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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.
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Bonus geek points for using an HP graphing calculator and string instead of GPS. 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).
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Not implying that this is, but... how hard would it be to make a web gadget that would auto-generate an image of a crop circle based on a simple 2-color bitmap.... (image only, don't want something that hacks into automated tractors)...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
It makes sense that geeks would be the ones making crop circles. Aliens surely have better things to do.
I guess that's how you amuse yourself when you live in Idaho's Portugal.
It proves a collection of browser zealots have plenty of free time and not much else to do with it. I mean, cool advertising, but some extraterrestrial's gotta be laughing at us.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
Otherwise, I'd have to suggest the perpetrators be sentenced to muck-out a feedlot or two.
"Use Open-Source on My FARM!?! That's what did more damage to my oats than a hailstorm followed by locusts last year!"
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
This makes the local news (and maybe gets picked up somewhere), and a few pissed off IE6 users might hear "Firefox, firefox, firefox" a few more times. And that might be all it takes for a few hundred more converts.
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.
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This was probably the most fun I ever had in my life. And now it's on slashdot! It can't get any better!
:)
I challenge others to come up with other ways to creatively promote the stuff they love. Try and beat this! muahahaha.
TAKE BACK THE [insert your geek-dom here].
... one Washington farmer reported a complete loss after IE enthusiasts recreated a blue screen of death across his soybean field.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
man, talk about beating the magic out something - that's a hell of a lot of pictures.
but I guess sometimes it's just really hard to decide between posting this shot or this one on your website.
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If you dont want to bother looking through all the pics (lots!) - here are the best arial shots: http://lug.oregonstate.edu/gallery/firefox-crop-ci rcle?page=12
"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.
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Isn't the tail in the logo supposed to be on fire?
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)
Look at the size of that thing! It's almost as big as Firefox' memory footprint!
"Maybe the google earth cameras picked it up! "
Hope they will soon!
The location of the crop circle is somewhere in the vicinity of here
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Great pics, especialy the good looking lil geek babe in pic #77. Bonus!
At the moment; viewed 98 times
Close up of tape measure; 73 times
Out of focus closeup of oats; 68 times
Geek guy; 47 times
Well, there you have it guys, you're less interesting than an out of focus picture of oats.
KFG
Will all virgins please raise their hands... http://lug.oregonstate.edu/gallery/firefox-crop-ci rcle/img_5374_1
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...
I suspect an overabundance of sugar in your diet.
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.
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This isn't corn. These were oats. Dry as sin oats, growing densely together. It was impossible to step anywhere without knocking some down, because they're so closely packed together, and were already just about falling down under their own weight. It was a choice between making a bunch of trails which would have been seen from the air as an ugly, less dense area, or making one trail.
Couldn't you get a cut of the profit if you only helped with the crops but stayed away from your grandpa's shit? He sounds like one cranky old dude.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
For anyone too lazy to do it themselves, I've made 1600x1200 and 1280x1024 wallpaper files of the cropcircle image.
I think most of us here are only familiar with girls dancing when there is a pole involved.