Go sit around the table of a family that owns a farm during one of the worst draughts in the past 50 years. Try explaining to the children there that you think it's better to take away their father's job, farm, their house, and throw them on welfare because some "third world" country needs the US's support more.

Re:The crops are valueless.

[delinear]

Go sit around the table of any family where the main bread-winner's business is not making enough money and you'll see the same. The only difference is that everyone else doesn't then receive massive subsidies from the government to keep their failing business ticking over. If the business is failing, get out of it and into something else.

It might actually benefit the economy to not be pouring so much money into a huge sink - sure the result may be some short-term job losses, but more money in circulation will eventually balance that out. The need to heavily subsidise farmers existed in the past, it no longer exists, and while helping out third world farmers might not be top of your list of priorities, if you can do that as a side effect of fixing your own economy, everyone wins.

Re:Bonus geek points for not using GPS

[RingDev]

I didn't look to close, but it was either grass hay or weat. ~43,000 square feet = 1 acre. 1 acre = what, like 60 bushels of wheat? A bushel of wheat is probably under $4. Even if the crop was completely unsalvagable, which is unlikely, the farmer is out $240 gross proffit. After associated costs per acre (seed, fuel, time, etc...) the farmer is probably turning $40 per acre if he's lucky.

Not exactly a huge loss, or anti-green movement.

-Rick

Enthusiastic users

[sunny256]

Really awesome stunt. Would any MSIE users do something like this to show their enthusiasm for the product? Probably not. This stunt is somewhat the same principle as when geeks on Linux meetings bring their penguins with them in all shapes and sizes. I mean, you don't see MS Windows users arrive with big amounts of glass...

Where do you think your overproduction goes?

[Colin Smith]

That's right, with the subsidies, the american produce is cheaper than they can produce in the developing and third world. Imagine that, you have a farmer with American wages to pay, capital investment in equipment, debts to the banks and with the subsidies it's still cheaper to ship the stuff half way round the world.

The farmers in the third world can't enter the American market, the American market is busy dumping the produce on their market.

August 11th 2006. Corn futures... $2.42 per bushel

[Colin Smith]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&si d=aIUBO99o5fTw&refer=home

On the open market. What part of the word "subsidies" don't you understand? The "profit" you're getting a cut of is welfare. It's handed to you still warm from the taxpayers wallet.

Re:I've been in tighter packed corn fields....

[rts008]

As a former rancher, you should then know the difference between wheatfields (RTFA, or look at the pics with all of the heads formed on the wheat) and cornfields.

Ahh...I get it! I guess that is one of the reasons you're a FORMER rancher.

Income

[Z34107]

Sure, let's kill off the main source of income for a large portion of the midwest and south... Nothing like a nice boost to inflation, jobless/welfare claims, foreclosures, and everyone's grocery bill to make you feel all nice and cozy in your insane and impossible world.

That "income" for the Midwest and South comes from every U.S. taxpayer. Why are we spending billions to encourage farmers to plant fields that would be more productive razed? That will just go to waste? That worsen the problem of low crop prices by encouraging farmers to flood the market? It's expensive and counterproductive, and benefits large corporate plantations - the people who lobby for these price supports - more than anyone else.

explaining to the children there that you think it's better to take away their father's job, farm, their house, and throw them on welfare because some "third world" country needs the US's support more.

Bullshit. Nobody's "supporting" the third world by eliminating farm subsidies. Every dollar per bushel taxpayers give to a farmer lets him sell his crops one more dollar below cost. If crop X costs $2/bushel for both American and African farmers to produce but American farmers get $1/bushel in subsidies, the cost of the African crop will be double relative to the American's crop. Eliminating the subsidies doesn't give free money to third world countries - it just lets them sell their crops, like everyone else.

This also means crop X will be more expensive - even if the crop sells for "less" because of the subsidies, remember that it still cost $2/bushel to make in addition to the $1/bushel of subsidies.

These subsidies also produce wastage - farmers will grow much, much more of crop X at $3/bushel the government effectively gives them than they will at the $2/bushel the free market will give. Remember that the free market doesn't want to buy all of this - farmers are growing more because they get more money for it, not because there's anybody to actually buy it. Besides wasting perfectly good land and resources, farming has environmental consequences such as water contamination from runoff and the chemicals and pesticides used on a modern farm, not to mention the fuel usage of modern farming implements.

Early societies began to evolve from subsistence-level standards of living when it became possible for one man to grow more than he immediately needed, allowing him to sell the rest. Because others could buy food instead of growing it themselves, this allowed for the specialization and division of labor - not everyone had to be farmers, they could do something else for a living.

Farm subsidies artificially make it cheaper to buy imported food from abroad than to grow it domestically. This is the "real" support to third world countires. It also prevents this critical first step for the evolution of third world societies - nobody will ever grow food (or, at least more food than they need for themselves) if they can buy it cheaper than they can grow it. And, most people will agree that nobody growing food in a starving country is a Bad thing.