Slashdot Mirror
Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese
An anonymous reader writes "Economic espionage is nothing new but one of the biggest areas being targeted now is agriculture. Here's a story about a FBI investigation to track down theft of seeds from research farms. 'The case of the missing corn seeds first broke in May 2011 when a manager at a DuPont research farm in east-central Iowa noticed a man on his knees, digging up the field. When confronted, the man, Mo Hailong, who was with his colleague Wang Lei, appeared flushed. Mr. Mo told the manager that he worked for the University of Iowa and was traveling to a conference nearby. When the manager paused to answered his cellphone, the two men sped off in a car, racing through a ditch to get away, federal authorities said.'"
It's really hard to feel all that much pity for DuPont. They have a long history of being enormous pricks.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
A major war between modern powers could be more effectively "won" with biological weapons than nuclear ones. Come up with something that will decimate the primary crop of the enemy nation (or even specific variations on that crop which might be planted en masse by Monsanto) and you severely weaken the country.
Fork Slashdot to a new site, move on and leave the dregs to remember the good old days and salt the ground with their bitter tears.
Oh wait, we've already done that...
There are many of us who have been providing *constructive* criticism for *many months* only to have it fall on deaf ears. Now that the beta is being forced on users in a graduated rollout you're going to be hearing these complaints more and more often until either:
1. The Slashdot admins capitulate and concede the beta was a giant mistake.
2. Slashdot Beta has functionality and usability parity with the standard site.
3. Those of us who absolutely hate the new site leave and never come back.
4. Comments complaining are stifled and silenced.
I'm thinking #3 is the most likely possibility.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
I see it more akin to Microsoft Bob.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Though I support the idea in principle I seriously doubt it'll get the PHB's attention since they have such an obvious lack of respect for, and understanding of the slashdot community.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Buck Feta
1. Way too much vertical white space, which is more precious than dehydrated unicorn testciles thanks to 16:9 screens.
2. A More Button. WTF! The bandwidth for text is cheap. Give me the whole converstaion.
3. Coonversation context is lost because I can't see summarised comments nested under modded up comments.
4. Thick borders. 1 pixel is enough.
46137
This site has been something special to a number of readers and posters here, and seeing the place go down in flames like Digg did when they ignored their users' feedback is a highly suboptimal emotional experience.
Saying that turns the place into the kindergarten you wanted to avoid.
Holy Crap! I just tried Beta. It's pretty bad. I wouldn't call it as horrifying as some, but it is really quite bad from a design perspective.
But here's my main complaint: You can't read comments without Javascript enabled. Javascript is really cool, it's great for creating dynamic web pages. Things like OpenStreetMap have made my life fundamentally better when doing dynamic content perusal.
But there's a gap there; reading a comment tree is not dynamic content perusal. I click my desired mod level, then read the entire tree without any changes. Occasionally I pop open a new tab to reply to an existing comment, but that is rare enough that it can be done with static pages.
I don't enable Javascript by default, and I don't enable it on sites that don't need it. It's a security thing, like not leaving services running that you don't need. It's also about not chewing up memory and CPU for dancing baloney.
The value of Slashdot is the community comments. That is why I come here. It is why I spend so much time carefully crafting and editing comments that I hope will add to the experience for others (and often censoring my more bile-laden knee-jerk responses that would make it a more combustible environment).
Like so many members of the Slashdot community, I put a lot into making this a place that people like to visit. And I am happy for Dice to make a profit selling ad space on the comments that my community creates, in exchange for playing host. That's a pretty good trade all around. Don't fuck it up.
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